Post by kat on May 24, 2007 2:05:02 GMT -5
HISTORY OF SLOVAKS
- by Univ. Prof. PhDr. Matúš Kučera, DrSc.
History often distinguishes between those peoples with a history, and those without. The first bathe in a limelight of glory, the second lurk anonymously in the shadows. For ages on end, the Slovaks were not even referred to in such classifications at all. Until a very recent period indeed, they remained ignored by other Europeans, and an observation offered by a Sorbonne professor in the early years of this century, Ernest Denis, author of La Question d´Autriche (The Issue of Austria), might still have been made only yesterday. ´Rare are those with any notion of the Slovaks´, he writes. ´Even educated people know them hardly at all, and would find difficulty placing them upon a map.´ Considered as a people without a past, as a nation of mere peasants and herders subject to their neighbours, Slovaks were hardly recognised as enjoying any identity at all, and as for history - even less. Hence the Slovak people’s entrance upon the international stage on January 1st, 1993, and the recognition of their existence by seventy-one States, finally hoisted them out of a historic rut wherein they had languished for the last thousand years.
Five years after independence, and despite doubts expressed by various observers, Slovakia had stabilised her economy, set up a democratic system on the European model, and guaranteed her citizens´ civil rights. She had demonstrated the soundness of her will to integrate the economic, political, and security structures of Europe and the United States. Her history, so long unknown, now pleaded on her behalf. Few European peoples indeed overcame such unfavourable conditions in order to forge an identity and manage to constitute a modern State. Her national identity, beaten down for centuries by those who successively dominated the country, only emerged after the very greatest difficulties. Such characteristic should be borne in mind by those who would understand why Slovakia, now that she has secured recognition, also craves respect.
Greater Moravia
The geographical and political space occupied by the Slovaks took shape along the middle course of the Danube as far as the inner arch of the Carpathian highlands, and was settled by human beings in prehistoric times, followed by Celtic tribes who prospered around a centre which would one day become Bratislava. Roman conquest incorporated Slovakia, then known as Pannonia, into the Empire, and several Emperors paused here. Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-Caesar, spent time on the river Hron, and Valentinian I. died in AD 375 in the town of Komarno. During the Great Migrations, successive waves of Slavs entered and settled the land, and as happened in other areas of the former Roman Empire, learned the basics of civilisation - from farming to the arts of war - from those whom they had subdued. Thus did the kingdom of Samo come into being, which ensured the defence of the entire region against the invading Avars in the 7th century AD. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus then bestowed upon this realm its name of Greater Moravia.
Greater Moravia formed around two centres, one in southern Moravia, the other in western Slovakia in the present town of Nitra, ancient Nitrava - and gradually waxed in power. The first Slovak monarch, Pribina, ruled in Nitra, and here the first Christian church was raised and consecrated in the year 823 by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Adalram. In the middle of the ninth century, while Nitriva was now raised to the rank of a bishopric, Michael III of Byzantium sent on mission to Moravia the bishop Cyril, accompanied by his brother Methodius, to pursue the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity. Cyril translated the Bible into the language of the Slavs, and devised for the purpose an alphabet derived from the Greek - so giving rise to the Cyrillic script. Slovakia thus became the cradle of a new liturgical language which, in turn, spawned a secular literature and an epic poetry whose fame came to spread throughout much of Eastern Europe.
Greater Moravia´s zenith coincided with the reign of Svätopluk in the later 9th century. This ruler considerably extended his kingdom’s way in the directions of Bohemia, Poland, and also present-day Hungary - at that time still peopled by Slavs - and so turned his State into the mightiest in Central Europe. Svätopluk´s powerful personality even fed speculation that he might be elected Holy Roman Emperor. His death in 894, however, brought on his kingdom’s downfall: it dissolved through internal dissension and collapsed in the reign of his son. The collective memory of the Slovaks, steeped in the past glory of this key period in their history, always nostalgically cherishes recollection of this age when the conversion of their land to Christianity - as they like to point out - opened the way for bringing the Gospel to all the other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. Svätopluk´s own epic glory was long sung by Slovak bards - the igritz - who spread his legend through the ages down to the period of national rebirth in the 18th century. These two leading moments in Slovakia´s history - Svätopluk´s rule and the country’s 18th-century resurgence - together find mention today in the preamble to the Republic’s Constitution.
