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 people’s standard of living is worse today than it was under the communist regime. Also, he is convinced that the Velvet Revolution was a classic political coup d’état that had been prepared long before from the outside - as opposed to from within Czechoslovakia - and that students and other citizens were brought to the streets only to make an impression of masses demanding changes.59 When evaluating certain symbolic events related to the communist regime (e.g. the anniversary of the communist putsch in February 1948), SMER-SD opts for ‘emergency exits’ such as a declaration in which the party claimed that it “looks into the future and leaves evaluation of historical events up to historians. Everything negative from the past should be condemned and everything positive should be made an example of’.60 While the party emphasizes positive aspects of particular Slovak protagonists of the communist regime in specific historical periods (e.g. Gustáv Husák during the SNP, Vladimir Clementis after World War II when he was executed by the communist regime or Alexander Dubček as a leading figure of the Prague Spring), it tends to avoid addressing more controversial aspects of their respective political careers. The HZDS verbally subscribes to the legacy of November 1989 as a historic event that removed totality and paved the way to restoring democracy in the country. The HZDS presents itself as a direct successor to political forces generated by the civic movement that led to toppling the oppressive communist regime. In 1998, the official website of then-prime minister Vladimír Mečiar featured information that he was “one of leading personalities of 1989, which was the landmark of bringing down the communist regime”. Since the said information was not even remotely true, it was eventually removed from the website;61 however, the case illustrates that the HZDS does not hesitate to resort to expedient interpretation of important historic events that portrays the subject in a better, more ‘democratic’ light with respect to November 1989. On the other hand, the HZDS never took the initiative of entering public debates on various aspects of the country’s development during the period of communism and never used anti-communist rhetoric. The closest any HZDS official ever came to criticizing the past regime was MP Ján Cuper (HZDS) who in 1996 called the communist regime a “failed experiment”.62 During the period of democratic deformations caused by the authoritarian rule by the populist coalition of HZDS - ZRS - SNS when democratic opposition pointed out that government’s power practices contradicted basic democratic principles and values of the Velvet Revolution and organized protest rallies designed to revive the November legacy, the HZDS 60
