Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Annex
Most Frequent Stereotypes Concerning Slovak-Hungarian Relations... improving their command of Slovak language. By insisting that names of towns, villages, rivers, lowlands and mountain ridges in textbooks for ethnic Hungarian pupils continue to be in Hungarian, ethnic Hungarians allegedly try to create an impression in their children as if they still lived in the Great Hungarian Kingdom. The ‘escalating demands’ thesis is based on the already described assumption that there is no problem left to tackle in the field of minority rights, particularly the Hungarian minority’s rights, since these rights exceed usual standards. Here, though, Slovakia’s ruling elite and virtually entire political elite runs into a fundamental logical discrepancy with their predecessors’ political and ideological line they constantly refer to. The point is that after Budapest in 1848-1849 refused to listen to Ľudovít Štúr and his group of national revivalists, they decided to turn to Vienna; after Andrej Hlinka declared in 1918 that “the thousand-year-old marriage with the Hungarians has failed”, the Slovaks turned to Prague. At this point, a legitimate question is: Why did part of Slovakia’s elite decide to turn with their demands to Vienna in 1948-49 and to Prague in 1918? Why did not they show ‘loyalty to their own state’? Well, because their own state refused to grant them the space for true dialogue and create legal and institutional prerequisites to the Slovaks’ effective participation in decision-making on matters related to their culture, language and education, i.e. matters that are indispensable to expressing, preserving and developing their national identity. This fundamental problem - i.e. the unresolved issue of the status of ethnic Hungarians (and other traditional ethnic and cultural communities) and their effective participation in decision-making on matters that existentially concern them - lies at the heart of all Slovak-Hungarian tensions. But it is quite impossible to spark off a public debate on this issue because any attempt to do so is a priori rejected with a reference to the allegedly abovestandard minority rights in Slovakia or an argument that the Slovak Republic refuses to recognize ‘collective rights’. Another important dimension of Slovak politicians’ perception of SMK-MKP representatives’ activities abroad is the assertion that SMK-MKP politicians ‘attack the Slovak Republic and Slovak statehood’. In fact, what they do - if they do so at all - is present critical evaluation of the incumbent administration’s measures. Interchanging government with the incumbent political power is a typical feature of national populism (and Bolshevik ideology, for that matter) and represents a return to the period of 1993-1998 or even before 1989 in some aspects. Again, a logical paradox is that before 2006 there was hardly a more agile and uncompromising cri281
