Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility (Postcommunist States and Nations)

SLOVAKIA Slovakia is one of the least known countries of Central Europe, despite being easily accessible to the wester...

Author: Karen Henderson

48 downloads 749 Views 838KB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

SLOVAKIA

Slovakia is one of the least known countries of Central Europe, despite being easily accessible to the western visitor – its capital city, Bratislava, is only an hour’s drive from Vienna. As the country’s accession to the EU draws near, it is vitally important to close the knowledge gap, and supply a very diverse audience with balanced information about Slovakia as an independent state. This book outlines the history of Slovakia over the last hundred years, and explains the importance of Hungarian legacies, as well as its development in a common state with the Czechs. Examining Slovakia’s political development since independence in 1993, it traces the elements of democratic stability that were a backdrop to the more dramatic and turbulent events of the 1990s. Consideration is also given to independent Slovakia’s international relations, following its path to Euro-Atlantic integration amidst the diversions of squabbling with its neighbours. Finally, Slovakia’s economic progress is summarised: both the underlying positive trends as well as the more sensational aberrations in its rapid construction of a functioning market economy. Breaking through the stereotypical portrayal of Slovakia as the ‘problem case’ among the four Visegrad states of East Central Europe, this book presents not just facts but also analysis designed to enable academic, professional and general audiences to evaluate the Slovak Republic as an actor in the new united Europe – and also to understand its future role in the development of the continent. Slovakia is portrayed as a complex, modern state, where a multitude of domestic and external influences interact to produce a fascinating picture of conflict and consensus. Slovakia should be of particular interest to students of East Central Europe, EU eastward enlargement and post-communist democratisation. Karen Henderson has been Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester since 1990. She has followed Slovak politics closely since studying in Bratislava in 1987, and has also written extensively on EU eastward enlargement. She is editor of Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union, and co-author (with Neil Robinson) of Post-Communist Politics.

POSTCOMMUNIST STATES AND NATIONS Books in the series BELARUS: A DENATIONALISED NATION David R. Marples ARMENIA: AT THE CROSSROADS Joseph R. Masih and Robert O. Krikorian POLAND: THE CONQUEST OF HISTORY George Sanford KYRGYZSTAN: CENTRAL ASIA’S ISLAND OF DEMOCRACY? John Anderson UKRAINE: MOVEMENT WITHOUT CHANGE, CHANGE WITHOUT MOVEMENT Marta Dyczok THE CZECH REPUBLIC: A NATION OF VELVET Rick Fawn UZBEKISTAN: TRANSITION TO AUTHORITARIANISM ON THE SILK ROAD Neil J. Melvin ROMANIA: THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION Steven D. Roper LITHUANIA: STEPPING WESTWARD Thomas Lane LATVIA: THE CHALLENGES OF CHANGE Artis Pabriks and Aldis Purs ESTONIA: INDEPENDENCE AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION David J. Smith BULGARIA: THE UNEVEN TRANSITION Vesselin Dimitrov RUSSIA Neil Robinson SLOVAKIA Karen Henderson THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST Sue Davis

SLOVAKIA The escape from invisibility

Karen Henderson

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2002 Karen Henderson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 0-203-21843-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27399-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–27436–2 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

vii xiv xviii xix

Chronology Preface Abbreviations Map of Slovakia 1

1

Slovakia before Independence Before Czechoslovakia 2 Czechoslovakia between the wars 4 The Slovak state 11 The democratic interlude 15 The Stalinisation of Czechoslovakia 18 The Czechoslovak Spring and its aftermath 21 Perestroika and the ‘Velvet Revolution’ 26 The division of Czechoslovakia 32

2

Slovak Politics in an Independent State

41

Slovak politics after 1992: an overview 42 Political institutions in Slovakia 55 Elections and the party system 62 The situation of minorities in Slovakia 72 3

86

Slovakia and the World European integration 89 Living with the neighbours 101 Slovakia’s place in the world 108

4

113

The Economy in Slovakia The Czechoslovak period, 1918–1989 115 Economics and the ‘Velvet Divorce’ 117 v

CONTENTS

The economy in independent Slovakia 120 The Slovak economy in the new millennium 123 The Slovak economy in perspective 127 134 136

Select bibliography Index

vi

CHRONOLOGY

1918 May October

1919 March June 1920 February April

1935 November December 1938 September October

November

The Pittsburgh Declaration is signed by Czechs and Slovaks in the USA. The Czechoslovak Republic is founded in Prague. The Slovak National Council issues the ‘Declaration of the Slovak Nation’ in Martin. Hungarian Bolsheviks invade southern Slovakia, declaring a ‘Slovak Soviet Republic’. Czechoslovakia is returned to its borders from the beginning of the year. The Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic is passed. Czechoslovak parliamentary elections take place, in which Slovaks are able to vote freely for the first time. The Slovak Hodzˇa becomes Czechoslovak prime minister. Benesˇ replaces Masaryk as Czechoslovak president. The Munich Agreement cedes Czech territory to Germany. Benesˇ steps down as Czechoslovak president. Slovakia is granted autonomy, with Tiso leading the provincial government. The Vienna Award cedes Slovak territory to Hungary, Poland and Austria (now German Reich). Hacha becomes Czechoslovak president. vii

C H RO N O L O G Y

1939 March October 1941 September 1942 March 1944 August October 1945 April

May December 1946 May

1947 April 1948 February May

June September 1950 April

The Slovak Republic (‘Slovak state’) is declared, with Tiso as prime minister. Tiso becomes Slovak president, with Tuka prime minister. The Slovak government introduces anti-Jewish laws. The transportation of Slovak Jews to concentration camps begins. The Slovak National Uprising begins. The Slovak National Uprising is defeated. Soviet troops enter Czechoslovakia. The Kosˇice Programme of the Czechoslovak government is published. Bratislava is liberated. Prague is liberated. The American and Soviet armies leave Czechoslovakia. The first post-war elections are won by the Democratic Party in Slovakia. The Czech communist Gottwald becomes Czechoslovak prime minister. Tiso is hanged. The communists take power. A new constitution is passed. Elections, with single lists of candidates, are ‘won’ by the communists. The Czech communist Gottwald replaces Benesˇ as president. The Communist Party of Slovakia is subordinated to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The dissolution of monasteries begins full-scale persecution of the church. viii

C H RO N O L O G Y

1952 November 1953 March 1960 April 1968 January

April

August 1969 January April 1970 December 1975 May 1985 March 1987 December 1988 March 1989 November

