Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Time and social networks
102 Rajkó Muršič industrial facilities. After all, Yugoslav socialism had itself introduced many elements of the market economy and private initiative in the sixties, however restricted this development may have been. Another distinctive feature of the Slovene (or, more generally, Yugoslav) transformation and the fall of communism was the dissolution of the federal state and the following descent into war. This was perhaps the only rapid change experienced in Slovenia. Therefore, it is rather difficult to distinguish between the end of socialism and the dissolution of the former federal state (on that point see Muršič 2000a). The village of Trate in the turbulent twentieth century Trate is a village in northeast Slovenia, at the border with Austria. It is situated on the small hills above the southern banks of the river Mura which forms the border between the two countries. The region was colonised in the Middle Ages, when the castle Upper Mureck was built on the hill above the river. On the northern bank of the river Mura, the borough Mureck (Cmurek) became a local trade, traffic and administrative centre. Since the late Middle Ages it had been settled mostly by a German speaking population. The region was a part of the Styrian Dukedom (Land), integrated in the Habsburg Monarchy for more than a millennium. The village of Trate happened to become the southernmost village with a German speaking population in Styria. Although many townspeople in the southern part of Styria used the German language in everyday communication, and many villagers north of the present-day border between the Slovene and the Austrian part of Styria spoke Slovene, Trate was located exactly at the boundary between the Slovene and German speaking population of Styria. In the nineteenth century, the majority of the nearly 400 villagers of Trate (German Wiesenbach) spoke German language, while in the neighbouring village, Zgornja Velka, the villagers spoke Slovene (see, e. g., Krempl 1845; Krones 1879; Specijalni 1893; Beg
