Slovak People Research Articles

Zakonšpirované Slovensko 1938 – 1945. Niekoľko úvah nad tvárami neviditeľného spiritus movens ľudáckeho režimu

The paradigm of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (HSĽS) regime, as well as the persecutory measures implemented against fabricated “enemies of the nation” during its reign (October 1938 – April 1945), were based on conspiracy theories. This essay identifies the main ones, pointing out their genesis, intentionality, and ways of operating with them in political practice. The analysis shows that although many conspiracy frames used in wartime Slovakia correlated with narratives in other countries of the fascist Axis, they cannot be considered copypastes of rhetoric popularized mostly by Nazi Germany. The text promotes the idea that the conspiratorial thinking of the HSĽS already formed in the late Habsburg monarchy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the changes in international politics in the 1930s only had an effect on their firmer establishment in the political culture of the party and political preferences of its supporters. The basis of this conspiratorial thinking was the fear of liberalism, of the threat to the Christian faith and the Slovak nation by a group of highly sophisticated interconnected “pests” with destructive intentions. Until 1918, it primarily included the Marxist left, capitalists, freemasons, and liberals in general, and after the creation of Czechoslovakia, Czechs, and Jews to an increased extent. The essay emphasizes that precisely the argumentation of conspiracy theories (“imperialism of Prague against Slovakia/Slovaks”, “Jewish Bolshevism”) provided the legitimizing platform for the repressive policy of the HSĽS regime and authorized violence against entire groups of the population that did not belong to the “ingroup”.

The Thought of Yaroslav Stetsko Compared with the Views of Vojtech Tuka to 1941: On Two Variants of Integral Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe

The inter-war period and the first years of the Second World War were a period when integral nationalism and Fascism were triumphant throughout Europe. The Ukrainian and Slovak national movements were no exception in this regard. These ideologies developed primarily within the framework of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, respectively. This article compares the thought of representatives of the more radical factions within these two organizations: Yaroslav Stetsko and Vojtech Tuka.

Fascist-Axis Slovakia’s spiritual Polis Politicus: transformation of Ružomberok to the ‘capital of the movement’ under the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party Rule (1938–1945)

ABSTRACT After the events of autumn 1938, the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana; HSĽS) engaged in mythmaking to legitimize its regime in people's eyes. This included making a legend about the ‘capital of the movement’, a city linked to the party’s political struggle leading to ‘ultimate victory’. Ružomberok was naturally chosen, where chairman Andrej Hlinka lived and worked as a priest, and the party’s influential Ružomberok group came from. Using a creative destruction lens, this study follows the transformation of Ružomberok’s image from a provincial, politically insignificant town to the Slovak State’s spiritual metropolis and fascist Neueuropa’s progressive model city. We focus on the dynamics of reshaping: from initial plans, unimplemented reconstruction projects to politically motivated interventions in the public space to remodel Ružomberok corresponding to the new national ideology into a polis politicus highlighting the new aesthetics and values. Finally, we analyse political iconoclasm’s specific manifestations based on examples of political interference in architecture. We also reflect on the collapse of the old, ‘decadent’ to the construction of the new, ‘progressive’ on a societal level as targeted attempts by political elites to prove their system’s vitality through modernization compared to its predecessors.

„Veľa detí do slovenských rodín“ - náčrt významu rodiny a detí v Slovenskom štáte

Family and children represent interesting subtopics of social history – including the history of the Slovak State. On the one hand, the presented text examines and analyzes the meaning of the family in the Slovak State. On the other hand, it reflects the meaning and importance of children for the state, in which Hlinka´s Slovak People´s Party ruled authoritatively. The study also brings closer the connection between family and children. During the existence of the Slovak State, the family and children had a supreme position. Both were a “national importance”. They were related to the further survival of the Slovak nation and state. Slovak children and Slovak families were in the center of attention. Children were to live and grow up primarily in their own families, while families with a large number of children were considered ideal. This is also confirmed by the pro-population policy promoted at the time. However, as the Second World War progressed, many families – especially large families – struggled with insufficient material security. In the Slovak State led by Hlinka´s Slovak People´s Party, there has been a significant politicization of the importance of the family and the politicization of care for children and youth.