Purge trials end with the execution of leading Czech and Slovak communists. Gottwald dies, shortly after Stalin’s funeral, and is replaced by Novotný, also a Czech communist. A new, more centralised, constitution is introduced. Dubcˇek, leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia, becomes first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The Communist Party publishes its ‘Action Programme’. The Czech communist Svoboda replaces Novotný as president. Czechoslovakia is invaded by the Warsaw Pact. Czechoslovakia becomes a federal state. Dubcˇek is replaced as Communist Party leader by Husák, also a Slovak. Constitutional amendments increase central control, particularly of the economy. Communist Party leader Husák replaces President Svoboda as head of state. Gorbachev comes to power in the Soviet Union, leading to the beginning of perestroika. The Czech Jakesˇ replaces Husák as Communist Party leader. The ‘candle demonstration’ in support of religious freedom is attacked by police in Bratislava. The ‘Velvet Revolution’ challenges the communist regime, and Jakesˇ is replaced as Communist Party leader. ix

C H RO N O L O G Y

December

1990 April May June

July September December 1991 January

February February/March

April June July December 1992 May June

July

The leading role of the Communist Party is removed from the constitution. Cˇ alfa and Cˇ icˇ, both technically still Slovak communists, become the prime ministers of Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. Havel replaces Husák as Czechoslovak president. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is renamed Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. Czechoslovakia signs a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EC. Democratic elections to the Federal Assembly and the Slovak National Council are held. Mecˇiar becomes Slovak prime minister, while Cˇ alfa (no longer a communist) remains Czechoslovak prime minister. The new Federal Assembly re-elects Havel as president. Czechoslovakia joins the IMF. The EC extends Phare aid to cover Czechoslovakia. Local elections take place. The Czechoslovak constitution is amended. Price liberalisation leads to several months of high inflation. Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland form the Visegrad Group. Public Against Violence splits, and Mecˇiar’s breakaway faction goes on to form the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Mecˇiar is removed from premiership and replaced by Cˇ arnogurský. Privatisation begins. The last Soviet soldiers leave Czechoslovakia. The Warsaw Pact is dissolved. The EC signs ‘Europe agreements’ with Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Voucher privatisation begins. Elections to the Federal Assembly and the Slovak National Council take place. Mecˇiar becomes Slovak prime minister, but no federal government is formed. Mecˇiar and Czech prime minister Klaus agree to the separation of Czechoslovakia. x

C H RO N O L O G Y

September November

1993 January February

April June October

1994 February

March September September/ October November December

1995 February March June

The Czech Stráský becomes prime minister of a ‘selfliquidating’ federal government. The Slovak National Council declares Slovak sovereignty. Havel, who has not been re-elected by the Federal Assembly, resigns as president. The Slovak National Council adopts the Constitution of the Slovak Republic. The Federal Assembly adopts law on the end of the Czechoslovak federation.

The Slovak Republic becomes an independent state. Michal Kovácˇ is chosen as Slovakia’s first president by the National Council of the Slovak Republic, and takes office the next month. The Czechoslovak crown is divided. Mecˇiar’s HZDS faces its first wave of defections. Slovakia joins the Council of Europe. HZDS enters a formal coalition with the Slovak National Party.

Slovakia joins NATO’s Partnership for Peace. The government loses its parliamentary majority as both member parties are hit by defections. The second Mecˇiar government falls, and is replaced by the Moravcˇík government. The second wave of voucher privatisation begins. Parliamentary elections are won by HZDS, but without a majority. The European Union issues a démarche to the Slovak government after the first meeting of the new parliament. The third Mecˇiar government is formed. Local elections take place.

The new Europe Agreement with Slovakia comes into force. The Slovak-Hungarian treaty is signed in Paris. Mecˇiar announces citizens will receive government bonds in place of privatisation vouchers bought the previous year. Slovakia applies to join the EU. xi

C H RO N O L O G Y

August September October 1996 February March

April

October December 1997 March

May July

December

1998 March

Kovácˇ Jr, the son of President Kovácˇ, is abducted to Austria. The government unsuccessfully demands President Kovácˇ’s resignation. A further EU démarche criticises in particular tension between the government and president. Austria returns Kovácˇ Jr to Slovakia. Amendments to the penal code are passed (later to fail after a presidential veto). The Slovak-Hungarian treaty is ratified by parliament. Remiásˇ is killed in a car explosion linked to the possession of information about the Kovácˇ Jr abduction. The ‘Blue Coalition’ of three centre-right parties is formed. Gaulieder is deprived of his deputy’s mandate by parliament after leaving HZDS. A public petition demanding a referendum on the direct election of the president is presented to the president. The Interior Ministry disrupts referendum on NATO enlargement and direct election of the president. Slovakia is omitted from the leading group of postcommunist states to negotiate accession by both NATO and the European Commission. The Slovak Democratic Coalition is formed. The Luxembourg European Council includes Slovakia in the EU accession process, but confirms its exclusion from the ‘first group’ of post-communist states to start detailed negotiations.

October December

President Kovácˇ finishes his term as head of state without parliamentary agreement on his successor. Parliament amends the election law. Parliamentary elections bring about the defeat of the third Mecˇiar government. The Dzurinda government takes office. Local elections take place.

1999 May

Schuster wins the presidential election.

May September

xii

C H RO N O L O G Y

July October December 2000 February March April November December 2001 February July October December

Parliament finally passes a law on the use of minority languages. Fico forms the Smer party, attracting voters disillusioned with the Dzurinda government. The Helsinki European Council agrees to start detailed accession negotiations with Slovakia. Slovakia starts detailed accession negotiations with the European Union. HZDS holds a transformation congress, and becomes a centre-right ‘people’s party’. Mecˇiar is temporarily arrested for failing to respond to being summonsed for police questioning. A HZDS-sponsored referendum demanding early elections fails as a majority of citizens do not vote in it. Slovakia joins the OECD. Parliament approves substantial amendments to the constitution. Parliament sets the number of local government regions at eight. Regional government competencies are agreed. The first regional elections take place, with notable successes for HZDS.

