CULTURAL OXYGEN 2/2017
Slovak culture in the fight against isolationism
Where does the affection to authoritarianism in our culture come from?
Editorial
"Oh, my Lord, it is the hardest to reap a bad thing consciously just once in a lifetime, then one keeps sawing it forever. (from the book Zo zákulisia rehabilitácií (Behind the Scenes of Rehabilitations) by Ján Uher)
Culture is a very fragile young lady. It can be more fragile than economy, education, or health care. It takes just a few days, one campaign, in every country, in every community, there will be people to begin to settle accounts with those who mean more and have done more. In the culture of Russia, it was called "when you cut down the forest, the chips will fly". Since 1917, there started a process of humiliation to engineers, architects, doctors, professors and artists, mocked by riffraff as they were forced to take low-qualified jobs. In our country, we witnesses such kind of shamelessness in 1950s, led by the blue shirts of Socialist Youth Movement, partly also in the 1970s. These were a Slovak sort of the so-called cultural revolution. Of little Slovaks. This is because these revolutions could not compete with the bloody ones organised by Mao Zedong in China in the 1960s, or by Pol Pot in Cambodia in the 1980s. Is this lack of blood an evidence of us being true Europeans? Our question at ICP is why true and quality artists also took part in these cultural atrocities, these torchbearers, no mob (Hannah Arendt). What attracted them to the destruction of cultural products not only of their fellow artists, but of the nation? What were and still remain to be the grounds for top writer enjoying the destruction of the cultural world he had been a part of? We believe that if we fail to clean our own mess, the dark side of our cultural policy, we will keep stumbling between two excuses,"such was the time" and "but then he would become a democrat". We cannot wish you pleasant reading, but it was not our intention anyway. Nevertheless, we believe that we can offer you interesting reading for the summer.
Magda Vášáryová Mementos Thank-you telegram of Štefan Tisa (Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic 1944-45) to Joachim von Ribbentropovi (Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany) dated 27th October 1944:
I have just received the gratifying message about the elimination of the headquarters of Bolshevik front guards in the heart of Slovakia, which undermined the independence of the Slovak State and European culture. our Excellence, please convey the most cordial gratitude from me and the Slovak Government for the help the Greater German Reich and the Leader have provided so generously for the future of the Slovak nation.
Karol Bacílek (minister for national security, 1952-53), on December 17th, 1952:
Who is guilty and who is innocent, where errors and mistakes end and criminal liability starts, shall be decided by the (Communist) Party with the assistance of the national security authorities."
Gustáv Husák (Deputy Speaker of the insurgent Slovak National Council), 1944:
"If there was an opportunity to decide by voting where Slovak wanted to belong to, then at least 70 percent of Slovaks would vote for joining the USSR, perhaps 20 percent for a new Czechoslovak Republic, the rest is in fear, confused." "It is necessary that Slovak man considers as the homeland ... the territory from Aš to Vladivostok."
Ján Čarnogurský (Prime Minister of the Government of the Slovak Republic, 1991-92), June 4th, 2017
"Prime Minister Robert Fico repeatedly insists that Slovakia must get to the first group of the existing member countries of the European Union, if the Union is to be divided into different "speeds". Let's make this clear. If that happens — and probably it will – the first group, the fastest one, will comprise countries grouped around Germany. But in this group, instructions will be given by Germany, and the countries in the group will sooner or later have to adapt themselves to Germany. Do we want to become just another land in Germany? " THE PINK ELEPHANT
Search for the national culprits
"We achieved the Slovak democratic statehood in 1993. It must be protected. And that is why we need Matica slovenská today to save the nation." SNN, May 10th, 2017
From whom should Matica slovenská, the fortress of Slovak culture, protect us?
According to the Slovenské národné noviny (Slovak National Newspaper - SNN; financed by the Ministry of Culture from the State budget), our national problems are caused by many different culprits. In the editor's column by Maroš Smoleec, they are "truth-lovers, libtards, neoliberalists, neomarxists, third sector representatives, paying the rest of the world" (Internet Trolls gainst Matica, February 2nd, 2017) . Namely, also "the foreign element, Grigory Mesezhnikov" (note by ICP: he is Russian!). The other targets of criticism include the European Union, President Andrej Kiska, the Bratislava's café community (note by ICP: this is a Czech expression borrowed from President of the Czech Republic Zeman - "Prague's café"). The devisers of the national suffering are so outright. All those who brought about the change of regime in 1989, which marked a return to a liberal democratic regime. All those who wished Slovakia would become part of the European world and its values, hand-in-hand with Germany. Ugh!
But, for example, someone like Jozef Tiso, adored in Matica for years, also made efforts to belong with Germany and its system of values back in 1938. That is to say, no democracy, racism and eugenics, antisemitism (all to gas), Aryan supremacy, inferiority of the Slavic peoples (note by ICP: this escapes Matica's attention) and the Roma, of course, they must not be omitted!
Where in the system of values on the pages of SNN is Jozef Tiso today? We offer a few headlines: President Jozef Tiso Not a War Criminal Jozef Tiso – Victim to Revenge by Communists and Beneš Jozef Tiso Saved Children from Certain Death Tiso Saved Communists From Concentration Camps Too
What is the vision offered by SNN today? Slovak Future Is in the Past Long Time Waiting for Steps Forward (poet A. Žarnov) Slovakia to Bring Gospel to Europe Slovak November 1989 or There Is Not Much to Applaud
The members of Slovak Matica slovenská's management do not like that media, also Slovak, write bad things about it. And so they released a list of its activities. As a matter of fact, from the 1,500,000 eur contribution from the State it returned 800,000. In the form of wages, social and health insurance, and taxes. Slovak Republic can actually be happy because Matica slovenská is a social enterprise today, saviour of jobs, which is a priority for today's Slovak Government. Not a cultural institution, on the contrary, it employs people who would otherwise have ended up on the street, dumped with the State. All along we thought that the Matica's employees are professional warriors fighting for the nation and its culture.