After the disappearance of Greater Moravia, the western portion of the kingdom was annexed by Bohemia, the region around the Vistula went to Poland, while Nitra and the area below the Danube eventually became part of the territory where Hungary was born. Although the Principality of Nitra was able to cling to a measure of independence for a spell, Slovakia ended by losing her entire political, religious and cultural autonomy. But since Hungary under the protection of Rome enjoyed ties with the leading centres of medieval Europe, Slovakia, too, became open to decisive influences from the West. By the 13th century, Slovaks were seen in the Universities of Padua, Bologna and even Paris. The rise of churches and town halls in the Gothic style bears witness to this imprint. The town of Bardejov, on the easternmost threshold of the country, thus boasts a municipal palace in the Late or Flamboyant Gothic manner whose faç ade is adorned with a statue of Roland - facing East.
For the Slovaks became aware from very early on that they constituted the ultimate, easternmost frontier of Christian civilisation. After beating back the Avars, the Tatars, and then the Hungarians, they stood as guardians of Europe’s borderland for a hundred years before the expanding Ottoman Empire. But war against the Turks, and Hungary’s defeat at Mohacs at the hands of Sultan Sü leymâ n the Magnificent in 1526, harrowed the land. Seeking refuge in the highlands, the Slovaks resisted Islamization, then descended back into the southern plains ravaged and depopulated by successive wars. Thus began a process of emigration which gave birth to the Slovak minorities in Yugoslavia, Rumania, Croatia, and especially Hungary.
The Renewal of a National Idea
Only by the end of the 18th century did the national idea recover its original vitality among an intelligentsia for the most part sprung from the people - rather than from the highly Magyarized aristocracy. The project of a Slovak nation was defended for the first time by Balthazar Magin, and then by the Catholic clergy. Priests, in fact, were led to play a highly important role in the spread of nationalist ideas, with Anton Bernolák (1762-1813) standing out in particular. Aware that a written language constitutes the indispensable core for the formation of a nation, this priest attempted to create a literary language from elements of a Western Slovak dialect, and published the first Slovak grammar. His attempt was resisted by the Hungarian authorities, and appeared to fail. But the nationalist idea of the movement he had launched gained headway among the people, even among the illiterate majority of them. The Catholic nationalists were later joined by Protestant intellectuals, graduates of Bratislava Gymnasium, and these set up a political and cultural programme with the aim of liberating Slovakia. One of their leaders, Ľudovít Štúr, created the present Slovak language upon the basics of, this time, a dialect from Central Slovakia, and founded the first Slovak periodical: Slovenské Národné Noviny. The new liberation programme proclaimed that Slovaks should rid themselves of Habsburg supremacy, and that as a sovereign people with their own traditions and language, they should not fuse with the Czechs. A literary movement sprang up, sparkling with writers and poets soon to become celebrated throughout the Slavic world - Janko Kráľ, Ján Botto, Pavol Jozef Šafárik, Ľudovít Štúr, Ján Kollár, Jozef Miloslav Hurban -, and these men swiftly became involved on behalf of liberation. In alliance with the clergy, the intellectual élite took advantage of the invent a flag and national anthem. The failure of the revolution in Hungary doomed their struggle, and a forced linguistic Magyarization of the land put a brutal end to the hopes that had been aroused. Persecution, however, spurred further revolt, and the Slovaks became determined to make themselves heard by the Hungarian Government: at the national gathering of Saint Martin of Turiec, on June 6th, 1861, they adopted a memorandum according to which they waived any further idea of transforming Hungary into a federally-organised State. In exchange, however they insisted that the kingdom should show them the same affection and respect as it did towards Hungarians: ´We are people in our own right, as they are. Our rights can be no less than those which they enjoy. Let there be freedom, equality and brotherhood for all people who dwell in the kingdom.´ Other demands included formation of a distinct administrative entity, means with which to found schools, and the creation of a Faculty of Law and a Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Budapest. While they urged free use of the Slovak language throughout the territories where it was spoken, the nationalists acknowledged Hungarian, however, as the sole administrative language.
But the authorities did not even take the trouble to read this text, and the Slovak delegation, led by Bishop Stefan Moyzes, had to address themselves directly to Emperor Franz-Jozef in order to make themselves heard. Soon after, in 1863, the Slovaks did receive permission to found their own national cultural institution, the Slovak Matica, along with three Gymnasiums. Such success proved short-lived, however: Kalman Tisza´s Government suppressed these institutions, and appropriated for its own use the funds which had been collected to create them.
