Slovenia

The republic that left Yugoslavia in ten days and never looked back. Slovenia is the northwestern corner of the former federation, Alpine and Catholic, ruled by the Habsburgs for six centuries and consequently oriented towards Vienna and Trieste rather than Belgrade. Slovene identity survived that long subordination mainly through language, standardised by Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century and carried by nineteenth-century poets, above all France Preseren, whose verse supplies the national anthem. It joined the South Slav kingdom in 1918 to escape Italian and Austrian claims, was partitioned three ways in 1941, and became the wealthiest republic of Tito's federation - about eight per cent of the population producing around a fifth of exports, which is the economic argument that underlay independence. Being ethnically homogeneous and geographically peripheral, with almost no Serb population and no border with Serbia, it was also the cheapest republic for Belgrade to let go. The Ten-Day War of June and July 1991 killed under seventy people and ended with the federal army withdrawing. Slovenia joined the EU and NATO in 2004 and the euro in 2007, the first post-communist state to adopt it. Ljubljana is the capital. Over half the country is forest. The country has about two million people and twenty thousand square kilometres. Triglav, on the flag, is its highest peak. Lake Bled and the Postojna caves are the best-known sites. Slovene uses a dual grammatical number alongside singular and plural, rare among living languages. The country has a short Adriatic coast of about forty-six kilometres.

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