xiii

PREFACE

This book was written by accident. In 1987 I applied to the British Council to spend an academic year in Prague, and the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education sent me to Slovakia instead. Bratislava in the late communist period was known to be a far more relaxed place than Prague, so I assumed that the Slovaks had been kind enough to accept me while the Czechs had vetoed me for political reasons. The truth was probably more banal. Slovakia was in those days an invisible country, and foreign scholars rarely asked to go there. Since Czechoslovakia was supposed to be a federation of two equal republics, this was a bit embarrassing, and I was despatched to Bratislava for the sake of federal fair shares. This arbitrariness of communist bureaucrats in 1987 had two results. The first was that I had to sit down and actively learn Slovak, since my modest Czech was clearly not going to get any better sitting in Bratislava listening to Slovak. The second was that when I was finally transferred to Prague for the second semester of my year in Czechoslovakia, I obtained an unexpected insight into Czech-Slovak relations. My Czech by now had such a heavy Slovak accent that most people assumed that was what I was speaking. This was such a curiosity in a foreigner that Slovakia inevitably became the first topic of conversation with most of the Czechs I met. To my surprise, I detected a Czech unease about Slovakia whose counterpart I had never encountered in Bratislava. While in Slovakia everything Czech appeared to be accepted as a matter of course, Slovak otherness somehow seemed to worry people in Prague. Many Czechs thought that the Slovaks didn’t like them. I had seen no evidence of this: Czech hang-ups about the Slovaks (and, alas, Slovak prejudices about Hungarians and Roma) were far more striking. Consequently, when Czechs and Slovaks began to squabble about how their federation was organised after communism fell in 1989, my experiences in the late 1980s inclined me to suspect that the problem lay at least as heavily on the Czech side as on the Slovak side. The fact that the federation’s capital was located in the largest Czech city of Prague was bad news to start with, since this did not look like a design that would assure equal access to power from both parts of the federation. xiv

P R E FA C E

Slovakia finally began its escape from invisibility a couple of months after communism fell, when politicians made the modest suggestion that CzechoSlovak might have a hyphen in the middle so that people abroad knew it was a state comprising two different nations. This was a fairly obvious point to anyone who had been regularly embarrassed by their friends referring to Slovak visitors as ‘Czechs’. Even Alexander Dubcˇek, the Slovak communist who had led the 1968 reform movement, was frequently labelled as a ‘Czech leader’. However, Slovaks became really visible in the spring of 1991, when the foreign press suddenly discovered Slovakia – or rather, ‘Slovak nationalism’ – in the shape of a small bunch of nationalists who used to demonstrate in a prominent position on SNP Square in Bratislava. I thought the people concerned were a dotty minority of minimal political significance – a view shared by all my Slovak friends – but they made a much better ‘story’ than groups of people sitting round meticulously arguing about who should run what and how, and how to reduce the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, as the real political debates on the future of the Czechoslovak federation became more and more complex in the course of 1991 and 1992, the image of the Slovaks as faintly ridiculous extremists tended to stick, or at least to colour the background of foreign coverage. The main problem with portraits of Slovakia painted by journalists in the early 1990s was that they bore virtually no resemblance at all to the country I had been visiting since 1987. The country was getting rather a hard deal. The political analysis in this book finds few kind words to say about Vladimír Mecˇiar – three times Slovak prime minister in the 1990s – or about the political party he has led. Yet I have rarely had quite such a strong feeling of a politician hitting the nail on its head as when in 1991 he first complained about the ‘bad image of Slovakia’ that was being propagated abroad. Unfortunately, being right about the problem does not always mean being right about the solution. It is a tragic irony that Mecˇiar, having become in late 1992 the founding father of the independent Slovak Republic, proceeded to do more than any other individual to perpetuate the bad image of Slovakia. Just at the crucial point where Slovakia finally became visible as a sovereign state, it managed to project all the wrong images. Mecˇiar’s abrasive personality left him with the most disreputably extremist parliamentary parties as coalition partners; he frightened the country’s splendidly articulate and mobilised Hungarian minority with nationalist rhetoric in a world that was solicitous of minority rights; he appeared hostile to the market economy and free movement of capital while attempting to join the European Union; and he insulted foreign politicians by blunt speaking at rallies when he thought they weren’t listening. Mecˇiar, a provincial politician of absolute genius, was painfully out of his depth when dealing with the international community, whose language (quite literally) he could not speak. An added bind was that the Slovak politicians able to communicate xv

P R E FA C E

effectively with the outside world could not help but compound Slovakia’s image problem. It became a pariah among the states of Central Europe precisely because it had too many people impressively competent at producing sophisticated analyses of everything that the third Mecˇiar government was doing wrong in the fateful years 1994–8. For a time, Slovakia’s greatest intellectual strength ended up highlighting its greatest weaknesses. These weaknesses mattered more than in most post-communist states because the country was in every other respect an obvious candidate for Euro-Atlantic integration. Yet Slovakia, by the mid- and late 1990s, was in other ways in a very different position from the beginning of the decade. Some journalistic images may still have been crude and stereotyped, but there was also now a plethora of foreign embassies in Bratislava who followed the details of Slovak political and economic development in all their complexity, using predominantly Slovak sources of the most diverse kind. Diplomats and other foreign visitors travelled to the far corners of Slovakia (and were usually impressed). Westerners without Slovak ancestors learnt the language and most people went to Bratislava without going to Prague first. Foreign assistance for strengthening Slovakia’s democracy and economy, whether from other governments, international organisations, or non-governmental organisations, went straight to Bratislava (or other places in Slovakia), and not via Prague. In short, many who had grieved the end of Czechoslovakia could in retrospect see some advantages to Slovak independence. When the government in Bratislava changed in late 1998, after Mecˇiar was defeated for the first time ever in parliamentary elections, Slovakia’s image did not improve for the better as quickly as some had hoped. Cautious international observers fretted about Mecˇiar’s return to power, and worried about the stability of the desperately multi-party government that had replaced him. However, progress was slowly achieved, at first in international relations, and later even in domestic economic stability. By 2001, Mecˇiar himself, and the political party that he led, appeared increasingly frantic to gain the international respectability that they had squandered in the 1990s, and to assure the electorate that they would not throw away the international achievements of the post-1998 period if they returned to power. But they found themselves in the position of the little boy who cried wolf. They had so often in the 1990s claimed that they were ‘for a democratic Slovakia’ and anxious to integrate into Europe while behaving in a manner that seemed to prove the opposite that no-one was really that interested in any political declaration they might care to make. Actions speak louder than words. In communist Czechoslovakia, everyone was used to people saying one thing and doing something completely different. Those days have gone. Slovakia in the new millennium is no longer an invisible country. It is a complex and mutli-layered community with many strengths, as well as some notable residual weaknesses. It is, however, now finally judged on its own xvi

