Читать книгу The History of Yugoslavia - Henry Baerlein - Страница 98

The Ausgleich was of ill-omen to the Slav subjects of Hungary. It was not much more auspicious for the Slovenes, Istrians and Dalmatians. The Slavs seem to have been the Habsburgs' nightmare. Why the million and a quarter of Slovenes—people who do not approach the Basques, for instance, in pugnacity—should be the butt of everlasting coercion and repression may seem inexplicable. When the German-Austrians of Triest, even after the Italians in Italy had begun to claim the town, allied themselves with the Triest Italians "to fight," as they declared, "the common enemy," it can surely not have been these quiet Slovenes who had won for themselves by great industry a place in the town which is situated in their province. The "common enemy" to whom the German-Austrians referred must have been Russia. And so the Southern Slavs of the Balkans and of the Adriatic owed part of the bad treatment they received not to their own vices but to the organizing virtues which their larger brother was supposed to have.