Foreword

You have before you the latest issue of the journal of the Institute for Slovene Emigration Research and its regular and occasional contributors from Slovenia and abroad. As with the first (1990) and fifth issues (1994), this year’s issue does not include complete or at least partial publications of papers from the last annual meeting in the field of Slovene emigration, which had become the common practice. The collection of papers presented at the international symposium entitled Soočenje mita in realnosti ob prihodu izseljencev v novo okolje (The Confrontation between Myth and Reality on the Arrival of the Emigrants to a New Land), which was organized last year by the Institute for Slovene Emigration Research in Portorož, was published separately owing to the large number of articles. The response to the journal mainly in the countries of origin of the participants of the symposium was certainly evidence enough of the rightness of such a decision. All articles published in this issue of Two Homelands were prepared especially for this journal, with only three exceptions. Two of these have never been published before, while a large part of the third was published in the latest issue of the magazine Meddobje, but in Slovene; we publish it here in English and in a revised form for the sake of its comparative applicability. This year’s issue com prises twenty-six articles in three regular columns, that is, fourteen papers (in four disciplines: history, demography, social anthropology and history of literature), five reports on events of interest linked to research on the issue of emigration , and seven book reviews or reports.

If we take into account the fact that in the frame work of all participating professions only about twenty-five researchers in Slovenia and abroad are more or less actively involved in the search of Slovene emigration, we can attribute the success of the journal, in particular abroad, mainly to the originality and cogency of its articles. In view of the fact that researchers of Slovene emigration are scattered all over the globe and considering the (slowly) increasing number of scientific disciplines involved, we wish to further increase the circle of contributors in next year ’s issue (8/1997) in the geographic as well as disciplinary sense. As regards the current bilingualism of our and other similar journals, we occasionally hear objections from some readers in Slovenia to the effect that Slovene authors should not publish their articles in a foreign language (even if the abstracts are in Slovene) in local journals. On the other hand, readers of Two Homelands from abroad, as numerous as local readers, would be much more satisfied if all the articles were published in one of the world languages. How can we meet both demands at the same time? In the future we will put more effort into ensuring that the total number of articles in Slovene will be balanced with that in foreign languages. We will achieve the appropriate ratio only if financial conditions for publishing the magazine so perm it. Since translations into foreign languages are relatively expensive in Slovenia, I wish to reemphasise the fact that contributors (mainly those from abroad, of course) would to a large extent make our work easier if their articles in Two Homelands were written in a foreign language, thus opening the magazine up to a wider circle of readers abroad. The very number of articles in this year’s issue as well as the outline plan for articles in the next issue guarantee the continuation of the publication of Two Homelands in the future. I would like to acknowledge the assistance and support of all the contributors in the publication of this issue, the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia, the editorial board and technical editor, the publishing council of the Centre of Scientific Research of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, local as well as foreign readers and of course all researchers  of Slovene emigration problems who have not as yet been contributors but have been encouraged to do so in future issues by the diverse and interesting content of our annual issues to date.