The geographical location between two very strong cultural and political regions, Italian and German, has had significant influence on the way of life in Slovenia. With a population of only two million, the Slavic people have always had to struggle to keep their own cultural identity surrounded by more dominant cultures and without their own state. Cultural identity has been preserved mostly through a strong commitment to the arts.
Before World War I, Slovenia was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Most Slovenian intellectuals studied in Vienna or Graz. The defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War 1 resulted in the Slovene province being divided with almost half of the country, the western part, annexed to Italy as victory spoils. The remainder of Slovenia allied itself with other South Slavic nations as the new state of Kraljevina Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev (The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in 1918. That Kingdom was later renamed the Kraljevina Jugoslavija (The Yugoslav Kingdom) and after World War II with the change of political system to Federativna Republika Jugoslavija (The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). Slovenia was part of the Yugoslav state until June 26, 1991.