Slovakia: Whose History, What History?

Abstract

Slovakia: Whose History, What History?There is a growing interest in study of Slovakia in Western scholarship, interest that is direct result of dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December 1992. In last ten years three main areas of research have emerged: Slovak history, dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and post-Communist development of second Slovak Republic. Each area seems to have a main focus or specific areas of concern or contention, yet it is interesting to note that all three areas continue to be conceptually linked as we explain below. The picture of Slovakia that emerges, as a result, remains, as it was before 1993, ambiguous one and four studies under review merely add to this ambiguity.What this new focus on Slovakia has not eliminated is one question that has been present in Western scholarship for over a century: is there such a thing as Slovak history, and if so, whose history is it? What Stanley Pech wrote in 1968 still defines accurately main problem concerning Slovakia and Slovaks:Although Western specialists in Eastern European history have usually regarded it as their task to make West familiar with entire ethnic panorama of polyglot region, they have in practice often been selective in favours they bestowed on each nation. They have incorporated in their work, in modified form, and prejudices of nations which they adopted. To give most conspicuous examples, they viewed Slovak history through Czech eyes and Ukrainian history through Polish (or Russian) eyes. In so doing, they have in fact created a second-class status for certain nations. The history of Slovaks in West has usually been presented from point of view of Czechoslovakism and has appeared as hardly more than a postscript to Czech history.The second independence of Slovakia in 1993 succeeded in removing postscript reflex; it did not, on other hand, eliminate reasons that underlie it. In other words, Slovak history continues to suffer from previous preconceptions. This is particularly evident in most recent presentation of Slovak history, Peter A. Toma and Dusan Kovac's Slovakia. From Samo to Dzurinda, whose coauthors were not only trained in different ideological systems (Kovac in Communist Czechoslovakia, Toma in United States of America), but who brought into this collaborative venture what Pech refers to as outlook and prejudices, in this case, those of their ideological and academic background.Although title suggests that this volume covers Slovak history from sixth century of our era to most recent developments, it is in fact a history of Slovakia in twentieth century. Two chapters, a little less than eighth of volume, cover preceding centuries. There is little in these chapters that gives reader a sense of Slovak history, of events or personalities that influenced political, social, cultural, and economic development of Slovaks, or how this development marked their history in twentieth century. The reason for this imbalance is what seems to have been a serious lack of communication between co-authors. Kovac submitted for publication some of same chapters he had written for his Slovak history volume; when Toma found this out, he proceeded to do editing job, which resulted in fact, as he writes, that the present contribution of my coauthor only resembles and therefore is not identical to Slovak version of some chapters of Dejiny Slovenska.3 One major consequence of this miscommunication is that this particular volume on history of Slovakia continues to perpetuate a misconception that has prevailed in West, namely that Slovaks have no history. In addition, coauthors fail to achieve a major methodological goal they set themselves, namely application of an approach [that] is to a large extent exogenic-recording events and analyzing situations as they developed and affected Slovak population within time frame of historical events taking place in Central Europe. …