Pium desiderium dr. Vekoslava Kukovca leta 1924
The pium desiderium of dr Vekoslav Kukovec in 1924

Summary/Abstract: The following discussion presents the initiative of one of the leading Slovenian liberal politicians in the first decades of the 20th century, Dr Vekoslav Kukovec, in the beginning of August 1924: that the liberals should withdraw from the ruthless political struggle against the Catholic side. When the leadership of the Slovenian liberal politics refused this initiative, Kukovec resigned. After this unsuccessful attempt at convincing the liberals to support the ideological appeasement in Slovenia, Kukovec’s efforts resulted in a debate between the liberal and Catholic side, in which both sides expressed the characteristic contemporaneous ideological rigidity of the cultural struggle. The “pium desiderium” — pious hope of Vekoslav Kukovec to put an end to this struggle did not come to pass. We can only speculate about how the Catholic side would have reacted had the liberal side offered ideological and political appeasement that Kukovec argued for. However, it is certain that by not doing so liberalism lost an opportunity to denounce the ideological intolerance and intellectual violence in Slovenia and thus exempt itself from the historical responsibility for the consequences. However, none of this happened. The Slovenian ideological complexes lived on and attained further painful dimensions.

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