P R E FA C E

merits: by its own citizens, by visitors, by journalists, by foreign governments, by international organisations, and most crucially, by the European Union, which produces some of the most systematic, boring and objective analyses imaginable. Everyone uses their own criteria, but the sum total is more likely to produce a truthful picture of Slovakia than has ever existed before. For a scholar studying Slovakia, the past decade has been immensely exciting and rewarding. This is a result not only of the drama, and the many twists and turns in its fate, but also because Slovakia is, ultimately, a very open society. The extraordinary engagement of all the Slovaks I have ever met with the political development of their country, and their willingness to share with me their – often very divergent – views, has always been the mainstay of my (sometimes contested) belief that their country could not possibly end up as anything other than a consolidated democracy. I hardly know where to start in giving my thanks to all those without whose help this book could never have been written, as I am so profoundly indebted to so many people who have helped me over the past fifteen years. I have been particularly dependent on the scholarship of the dedicated academics who have laboured with such consistency throughout the past decade, particularly my friends at the Department of Politics at the Comenius University in Bratislava, as well as the Sociology Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and also such exceptionally productive organisations as the Slovak Foreign Policy Association and the Institute of Public Affairs. All have been generous both in sharing the published results of their research, and in sacrificing their time in personal conversation, as have many diplomats, ministerial officials, journalists and others. My thanks also go to the people who have read and commented on parts of the text for me: Vladimír Bilcˇík, Karen Buerkle, Sharon Fisher, Anton Marcincˇin, Martina Sud’ová, Peter Sýkora, Tibor Szezo˝di, Andrej Sˇ kolkay and Kieran Williams. I apologise for the fact that I did not have the skill and the space to incorporate fully many of the very valuable points that they made. Karen Henderson Leicester, January 2002

xvii

ABBREVIATIONS

CMEA CSCE DÚ EC EDU EU FDI GDP GDR HZDS

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Demokratická únia: Democratic Union European Community European Democratic Union European Union foreign direct investment gross domestic product German Democratic Republic Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko: Movement for a Democratic Slovakia IGC Intergovernmental Conference KDH Krest’anské demokratické hnutie: Christian Democratic Movement NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OF Obcˇianské fórum: Civic Forum OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe PR proportional representation SDK Slovenská demokratická koalícia: Slovak Democratic Coalition SDKÚ Slovenská demokratická a krest’anská únia: Slovak Democratic and Christian Union ‚ SDL Strana demokratickej l’avice: Party of the Democratic Left SIS Slovenská informacˇná sluzˇba: Slovak Intelligence Service SMK Strana mad’arskej koalície: Party of the Hungarian Coalition SNP Slovenské národné povstanie: Slovak National Uprising SNS Slovenská národná strana: Slovak National Party SOP Strana obcˇianskeho porozumenia: Party of Civic Understanding Sˇ tB Sˇtátna bezpecˇnost’: State Security (secret police) VPN Verejnost’ proti násiliu: Public Against Violence VSZˇ Východoslovenské zˇeleziarne: East Slovak Steelworks ZRS Zdruzˇenie robotníkov Slovenska: Association of Workers of Slovakia xviii

Map of Slovakia.

1 SLOVAKIA BEFORE INDEPENDENCE

In the twentieth century, Slovaks embodied the experience of much of Central and Eastern Europe: they witnessed frequent and radical changes not only of their system of government but also of their state. Imperial rule by the Hungarians ended in 1918, to be replaced by representative government from Prague upon the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic. This endured until the eve of the Second World War, which saw the creation of the ‘Slovak state’, and authoritarian one-party rule under German tutelage. The restoration of Czechoslovakia in 1945 brought the brief return of a democratic form of government, before the communist takeover in Prague in 1948 plunged Slovakia into forty years of communist one-party rule. 1989 saw another short interlude of Czechoslovak democracy, until in January 1993 the people of Slovakia at last found themselves in a position to build a democracy of their own. As a result of all these changes, the proverbial villager who had never moved from their place of birth had watched the capital city move from Budapest to Prague to Bratislava, then to Prague again and finally back to Bratislava. The Slovak capital of Bratislava itself exemplifies Slovakia’s position at the crossroads of Europe, and how closely it is interlinked with its neighbours. At the time Czechoslovakia was founded, its population was predominantly Hungarian or German-speaking rather than Slovak.1 The city only received the name Bratislava in 1921, previously being known in Slovak as Presˇporok, and it is still referred to with familiar ease as Pressburg by the Austrians and Pozsony by the Hungarians. Geographically, it is also extremely close to its neighbours: Hungary begins a few minutes’ drive down the road, and the Austrian border post is easily visible from the tower blocks of Bratislava’s suburbs. The tram that had run from Bratislava to Vienna in the period between the First and Second World Wars was remembered with an almost mystic reverence in the communist period, when the city was bordered by the Iron Curtain; and in modern times, Vienna’s Schwechat is the Slovaks’ favourite international airport. Although the twentieth century was the Slovaks’ Czech century, in which they were governed from Prague for a total of sixty-eight years, the crow 1

S L O VA K I A B E F O R E I N D E P E N D E N C E

on any Slovak rooftop can fly to Vienna and Budapest more quickly than to Prague.

Before Czechoslovakia Consequently, although the historical background in this chapter will focus in the main on the Czechoslovak period, and relations between Czechs and Slovaks, it is important to remember that it was above all Hungary that dominated Slovak history, and that has left the deepest mark on Slovaks’ national consciousness. It is true that the preamble to the Slovak constitution passed in 1992 earnestly remembers Great Moravia, when Cyril (Constantine) and Methodius brought Christianity to the land, and this empire could, at a stretch of the imagination, be designated as the prototype common state of Czechs and Slovaks since it combined part of the current Slovak Republic in the east with Moravia – now in the Czech Republic – in the west. Yet this formation only lasted for about fifty years in the ninth century, and then collapsed. In 896, the Magyar tribes from whom present day Hungarians are descended had come through the mountains from Asia, eventually to settle, in the early tenth century, on the Danubian plain. There began the thousand years of Hungarian rule which form the refrain of many Slovak nationalist laments. The Slovak lands were in Hungarian Felvidék – the upper lands. Slovakia was Upper Hungary. Contemporary Slovak historians therefore face a dilemma about what Slovak history actually is.2 Since the predominantly Slav-speaking lands of Upper Hungary (that is, Slovakia) never formed a separate administrative unit within Hungary, creating Slovak history by examining the development of the territory that now comprises the Slovak Republic is complicated. The shape and form of the Hungarian empire over the last millennium changed many times. For example, parts of present day Slovakia were invaded by the Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and in the same period, Bratislava was elevated to the status of the Hungarian capital while the Ottoman Empire controlled Budapest. Yet defining Slovak history as the story of the Slovak nation is no easier a task: although Slovak history has sometimes been portrayed as a thousand-year struggle for the survival of the Slovak nation,3 in some respects a Slovak national identity did not begin to ‚ crystallise until the end of the eighteenth century. Ludovít Sˇ túr, who codified the Slovak language and is regarded as one of Slovakia’s great heroes in the struggle for nationhood, was only born in 1815. This Slovak National Awakening in the first part of the nineteenth century was also a precursor of one of the most difficult periods of Hungarian rule for the Slovaks. The multinational Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire was badly shaken by the revolution of 1848, during which the Slovaks tended to side with the Austrians against the Hungarians, but when the Habsburg Empire became a dual monarchy with the Ausgleich of 1867, Hungarian rule 2


