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... Chairman Vladimír Mečiar openly labelled the wartime Slovak State’s regime as “fascist”.55 In recent years, LS-HZDS tried to avoid the public debate on issues related to the wartime Slovak State and SNP; occasionally, it releases rather general and vague statements. “Historians owe us a lot regarding the issue of [wartime] Slovak State,” Mečiar declared in 2007. He also made light of the fact that positive views about the wartime Slovak State appeared increasingly frequently in Slovakia by alleging that “the entire [Czech] cabinet visited the grave of [Czech Protectorate’s Prime Minister Emil] Hácha and the entire Hungarian cabinet visited the grave of [Hungary’s Regent Miklós] Horthy”. According to Mečiar, the issue of “the first Slovak Republic” should not be turned into an acute political issue.56 SMER-SD leaders’ preference of ethno-national element over the civicdemocratic one clearly showed on the occasion of commemorating the 90th anniversary of founding the first Czechoslovak Republic (ČSR). Party leaders issued several public statements in which they emphasized that founding of the Czechoslovak state in 1918 amounted to materialization of the Slovaks’ emancipation efforts and desires to liberate from “an almost thousand-year Hungarian hegemony” and terminate “an almost thousand-year forced coexistence between Slovakia and Hungary”57 and that existence of the ČSR allowed for “further development of attributes such as Slovak nation and Slovak statehood”. The fact that the ČSR was primarily a state with a democratic system of government was largely overlooked in public statements by SMER-SD; while they did positively evaluate “democratic environment” of the first ČSR, they simultaneously pointed out that “a failure to tackle social issues led the first ČSR into a serious economic crisis that befell Slovakia in particular”.58 Symptomatic for SMER-SD is its evaluation of the country’s communist past. Here, the party applies a ‘balanced’ approach that combines general acknowledgment of the fact that the pre-November regime was undemocratic with assertions that communism was socially more just and provided greater social security to citizens. When comparing the existing regime to the communist one, party leaders tend to emphasize negative phenomena of the country’s post-November development. In 2003 Fico declared that the communist regime was more sociallyoriented and that people were better off back then. While acknowledging that the Velvet Revolution of November 1989 did bring about important political and civil rights, he claimed that these rights had become merely formal, which was the biggest disappointment. Fico believes that strong financial groups and corporations have seized control over Slovakia and that 59
