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Albert Hlebec: On the Slovenian National Question
Albert Hlebec is a paradigmatic representative of a Slovenian independentist current within the Yugoslav communist movement. Given that the Yugoslav socialist state had eventually been formed on a federal basis, the independentist currents within various local sections of the party withered away after the intro-duction of the Popular Front policy in 1935. The Popular Front aimed to preserve the territorial unity of the Yugoslav state, fearing that any other outcome would benefit fascist expansionism. However, until that moment, for most of its history, the KPJ had been decidedly anti-Yugoslav: it sought to break up Yugoslavia to create a Balkan Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, with Slovenia (among others) as an administrative unit. While it may seem counter-intuitive at first, given their internationalism, the communist support for secessionism made sense within the overall theoretical framework that was dominant in the movement during the 1920s and 1930s.