over the Slovaks was strengthened. The Hungarians used their new-found power to launch a concerted campaign of ‘de-Germanisation’ in their part of the Empire, but their attempts to bolster the use of their own language led to the suppression of minority cultures and attempts totally to assimilate the Slovaks and other minorities. In the course of the 1870s and 1880s, the Slovak cultural association Matica slovenská was closed down, and secondary education in the Slovak language ceased. After 1907 the vast majority of primary education was conducted in Hungarian as well.4 What had changed over the course of the nineteenth century was the Hungarians’ attitude to the national and cultural identity of their empire. This is a development that is linguistically difficult to capture in the English language. The Slovak language differentiates between Uhorsko – the lands of the extensive Hungarian Empire – and Mad’arsko, the smaller, modern, ethnically Hungarian state, while both concepts tend to be rendered as ‘Hungary’ in English. Although the English word ‘Magyar’ is sometimes used to denote that which is culturally and linguistically Hungarian, there is no word that equates to the Slovak Uhorsko and pertains exclusively to the Hungarian Empire. This had traditionally been an area of many languages and cultures (and which had, for many centuries, used Latin as its official language for state communication). It was only in the nineteenth century – particularly the latter decades – that the Hungarians made a concerted attempt to impose the Magyar language and culture on those whom they ruled. Magyarisation meant that it was instrumental for young Slovak-speakers seeking upward mobility via education to abandon their Slovak roots and assimilate into Hungarian culture, which to an extent represented modernity and progress in contrast to more rural, Slovak life. The only other escape for a Slovak at the end of the nineteenth century – and, indeed, well into the early Czechoslovak period – was emigration. With the exception of the Irish, few other peoples in Europe experienced such an exodus as Slovakia. Approaching 20 per cent of the population emigrated to the USA in the last half century of Hungarian rule, a majority never to return.5 Other Slovaks moved to the non-Slovak parts of Uhorsko, and Budapest in particular, but also Vienna contained larger urban concentrations of Slovaks than any town in what is today Slovakia.6 But from there, at least, it was easier for them to return to their roots, particularly after the formation of the Czechoslovak state in 1918. In these circumstances, it was hard for Slovaks to organise politically, since they lacked a strong educated elite. Many of the literate urban-dwellers in Slovakia – Hungarian bureaucrats and aristocrats and German traders – could not speak Slovak at all. In the villages, the leading figure of authority was the priest, but since the Catholic church was organised territorially as part of Hungary, and the bishops were Hungarian, priests were subject to the normal Magyarisation pressures. Even if they retained a nationalist persuasion, their celibacy meant that their views could not be handed down to 3


their children.7 Consequently, although Slovakia was a largely Catholic country, Slovak Protestants were pivotal to nineteenth century nationalist movements. Their vernacular Bibles were written in the Czech biblical language, and this created a natural affinity with their Slav neighbours in the west. The political organisation of Slovaks in Upper Hungary was concentrated around the Slovak National Party, founded in 1871.8 Since the adverse circumstances in which Slovak politicians had to function required a united approach, the party contained different strands within it, ranging from liberals with close links to Prague and the Czech Professor Tomásˇ Masaryk to Catholic populists. However, in electoral terms, the Slovak National Party could achieve very little in a country where a limited franchise, no secret ballots and widespread bribery and corruption rendered standing for election virtually pointless.9 The largest number of Slovaks ever to enter the Hungarian parliament, in 1906, was seven, and the figure decreased to three in 1910. The Hungarian attempts totally to assimilate the Slovaks might have been successful had it not been for the First World War and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire.10 When the war started in August 1914, the Slovaks found themselves in a weak position, forced to fight against the Slav Serbs and Russians for a Hungarian state to which they felt little loyalty, but vulnerable to the harsh oppression characteristic of wartime if they displayed open opposition. A consequence of this was that Slovak national aspirations were articulated most vocally by Slovaks abroad, particularly in the United States.11 The possibility that the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) would be defeated opened the way to more ambitious goals than mere Slovak autonomy within a Hungarian state, and by 1915 the favoured project was the formation of a Czecho-Slovak state. This notion was promoted in London by the Czech Masaryk, and in Paris by the Slovak Milan Rastislav Sˇ tefánik, who had lived there since 1904 and become a French general. Together with Eduard Benesˇ, they created the Czechoslovak National Council in February 1916, which set about furthering CzechoSlovak plans not only on the diplomatic front, but also by the creation of a Czechoslovak Legion to further the Entente’s war efforts. In the summer of 1918, the French, British and Italians finally recognised the Czechoslovak National Council as the Czecho-Slovak government.