Incipient Freedom
The cataclysm provoked by the First World War finally provided the Slovaks with an opportunity to escape from the grip of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a true ´prison of the people´ as it was then known, and so find their own way towards realisation of their national destiny. History has not yet rendered full justice to those Slovak-Americans who then worked on behalf of their native land for the establishment of balanced international relations in post- 1918 Central Europe. As soon as war was declared, the Slovaks in America collected significant sums to make known their countrymen’s plight throughout the American and European - and particularly the French - press. Slovak-Americans, in fact, with men like T.G.Masaryk, signed the Pittsburgh Convention - Pittsburgh then being the greatest centre of Slovak emigration - providing for the founding framework of a federal-type Czechoslovak Republic where the rights of Slovaks would be recognised as those of one of the two co-founding peoples. On October 28, 1918, the new State made its appearance on the international scene. Some observers doubted, however, whether it would prove viable if relations between the two peoples were not established on an equitable bases. Indeed, as early as 1909, Ernest Denis had noted: ´Decline and servitude for the Slovaks would constitute an irreparable disaster for the Czechs (...) Only if the Slovaks find in the Kingdom of Saint Wenceslas their due place in the sun will the light of freedom swiftly dispel the rank and contagious mists of Hungarian corruption. To the Czech Kingdom, they will contribute their youth and enthusiasm, and thereby mitigate the delicate caution of their elder brethren. The issue of Slovakia is of European importance, and the safeguarding of the Slovak people is one of the conditions for the freedom of the world.´
Such warnings were made in vain. The first Constitution of the Czech Republic, which saw the light in 1920, made no provision for the right of the Slovaks to exist as an independent people. Mention was only made of a single ´Czechoslovak´ people, meaning, for practical purposes, the Czechs alone. While the formula specifying ´One State, One Nation´ undeniably brought some benefits to the Slovaks, it also sowed the seeds of partition over the long term by failing to respect their right to self-determination. Nor were the Slovaks alone in claiming such a right: four million Germans included within the borders of the new Republic were keen to enjoy it as well. After twenty years of existence, the Republic was swept away by Hitler, who tore off Bohemia and Moravia to form a protectorate. Slovakia was thus left alone, to face the tender mercies of Fascist Hungary to the South, and Poland to the North. After centuries of struggle on behalf of her sovereignty, circumstances now seemed finally to offer her the opportunity of becoming an independent State under the leadership of Father Jozef Tiso, in 1939. But under the influence of the dictatorial practices of the IIIrd Reich, the State apparatus of the new Republic became mired down in a pro-German policy: political pluralism for different parties was suppressed, racialist doctrines with their well-known consequences made their appearance, and a conquering militarist spirit was inculcated - all of which was profoundly foreign to the Slovak way of thinking. Catholic Slovakia had long been steeped in pacifism, had ignored territorial ambitions, and had never taken up arms against her neighbours. Rejected as they were by the majority of the population, the Tiso Government’s pro-Fascist policies provoked the national uprising of August 1944. Their anti-Fascist insurrection allowed the Slovak people to emerge from World War II on the side of the victors. Edvard Beneš, President of the Government of Czechoslovakia in exile, who had signed a treaty of alliance with Moscow in 1943, was in a position to found a new Republic with elements of a federal basis and where the principle of equality between both peoples was recognised. Again, to no avail: for while the 1948 elections yielded more than 60 % of the vote to the Democratic Party in Slovakia, the Communists scored a clear victory in neighbouring Bohemia. The ensuing chain of events is well known: under pressure from Moscow, Beneš was forced to form an exclusively Communist Government. Less well-known is what followed ´the Prague coup´: persecution for Slovak Communists like G. Husák and L. Novomeský, condemned to lengthy prison sentences, and outright execution for others like V. Clementis. Citizens´ rights and individual freedoms were abolished and police terror fell upon the population. Only the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union allowed some relaxation of political tension. A few years later, a Slovak, Alexander Dubček, became the incarnation of the ´Prague Spring´ with its progressive socialism: soon to be crushed, however, under the tanks of the Red Army and its Warsaw Pact allies. A painful spell of ´normalization´ followed hard upon.
