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 from telling us what is and what is not correct or democratic ... The principal challenge for the future is to defend an independent and sovereign Slovakia and build it in a way we imagined it to be”.13 According to the SNS, “the most tangible” and “historically most valuable” outcome of the regime change from 1989 was the split of former Czechoslovakia that followed and the subsequent emergence of the independent Slovak Republic, i.e. exercising the Slovak nation’s right of self-determination.14 When interpreting interests of the state, HZDS representatives always liked to point out that their political subject was their authentic upholder, not only as the initiator of processes that eventually led to emergence of independent Slovakia but also as a political subject that enjoyed the highest voter support. According to this interpretation, activities by opposition forces or any opponents of the government should be perceived as “hostile to the state”. SNS leaders embraced identical argumentation. Their party could not boast such a massive voter support as the HZDS could at the time; however, they strove to emphasize the fact that the SNS was the first political subject in Slovakia to further the concept of Slovakia’s state independence after November 1989 and therefore it was the true upholder of “national values”. Along the same lines, SNS representatives often dismissed criticism from their political and ideological opponents as “anti-national”. While the ZRS, the second largest ruling party in the period of 1994—1998, lacked any detailed concept of Slovakia’s statehood, it always advertised its reluctance to embrace fundamental changes introduced after 1989, including the democratic regime. In fact, ZRS leaders viewed various social problems and negative social phenomena as a direct consequence of the regime change. “Our young Slovak Republic is just being bom and that’s why we struggle with many problems. We create laws and develop the economy, but democracy has brought us a lot of misfortune to us,” ZRS Chairman Ján Ľupták said in 1997.15 “All November 17 means is that we have paid too big a toll for freedom of speech and democracy in the welfare area ... This nation had to learn the hard way and that’s why we don’t subscribe so much to [the ideas] they proclaimed on the streets ... After all, November means nothing to me.”16 The anti-capitalist profile of the ZRS was manifested especially through efforts to halt the process of denationalizing economy, particularly privatization of so-called strategic enterprises. The party appealed mostly to people with etatist, egalitarian and anti-free-market views; however, the ZRS electorate was not sufficiently stable and its strongly submissive position in the coalition with the HZDS and SNS was one of principal reasons behind its defeat in the 1998 parliamentary elections. 48