Czechoslovakia between the wars In the light of the overwhelming Hungarian threat to Slovak identity, joining with the Czechs to form Czechoslovakia in 1918 was an attractive option. On 18 October 1918, the Slovak General Sˇ tefánik, together with the Czechs Masaryk and Benesˇ (both later Czechoslovak presidents), signed ‘The Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation by its provisional government’, which stated: 4


We claim the right of Bohemia to be reunited with her Slovak brethren of Slovakia, once part of our national State, later torn from our national body, and fifty years ago incorporated in the Hungarian State of the Magyars, who by their unspeakable violence and ruthless oppression of their subject races have lost all moral and human right to rule anybody but themselves.12 The Czechoslovak Republic was founded in Prague on 28 October 1918. In the course of 1918 the idea of a Czechoslovak state had also increasingly been supported by declarations within Slovakia itself, where politicians and people alike were still subject to repression by the Hungarian authorities. These culminated in the formation of a Slovak National Council in the Slovak town of Martin in September 1918, followed by the ‘Declaration of the Slovak Nation’ on 30 October 1918.13 The actual relationship of Czechs and Slovaks in this new state was a source of contention that lasted until 1992. The formation of a CzechoSlovak state was presented as the demand for self-determination by a Czechoslovak nation – a concept that was to cause lasting problems. Particular confusion was caused by the Pittsburgh Declaration of May 1918, in which Czechs and Slovaks in the USA agreed to form a state in which the Slovaks would have autonomy.14 A difficulty of wartime declarations and agreements reached in communities not organised as democracies is that the decision-making rights of individuals can later be disputed, and the status of the Pittsburgh Declaration was never clear. Slovak politicians immediately embraced the new Czechoslovak state, and although, unlike the small Slovak elite, ordinary people in Slovakia were not really familiar with the Czechs, their dislike of the previous regime made them generally welcoming of the new arrangement – providing they were ethnically Slovak. However, the fact that both the state apparatus and forces of law and order were completely Hungariandominated created a precarious situation, and it took considerable pressure on the Hungarian government by the Entente powers before Slovakia was fully liberated from Hungary at the beginning of 1919. This appeared a short-lived achievement, since one of the first acts of the Bolshevik government of Béla Kun that came to power in Hungary in March 1919 was to invade a third of Slovakia and turn it into a Slovak Soviet Republic. However, after bloody battles between the Hungarian and Czechoslovak armies, pressure from the Entente powers returned Czechoslovakia to its new borders in June 1919.15 Of the new Slovak borders, it was the southern one that was the most contested. Slovakia had been surrounded to the west, north and east by Austrian parts of Austria-Hungary. The Czech Lands in the west and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia in the east became part of the new Czechoslovak state, while the ethnically Polish lands to the north naturally fell to the 5


newly-constituted Polish Republic, aside from disputes over a few villages in the north of Slovakia. But there had been no traditional border in the south, since Slovakia had previously been part of a seamless Hungarian state. Nor was there a clear ethnic border between Slovaks and Hungarians. The decision to give Czechoslovakia geographically defensible borders, running in the ‚ western part of southern Slovakia along the rivers Danube and Ipel, left a substantial Hungarian minority, including the overwhelmingly Hungarian cities of Sˇ túrovo and Komárno (Esztergom and Komárom), inside Slovakia, and there, in spite of population shifts, it has remained until the present day.16 The ethnic composition of Czechoslovakia as a whole also left a sensitive political problem that impacted on the formal relationship between Slovaks and Czechs. The aftermath of the First World War was the age of nation states, and according to this principle, Czechoslovakia had been recognised as the nation state of Czechoslovaks, in which Czechs and Slovaks formed two branches of one nation. The proposition that there was a ‘Czechoslovak’ nation was dictated by practical politics. According to the 1921 census, the ‘Czechoslovak’ nation as a whole comprised just under two-thirds of the population of Czechoslovakia, while a further 23 per cent of the population was German, and somewhat under 6 per cent Hungarian.17 Since the Slovaks comprised a mere 15 per cent of the population, if they had been recognised as a separate nation, any advantages or autonomy that they enjoyed would logically also have had to be afforded to the more numerous Germans, and Czechoslovakia would demonstrably have been a multinational state. It was hence more comfortable in the prevailing international climate to adhere to the founding premise that there was a state-building Czechoslovak nation. The difficulty was that the Czechs, who formed its majority, accepted the idea of a Czechoslovak nation with relative ease, while many Slovaks felt a strong need for the autonomy of which they had been deprived under Hungarian rule. When the first Czechoslovak constitution was passed in February 1920, the law that introduced it began with the words ‘We, the Czechoslovak nation’, and the constitution established a democratic, but centralised, republic.18 (Ruthenia, unlike Slovakia, was designated as an ‘autonomous territory’, with its own diet, or parliament, although the realisation of this principle actually had to wait until the late 1930s.) Apart from the constitution’s failure to address the issue of Slovak otherness, it was a model of democracy for the age. A bicameral parliamentary system was established, with a lower house, or Chamber of Deputies, of 300 members elected every 6 years, and an upper house, or Senate, of 150 members elected every 8 years, with universal suffrage on the basis of proportional representation applied to everyone over the age of 21, regardless of gender.19 A president was to be indirectly elected for a period of 7 years by a three-fifths majority of both chambers voting together. 6


The constitution also contained a section entitled ‘Rights, liberties and duties of the Citizen. Equality’, which, among other standard rights, guaranteed equality before the law to all citizens regardless of race, language or religion. A special enactment regulated use of language, and established that the ‘Czechoslovak language’ would be the official state language of the Republic. It also made specific reference to the Czech language (to be used regularly as the official state language in the Czech Lands) and the Slovak language (to be used in Slovakia) but stated, effectively, that citizens could use them interchangeably when dealing with the authorities.20 Most interestingly, this enactment also obliged official organs to use other languages in districts where 20 per cent of citizens spoke that language.21 This provision was still preserved in the laws of the Slovak Republic at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and is particularly relevant for contemporary relations with the Hungarian minority. Czechs and Slovaks had not lived in a common state since the days of the Great Moravian Empire in the ninth century, but a major similarity between them was the mutual intelligibility of their languages. They were also both predominantly Catholic. However, it is interesting to note that although Slovakia is now commonly viewed as being more Catholic than the Czech Republic, it was actually more mixed religiously than the Czech Lands, with proportionally larger Protestant and Jewish communities and also some orthodox Ruthenes in the east.22 Crucially, however, Czech society was more secular: the role of religion was less important.23 The major differences between the two parts of the new state were structural. The Czech Lands were more urban and industrial than Slovakia, where the majority of the population worked on the land.24 However, it is not accurate to portray the Slovaks as a backward, eastern nation in total contrast with the industrialised, western Czechs. This can be best exemplified by looking at rates of literacy. While the Czechs started the twentieth century with the benefit of an almost totally literate population – at that time a great rarity – the Slovak literacy rate was around 70 per cent. While lower than the Czech rate, this was nonetheless still considerably higher than in East European states such as Romania and Russia, where only a small minority of the population could read and write.25 An equally important difference between Czechs and Slovaks was in their political and administrative experience. Although Czech participation in Austrian political life had been in many respects limited, Slovaks had played almost no role at all in representational politics in Hungary. The gulf was even greater when it came to the civil service. Here, Czechs had had approximate numerical equality with Germans under Austrian rule, while Slovaks were subject to almost total Hungarian domination.26 Moreover, Slovaks who had gained sufficient education to enter a white collar occupation had inevitably been subjected to severe Magyarising tendencies during their education, and had been required to suppress their Slovak identity in 7