Croatian and Slovak Political Catholicism and Clericalism in the Period Between the First and the Second World War

In this article, the presence and influence of clericalism on Croatian and Slovak political Catholicism between the two world wars is examined through a comparative analysis, based on some Croatian interwar Catholic periodicals, recent Croatian and Slovak historiographical studies, as well as studies by some foreign historians. Also, the focus of the research attention was on re-examining the causes of the findings. At the very beginning, the terms clericalism and political Catholicism are defined as key terminological determinants used later in the article. That is followed by a brief review of some peculiarities of the modern Croatian and Slovak nation genesis, as one of the variables that had great influence on the peculiarities of Croatian and Slovak society and political culture as a whole. The central part of the article analyses the development and activities of Croatian and Slovak interwar political Catholicism, primarily through political activities of the Croatian People's Party and the Slovak People's Party/Hlinka's Slovak People's Party. Finally, a comparison of similarities and differences between the Croatian and Slovak political Catholicism follows, with explanations of possible causes for such a situation, and a quantitative analysis of the presence and impact of clericalism on Croatian and Slovak interwar political Catholicism.

Charismatic species should be large: The role of admiration and fear

Abstract Humans show strong preferences for large, “charismatic” animals. However, the ultimate reasons for these innate preferences remain unclear. In our research, we investigate the affective components of human attitudes toward animals, as well as the willingness to pay (WTP) for their conservation in a sample of N = 549 Slovak people using an online questionnaire. From the use of structural equation modelling, we discovered that particularly large animals trigger both biophobic (fear) and biophilic (admiration) emotions in humans, and as a result, these emotions have contrasting effects on the WTP for animal conservation. Both fear and admiration of animals were influenced by the same emotions triggered by non‐animal objects. Beliefs in the magical power of animals did not directly influence the WTP animal conservation, but was mediated by the admiration of large, non‐animal objects. Females showed greater WTP animal conservation than males, irrespectively of the size of the species. Therefore, we believe that biophobic responses from large animals and non‐animal objects in contemporary humans were inherited from our mammalian ancestors, who were targets of predation by large prehistoric reptiles throughout a significant part of mammalian evolutionary history. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

«SLAVIC MUTUALITY»: INTERSECTION OF IMPERIAL IDEAS IN UKRAINIAN-SLAVIC-EUROPEAN RECEPTIONS

The purpose of the study is the reconstruction of one, although definitely not primary, factor in the ideologization of the national movement of the Western Slavs (we are talking about Ukrainian relations with the Western Slavs), which allows for a more accurate understanding of both the circumstances of the Slavic revival and the ideological syncretism of the revivalists. Accordingly, Slavic interethnic relations and spiritual receptions were "sanctified" for many years by the idea of "Slavic reciprocity," a cultural or linguistic-literary community. In the absence of their own statehood, romantic national idealism was not only a component of the ideology of ethnocultural preservation, for example, among the Lusatians, but also became an additional factor in the national movement of the Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak peoples for their national liberation. We will focus on only some aspects of Ukrainian-Slavic relations. Accordingly, it would certainly be an exaggeration to attribute to the connections of the Western Slavs with the Ukrainians, as well as with the Russian environment, the significance of the exclusive catalyst of national movements. But the information about connections and exchanges that have reached us testify to the establishment of mostly direct contacts between active representatives of the Slavic peoples, which, of course, expanded the worldview of national leaders and strengthened the feeling of the all-Slavic community. In our opinion, external Slavic factors, including Ukrainian ones, supplemented the ideology of the Slavs not so much with a national content but mainly emphasized that ethnic revival is not a local or regional phenomenon but a process that is genetically connected with the generality of similar phenomena. It is significant that at the activation stage in the 1930s and 1940s, cultural and national aspirations of Ukrainians and Western Slavic peoples, the European policy of the Russian Empire was one of the reasons for the politicization of national ideologies. However, the study of international communication is impossible without clarifying the content of typology and patterns of the appearance of inter-imperial contradictions and interests as fairly typical phenomena in the context of the formation and development of national ideologies in Central and Central-Eastern Europe in the first half of the 19th century.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE PASTORAL LETTER OF THE SLOVAK AND SUBCARPATHIAN RUTHENIA BISHOPS OF 1924

The Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenia bishops of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches published a pastoral letter in November 1924 to respond to the fact that some members of these churches were members of communist, socialist, or progressive organizations that rejected belief in God, criticizing the churches from atheistic positions and striving to create a secular society. In an effort to expand their membership and electorate, the socialists went so far as to formally present themselves with Christian symbolism, which was supposed to deceive Catholics in a difficult social position and attract them to their ranks. The bishops reflected on this fact and, through the Pastoral Letter, explained to the members of their churches the destructiveness of socialist and progressive theories and recommended that they leave anti-Catholic organizations. Those Catholics who deliberately failed to take their teachings and warnings into account had to expect that the Church would not administer certain sacraments to them. The publication of the Pastoral Letter provoked a fierce reaction in socialist and progressive circles as an attack against the state, its constitution and laws, the government, and the democratic system that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The Pastoral Letter and its authors, the Catholic Church, the Holy See, and Czech and Slovak political Catholicism were violently attacked by journalists, triggering a press affair. Subsequently, the question time of German Social Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a government crisis solved not only by the government, parliament, and political parties but also by the so-called Pětka (Committee of Five) as the supreme body of Czechoslovak politics. The search for a way out of the government crisis showed that the socialists, especially the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, did not want to defend their own ideology in the case but used the publication of the Letter to pressure the Czechoslovak People’s Party, which, as part of the government coalition and the Švehla government, hindered the solution of the issue of regulating the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. They wanted to force a change in its attitude by acting tactically with the idea of a minority government without the participation of the Czechoslovak People’s Party. However, the Czechoslovak People’s Party’s leaders handled the difficult situation it found itself in due to pressure from its coalition partners and the Catholic Slovak People’s Party and the Prague radical wing of its own party formed around Rudolf Horský, thanks to the prudent policy of its chairman Jan Šrámek. Although it agreed to negotiate a regulation of the relationship between the state and the churches, it defended the membership of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in the governing coalition, agreed to prosecute only those priests who manifestly violated the law, and defended the right of bishops to act independently in public within the limits of the law. This paper analyses and evaluates the current Slovak and Czech historical production on the topic of the Pastoral Letter, draws attention to the agreements and differences in the concept of the case individual authors presented, and indicates other possible research directions.

Enhancing Attention and Interest in Plants to Mitigate Plant Awareness Disparity.

Plant awareness disparity (PAD, formerly plant blindness) is the human inability to notice plants in everyday life. It is suggested that the main underlying factors of PAD are: 1. the inability to recognize individual plants and 2. stronger preferences for animals, which prevents building positive attitudes toward them. The presentation of individual plants should trigger more positive responses toward them than the presentation of groups of plants. Strong preferences for animals predict that the presence of an animal on a plant might enhance positive perceptions of the plant by people. We experimentally investigated the perceived attractiveness and willingness to protect (WTP) plants presented individually and in groups and with or without various pollinators in a sample of Slovak people (N = 238). In contrast to the first prediction, only one of four plants (dog rose, but not saffron, spruce, or beech tree) received higher attractiveness scores when presented individually than in a group. None of these species received higher WTP scores when presented individually, rather than in a group. The effect of the presence of pollinators on flower attractiveness and WTP was distinguished between vertebrates and invertebrates; only flowers with birds and bats increased their attractiveness scores, while flowers with invertebrates, including a butterfly, honeybee, beetle, and the syrphid fly, received similar or lower scores than the same plant species without pollinators. WTP plants significantly increased only when the scarlet honeycreeper and the cave nectar bat were present on flowers as pollinators. People showed significantly stronger preferences for items that associate 1. plants with pollinators and 2. plants with animals that distribute animal seed than for items focused solely on plants. Connecting animals and plants should help reduce PAD. This aim cannot be achieved, however, by presenting individual plants and/or plants with randomly chosen pollinators.

