What Have We Been Doing And What Have We Achieved

(A review of the work of the Institute for Contemporary History on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary)

Abstract

On the basis of archive material and work reports, the author presents the activities of the Institute for Contemporary History, the central national institution for the study of Slovenian history from the national revival in 1848 to the present day. The Institute was founded in 1959 by the Executive Council of the Slovenian government on the initiative of the Central Committee of the League of Communists. The research work of the Institute, which in the beginning only dealt with the revolutionary workers' movement, was, in the early Seventies, extended to cover all aspects of the recent national history. The Institute's associates have been studying the complete political, cultural, economic and social history of Slovenia, divided into four chronological periods (pre 1918, 1918 to 1941, 1941 to 1945, and after 1945). Their findings are available in academic monographs, published sources, papers in national and foreign historiographic and specialist journals, and elsewhere (Encyclopaedia of Slovenia, for example). The Institute also publishes the journal Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino (Contributions to Contemporary History). Most of the research work on recent Slovenian history has been done by the researchers of the Institute. The Institute is a professional research institution boasting a very highly qualified personnel: twenty-two of its twenty-six employees are historians of whom thirteen are holders of doctoral degree and three Masters of Art.