order to gain professional advancement. Consequently, they were viewed by the new Czechoslovak state with the utmost suspicion as ‘Magyarones’ – Slovaks who had been successfully Magyarised, and whose loyalty was therefore in doubt.27 In the early years of the Czechoslovak state, therefore, many official positions were occupied by Czechs. This was also the case in the education system. Many Czech school teachers went to work in Slovakia, and Czech school books initially had to be used as none written in Slovak existed at higher levels. Among primary school teachers, the majority in Slovakia were always Slovak, although in middle schools and the grammar schools a majority remained Czech. The first non-Hungarian university in Slovakia, the Comenius University in Bratislava, began teaching in December 1919, but even by 1930, the majority of its professors were still Czech.28 However, although much was made of discrimination against Slovaks – particularly once the first generation of Slovak-educated graduates began to emerge – in fact successive Czechoslovak governments did much to advance the education of Slovaks.29 Most significant, however, for the development of Slovakia within the Czechoslovak state was the composition of the government. The party system in Czechoslovakia suffered from a fragmentation that was not untypical of Europe of that time, and which, in neighbouring Germany and Poland, made a major contribution to bringing down democracy in the interwar period. It was very rare for a party ever to receive more than 15 per cent of the vote at a Czechoslovak election, as a consequence of which five parties – the peˇ tka – almost always ended up in coalition with each other. The party fragmentation derived in part from the multiple nature of political cleavages in Czechoslovakia. Parties were distinguished both by their economic and class base (agrarians, social democrats, etc.), and by nationality (Czechoslovak, Slovak, German, Hungarian), and, in the case of the populists, also by religion (Catholicism). Only the Communist Party attracted voters from all national groupings in Czechoslovakia.30 A look at the governments formed in the interwar period indicates that the predominant cleavage was actually the national one: all five major government parties were Czech ones, although two of them, the Agrarians and the Social Democrats, did have substantial Slovak support. Since a state’s national composition does not change between elections, Czechoslovak governments did not alternate either. Consequently, Czechoslovakia – otherwise the model democracy of interwar Central and Eastern Europe – did not satisfy one of the major criteria of a democratic political system. Shifts in the electoral preferences of voters did not lead to real changes of governments. The Czechs, who comprised some 50 per cent of the population, had a permanent hold on power, regardless of their economic or religious orientation. Although Czechoslovak parties had a tendency to form oversize coalitions – that is, they contained more parties than would be strictly necessary in order 8


to secure a majority in parliament – a majority of voters in Slovakia always opted for parties that usually ended up in opposition.31 Even the most cursory look at Slovak voting patterns in the interwar period shows that the Slovak electorate was profoundly divided, and in a way that was still evident in the post-communist period. The fundamental split was between the Czechoslovak government parties, who believed that Slovakia’s interests were compatible with those of the Czechs and could be best served within a unitary Czechoslovak state, and those who did not. The former had the support of roughly a third of the Slovak electorate, who voted for the five main Czech parties. The latter were split into two main camps. The largest Slovak party, the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party, favoured Slovak autonomy, and on average obtained up to a third of the vote in Slovakia. It was a conservative and profoundly Catholic party, since it was led by a priest – Andrej Hlinka – and nearly a third of its parliamentary deputies were priests.32 Ironically, given the aversion to everything Hungarian among post-communist Slovak nationalists, it was frequently suspected (sometimes correctly) of conspiring with the Hungarians. The autonomy that it desired for Slovakia had been on offer from the Hungarians at the end of the First World War, and was therefore viewed as a demand with a Hungarian flavour. The Slovak populists were also extremely wary of the Czechs because of the secular nature of Czech society. While Hlinka’s party sought modifications of the Czechoslovak state structures, and at least engaged with Czechoslovak governments, even experimenting with joining them in the late 1920s, a final part of Slovak society, amounting to almost a third of voters, was even further outside the Czechoslovak system. It was comprised in the main of ethnic Hungarians, who were some sixth of the population in Slovakia. Like the 5 per cent who were Germans, they tended to vote for their own parties, and also for the Communist Party, who obtained more than 10 per cent of the vote. In terms of the government composition, Carol Skalnik Leff has calculated that Slovaks held 17 per cent of the total of 322 ministerial portfolios which were created in the First Republic. However, although Czechoslovak governments were frequently reshuffled, only 93 men ever actually held ministerial office, and among Slovaks, the concentration of power was even stronger, with 60 per cent of the ministerial portfolios occupied by Slovaks being held by three men: Vavro Sˇ robár and Milan Hodzˇ a of the Agrarian Party, and the Social Democrat Ivan Dérer. Furthermore, Slovaks tended to be concentrated either in ministries relating solely to Slovakia, such as the Ministry for Unification, or in Education and Culture, Agriculture and Health. Hodzˇ a was the only Slovak to obtain the prestigious Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in November 1935 he also became the only Slovak ever to become Czechoslovak prime minister – but at a point when the Republic was already approaching crisis.33 It is commonly stated that the first Czechoslovak Republic was brought 9


