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
National Populism in Slovakia... voters mostly by emphasizing social issues, opposing systemic changes within society after the fall of communism in general and liberal economic reforms in particular and sharing nostalgia for “socially just” society before November 1989. In terms of orientation the ZRS resembled a far-left organization of the neo-communist type, this despite the absence of references to the communist or Marx-Leninist ideology from its program documents and its leaders’ public statements. Although the ZRS was not a typical national populism subject, its participation in government alongside the HZDS and SNS created favourable conditions for implementation of policies of national populism. The actual stance of national populists on various types of mutual interactions (i.e. dialogue or conflict) between particular social groups in Slovakia is not only reflected in their positions on issues concerning ethnic minorities (although this is where ethnic nationalism is manifested the most vividly) but also on issues such as understanding the fabric of society, defining the character of the system of government, choosing the concept of nation, tackling the dichotomy of ‘ethnic’ vs. ‘civil’, general harmony between the political creed and liberal-democratic values and interpretation of national history, including perception of particular historical periods, events and figures. ÜEfiNiiNq tIhe Character of tIhe State Between 1994 and 1998, during the reign of ‘hard’ populists from the ruling coalition of HZDS - ZRS - SNS, leading protagonists of national populism strove to emphasize their exceptional role in the process of founding independent Slovakia, a special value of the national state, Slovakia’s state independence as the top social priority, and superiority of interests of government and its institutions over those of individuals. At this point, emergence of the independent Slovak Republic was quite a recent history and the process of building state institutions had not yet been fully completed. The degree of Slovak citizens’ self-identification with their recently-emerged country was relatively low; furthermore, for a significant part of the population the acceptance of former Czechoslovakia’s dissolution was mixed with frustration over their own incapacity to put through a different solution to the constitutional system issue during the period of 1990-1992. These sentiments were multiplied by authoritarian domestic politics of the Vladimír Mečiar administration that inspired anxiety and provoked protests, especially among people professing pro-democratic values. Members of 45
