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00:00:32 – What is the “elevator pitch” for Polenar Tactical?
00:02:26 – How did you get your channel name?
00:04:49 – What are the Slovenian gun laws like?
00:07:11 – How do EU rules impact an individual country’s laws?
00:11:37 – What do you think will be the most prevalent rifle and cartridge to spring up for civil defense in Eastern Europe?
00:16:43 – What rifle to replace the SIG 550 for Swiss service?
00:19:11 – With the US Army moving toward the 277 Fury, what will NATO countries do?
00:29:19 – Optics and other accessories price and availability in eastern Europe?
00:35:38 – How has the war in Ukraine affected the availability of firearms accessories and gear? Also, have any fighters reached out to you for tips and training or equipment procurement?
00:38:13 – What were the reasons for allowing civilian suppressor use in Slovenia?
00:44:36 – What was the development process for Grip Clamp C ™?
00:45:22 – What’s the story with that warehouse with the tires on the walls where you do many of Polenar’s vids?
00:48:38 – If you could only have one gun…
00:50:49 – How has the transition to western-style and caliber firearms gone for countries transitioning from the Warsaw block to NATO?
00:58:36 – What are the tactical advantages of track suits for AK operation?
01:00:07 – If you had to live in another European country what would it be and why?
01:01:45 – What is your guess on future firearm related law development in Europe?
01:05:39 – What is the most Slavic drink you are going to make Ian drink?
01:07:23 – What is the best Slovenian fruit brandy? Apricot, pear, plum, etc?
01:09:17 – AK vs AR in Slovenia?
I’m ok with sammo giving geopolitical history lessons
Why are some people so hung up with being called “eastern European”? Is it an offence? I would be proud to wear that description.
In case of Slovenia being dubbed Eastern Europe might be seen as effect of mistaking with Slovakia.
Slovak people actually being western slavs together with Poles and Czechs and the Sorb minority in Germany and a few others.
These guys aren’t from Eastern Europe. That’s why they don’t want to be called Eastern European.
Not only that, Slovenia is also seen Southern Europe by United Nations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Europe
therefore claiming that Slovenia is Eastern Europe must be seen as manifestation of disdain for said organization and therefore current world order.
Probably more accurate term would be “south central Europe”.
The problem in political geography is that it ignores the geographical historical facts, which are that Europe spreads up to the Ural mountains.
In that case, Eastern Europe would begin nearest only in Ukraine, Belarus and such.
Slovenia is actually further to the west than Vienna or Prague or Berlin. The Slovenes are the westernmost slavic people and Slovenia has also historically been called Duchy of Carniola and South-Carinthia at various times. Administratvely it was part of the Austrian Crownlands, that is the western half of the AUstro-Hungarian Empire. So yeah, more western to central Europe historically than anything else. As part of Yugoslavia it was block-free though socialist, it was most definitely not part of the Moscow controlled block. Serbia anmd Montenegro have always leaned more to the eastern slavic side, that is Bulgaria and Russia, but Croatia and Slovenia leaned more to western Europe in their preferences. IMHO perfectly understandable, that they object to being called eastern european.
Also note that Slovenia has access to Mediterraneo via Koper and logically northern coast of Mediterraneo is southern border of Europe.
Historical tidbit: Yugoslavia had south in its’ name (Jug is Croatian word for south).
Ah, Slovenia… How to explain? To Americans? Who mostly don’t have a clue when it comes to all the ins and outs of much of European ethnonationalist differences?
Also, for the Slovenes who might read this… Sorry, guys, but the raw fact is that outsiders look at anything Slavic as being automatically and irretrievably “Eastern Europe”. You guys speak a Slavic language, sooooo… Yeah. I know that pisses Slovenians off, but the fact is, even your immediate neighbors to the north are just humoring you when they nod along and agree whenever you insist that you’re firmly Mitteleuropa. When in private, and out of your sight and hearing, they’re pretty much telling everyone else that you’re not really Central European. Which is why they felt no grief at all about cutting loose most of the Slavic-language parts of the former Austro-Hungarian province of Carinthia and consigning you to the perdition that was Yugoslavia… Besides, you guys badly wanted to be part of Yugoslavia, trying to take Carinthia with you there at the end of WWI.
There’s also the point that “Eastern Europe” isn’t a label that the locals come up with, either… Do note how the Duetsche are “German” to the English-speaking bits of the world, and Nederland is (inaccurately) described as Holland or Dutch. Ain’t how they see it, but the labels are for outsiders, sooo… They stick, with total unfairness and inaccuracy.
For everyone else… Aside from the sheer geopolitical inaccuracy of it all, the reason Slovenians get upset about the idea of being lumped in with “Eastern Europe” is because a.) they’re really not entirely culturally Eastern European, and b.) Eastern Europe is seen by them as being “other” due to the general lack of civilized behavior and advancement they see demonstrated by those that live there. The Slovenes did not generally partake in the crazed BS that was the greater Balkan milieu; you’re not going to find too many cases where a Slovenian took part in rounding up the neighbors and slaughtering them, the way the Croatian Ustashe and Serbians were commonly wont to do, tit-for-tat down the centuries.