SNN editors then and now 1846 Ľudovít Štúr 2017 Maroš Smolec Bohuslav Nosák Emil Semanco Peter Kellner-Hostinský Dušan D. Kerný
There are several thousand Slovaks active in Matica slovenská in Matica's local organisations across the country. They meet, sing, recite and discuss, in short, they deal with innocent matters in favour of the Slovak nation. The question is whether they are satisfied with what they read on the pages issued by their press agency? Some probably are. Because some of their meetings (not all!), after ingestion of the Slovak national drug (at least the innkeeper is our man), end up in singing about the cutting and axing till there's blood (do krve)(as documented by ICP). And those chants down under Sitno were definitely not the first time (poprvé). That sounds like Czech! Our Remnants of "the Soul of a Slave"
Historian Ľubomír Lipták wrote it aptly in his book Nepre(tr)žité dejiny (Continuous History/History not Lived). "Both humility and defiance, bent neck, (...) imprinted our opportunism (...) with some peculiar traits". The so-called specificities of the nation, as we have tried many times to justify them. Generations of interpreters of national stories tried to justify that -- "Thousand years we have suffered", they lied. "We have had servitude for a long time" the others cried out and they did not lie, they just forgot that not all the inhabitants in the Slovak territory were indigent people. "The exploiters did not allow us to modernise and become people of bright tomorrows" we heard for 40 years and successfully split into a couple of guilty ones and masses of victims. Being a victim is so nice. "The Jews are to blame", still echoes in Slovakia "they forced us to drink", sovereign Slovak citizens still argue today, staggering from pub to pub, more than 60 years after we expelled our Jews to gas chambers. And so we apologise beforehand for decades in order not to admit that we ourselves are the makers of our destiny, and in order not to have to ask some uncomfortable fundamental questions. For example: why did we succumb to the fascist ideology and sieg-heiled to it enthusiastically in national costumes at the Christian cross, something which many of us still do today? The Slovak National Uprising is merely a part of the answer. And why did we then succumb, without much resistance, even with enthusiasm, to the next great totalitarianism – the Communist regime? The year 1968 is just one of the possible answers. We can argue that the miserable and work-worn Slovak people did not know what was going to happen. Well, I take it, but ... But why the executors of the filthy deeds, the formations of renegades and quislings of both regimes were joint by almost all artists, intellectuals, educated people? And writers, this salt of every national culture? What was so appealing about totalitarian dreams that they succumbed? The traditional huge existential dependence on the state power? This "bread addiction" as František Hečko confessed in his Journals? Or the notorious mist "Mayakovsky's blindness" at the time he was writing his poem to Lenin, as remarked by Milan Kundera? What were the incentives and motives that brought the artistic souls, the poetic talent, to these perverted regimes? "Such was the time", is an evasive answer. We should not take it as an explanation. Times have kept and will keep changing in all ways, but we should not be so much indifferent to the fate of the national culture just to shrug this off. We should provide a guideline at least for future generations how to avoid the tragedy of compromise with one's character. To leave them with the testimony that one stumble of an intellectual, nation's torchbearer, will be stuck to all of his or her life, whatever meritorious he or she would do in the future. To point out the fate of talent which just irrevocably escapes to privacy in fear rather than have the spine broken, declaring loyalty on the outside. Talent does not sympathise with pragmatism, that you have used the "cash" to tile your bathroom (like Hečko), or was given a car to use (with a driver, like Mináč). Was it mere human fear which prevented them from "jumping out" before it was too late, after their sense for orientation had failed them? A concern about a loss of position, and thus a social status, or once they got involved, a worries about livelihood? What could be an argument for the period of the 1950s. After all, they "saved something or someone", is another excuse. "If I wasn't there myself, it would have been even worse" . The problem is that they would not save themselves for their future in the Slovak culture. They disappeared from reading-books, from shelves of libraries, from scientific conferences. Or let us stop fabricating and let us settle for the fact that each one of our cultural heroes hated someone, was jealous about someone, envied someone else, and the position ensured by the hateful regime, allowed him or her to take revenge. "Serves you right!" Understandable human calculation. Ordinary, normal people can confess their personal hates to a priest, but what about cultural celebrities? What is the message we are carrying in our backpacks of civilizational experiences into the next decades? It seems so hard to write this – they believed, really believed until the last moment .... they loved the leader, hated democracy. ... turned their fellow citizens in. And our torchbearers? The heroes of our nation? Impossible! Ladislav Kováč, who wrote several essays on this topic, notes that an intellectual has only two options in totalitarian regimes, and is a very endangered species is his or her own life strategies. An intellectual can either be part of official, even governmental structures and eventually become a cynic, which is the fate of many creative brains of today, or has got another career to choose, that is to become a dissident and live in a ghetto without a possibility of influencing the public, and possibly work in relatively better times, at least for the drawer. Here, only the Chekhov's exclamation may comfort us that maybe once in a hundred, two hundred years, someone will notice, what he/she wrote, .... created, ... and then all will remember he/she lived. However, the tradition in Slovakia of sliding down into the moral basement, is a little more complicated. "Stupidity and danger" , F. V. Sasinek and V. Paulíny-Tóth wrote in their Letter to Jews and this is they way they communicated with the Jews of Slovakia in the second half of the 19th century, not to