Operations "Venček" and "Prstan": Monitoring of Mixed Marriages with Eastern European Citizens in Socialist Republic of Slovenia by the State Security Service in the 1980s

The article examines the monitoring of mixed marriages in the 1980s by the Slovenian intelligence and security agency, the State Security Service (SDV) and federal State Security Service (SDB), which functioned as the secret political police. This study is based on previously unprocessed archival material housed at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia and two confidential and classified analyses from the 1982 of the operations of the Soviet intelligence service on Yugoslav territory in the 1970s and 1980s, written by employees of the SDB. Mixed marriages, especially those involving Eastern European citizens, were of particular interest to the SDV due to perceived counterintelligence risks that were viewed as potential threats to the system, primarily concerning activities of Eastern European intelligence agencies. In response, the SDV launched at least one operational campaign under the codename "Venček" (Wreath) and conducted an operational investigation named "Prstan" (Ring). Drawing on preserved documentation, the author presents a comprehensive statistical and content-based review of the reports, analyses, and information produced by the SDV during the 1980s. *Keywords:* mixed marriages, State Security Service, 1980s, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Eastern European citizens (Note: The published abstract appears as a single block under the heading "Abstract" without subsections such as Background, Methods, Results, or Conclusions.)