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In the 19th and 20th century, it has been the most prosperous of all the former parts of Yugoslavia. Today it has a diversified economy depending on agriculture (primarily grains), mining (bauxite, iron ore, lead and other minerals), manufacturing (electrical, chemical, metallurgical, food, textiles and wood products) and tourism (Slovenia 2929). Although its economy was disrupted by the break with Yugoslavia, Slovenia has enjoyed solid GDP growth during 1992-1998 ranging from 2.9 percent in 1992 to an estimated 5 percent in 1998 and only moderate inflation (an estimated 7.5 percent in 1998 (Ramet 113). Its GDP per capita of $11,200 in 1997 is the highest among East European nations and higher than in Greece or Portugal (Ramet 113).
During the last pre-independence stage of glasnost in the late 1980s, Slovenians enjoyed freedom of press and speech. Its first free multiparty elections were held in early 1990, which resulted in a noncommunist coalition government and instituted the first multiparty system in 1989. After Tito's death in 1980, Curtis says that "Slovenia . . . came to resist the central (Yugoslav) government's policy of redistributing . . . [its] relatively greater wealth to impoverished regions in the Slav South" (xxvi). After Serbian leaders in Belgrade rejected Slovenian (and Croatian) proposals to convert Yugoslavia into a loose confederation of quasi-independent states, 88 percent of Slovenians voted in December 1990 for complete independence, which was declared in June 1991. After a brief period of hostilities between the Slovenian militia and the Yugoslav Army in the summer of 1991, a cease fire was declared which is still in place. Slovenia's independence was recognized by Germany, the United States, other European states and the United Nations in 1992.
The independence movement was led by a broad six-party center coalition called the Democratic Coalition of Slovenia (Demos), led by the former League o...