hinder the assimilation, and to promote national efforts of Slovak Intelligence. Some heard them out and even financially supported Matica slovenská in the beginnings of its establishment, although most of them were made Hungarian. Ten years later, good old S. Hurban-Vajanský accused all Slovak Jews of moral and material impoverishment of the Slovak people. (more in Po stopách tragédie (In the Footsteps of Tragedy), Ivan Kamenec). In November 1939, F. Hečko wrote: "Škultéty joined the Hlinka Guards today. This is going to make a stir. among the Protestants. They lost the trump card they had thought was theirs, but he faithfully "joined" the idea of the Slovak State. Well, you are, get to work! " After all, the hardest part is to make the first misstep, concession against conscience, from common sense, from humanism and then ... there we go. In 1938, Karol Sidor came up with the idea to evict all Slovak Jews to Birobijan. And the doors of Martin, the cultural centre, to fascism and anti-Semitism, hate towards the "other", were wide open, and we now know that we have not closed them well. "And politics? To hell with those! I did not read anything for three days, I did not listen to the radio, and I was happy like hardly ever. After all, things will be somehow. Those who have built will have it, and those who lost anything, it serves them right. They should not have given it away! Just let the people who do no harm to anyone, let them have a heavenly peace. Lord save us from politicising. What one has to do is work and work ... This is the most important thing. Valuable work ... All other things, opinions, systems, ideologies, directions – it is just dust swept away in the wind. ... Just plough, hammer and pen - the three winners from the beginning ... " (Hečko). There has been no better description of the behaviour of Slovakia's little soul in revolutionary times since the birth of the modern Slovak nation until today. Vladimir Petrík wrote in the afterword to Hečko's work: "Christian humanism of The Red Wine was later replaced by Socialist humanism of The Wooden Village, the national pathos of the Slovak State turned into a socialist internationalism ... he was essentially a believer, but his faith had always a different form in the flow of time". Essentially a believer? What kind of a believer is that? "The Christian faith is something like folklore for the majority of the people" – late Bishop of Banská Bystrica Baláž told me in an interview. As someone who remembers the tying fear for livelihood in our family from the 1950s I have to admit the possibility that it was mainly fear behind all the poems and collaboration. And its consequence – submission.
Just one thing I know: It was the cause then, When I became the Party's Member.
Mária Jančová wrote in her Denníky (Diaries). And her husband added sincerely: "However, certainly, we both got a little further with the help of the Party ..." A little bit, that was it? And for those who had made a bigger mistake (for example, had been editors of the Guardsman), there was confession, still popular today, or self-criticism in new-speak. From Denníky: 14th December 1957: "The Cultural Life came out, with Milo Urban's self-criticism in the form of an interview, and an excerpt from Zhasnuté svetlá (The Lights Off) – about the Free- Masonic lodge and the Jewish dog. So, now comes the time of Milo Urban ..... welcome to the socialist literature." J. Uher thinks that "believing" Communists could not imagine that Gottwald and Zápotocký knew about the issue. (About the trials of their Communist accomplices). When the Hungarian communist leader, János Kádár, was asked why so many had believed the trials, he answered that it had been so because it was fantastic and most importantly – they believed the Party!! The idea of leaders being traitors was unacceptable to them. After all, they were the "people of special nature". Heroes from fairy tales. The rehabilitation processes in the 1960s brought evidence that they had known, they had created those devastating mechanisms themselves. And, therefore, they were responsible for the regime that spawned perversity. Poet Ladislav Novomeský, a victim of the trials reportedly "placed the unity of the Party above personal uncertainty, doubts that something was not right. He blamed himself for doubting". "Comrade Gottwald thinks on behalf of us!" – an sich fetishised entity. (Uher). He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. "Little nation, big swine" – he used to say. It is believed he was aware of his guilt and weakness, but he was too "dependent" on Husák, who maybe saved his life in the trials. The only gesture he made was that he resigned from the Central Committee of the Party in 1970! Too little for being an role model today of how not to succumb to pressures on loyalty. Anticommunists were better off, he argued. Why? Because they did not believe in communism, had neither biased illusion nor were zealots of the communist mission. What did antifascists and anticommunists believe in? They believed in democracy, parliamentary system, the rule of democratically formed law. They believed that freedom is what elevates people and makes them creative beings. Cultural and responsible. Today, many things are spoken and written about the political and civilian crimes by totalitarian regimes and their supporters. Nonetheless, there is no mention that for decades, the torchbearers of the nation helped suffocate our culture. They applauded those with no talent to stand on a pedestal. They hung medals on necks which had long been bent, even several times. No wonder that fell in the dust and the armies of more bent necks trampled them deep down to the ground. Marian Váross (Samota (Loneliness)), on 7th December 1981 recorded (under the impression of the performance of Slovo (The Word) by Válek: "I am convinced that a poet (and a personality) with such a mental potency and such a cultural context can not, without self-rape, bring such shallow, cheap phrases of political nature. That is a profound contradiction." Why have we lived and still live in this way and not otherwise? How do we shape our subconsciousness with which we perceive the things and phenomena around us through culture? What should we do with the inherited cultural content and its legacies? How do we define our identity in relation to the outside world? How are we able to take the responsibility and solve the problems of Europe? Will it suffice if future writers will learn more history at schools?