Freedom Gained in Peace
When Communism’s crisis reached its ultimate outcome, the regime collapsed like a heap of cards. In the euphoria which followed the recovery of freedom, it was still found necessary to bring fresh examination to bear on the difficult relations between Slovaks and Czechs. The Slovaks wished to return to the working federalism which had begun to take shape in 1968, whereas the Czechs, even those who had been members of Charter 77, preferred resuming the procedures of Masaryk´s Republic. This the Slovaks could not accept. Quarrels erupted daily, struggles over the internal structure of the State and the sharing of responsibility became ever harsher, and relations between both peoples became strained almost to breaking point. The results of the 1992 elections, however, provided a more favourable climate for resolving the issue. The Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, the winner in the elections, had based its programme on the idea of confederation, but will was lacking on the Czech side to allow implementation of such an idea: hence the decision to partition the State among two distinct and independent Republics.
It is to the honour of both peoples that they proved so able to settle their differences though negotiation and parliamentary procedures, despite the immense difficulty of the task at hand. Highest credit for this, as History will one day show, should go to two men, Vladimír Mečiar and Václav Klaus, who refused to allow matters to get out of hand. While other States in Europe were born in blood, war and suffering, here two democratic republics saw the light of day without the firing of a single shot. I am not certain that Europeans have drawn all the inferences from such an unprecedented experiment. When, on January 1st, 1993, the Slovak Republic appeared on the map, she was still frail and had undergone great losses through partition. Since then, however, she has overcome the major hurdles in her path, and while few years of existence are hardly sufficient to pass judgement on the results, her harmonious development with help from no outside quarter cannot be denied. Has the time now come to show her trust and support?
Throughout their history, the Slovaks have furnished proof of their remarkable spirit for resistance. During the thousand years when they dwelt under Hungarian sway, then through the seventy years of Czechoslovakia, they have managed to remain themselves. Fully European as they are in their own right, they have yet had to follow a long and arduous path towards sovereignty: hence their determination to build a democratic society open to all and to reinforce their State with due respect for republican ideals and with no threat to any of their neighbours. As all of us must be aware, such a process takes time. Deeply European as they are through their culture, history, and work, the Slovaks have succeeded in overcoming the injustices and neglect of which they were the victims. In this they have found great help through their vitality, their creativity, and their enthusiasm. Such qualities ought to allow them to find integration within Europe. Or so, at least, they hope.
- by Univ. Prof. PhDr. Matúš Kučera, DrSc.
History often distinguishes between those peoples with a history, and those without. The first bathe in a limelight of glory, the second lurk anonymously in the shadows. For ages on end, the Slovaks were not even referred to in such classifications at all. Until a very recent period indeed, they remained ignored by other Europeans, and an observation offered by a Sorbonne professor in the early years of this century, Ernest Denis, author of La Question d´Autriche (The Issue of Austria), might still have been made only yesterday. ´Rare are those with any notion of the Slovaks´, he writes. ´Even educated people know them hardly at all, and would find difficulty placing them upon a map.´ Considered as a people without a past, as a nation of mere peasants and herders subject to their neighbours, Slovaks were hardly recognised as enjoying any identity at all, and as for history - even less. Hence the Slovak people’s entrance upon the international stage on January 1st, 1993, and the recognition of their existence by seventy-one States, finally hoisted them out of a historic rut wherein they had languished for the last thousand years.
Five years after independence, and despite doubts expressed by various observers, Slovakia had stabilised her economy, set up a democratic system on the European model, and guaranteed her citizens´ civil rights. She had demonstrated the soundness of her will to integrate the economic, political, and security structures of Europe and the United States. Her history, so long unknown, now pleaded on her behalf. Few European peoples indeed overcame such unfavourable conditions in order to forge an identity and manage to constitute a modern State. Her national identity, beaten down for centuries by those who successively dominated the country, only emerged after the very greatest difficulties. Such characteristic should be borne in mind by those who would understand why Slovakia, now that she has secured recognition, also craves respect.
Greater Moravia
The geographical and political space occupied by the Slovaks took shape along the middle course of the Danube as far as the inner arch of the Carpathian highlands, and was settled by human beings in prehistoric times, followed by Celtic tribes who prospered around a centre which would one day become Bratislava. Roman conquest incorporated Slovakia, then known as Pannonia, into the Empire, and several Emperors paused here. Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-Caesar, spent time on the river Hron, and Valentinian I. died in AD 375 in the town of Komarno. During the Great Migrations, successive waves of Slavs entered and settled the land, and as happened in other areas of the former Roman Empire, learned the basics of civilisation - from farming to the arts of war - from those whom they had subdued. Thus did the kingdom of Samo come into being, which ensured the defence of the entire region against the invading Avars in the 7th century AD. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus then bestowed upon this realm its name of Greater Moravia.
