"WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITIES" IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLOVENIAN STATEHOOD (1918-1941)

The process of restoring of the Slovenian statehood began in August 1918, was complicated by division of Slovenian lands between Italy, Austria and Hungary, passed through four "windows of opportunity" and remained unfinished in the context of the nacist-fashist occupation in 1941. The incompleteness of this process was due to the indecision of the Slovenian national-political program, the split of the Slovene politicum on the currents of Yugoslavism and "Sloveneness". The "windows of opportunity" of the state-building process show its "wave" character: it was accelerated in times of the collapse of multinational state formations within which the Slovenians lived, and amid increasing external threat from side of Italy, Austria, Hungary. Thus, in the conditions of stable existence in authoritarian multinational states, the process of Slovenian state formation slowed down.