You may object that my essay deals with writers only. After all, this is exactly the behaviour of other artists and intellectuals. Yes, but I refer to the statement by Maria Janion, living guru of cultural policy of Poland, who wrote: "National independence is legitimised primarily by language, and thus by literature. Men of letters should relativize myths and stereotypes in the spirit of europeanism". Relativize, and not yield to "mythophilia" ... "and to become infected by memes of the Only Truth and to make this infection flourish excellently" Ladislav Kováč wrote at the end of Prírodopis komunizmu (Natural History of Communism). What is the role the cultural policy set-up can play? This is yet another question we should answer today. But still, the most important criterion for the attitude of torchbearers is the political criterion. Indeed, all those destroyers of our culture did not consider freedom, democracy and European identity to be significant. And that's the major lesson to be learned from the 60 years of crisis development of our culture. Magda Vášáryová A Picture from Grandmother's Story
"It was the 6th of October, Thursday. At that time I went to Žilina, to town school. We had maths. The teacher walked around the classroom, we calculated examples and drew. All of a sudden, someone knocked on the door, the teacher went out to the hall and came back smiling. We had schoolmate in our class, Elena H., a very prying girl. Teacher, what happened, what happened? And the teacher said: "Girls, we've got autonomy." The schoolmate clapped her hands straight away: "Wow, autonomy!" As if she knew what it was. Just then, chanting entered through the windows: "We are Hlinka's patrols/ We are Hlinka's Guards" A man ran into our classroom, a teacher from the boys' school, and wrote on the blackboard: Czechs out! We want Slovak Principal! When we heard the people singing in the streets, we all crowded into the windows. I could not even get close enough to look out. One girl, Anča K, started to shout that she wanted to look too, and that Elena H. made her shut up right away: Shut up, you stupid Czech, stop ranting!" I will never forget this day. And the school was over."
Alojzia Hatarová Interview with Ivan Kamenec
MV: Mr. Kamenec, you said that when someone is boasting too much about the nation in our history of the 20th century and keeps talking about the the welfare of the Slovak people, these people are the most harmful ones.
IK: They are detrimental to the idea they say they promote, and pretend to be the most ardent, sometimes even the only authentic advocates of the idea. For example, the idea of a nation, statehood, the idea of social justice, and the like. We have got a lot of experience and examples from our the modern history of the nation and the state.
MV: I understand that simple village people fell prey to the the illusion at the end of the 1930s that everything would be fine from then on and that new politicians would solve all their problems, after all, the head of the State was a priest, ... but how is it possible that even intellectuals also succumbed, top writers who kept trying to defend, until the end of their lives, the fascist ideology, which was defeated. Can you explain this?
IK: Illusions come hand in hand with every fundamental change of polity. They keep repeating throughout our history in 1918, 1938, 1945, 1948, and, most recently, such an illusion emerged in 1989, or 1993.
MV: I understand that people can give in to a collective illusion or start to panic. But what about the elite of the society? How is it possible that such a good writer like Milo Urban became the head editor of the Gardista (Guardsman)?
IK: There were many, but I prefer highlighting the personality of Janko Jesenský. Back in those times the poet wrote samizdat verses critically commenting events hapening in Slovakia. He saw the situation soberly, he wrote satirical verses and civic poetry. His samizdat poetry was published by Slovak political exiles in London in two volumes, and after the war it was published in Slovakia. At the same time, Jesenský had already criticized and written satirical verses with ironical detached view back in the time of the first Czechoslovak Republic.
MV: So he knew, not just anticipated.
IK: The fact is, and this does not just concern artists, but also scientists, teachers, church dignitaries and other intellectuals who succumbed to political pressures. We have witnessed these things even after the changes in 1989. How can one explain the attitudes, say, of Matica slovenská, or Slovak Writers Association in the era of Mečiar?
MV: Because they were mostly ex-Communists or mediocre writers?
IK: Not quite, for example, take a look at Štefan Moravcik, a great poet. And the things he wrote! I gained some knowledge when I drafted my book about the Holocaust in 1939-1945. In this context, I read the texts if the fun magazine Kocúr (The Puss). I found some verses there which make one's brain stall. This was repeated, and no longer just in the satirical form, in the period of the monster trials in the 1950s, when Slovak writers openly approved or demanded death sentences.
MV: In the main article of this issue of Cultural Oxygen I mention poet Ladislav Novomeský. He was sentenced to 10 years by the will of his comrades, and the only gesture he made after the occupation was that he had stepped out of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia in 1970. He did not leave the Party. Why did these people remained in it for so long?
IK: Some say he was a wimp. I do not subscribe to such an assessment, even though Novomeský was not even a "barricade fighter". Zdena Holotíková, who wrote his biography, remembered that in the last years of his life, when he was seriously ill and out of politics, he expressed his disapproval emotionally and helplessly.
MV: To endanger all one's work, and why? For a state-allocated car, money, social status? IK: Novomeský did not approve of all the methods of Husák, but he always supported him politically and stuck with him. Probably, he was aware that in the preparation of their joint trial after the war, Husák had saved his life, in a way. The second thing is whether this is true. From human point of view, can you imagine that someone believed something all his life?
MV: How could they trust the communist idea after 1953?
IK: They had been believing the whole time during the first Czechoslovak Republic, the Slovak State, in 1945, and suddenly they found themselves in prison. Novomeský confessed to everything, and said, "I will confess everything and sign it, just do not bully me." I discussed this subject with Milan Hamada. It is said that these extreme ideologies have a lot to do with religion.
MV: I understand these attitudes of people like Biľak, Dávid, Bacilek, those were the people who would normally not get the top posts. They got to the top because they were capable of doing anything.
IK: They got there also because they were afraid. Fear is a phenomenon which makes a lot of people make compromises with their conscience and they cross the line, and there are just bad things beyond. Fear operates mainly among intellectuals.
MV: Pick an intellectual in the 40 years of the Communist regime, who was not a fascist, and who did not surrender later?
IK: Mostly these were the same ones, for example, Hanus, Hirner, Rapant. Artists and scientists want to realise their potential also in a totalitarian regime. They are not willing to wait for the uncertain arrival of more favourable times, and so you make trade-offs. Take a look at the dissent after 1970. There were people who would never oppose if they had not been kicked out of the Communist Party after revisions, or if they had not been prevented from doing their jobs.