Greater Moravia formed around two centres, one in southern Moravia, the other in western Slovakia in the present town of Nitra, ancient Nitrava - and gradually waxed in power. The first Slovak monarch, Pribina, ruled in Nitra, and here the first Christian church was raised and consecrated in the year 823 by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Adalram. In the middle of the ninth century, while Nitriva was now raised to the rank of a bishopric, Michael III of Byzantium sent on mission to Moravia the bishop Cyril, accompanied by his brother Methodius, to pursue the conversion of the Slavs to Christianity. Cyril translated the Bible into the language of the Slavs, and devised for the purpose an alphabet derived from the Greek - so giving rise to the Cyrillic script. Slovakia thus became the cradle of a new liturgical language which, in turn, spawned a secular literature and an epic poetry whose fame came to spread throughout much of Eastern Europe.
Greater Moravia´s zenith coincided with the reign of Svätopluk in the later 9th century. This ruler considerably extended his kingdom’s way in the directions of Bohemia, Poland, and also present-day Hungary - at that time still peopled by Slavs - and so turned his State into the mightiest in Central Europe. Svätopluk´s powerful personality even fed speculation that he might be elected Holy Roman Emperor. His death in 894, however, brought on his kingdom’s downfall: it dissolved through internal dissension and collapsed in the reign of his son. The collective memory of the Slovaks, steeped in the past glory of this key period in their history, always nostalgically cherishes recollection of this age when the conversion of their land to Christianity - as they like to point out - opened the way for bringing the Gospel to all the other peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. Svätopluk´s own epic glory was long sung by Slovak bards - the igritz - who spread his legend through the ages down to the period of national rebirth in the 18th century. These two leading moments in Slovakia´s history - Svätopluk´s rule and the country’s 18th-century resurgence - together find mention today in the preamble to the Republic’s Constitution.
After the disappearance of Greater Moravia, the western portion of the kingdom was annexed by Bohemia, the region around the Vistula went to Poland, while Nitra and the area below the Danube eventually became part of the territory where Hungary was born. Although the Principality of Nitra was able to cling to a measure of independence for a spell, Slovakia ended by losing her entire political, religious and cultural autonomy. But since Hungary under the protection of Rome enjoyed ties with the leading centres of medieval Europe, Slovakia, too, became open to decisive influences from the West. By the 13th century, Slovaks were seen in the Universities of Padua, Bologna and even Paris. The rise of churches and town halls in the Gothic style bears witness to this imprint. The town of Bardejov, on the easternmost threshold of the country, thus boasts a municipal palace in the Late or Flamboyant Gothic manner whose faç ade is adorned with a statue of Roland - facing East.
For the Slovaks became aware from very early on that they constituted the ultimate, easternmost frontier of Christian civilisation. After beating back the Avars, the Tatars, and then the Hungarians, they stood as guardians of Europe’s borderland for a hundred years before the expanding Ottoman Empire. But war against the Turks, and Hungary’s defeat at Mohacs at the hands of Sultan Sü leymâ n the Magnificent in 1526, harrowed the land. Seeking refuge in the highlands, the Slovaks resisted Islamization, then descended back into the southern plains ravaged and depopulated by successive wars. Thus began a process of emigration which gave birth to the Slovak minorities in Yugoslavia, Rumania, Croatia, and especially Hungary.