The Psycholinguistic Aspects of Global Bilingualism Against the Background of the Society Digitalization Process in Ukraine and Slovak Republic

ABSTRACT
 Purpose. The purpose of the experimental study is to identify the tendencies of the global bilingualism development in the Ukrainian and Slovak languages based on the English loanwords functioning in the individual consciousness of their speakers. The novelty of the research is setting up the main features of the global bilinguialism where the young people are the social stratum that represents the basis of the language changes and reacts to the social processes leading to the new perception of the English loanwords that is relevant nowadays. The main hypothesis of the research is the statement about the expansion of the global bilingualism trends connected with the intensive use of the digital technologies. It causes language code switching and the blurring of the languge pictures of the world.
 Methods. The main method of the research is psycholinguistic, more precisely, the free associative experiment and its essence to offer the respondent the stimuli, in our case, the English loanwords, with the aim of evoking appropriate associations.
 Presedure. The respondents were given a written list of the stimulus words and they had to write down the first word that comes to their mind when responding to the stimuli. For the Ukrainian and Slovak respondents the list consisted of such English loanwords from the area of the social networking: Ukr. контент, Sl. kontent (content); Ukr. скріншот, Sl. skrinshot (screenshot); Ukr. iнтерфейс, Sl. interfeis (interface); Ukr. xештег, Sl. haštag (hashtag); Ukr. чат, Sl. čat (chat); Ukr. клік, Sl. klik (click); Ukr. лайк, Sl. like (like); Ukr. паблік, Sl. public (public).The experiment was conducted two times in 2019 and in 2022 in the Ukrainian and Slovak universities at non-language faculties where the respondents at the age of 17–21 took part: 200 Ukrainian and 200 Slovak students, 100 women and 100 men.
 Results. There have been four groups of the associations given by the Ukrainians and Slovaks: the same loanword, the other English loanword, the unassimilated English word, the word of the native language. The number of the associations in different groups is dissimilar. The Slovaks gave more associations in English, the Ukrainians had more associations in Ukrainian. The both groups have the tendency to increase the number of the associations expressed with the English words, which are connected with the process of the global bilingualism development caused by the society digitalization era.
 Conclusions. Due to the globalization processes that are taking place all over the world, the perception of the loanwords is changing. The English language is perceived as an integral part of everyday life. According to the results of the experiments conducted in 2019 and 2022 we can observe the emergence of the associations in English, which indicates the development of a special type of bilingualism, namely global, which is connected with the internationalization of the English language in the world, as well as the peculiarities of its perception. The development of the global bilingualism causes the interaction of two language codes in the consciousness of the individual. The English language is penetrating into the speech of the Ukrainian and Slovak people, changing thinking in the globalizing society. Thus, the shift in the self-concept can affect the transformation in the language picture of the world, that confirms the research hypothesis.

Farár Alexander Šindelár vo funkcii starostu obce Piešťany

Very few Slovak communities or cities have in their history a Catholic priest as the head of their administration. One of those was the city of Piešťany, which during the years 1931 – 1938 had as mayor the local priest, Alexander Šindelár. Acting as the mayor of Piešťany, he had a significant contribution in building relationships between the community and spa. In the state archive there is an original copy of his first official mayoral speech. He built the road bridge across the river Vah, and paved streets and paths. For the needs of residents, he founded the new cemetery, which is still operating. Šindelár ended his political activity; he was a district president of Hlinka´s Slovak People´s Party. After the end of his tenure as mayor, he devoted himself solely to pastoral activities in his parish. Šindelár tragically died in his parish in November 1947, after blessing one of the missing bells from the First World War. He is buried in the cemetery not far away from his parish church.

K reflexi pastýřského listu slovenských biskupů z roku 1924 Československou stranou národně socialistickou

The Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenia bishops of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches published a pastoral letter in November 1924 to respond to the fact that some members of these churches were members of communist, socialist or progressive organizations that rejected belief in God, criticizing the churches from atheistic positions and striving to create a secular society. The socialists, in an effort to expand their membership and electorate, went so far as to formally present themselves with Christian symbolism, which was supposed to deceive Catholics in a difficult social position and attract them to their ranks. The bishops reflected on this fact and, through the Pastoral Letter, explained to the members of their churches the destructiveness of socialist and progressive theories and recommended that they leave anti-Catholic organizations. Those Catholics who deliberately failed to take their teachings and warnings into account had to expect that the church would not administer certain sacraments to them. The publication of the Pastoral Letter provoked a fierce reaction in socialist and progressive circles as an attack against the state, its constitution and laws, the government and the democratic system that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The Pastoral Letter and its authors, the Catholic Church, the Holy See and Czech and Slovak political Catholicism were violently attacked by journalists and it triggered a press affair. Subsequently, the question time of German Social Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a government crisis solved not only by the government, parliament, and political parties, but also by the so-called Pětka (Committee of Five) as the supreme body of Czechoslovak politics. The search for a way out of the government crisis showed that the socialists, especially the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, did not want to defend their own ideology in the case, but used the publication of the Letter to pressure the Czechoslovak People’s Party, which, as part of the government coalition and the Švehla government, hindered the solution of the issue of regulating the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. They wanted to force a change in its attitude by acting tactically with the idea of a minority government without the participation of the Czechoslovak People’s Party. However, the Czechoslovak People’s Party’s leaders handled the difficult situation it found itself in due to pressure from its coalition partners and the Catholic Slovak People’s Party and the Prague radical wing of its own party formed around Rudolf Horský, thanks to the prudent policy of its chairman Jan Šrámek. Although it agreed to negotiate a regulation of the relationship between the state and the churches, it defended the membership of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in the governing coalition, agreed to prosecute only those priests who manifestly violated the law and defended the right of bishops to act independently in public within the limits of the law. The article analyses and evaluates the attitudes and behaviour of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party in this case.

Hitler's Priests in Slovakia? On the Convergence of Catholicism and Fascism in Nazi "New Europe"

This paper deals with the fascistization of Catholic clergy on the eastern periphery of the Nazi “New Europe”, specifically within the Slovak State (1939–1945), a Nazi satellite in East Central Europe. In reference to recent historiographical debates, “clerico-fascism” serves here as a tool for an analysis of the ideology of the most prominent Slovak “clerico-fascist”, the president and Catholic priest Jozef Tiso (1887–1947). Specifically, it examines the transformation of social Catholicism into an instrument of fascist discipline. In addition, the article examines the fascistization of three other Slovak clerics: Karol KĂśrper (1894–1969), Ladislav Hanus (1907–1994) and Viliam Ries (1906–1989). Focusing on individual agencies of both moderate and radical “clerico-fascists” on the basis of the regime of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenskĂĄ ÄžudovĂĄ strana) during the Second World War, the article seeks an explanation for political and religious radicalization in East Central Europe during the first half of the twentieth century.

DEFENDER OF CZECHOSLOVAK UNITY. A PROBE INTO THE POLITICS OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK NATIONAL SOCIALISTS IN SLOVAKIA BETWEEN 1918 AND 1938

Until 1989, the reformist current of the National Socialists was one of the backbone elements of the Czech/Czechoslovak party-political system. The political party of the Czech National Socialists was formed in the 1890s and during the years of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918 – 1938) under the name Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (CSNP) was a regular part of government coalitions. The historiographical description of their activities and their contribution to solving the political, economic, social, and cultural problems of state formation corresponds to this fact. An exception in this context is the history of the party in Slovakia between 1918 and 1938, a period when the party leaders decided to extend the organization's reach to the entire territory of the newly formed state. Apart from partial mentions, we have only a few short historical studies, which are inaccurate in their findings and give only the most basic outline of the Party's policy in this territory. Therefore, the present study is one of the new probes into the Party's activities in Slovakia, aiming to reduce the historiographical debt. Given the limited scope, this article analyses the party's profile in Slovakia intending to evoke its Czechoslovakist programme, the programme of Czechoslovak national and state unity, which was not accepted with understanding in the conservative and especially nationalist and autonomist-oriented Slovak environment or was fundamentally rejected. In the field of political practice, the party projected the concept of unity into the issue of the search for the optimal administrative system of the Czechoslovak Republic. It was opposed not only to the vision of an autonomous Slovakia within Czechoslovakia, which she correctly perceived as the first step in the process leading to the state-law separation of Czechs and Slovaks, but also the provincial system. The ideal, fulfilling the idea of self-government, autonomy, and independence, was the county system. As a probe into the aforementioned topic, this study also analyses the relationship of the National Socialists in Slovakia to Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, which had the most significant electoral support of the population and differed with them programmatically and politically on the issues addressed in our study. It was their primary political opponent.

