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.