The Renewal of a National Idea
Only by the end of the 18th century did the national idea recover its original vitality among an intelligentsia for the most part sprung from the people - rather than from the highly Magyarized aristocracy. The project of a Slovak nation was defended for the first time by Balthazar Magin, and then by the Catholic clergy. Priests, in fact, were led to play a highly important role in the spread of nationalist ideas, with Anton Bernolák (1762-1813) standing out in particular. Aware that a written language constitutes the indispensable core for the formation of a nation, this priest attempted to create a literary language from elements of a Western Slovak dialect, and published the first Slovak grammar. His attempt was resisted by the Hungarian authorities, and appeared to fail. But the nationalist idea of the movement he had launched gained headway among the people, even among the illiterate majority of them. The Catholic nationalists were later joined by Protestant intellectuals, graduates of Bratislava Gymnasium, and these set up a political and cultural programme with the aim of liberating Slovakia. One of their leaders, Ľudovít Štúr, created the present Slovak language upon the basics of, this time, a dialect from Central Slovakia, and founded the first Slovak periodical: Slovenské Národné Noviny. The new liberation programme proclaimed that Slovaks should rid themselves of Habsburg supremacy, and that as a sovereign people with their own traditions and language, they should not fuse with the Czechs. A literary movement sprang up, sparkling with writers and poets soon to become celebrated throughout the Slavic world - Janko Kráľ, Ján Botto, Pavol Jozef Šafárik, Ľudovít Štúr, Ján Kollár, Jozef Miloslav Hurban -, and these men swiftly became involved on behalf of liberation. In alliance with the clergy, the intellectual élite took advantage of the invent a flag and national anthem. The failure of the revolution in Hungary doomed their struggle, and a forced linguistic Magyarization of the land put a brutal end to the hopes that had been aroused. Persecution, however, spurred further revolt, and the Slovaks became determined to make themselves heard by the Hungarian Government: at the national gathering of Saint Martin of Turiec, on June 6th, 1861, they adopted a memorandum according to which they waived any further idea of transforming Hungary into a federally-organised State. In exchange, however they insisted that the kingdom should show them the same affection and respect as it did towards Hungarians: ´We are people in our own right, as they are. Our rights can be no less than those which they enjoy. Let there be freedom, equality and brotherhood for all people who dwell in the kingdom.´ Other demands included formation of a distinct administrative entity, means with which to found schools, and the creation of a Faculty of Law and a Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Budapest. While they urged free use of the Slovak language throughout the territories where it was spoken, the nationalists acknowledged Hungarian, however, as the sole administrative language.
But the authorities did not even take the trouble to read this text, and the Slovak delegation, led by Bishop Stefan Moyzes, had to address themselves directly to Emperor Franz-Jozef in order to make themselves heard. Soon after, in 1863, the Slovaks did receive permission to found their own national cultural institution, the Slovak Matica, along with three Gymnasiums. Such success proved short-lived, however: Kalman Tisza´s Government suppressed these institutions, and appropriated for its own use the funds which had been collected to create them.
Incipient Freedom
The cataclysm provoked by the First World War finally provided the Slovaks with an opportunity to escape from the grip of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a true ´prison of the people´ as it was then known, and so find their own way towards realisation of their national destiny. History has not yet rendered full justice to those Slovak-Americans who then worked on behalf of their native land for the establishment of balanced international relations in post- 1918 Central Europe. As soon as war was declared, the Slovaks in America collected significant sums to make known their countrymen’s plight throughout the American and European - and particularly the French - press. Slovak-Americans, in fact, with men like T.G.Masaryk, signed the Pittsburgh Convention - Pittsburgh then being the greatest centre of Slovak emigration - providing for the founding framework of a federal-type Czechoslovak Republic where the rights of Slovaks would be recognised as those of one of the two co-founding peoples. On October 28, 1918, the new State made its appearance on the international scene. Some observers doubted, however, whether it would prove viable if relations between the two peoples were not established on an equitable bases. Indeed, as early as 1909, Ernest Denis had noted: ´Decline and servitude for the Slovaks would constitute an irreparable disaster for the Czechs (...) Only if the Slovaks find in the Kingdom of Saint Wenceslas their due place in the sun will the light of freedom swiftly dispel the rank and contagious mists of Hungarian corruption. To the Czech Kingdom, they will contribute their youth and enthusiasm, and thereby mitigate the delicate caution of their elder brethren. The issue of Slovakia is of European importance, and the safeguarding of the Slovak people is one of the conditions for the freedom of the world.´
