Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Grigorij Mesežnikov: National Populism in Slovakia - Defining the Character of the State and Interpreting Select Historic Events
Grigorij Mesežnikov nty. Between 1993 and 1994, between 1994 and 1998 and after the 2006 elections it was part of government, which enabled it to participate in shaping policies in all relevant areas of public life. It is a radical nationalistic force that uses far-right and anti-communist rhetoric. It is a sworn opponent of the concept of civically defined political nation and advocates the concept of ethnic nation. The SNS views the Slovak Republic as a national state of ethnic Slovaks; with respect to ethnic minorities, it promotes the concept of assimilation that manifests primarily - but is not limited to - in a priori questioning ethnic Hungarians’ loyalty to the Slovak Republic. On the ‘theoretical’ level, this shows through questioning the fact that ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia are of truly Hungarian origin; in practice, it shows through proposing measures that complicate practical exercise of ethnic Hungarians’ rights in the field of political representation, use of language, education, culture, regional development and maintaining ties with Hungary, which ethnic Hungarians consider their motherland in terms of culture and language. In the mid-1990s, the SNS unsuccessfully campaigned to introduce the system of so-called alternative education for children belonging to ethnic minorities. Its practical implementation would have amounted to an irreparable decline in the standard of exercising minority rights with all sorts of political implications. SNS representatives have become notorious for using confrontational rhetoric and aggressive tone; they regularly utter offensive statements with respect to members of ethnic minorities and their political representatives. The party appeals to people with proclivity to nationalist views and authoritarian concepts of society’s political organization. Another political subject that can be considered a protagonist of national populism in Slovakia is the People’s Party-Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). The party was founded in spring 1991 as a result of internal rift within Public against Violence (VPN), a revolutionary and reformist movement that was the architect of peacefully toppling the communist regime in 1989 and won in the first free parliamentary elections in June 1990. The initiators of the split led by then Prime Minister Vladimir Mečiar advocated a model of transformation different from the ‘federal’ model that was implemented in Slovakia between 1990 and 1992 by VPN and its coalition partners. Eventually they founded the HZDS that immediately gained political support, especially among those voters who were disenchanted by the course of the transformation process. Another item on the movement’s political agenda and an important factor behind its strong voter support was the issue of dissolving the Czechoslovak Federation. The HZDS profiled itself as the promoter of Slovaks’ ‘national aspirations’ and 42