THE SLOVAK ISSUE IN THE POLITICAL STRATEGY OF THE SLOVAK NATIONAL COUNCIL IN 1943 – 1945

The article aims to investigate the Slovak question in the political strategy of the Slovak National Council (SNC) at the final stage of the Second World War. The methodological basis of the proposed article is the principles of historicism and objectivity, the application of which involves an unbiased depiction of past events in their historical context. The scientific topicality lies in the systematic analysis of the Slovak question in the activities of the SNC in 1943 – 1945. The author of the article states that the SNC program to resolve the Slovak issue consisted of three main points: recognition of the identity of the Slovak people, return of Slovakia to the Czechoslovak Republic, and regulation of Czech-Slovak relations in the country on an equal footing. The latter de facto provided for the reorganization of the Czechoslovak Republic on a federal basis, which was opposed by President Edvard Beneš and representatives of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. The SNC began a program to resolve the Slovak question during the Slovak National Uprising of 1944, which, although defeated, contributed to Slovakia's liberation from German dependence and its integration into the anti-Hitler coalition. During the Slovak National Uprising, the SNA was transformed into the supreme legislative and executive body in Slovakia, which supporters of unitary Czechoslovakia could no longer ignore. As a result of intense negotiations in Moscow between the SNA delegation and representatives of the Czechoslovak émigré government in March 1945, Slovaks were given the opportunity to join the revived Czechoslovakia as an independent nation. The SNC became its legitimate representative and bearer of state power in Slovakia. Another critical achievement of the SNC was the Czechoslovak relations in the Czechoslovak Republic that the new Czechoslovak government promised to build on the principle of "equal to equal." All these aspects were fixed in the Košice government program of the National Front. The SNC was recognized as the bearer of national sovereignty and state power in Slovakia. In fact, it was a question of building the Czechoslovak Republic on a federal basis, as it presupposed the existence of Slovak national authorities alongside the central ones. At the same time, the program of the National Front government did not define in detail the basic principles of the state and legal system of the Czechoslovak state, which in the future prevented the SNC from maintaining its achievements in the Slovak question.

Az 1939 és 1945 közötti Szlovák Köztársaság államfői tisztsége

The paper deals with the constitutional development of the independent Slovakia between 1939 and 1945. It focuses on the position of the president in the context of the Czechoslovak constitutional tradition and authoritarian challanges, which were typical from the end of the 1930’s. The problem of continuity and discontinuity of the state and law is also an important part of the paper. The Slovak constitution was adopted in 1939. The influence of the Southern-European fascist and authoritarian models were strong during the process of constitution-making, but the Czechoslovak constitution of 1920 also had an impact on the legislator. Although the president of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso arrived from the Slovak Catholic and autonomist movement, he became the symbol of pro-Nazi collaboration during the second world war. Tiso had two positions – he was the Slovak president and paralelly the leader of the Hlinka Slovak People Party, which was a dominant political factor in Slovakia. A special act regulated the position of this party and its leader in the constitutional and political system.

Česká inteligencia v procese budovania slovenskej vzdelanosti a kultúry

The study evaluates the role of the Czech intelligentsia in Slovakia in the interwar period. The Czech intelligentsia’s main contribution (apart from its work within the civil service) was the development of education at all levels. In this regard, attention has mostly focused on the founding of Comenius University by President T. G. Masaryk’s decree in July 1919. From a sociological point of view, the Czech intelligentsia operating in Slovakia can be divided into three groups: (1.) emotional supporters of Czechoslovak reciprocity drawing on the moral ideals of T. G. Masaryk (e.g. L. Narcis Zvěřina, J. Jirásek) and following up on the Czech Slovakophile movement; (2.) officials, artists, railway professionals, and gendarmes, who saw coming to Slovakia as a chance for social advancement, with young university graduates as a specific subgroup; (3.) speculative business people taking advantage of the underdeveloped Slovak market to get rich quickly, who were numerically the smallest of these three groups. The topos of the protectoral, profiteering Czech led to irritated reactions by the autonomist wing of Slovak nationalists, associated with Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (cf. M. Rázus’s 1929 novel Svety [Worlds]). Interesting information on the position of Czech university graduates in Slovakia can be gleaned from the letters of Frank Wollman, a Slavic languages specialist, who reflected on the problematic nature of Czech-Slovak cultural equalization. The Czech intelligentsia virtually disappeared from Slovakia in 1939 as a consequence of the political decisions made by the new Slovak government, and its “spiritual legacy” remains to this day a reminder of the positive contribution of Czechs to the constitution of Slovak national and state-forming identity.