MV: We all have to make compromises, what is important is where is the line not to be crossed. The one crossed by Válek, Mihálik...
IK: Interestingly, no one has written about this yet, no comparison to the situation after 1989 has been made.
MV: I ask myself what the cause is that we Slovaks are not able to understand that crossing the line means destroying one's own life's work. Today one cannot find Válek's verses, Mihálik, Novomeský, it's all thrashed or put somewhere in hind rows of dusty shelves.
IK: This concerns not only the situation in Slovakia. Often we lack the moral and legal continuity, and continuity of thought. Over the past one hundred years, there was the belief shown several rimes that when something is taken from somebody else, the rest of us will be better off and have a higher social status. During the first republic they took from the nobles, in 1938-39 from Jews, in 1945 from Hungarians and Germans, and in 1948 from the bourgeoisie. But even after 1989, the belief remained for long that everything would be good the material and other benefits were to be taken from the ruling Party. There is some kind of the "Jánošík's tradition" persisting: there is no need to work hard, to think, but to seize the property of anyone else we identify as the enemy of the state, the nation, the working people, the religion, and so on. It's very tempting road, but impassable.
MV: Our Institute for Cultural Policies held a conference on the role of culture in cultivating the society. Daniel Hevier, the author, answered my question whether this was true, convincingly - yes, it is. But who has been more cultivated than Novomeský, Mináč, Hronský. Who was culturally more cultivated than these people of word?
IK: After all, every one kept saying that everything that they were doing was in the name of cultivating the society. They were just "misguided". After all, you know, for example, the Lomnica Manifesto from 1940, claiming allegiance to the ideology of national socialism. It was not signed by "niemands", but by a number of outstanding representatives of Slovak culture. MV: Martin's district governor M. Vančo, an educated man, voted enthusiastic for the anti-Jewish laws in embroidered shirt in the Slovak Parliament.
IK: It was not the embroidered shirt that mattered, but the nature of things ... For example, the search for an answer to the question of why the members of the Slovak council voted for a variety of undemocratic laws and additionally supported anti-human actions of the government. Laws. After the war, when the courts examined the cases, the people involved said they had not voted for the law on evicting Jews from 1942. Even the proposer of this bill, František Orlický, sad he had not voted for it. This is hardly believable.
MV: In parallel, I read two types of diaries a few years ago. Slovak Hečko, and Márai, born in Košice, yet Hungarian. The difference in describing the political situation, the loss of freedom to the onset of fascism or communism is abysmal. People like František Hečko, a great author of The Red Wine, were not democrats, unlike Janko Jesenský. Did democracy mean nothing to these people?
IK: From Hečko's diaries, from the human aspect, this writer seems to be a small, petty man who did not have any ability to self-reflect. For example, in 1956, during the events in Hungary, he wrote – "My dear little pigeons, would you like some freedom"? When Alexander Matuška criticized him for literary schematism in one of his essays, Hečko wrote a letter to Karol Bacílek complaining about Matuška's reviews and "threatened" to quit his literary work and would rather go farming in Orava.
MV: Does that mean fear, provinciality and lack of democratic thinking?
IK: The 20 years of the Democratic Czechoslovak Republic were too short for the society to gain stronger foundations of democratic thinking and doing. .
MV: But intellectuals could read the U.S. Constitution, giving the breeze of freedom, or the novels by writers — democrats.
IK: The text of the Constitution is one thing, and quite another thing is its implementation in daily political and social life, for instance, the Soviet Constitution of 1936. Now some of my own "professional deformation": German historian Ranke, the founder of modern positivistic historiography, argued correctly that a historian should, on the basis of sources, examine "how it actually was". His proposition, however, has already been made partly obsolete, because the mission of a historian is to ask, "why was it so?". When I go to lectures, the audiences often demand: "Tell us the truth at last"! I reply a bit like a demagogue: "I cannot tell you the truth, no one can tell you the final truth. It simply does not exist! And then: Even if it exists, what will the next historians do then? When they ask me about Tiso's dispensations, I ask back "and against whom the President had to protect his own citizens? After all, they were persecuted by the regime, where the leader was the dispensing philanthropist himself."
MV: Try to find the a famous person, a woman or a man, who did not succumb during the Communist regime.
IK: A breaking point was in 1968, for example. Zora Jesenská.
MV: But Heško wrote that when Stalin died, she lamented with Ľudo Petránsky that such a great personality had passed away.
IK: In this case (but not only) the accuracy of asking the following question is shown: "Why was it so?" The explanation is complicated. Answering questions concerning history is not as easy as learning the multiplication table. Anyway, as far as Zora Jesenská is concerned, there has been a strong Russophile tradition. Not only in her case, but many people of Martin. But do you know, for example, whom Jews saw as first when they were released from concentration camps or could leave the bunkers where they had been hiding? It was a Russian soldier. This had undoubtedly affected their post-war political and social orientation – until they lost their illusions. MV: Well, Zora Jesenská. We have the book Sedem dní do pohrebu (Seven Days to the Funeral), so we do not have a lot of explaining to do. But can you remember a man.
IK: Maybe some of the deposed ones. But those who served the preceding totalitarian regime, were deposed as well.
MV: Isaiah Berlin wrote a book after 1945, in which he sought to describe those intellectuals who had not surrendered to any of the totalitarian ideologies. He found only four and he was the fifth one. Five only.
IK: I think that such interviews should be done with sociologists or psychologists. The psychological approach or the examination of history is also extremely important.