Which is not to say that they’re not capable of being as crazy as their cousins and neighbors, just that they don’t generally partake in the insanity that is the usual Balkan state of mind. If Yugoslavia was to be thought of as a particularly dysfunctional extended trailer-park family from here in the US, the Slovenes were the cousins who deliberately got out of the trailer park and cut off relations with the ones who stayed there, taking out restraining orders to keep them off their property…
As such, they really don’t like being reminded that they were once forced to live in the trailer park with their ne’erdowell cousins, and have been lumped in with them by outsiders ever since. Which, flatly, pisses them off because they’ve done everything they could to move up to being firmly middle-class in values and lifestyle…
You also have the classic German/Slav thing going on here: The Germans to their north have firmly denied that the Slovenes are in any way Germanic, which the Slovenes did not take too well, over the years. This is why they decamped to the Slavic camp at the end of WWI, despite the fact that the Slovenes are rather insistent that while they speak a Slavic tongue, they’re really not like those nutters to the south and east of them. They actually occupy a sort of borderland of the mind, being Germanic in outlook and a lot of cultural traits/values, while also remaining firmly Slavic. Which is why they wound up screwing themselves at the end of WWI, being as the Austrian Germans wanted to shed all those damn foreign Slavs like the Hungarians (questionably Slavic, I know, but that’s the way the Austrians saw it…), and the Slovenes being more than a little miffed by the centuries of Germanic rejection, decided that they’d give this Slavic brotherhood thing a shot. Which is how they wound up a part of very Slavic Yugoslavia…
Which they tried for a good long time, and finally gave up on. They’re rejected by both the Germanic Austrians to their north, being seen as Slavs, and by their southern neighbors as being way too Germanicized to be proper Slavs, any more. So, they finally went their own way, thankyouverymuch, and they’re a lot happier because of it.
What happened in the 1990s could be framed as the Slovenes finally getting fed up with the whole internecine Serbo-Croat Slavic mess and asking for a divorce from it. Forcefully. If you had to pick one of the ethnicities from the former Yugoslavia as being the most sane and switched-on with the modern world, it’d be the Slovenians. Which would explain the reason that they were the first to go, and the ones who got out relatively cleanly.
You could, if you squinted hard enough and cut enough corners, think of Slovenia as having tried out being Eastern European during their time as a part of Yugoslavia, and not having liked it one damn bit.
Which is why that’s a big hot-button for them.
Well, it is often hard to be known to whole world even if you wish, see
https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/7lp5ht/keys_to_inventing/
From what I learned in school history class, southern slavs in Austro Hungarian empire yearned for their separate entity, making it like a tri-part empire, but these others two would not hear about it, out of fear and “divide et impera”.
But, when shit hit the fan in 1918. and Kaiser and crew realising its all going kaputt, they desperately even came with such proposal; now political representatives of sothern slavic peoples shrugged it off, because they (most of them, but some were opposed, sensing epic clusterfuck what would it soon turn into) planned new union, now with Serbia.
After A.H. collapsed, there briefly existed (like few weeks iirc) so called State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was composed of territories of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that state joined its eastern neighbour, former war enemy(!), Kingdom of Serbia to form so called Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Only 10 years later, name was changed to Kingdom Of Yugoslavia.
As for the “divorce” from rest of Yugoslavia, Slovenia was spared from the brutal war (though they had skirmishes with JNA teenage conscripts lasting 10 days, so called “ten days war”)
mainly because of not having regions with serb minority, that were instigated in rebellion (like in Croatia and B&H) with goal of potentially in future joining that occupied territory with Serbia – to put it into easier, modern perspective, its exactly the same thing and agenda as what Russia wants to do/is doing with Ukrainian Donbass and Crimea today.
Though Slovenia had some numbers of serbs and bosnian muslims, often in mixed marriages, spread in big cities, that worked in administration, police and military, by not a small degree.
That does happens less by time as more people in North America are more versed in realities as time goes. However the term “eastern” implying “ex-communist” still perseveres. What can you do about it?
That’s the root cause — west and east Germany set the tone. Before WW II, eastern had the same meaning as now, but the Cold War really messed with the difference between west and east, eliminated the center entirely.
The split I’ve always seen in the literature has been along ethno-linguistic lines: Central Europe? Germanic tongues, Germanic culture. Eastern Europe? Slavic tongues, Slavic culture.
Now, granted, this is outsiders looking in and classifying the things they see, not the people that live there saying “Yeah, we see ourselves as “A”…”
It’s kind of like the US… I grew up in the Western US, Oregon and Washington states. You ask me to define the “Mid-West”, I’m going to say “Anything east of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi…”
Now, go ask someone from Colorado, and they’re going to tell you that “Mid-West” is over there in Iowa and Ohio, that they’re “Western”, thankyouverymuch. To my eye, they’re delusional. To theirs? Uhmmmm… Not so much. It’s an issue that lives in that area of the mind that is self-defined and yet at the same time, defined by others, creating confusion and strife when carried too far.
To clear the issue of “communist” past, thus East-European association by popular western perception, there is clearly a historical record in that direction. The Slovene partisans during WW2 were for most part of communist ideological orientation. They joined with comrades in Serbia and Croatia while hoping for more autonomy than they were finally rewarded with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_in_the_Slovene_Lands
During my visit to Kobarid area on the Italian frontier, I have seen monuments to those who fought and gave their lives in fight against foreign fascists and their domestic collaborators. Right in the center of town of Kobarid (Caporetto) is a house marked with Red star. It was a seat of first self-administrative body in spring of !945. Go and take a look for yourself; seeing is believing. So, Slovenia was definitely NOT free of “communism” per se by the end of WW2 and during the long existence of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobarid
Thus you have to wonder, why one of the fellas is putting on display his fake emotion. There is nothing to be ashamed of being called “east-European”, no matter what their geographical location happens to be. Located furthest in the west, but still eastern by its soul – that is what Slovenia is. I hope this historical mini-minilecture helps.
“What are the tactical advantages of track suits for AK operation?” is my all time favorite question.
I was really hoping Manca would make a cameo. Her shooting the G3 video is one of my favorites. She definitely took one for the team so to speak.
Regarding the Sig Spear –
If all these fudds are to be believed, suddenly all of our enemies will all become supernatural marksmen who will reliably make 1,000 yard headshots on AK iron sights and our XM5s will become completely unusable the moment the batteries run out.