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... nuum of unchanged endeavour to exercise the nation’s right of self-determination within its own state”.47 SNS leaders’ positive views of the “first Slovak statehood” were automatically reflected in their negative perception of the Slovak National Uprising (SNP). In 2002 Slota declared that the SNP laid the ground for communist totality and the country’s Soviet satellitization, adding that the SNP “was abused for 40 years to promote red totality” and that it “has lost its moral credit”.48 After 2006, official views presented by SNS representatives regarding the period of 1939-1945 saw a slight shift. While party chairman Slota virtually avoids making any public comments on the issue, positive views are most frequently presented by a former emigrant and now MP for SNS Jozef Rydlo. According to him, Slovakia’s constitutional history did not begin on September 1, 1992, when the Slovak National Council passed the currently valid Slovak Constitution but on July 21, 1939, the day of adopting the constitution of the wartime Slovak State. “Without the first Slovak Republic there would be no second,” Rydlo said, arguing that the Slovak State’s political regime should be distinguished from the state itself. Like other SNS leaders, Rydlo condemns deportations of Jews from Slovakia as abominable practices; on the other hand, he opposes attempts to disparage the state as such, reasoning that the former Czechoslovakia was also ruled by a communist regime. “Nobody questions existence of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic just because it was undemocratic,” he said.49 But the most significant shift in SNS leaders’ interpretation of the World War II period in recent years may be noticed with respect to the SNP. In 2004 SNS Vice-Chairperson Anna Malíková-Belousovová called the SNP an act of “the Slovaks’ opposition to fascism” but refused that the move was aimed against their own state. “The SNP shall enjoy an honourable place in Slovakia’s history,” she said.50 In August 2006, Belousovová declared that the SNS took its hat off to hundreds and thousands of victims claimed by the struggle against “perverted fascist ideology and its upholders”.51 These statements illustrate SNS leaders’ overall perception of Slovakia’s history during World War II, which is full of confusing and ambiguous interpretations. While these statements cannot be qualified as intentional nourishing of pro-fascist sentiments, they were undoubtedly inspired by efforts to appeal to those nationalist-oriented voters who view positive perception of ‘the first Slovak statehood’ as a display of true ‘patriotism’. On a declaratory level, SMER-SD fully embraces the ideological legacy of the anti-fascist Slovak National Uprising. Its chairman Robert Fico repeatedly presented public statements in which he unambiguously con-57
