Foreword

The first issue of the international scientific review Dve domovini/Two Homelands, published by the Institute for Slovene Emigration Research, a part of the Centre of Scientific Research of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, has been received very favourably, both at home and abroad. This encouraging response gives its editors every reason to continue with the publication of this periodical. Despite the very difficult financial situation, you have before you a double issue of Dve domovini/Two Homelands. The first of the two sections contains a selection of papers presented at the International Symposium on Emigrant Publications, held in Maribor from 18 to 21 April 1991. The gathering was organized by Maribor’s Faculty of Education, the History Department and the Research Institute of the same Faculty, and financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia. In keeping with the policy of open scientific cooperation, the Institute for Slovene Emigration Research cooperated very productively with all home scholars and foreign researches of Slovene extraction who attended the symposium.

One of the results of this useful interaction was the publication of several papers presented at the symposium. The second part of the papers is reprinted in Maribor’s Znanstvena revija No. 2, III/1991. This issue of Dve domovini/Two Homelands also carries several contributions on emigrant publications which were not presented at the symposium, or were written after it, as well as several articles dealing with the topical issues of the Slovene emigrant community.

Now that the new issue of Dve domovini/Two Homelands has been sent throughout the independent state of Slovenia and to our fellow Slovenes and scholars of Slovene emigration throughout the world, we sincerely hope that it will he received with the same excitement as the first one. Our efforts are geared to promoting these periodicals as an enduring tie between all Slovene-born and other scholars of Slovene emigration. We would like to thank all those who contributed articles to this issue and in particularly the Ministry for Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia for its financial assistance and understanding.