MV: Yes, but until now all psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists say we still do not know the answer to the question why Schickelgruber become Hitler and why Dzhugashvili became Stalin. They still do not know. What I am interested in are the attitudes of the "torchbearers" of the Slovak culture. I do not want them to be ideal, to be innocent and not to drink, but I imagine that at the moment when dangerous primitive ideas and visions emerge, they stand out against them as a group.
IK: That is why I am talking about the necessity of a psychological approach in historiography, because we often skid down to the presentist approach. We know how it ended, we have already analysed both of these totalitarian systems, but let us answer the question whether they had an idea how things would end up seventy or eighty years ago.
MV: I have to admit that I have succumbed to one illusion in my life. I thought a part of my generation, who were twenty in 1968, when we were awaken by the noise of tanks, and we would not travel abroad to study but stay at home, would not be subdued. Almost all of my classmates and acquaintances joined the Communist Party after 1970. I had a feeling that this part of the generation would not ever do that, having experienced what they had.
IK: What did people say in the 1960s? "For God's sake, how could it be we were so naive and so foolishly obedient?" and 3 or 4 years later the same people claimed in fear: "No one will ever call me a Dubček's man."
MV: So we have not had a single top-level cultural person who would keep standing for his or her democratic stance?
IK: But those who could not continue, for example, Miro Kusý, Milan Šimečka ... Willy Brant also started his carreer as a Communist when he was young.
MV: Nevertheless, the intellectuals still must have known before. ... Did they stay members of Hlinka's Guards, the Hlinka's People's Party or the Communist Party because they would make money for a bigger piece of bread than the others? Or did they revel in the significance and power they had?
IK: I can not give a clear answer, because each answer would be an unacceptable simplification. Despite the fact, so we are not finishing our interview pessimistically, I would like to mention the person of Daniel Rapant, the founder of modern Slovak professional historiography. He resisted ideological pressures from both totalitarian regimes, in which he lived and worked. Yet he left behind a formidable scientific work, in many ways still unequalled today. In addition, he had a significant influence on at least two generations of Slovak historians, although he had to prematurely retire from the post of a university professor.
Interviewed by Magda Vášáryová
When you cut down the forest, chips fly Lime, Chestnut, Rosehip, Alder, Maple, Birch, Aspen, Pear, Gooseberry, Pinewood, Beech, Spruce, Fir, Plum, Blackthorn, Ash, Pinetree, Hornbeam, Oak, Cherry, Willow, Locust Tree, Walnut, Apple, Hazel, Poplar ... This is not a dendrologic analysis of the Slovak forests and orchards, but the poetic names of thirty troops of Hlinka's Guards. The most brutal thugs. At that time, the Hlinka's Guards had about 100 thousand members. And, imagine, that in March 1945 the troops had only 5,867 members in active service. Where have the others gone to?
LEFT FOOT FORWARD, NO STEP BACKWARD
In February 1948, there were 6,700 members of the Workers' Militias, a third of whom were armed with guns. By the end of 1953 there were 18 thousand members of the People's Militias, and 19,500 early in 1955. Most of them had guns and most of them had blue collar jobs and they wanted to show the intellectuals their hard-working fists. The Slovak culture ended up black eyed too. From 16th to 21st 1968, 27,000 members of the People's Militias (ĽM) were deployed against protesters. On 21st November 1989 around 4,000 members of ĽM gathered. In December 1989 they were all disarmed, at that time, there were 84,821 members. Where have they gone? Survey: Which book or work by Slovak authors do you think is a showcase of fascist and communist totalitarian ideology?
--- Even a great poet like Valentín Beniak, got to write some nice nationalist propaganda in his Vigil:
Thou shalt be a hammer, thou shalt be the bell, heart of the wild: "Jews and Czechs, out! the time of justice is coming! "
I think that a showcase of the other one of the totalitarian ideologies is a collection Súdružka moja zem (Land, My Female Comrade).
There is one world, and yet there are two worlds - the Wall Street, and the Kremlin Clock.
Although I am not sure and maybe Lajčiak was actually right. The West and the East are really two completely different worlds.
Tomáš Janovic
--- Just one name to be mentioned: František Hečko. During the Slovak State, he wrote his best novel, The Red Wine, and then in the Communist era he wrote The Wooden Village.
Milan Lasica
--- There was no book praising fascism to get into my hands, because I was only born after the Slovak State, and there was nothing like that in my parent's bookcase. In the introduction to the book by Peter Kerecman, Jana Schillerová, the daughter of writer Ivan Horváth, sentenced to 22 years in prison, quotes a hateful article by a Slovak writer in the Pravda dating back to 1952.