„Sme za demokraciu.“ Kanonik Andrej Cvinček a jeho percepcia a realizácia demokracie

This paper focuses on the years 1945 – 1948. The Slovak historiography calls this era the “people’s democracy”. A people´s government and democracy itself were supposed to be the cornerstones of post-war Czechoslovakia. The word “democracy” had not only been used very often in public by the organiser of the Slovak people’s uprising (Slovenské národné povstanie), but it was a keyword in all important political documents. Those intellectuals who were part of the revolution were fighting for a functioning democratic system, plurality, free elections, a pluralistic party system and a government that was approved by parliament. These ideals first materialized in the foundation of the Slovenská národna rada (National Councilof the Slovak Republic) and the founding of the Demokratická strana (Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia) in Banská Bystrica. Andrej Cvinček, a canon from Nitra (Slovakia), was an active player in this process. Cvinček was not only a politician with a Christian background, he was a politician who stood up against secular tendencies within the state and was a proponent of conservative political opinions. Cvinček was a forceful advocate of the Christian weltanschauung and the axioms, principles, and interests of his church and religious bodies and organizations. This paper wants to analyze his view on and perception of democracy in post-war Czechoslovakia. Cvinček was hinting at the extreme divergence of what communists described to be a people’s democracy and the very communist reality: this was a warning of what to expect from the immanent rise of totality. Simultaneously, we need to raise the question of whether changes in the political system and society had an impact on the convictions and the career of a politician that was fighting for church interests and Christian principles. This paper is based on materials kept in archives, press articles of his time, and memoirs of his contemporaries. The aim of this paper is, to a lesser extent, to portray his political career, but the focus is being laid on the creation of a typology of how he perceived and understood democracy and how democratic ideas were implemented in the given years 1944 – 1948.

Migration of Central European musicians exemplified by John Dopyera, Diana Krall, Andreas Varady, and Celeste Buckingham

The author examines the different reasons behind the emigration of musicians from the territory of today's Slovak Republic during various eras. The migration of Slovak people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire around the end of the 19th century was largely motivated by economic factors. Ideological doctrines that constrained free artistic thinking propelled another wave of emigration during the former socialist Czechoslovakia (1948–1989). After the birth of the Slovak Republic (1993), migratory movements continued especially with Czech and Slovak jazzmen trying to establish themselves on the global scene. The examples of departing artists (John Dopyera, the inventor of the resophonic Dobro guitar; Diana Krall, jazz pianist and singer; Andreas Varady, a jazz guitarist of Romani origin; and Celeste Buckingham, a singer with multicultural ancestry) contribute to the debate on migration’s cultural and artistic significance. The author discusses the instrumentalist approach to the issue of ethnicity for those globally successful artists who pragmatically stress the appropriate element of their ethnic background relevant to the circumstances. Additionally, the article gives attention to the primordialist aspects and emotional issues relating to the ethnicity of those Slovak musicians whose success abroad was only localized.

Creating the Paradigm of ‘New Nation’

Abstract Despite its official Catholic nature, Jozef Tiso’s Slovak State apparatus adopted not only the teachings of the eugenic movement but also the racial-hygiene ideology of National Socialist Germany, which it gradually implemented into its political culture. This study presents how eugenic and racial-hygiene thinking was introduced into the structures of Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana (HSĽS; Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party), the self-governing party of independent Slovakia during the Second World War, against the backdrop of developmental trends in Europe. What is emphasized here is the gradual formation of the racial paradigm in the spirit of a eugenic and racial-hygiene framework, as well as the formation of a ‘pure Aryan Slovak nation’ cult, physically and mentally contrasting with racially-hygienically ‘unclean and degenerate’ Jews and Roma.