Such warnings were made in vain. The first Constitution of the Czech Republic, which saw the light in 1920, made no provision for the right of the Slovaks to exist as an independent people. Mention was only made of a single ´Czechoslovak´ people, meaning, for practical purposes, the Czechs alone. While the formula specifying ´One State, One Nation´ undeniably brought some benefits to the Slovaks, it also sowed the seeds of partition over the long term by failing to respect their right to self-determination. Nor were the Slovaks alone in claiming such a right: four million Germans included within the borders of the new Republic were keen to enjoy it as well. After twenty years of existence, the Republic was swept away by Hitler, who tore off Bohemia and Moravia to form a protectorate. Slovakia was thus left alone, to face the tender mercies of Fascist Hungary to the South, and Poland to the North. After centuries of struggle on behalf of her sovereignty, circumstances now seemed finally to offer her the opportunity of becoming an independent State under the leadership of Father Jozef Tiso, in 1939. But under the influence of the dictatorial practices of the IIIrd Reich, the State apparatus of the new Republic became mired down in a pro-German policy: political pluralism for different parties was suppressed, racialist doctrines with their well-known consequences made their appearance, and a conquering militarist spirit was inculcated - all of which was profoundly foreign to the Slovak way of thinking. Catholic Slovakia had long been steeped in pacifism, had ignored territorial ambitions, and had never taken up arms against her neighbours. Rejected as they were by the majority of the population, the Tiso Government’s pro-Fascist policies provoked the national uprising of August 1944. Their anti-Fascist insurrection allowed the Slovak people to emerge from World War II on the side of the victors. Edvard Beneš, President of the Government of Czechoslovakia in exile, who had signed a treaty of alliance with Moscow in 1943, was in a position to found a new Republic with elements of a federal basis and where the principle of equality between both peoples was recognised. Again, to no avail: for while the 1948 elections yielded more than 60 % of the vote to the Democratic Party in Slovakia, the Communists scored a clear victory in neighbouring Bohemia. The ensuing chain of events is well known: under pressure from Moscow, Beneš was forced to form an exclusively Communist Government. Less well-known is what followed ´the Prague coup´: persecution for Slovak Communists like G. Husák and L. Novomeský, condemned to lengthy prison sentences, and outright execution for others like V. Clementis. Citizens´ rights and individual freedoms were abolished and police terror fell upon the population. Only the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union allowed some relaxation of political tension. A few years later, a Slovak, Alexander Dubček, became the incarnation of the ´Prague Spring´ with its progressive socialism: soon to be crushed, however, under the tanks of the Red Army and its Warsaw Pact allies. A painful spell of ´normalization´ followed hard upon.
Freedom Gained in Peace
When Communism’s crisis reached its ultimate outcome, the regime collapsed like a heap of cards. In the euphoria which followed the recovery of freedom, it was still found necessary to bring fresh examination to bear on the difficult relations between Slovaks and Czechs. The Slovaks wished to return to the working federalism which had begun to take shape in 1968, whereas the Czechs, even those who had been members of Charter 77, preferred resuming the procedures of Masaryk´s Republic. This the Slovaks could not accept. Quarrels erupted daily, struggles over the internal structure of the State and the sharing of responsibility became ever harsher, and relations between both peoples became strained almost to breaking point. The results of the 1992 elections, however, provided a more favourable climate for resolving the issue. The Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, the winner in the elections, had based its programme on the idea of confederation, but will was lacking on the Czech side to allow implementation of such an idea: hence the decision to partition the State among two distinct and independent Republics.
It is to the honour of both peoples that they proved so able to settle their differences though negotiation and parliamentary procedures, despite the immense difficulty of the task at hand. Highest credit for this, as History will one day show, should go to two men, Vladimír Mečiar and Václav Klaus, who refused to allow matters to get out of hand. While other States in Europe were born in blood, war and suffering, here two democratic republics saw the light of day without the firing of a single shot. I am not certain that Europeans have drawn all the inferences from such an unprecedented experiment. When, on January 1st, 1993, the Slovak Republic appeared on the map, she was still frail and had undergone great losses through partition. Since then, however, she has overcome the major hurdles in her path, and while few years of existence are hardly sufficient to pass judgement on the results, her harmonious development with help from no outside quarter cannot be denied. Has the time now come to show her trust and support?
Throughout their history, the Slovaks have furnished proof of their remarkable spirit for resistance. During the thousand years when they dwelt under Hungarian sway, then through the seventy years of Czechoslovakia, they have managed to remain themselves. Fully European as they are in their own right, they have yet had to follow a long and arduous path towards sovereignty: hence their determination to build a democratic society open to all and to reinforce their State with due respect for republican ideals and with no threat to any of their neighbours. As all of us must be aware, such a process takes time. Deeply European as they are through their culture, history, and work, the Slovaks have succeeded in overcoming the injustices and neglect of which they were the victims. In this they have found great help through their vitality, their creativity, and their enthusiasm. Such qualities ought to allow them to find integration within Europe. Or so, at least, they hope.