Olga Feldeková Analysis
We at IKP do not find it surprising that neo-nazi and neo-communist ideas keep blossoming. For years, the citizens of Slovakia were fed with the neo-nazi ideas in magazines funded every year by the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, under the slogan of freedom of the press and of speech. The most important, the oldest and most popular of these periodicals is the Slovenské národné noviny (Slovak National Newspaper; SNN), the press authority of Matica slovenská. The "hot topics" in SNN include "The Slovak State", "The Roma Problem" and "Building the State" and this platform seems to be a welcome place for publishing extremist views. You do not believe? We have analysed three articles:
Example 1:
The central person in the editors' office of the SNN is Maro3 Smolec, the Editor in Chief, and at the same time, the manager of Matica slovenská. In the 1990s, Smolec wrote for the newspaper supporting Mečiar and his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), the Slovenská republika (The Slovak Republic) daily. The article Till When Will the Illiterate Loudmouths Bully the Nation? from 18th November 2013 about the fact that the Nation's Memory Institute had not awarded František Vnuk has got a quite vitriolic introduction: "Loudmouths, conforming journalists, Czechoslovakists, grey eminence of the third sector, multiculturalists, gender minority and other denationalised societies – these are the people and institutions who are able to control the Slovak life, not only political and cultural life, but also the scientific one." After these publicly funded insults, we ask a question who specifically threatens the nation and how, because it is not clear even after reading the whole article. The"Illiterate loudmouths" are the ones of an opposite opinion, labelled as "historically uneducated person" , "elderly anti-fascist warrior","breast-fed by Communists" , "some unknown political scientist" and the daily, covering the topic is labelled "anti- national". That literacy in the title is, therefore, a new category of literacy, the national literarcy. It's not about reading comprehension, writing without errors, working digitally, and so on, but literacy measured by means of the intensity of national pride manifested externally, and in particular, the degree of acceptance of the interpretation of Slovak history by František Vnuk. Vnuk was nominated for the ÚPN Award by a six-member panel of historians, including Matej Lacko, a historian respected by Smolec who currently works for the People's Party Our Slovakia. František Vnuk and Milan Ďurica are the authorities of today's historiographic activities of Matica slovenská. Both have left Slovakia and their education had only a marginal link to history (theology, technology). Considering the frequency of use of their names in SNN and how they keep coming back, they are obviously attractive to the SNN's target audience and close to the opinions of SNN.
Example 2:
As we know that one of the editors, Eva Zelenayová, is a candidate for the People's Party Our Slovakia and previously a member of HZDS, we looked more closely at her comment from 12th June 2017 titled The Old Leeches Keep Sucking. Like in the first example, there is also a major threat. What is at stake is "the preservation of the existence of the Slovak Republic" which is endangered by the "hardcore Czechoslovak wing of the Public Against Violence (VPN)" and "Havel-supporting VPN-members", followed by a commented list giving the names of the "leeches" . They are those who want take "soil, water and mineral wealth" from Slovakia. And the position of the Republic's saviour saving it from VPN, which has not been in existence for two decades, is taken by Vladimír Mečiar and his HZDS, which supported Slovak products. The author creates an impression that Slovak lands are sold to foreign investors not by their owners, but that they are forced to do so by the state as commanded by the European Commission. This would not happen, had it not been for "the non-governmental sector" intervening before the 1998 election, pursuing exclusively the interests of foreign "conquerors". In the article, she defends amnesties granted by Mečiar and rebukes Prime Minister Fico, although "he is not one of those politicians who get scared and deny themselves" but in this case he failed. The author does not only stand for her previous political movement, but also the new grouping, the People's Party Our Slovakia, in which she stood as a candidate: "The people who defend the freedom and democratic constitutional rights of citizens are labelled extremists. Calling them fascists may calm down the public for some time, but also wake it up from indifference." It is probably the revival of the old roots of HZDS, and their continuation in the People's Party Our Slovakia which the author considers "an effective bloc to save Slovakia" -- and to eliminate the "leeches".
Example 3:
Maroš Smolec interviewing Milan Ďurica, theologian, lifetime member of Matica slovenská, who emigrated to Italy in 1947, titled Echoes of the Holocaust in Slovakia . This respectable theologian, who returned to Slovakia as an elderly man, surprisingly uses a similar radical vocabulary against opponents, characteristic of some of the articles in SNN to defend the Tiso's regime. "In the case of many of them, (N.B.: the historians who had criticised his work) however, one can sense the essential attitude of the authors, which is an anti-national and anti-Christian ideology of the Czechoslovak communism." Interviewer's question: "Also on the basis of this study, you issued a text book, “The History of Slovakia and Slovaks” which was opposed by Marxist historians, who eventually achieved that the book was withdrawn from schools." Answer by M. Ďurica: “... and the latest response of the Slovak nation to the criticism is that that this thousand-page 5th edition was sold out in six months. Later in the same year, the publishing house had to reprint the regular run." Children at Slovak schools were to read this sophisticated defence of powerlessness and hence the irresponsibility of Slovakia and Slovaks for what was happening in its territory, or to its citizens. "At the time, when the Slovak Republic was established, absolute determinant for the political events in Central Europe, and also in the wider European area, was Hitler's German Reich." The line of reasoning is heading towards giving excuses for the tendency to the fascist ideology, as if there was no other way to go. Finally, "President Tiso likewise respected also those two Slovak Ministers who were increasingly inclined to the idea the German national socialism. This was shown, in particular, in the issue of "solution to the Jewish question". Does that mean the other Ministers were democratic men? The entire interview is conducted in the spirit of avoiding any contentious issues of responsibilities of each of the persons in lead of the Slovak State in Hlinka's Guards, in Aryanisation commissions which could possible embarrass or discomfit Mr. Ďurica. After all, what could we do? We, Christians. It is interesting that when the article is read carefully, there is a principal position of Ďurica which cannot escape one's attention: Jews were Slovak citizens, "On 23rd March 1942 (the State) began to deport Jews to work in Germany, who ceased to be Slovak citizens". But for Slovak Christians, they had probably never been "ours", so why should we protect them, the others do so as well ... And yet "the Slovak Republic was the first state, in which the Germans faced such a tough resistance in this issue, that already in October 1942 they had to interrupt their programme of "the final solution". This lie and purpose-built interpretation of the history pis probably the biggest misdemeanour of Ďurica not only to the victims but also to Slovakia and Slovaks. Neither the editors of SNN nor the interviewer have responded to that.
Today some of us are shocked that a certain Slovak citizens tend to spread and support extremist ideas, which are based on non-discerning adoration of the Slovak State. The SNN weekly, the press authority of Matica slovenská, systematically promotes extremist ideas and arouses the impression of being endangered. Under the guise of "patriotism and love for the nation", the weekly spreads hatred, and attacks anyone who, in the opinion of the members of the editorial staff, is not sufficiently "literate". And so, a few individuals uses state money to give some posthumous children of the fascist regime the space to publish, in essence, hate speech, completely undisturbed. Ministers of Culture have been satisfied with such activities, and regularly support Matica and SNN. Including the present day's and longest-serving Minister. It is too late for excuses that we have the freedom of speech.
Martin Katuščák Magda Vášáryová Monitoring
RTVS Bad and worse. Dividends are to be paid out to a candidate thanks to whom we all know who it is, when one says "captain". The new Director General has got a wide-ranging support from communists, fascists, Hungarians and Slovaks. That is true diversity. We expect the annoying colon is disappearing from the RTVS logo and that the name will be followed by "(my) national public medium". While we have forgotten that former more handsome director was a candidate of the ruling party against independent Zemková and Machaj, we will not forget that this fatter director wanted Sputnik to be a news source. We swear!
The Eurovision Song Contest The lost multiculturalism was found in Eurovision. To the great joy of all nationalists and other blockheads, who went nuts to see bearded Conchita. What does multiculturalism mean today? Disco rhythms, some yodeling Romanians, a throaty and depressed Belgian woman, a playful Italian man, and all the show was stolen by a romantically emotional Portuguese man. We, Slovaks, do not get involved in multiculturalism in this form, we do not have it (the money).
The Kidnapping A necessary film, a great topic. If Americans shot it for us like they did Anthropoid, this could be distributed throughout the world. Full of action, believable, generalising, professional. But let us be happy that we have the citizens' initiative in addition to the film which did not allow the people involved in the abduction and the successors of the atmosphere of fear to say again that the deed did not happen. We just do not know if it the Audiovisual Fund will be praised or damned for that.
Culture Unites People These words were strongly pronounced from the European Union for the first time. The Council of the EU acknowledged the role of culture in cultivation of relations inside the EU and externally. Everyone looked very excited. Culture prevents conflicts, strengthens economy and is a driver of creativity, cultural heritage is a source of diversity, which is the flagship of the European culture, sounded in Brussels. The Institute for Cultural Policies has got a little feeling of victory, as we have maintained this opinion since 2013. We are doing everything we can to make you aware of it. By the way, who was the first European Commissioner for culture? A Slovak man. This joyous appeal could be the Slovak trick (that is, "fígeľ"). The time was not convenient?
Education in culture - a pill for stupidity? We held a conference with the same name in June 2017. Let us live here and now, not there and then, one of the panelists said eagerly. Let us live and teach children the today's culture first and then come back, step by step, in a sentimental manner, to the 19th and other centuries, the next panelist continued. And let us not wait for spectacular reforms. Let us all start now, today, where we are, another panelist added. There are many of us, creative and fearless people, we say at ICP.
Raiders of the Lost Treasure ICP honestly declares that it has has nothing to do with the disappearance of gold from the National Treasure in Matica slovenská. It just happened to be that two of our members got married in the meantime.
We are boasting In the first half of 2017, ICP released publications you can order from us: 1) Buried under Heritage. Proceedings of the conference in the project titled Living Culture and Heritage (supported from public resources by the Arts Council) 2) Evaluation of the UNESCO Brand and its Added Value in Slovakia. A set of studies about the UNESCU World Heritage sites in Slovakia. (supported by the subsidy scheme of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic) 3) Cultural Policies of Slovakia in the 21st Century. The selection of articles from the Cultural Oxygen, 2013-2016 (supported from public resources by the Arts Council)
ICP Glossary Intercultural dialogue in our ways - "Do you have some Tatra mountains and castles like we have? - “Sorry?” We speak up - "Have you ever seen anything like Slovakia?" “Don’t understand you”. We shout - "Learn Slovak, swine." - “Yeah, yeah, very nice”.
Orientalism - an unfulfilled dream, once dreamed by Kollár in Vienna, where "he had never been to". This phenomenon of "never" continues in the dreams of many generations of Slovak dreamers. "I have not been to the oriental country, but it must be amazing". And when will you go there? - asks one who is awake. "What for?" - answers the Slovak, dreaming.
Destroyed slogan- " Who throws a stone; should be offered a loaf of bread" has changed to "who offers a loaf of bread, should be thrown stones at". As a result of this change, we see our society being de-humanised. The question is whether this has been cyber-planned or spontaneous, because it would mean a fundamental modernisation of the Slovak rural society. Finally, we managed to make a civilising cultural change. Farewell, little houses with roofs of straw, and the Slovak hospitality under them.
Ourism - As Walter Lippmann said, people I do not know are all the same. This means they are not ours. And it needs to be really made clear to them so that they are not deluded into different thinking... where has this nacism come from? Culture stands accused. Culture is the first to teach us who is ours, and only then we are convinced personally what the world looks like in reality. You should know one who is not drinking with us, is different and not ours.
Nativism - A method to distinguish the native population of Slovakia from the "non-native". All whose names are derived clearly from the Bible, lived and and written by Jews, like John, Jacob, Samuel, Peter et tutti quanti, as well as the Gašparovičs, the Pellegrinis, the Mazureks, the Nováks, or the Maďaričs, should slovakize their names to Clear-slav, Shine-slav, Tough-mir, and their surnames to Straw, Nail, Mason, or Birdcatcher. Otherwise they threaten our homogenous national state (written by Magda Vasari, with a new name of Vejana Listening-Lake) .
Slovak Colonialism - Finally, we too! We have colonised our future by values adored by members of Hlinka's Guards and professed by Communists, thinking they were different, more progressive. And so the aim of the present is to consume the past.