down in 1938 largely because of external influences, and that it was the only democratic nation state formed in the wake of the First World War which managed to preserve its democracy for virtually the entire interwar period. To a large extent, this is true. However, it was not immune from the radicalisation that overtook Europe in the 1930s. On a political level, the most obvious signs of this were found among the German minority of the Czech Lands. German parties had participated in government from 1926 onwards, but they were fatally undermined in the 1935 elections when two-thirds of the German vote went to a single party – Henlein’s Sudeten German party, which was openly supportive of Hitler’s Nazis in the German Reich. However, Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, which was led by a solely domestic agenda, also pursued a programme of autonomy whose effect on the legitimacy of the Czechoslovak state was eventually nearly as destructive as the behaviour of the Sudeten Germans. With hindsight, it is striking that the demands made by Hlinka and his followers in the interwar period were for no more than Slovakia obtained in the late communist period, after the Soviet invasion of 1968. Slovak independence was not on the agenda in interwar Slovakia.34 However, although Hlinka and many of his supporters may genuinely have supported the existence of a Czechoslovak state, provided it granted sufficient recognition to the Slovak nation, it nonetheless remains likely that autonomy would have made Czechoslovakia just as vulnerable to dismemberment in the unstable political world of the 1930s as it proved to be in 1938–9.35 The radicalisation of the 1930s had an economic as well as a political background, and this formed another contentious issue in Slovak politics. The economy of Slovakia had not flourished in the Czechoslovak Republic. Its industry had been in an unfavourable position to cope with the stronger, more advanced Czech competition after 1918, particularly as it was cut off from its traditional Hungarian markets. The achievements of the Czechoslovak education system in improving the situation of Slovaks could do little to counteract these underlying economic problems. Slovakia was hit particularly hard by the advent of the Great Depression in 1929, which generally had harsh effects on agricultural economies, and removed the traditional safety valve of rural overpopulation, which was emigration to the United States. The Slovak economy picked up slightly in the second half of the 1930s, as the unfavourable international situation led to a strengthening of the Hungarian and Austrian borders and the creation of new arms factories in the Czechoslovak inland, just inside Slovakia, which somewhat alleviated the unemployment problem.36 Nonetheless, economic developments in the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic did not, as a whole, contribute to a legitimisation of the political system in the eyes of those who supported greater autonomy for the Slovak nation. It must be noted, however, that when Czechoslovakia entered the fateful year of 1938, most Slovaks supported the Czechoslovak Republic. Hlinka’s 10


Populists wavered in their attitudes to the Prague government. When, in December 1935, the parliament had to elect a new president because the ailing 85-year-old Masaryk had stepped down, they gave crucial support to the candidacy of Masaryk’s chosen successor, Benesˇ, against a candidate supported by Henlein’s Sudeten Germans and various other right-wing Czech parties.37 However, neither their support for Benesˇ nor the advent of the first Slovak prime minister in 1935 brought about substantial moves towards Slovak autonomy. After the German Anschluss of Austria had taken place in March 1938, and under pressure from the international community for the Czechs to do something to satisfy the demands of its national minorities, in July 1938 the government produced a plan designed to divide Czechoslovakia into four units (Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia) with their own assemblies, and to ensure proportional representation of minorities in state service and education.38 This was rejected by the Slovaks (who were in any case not technically a national minority, but part of the state-building nation), and their own proposal for autonomy was eventually accepted, but only after Munich. It was at the Munich conference at the end of September 1938 that the British and French agreed with the Germans and Italians that Czechoslovakia should cede all the Sudeten German borderlands to Hitler. The Czechoslovak Government had little choice but to accede to the demand. Without British and French support, they had relatively little hope of defending themselves against Hitler, particularly as Hungary and Poland were also poised to realise their irredentist demands for Czechoslovak territory. Although the Soviet Union had, in 1935, signed a treaty with Czechoslovakia, it was linked to Soviet–French and French–Czechoslovak treaties. The Soviet army was in any case barely in a position to send troops to help the Prague government as the two countries had no land border at the time, and neither the Poles nor the Romanians would have been prepared to permit Russian soldiers access over their territory. For the British, Munich became a symbol of crass short-sightedness and gullibility, as the then prime minister Chamberlain believed that he had achieved ‘peace in our time’ by accepting Hitler’s implausible claim that the Sudetenland would be his last territorial demand. For Czechs and Slovaks, however, ‘Munich’ became a shorthand designation for betrayal, and o nás bez nás – about us without us – was still heard at the end of the century and beyond as a reproach for anyone who dared decide their fate without consulting them first.

The Slovak state When Slovakia finally gained autonomy in October 1938, it was in severely adverse circumstances within what was now called the Czecho-Slovak Republic, and is also referred to as the Second Republic. (The hyphen, which 11


had also existed in the Pittsburgh Agreement, was to continue as a bone of contention between Czechs and Slovaks in the immediate post-communist period.) Benesˇ had resigned as president on 5 October, shortly after the debacle at Munich, and been replaced by Emil Hacha. The autonomous provincial government of Slovakia was led by Jozef Tiso, who had succeeded Hlinka as the leader of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party on the latter’s death in August 1938, and who was also a priest. But most ominously, the new leaders and new structures were faced by old threats from Hungary. The issue of Slovak territory was finally decided by the German and Italian foreign ministers in Vienna on 2 November 1938. The Vienna Award led to the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia losing 22 per cent of its territory and nearly 27 per cent of its population.39 Most of its territorial losses, including its second largest city, Kosˇice, and some quarter of a million ethnically Slovak citizens,40 went to Hungary. However, Germany (which now incorporated Austria) took a small amount of territory on the outskirts of Bratislava, and Poland acquired a few villages in the north of Slovakia. The political direction in which Tiso was leading Slovakia was fairly clear from the elections that took place in December 1938, when voters were presented with only a single list of candidates, and the fact that the removal of all Czech teachers and officials from Slovakia began.41 The country’s international position, however, was less clear. The Czecho-Slovak government in Prague made a final attempt to save its state, and on 9 March 1939 it intervened in Slovakia militarily and replaced Tiso as prime minister with one of his fellow party members, Karol Sidor. With tension rising, Hitler invited Tiso to Berlin and faced him with the alternatives that Slovakia should either immediately declare independence, or Germany would ‘leave Slovakia to its fate’, which was understood to mean division between Poland and Hungary.42 A meeting of the Slovak Diet was called on 14 March, where astonished representatives were asked to vote for the creation of an independent Slovak state. This they did by rising and singing ‘Hej, Slováci’, a rousing nationalist song that was to become the new country’s national anthem.43 Slovakia was referred to at this point as the ‘Slovak state’, although when its constitution was passed it was officially called the ‘Slovak Republic’. On 15 March 1939, German troops entered the Czech Lands and created the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Later in the same month, Hungary occupied Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, taking further Slovak territory in the process as well. The Slovak state is one of the most controversial periods in Slovak history. When the Slovak Republic became truly independent at the beginning of 1993, there was a general consensus that it was completely unrelated to its 1939–45 predecessor. However, sociological surveys conducted in the 1990s showed ambivalent views among Slovaks towards the wartime period.44 It was seen both as morally negative, but also as a period when Slovaks had greater opportunity than ever before to demonstrate their ability to run a 12


state. It was also as a period of relative economic growth.45 However, while Slovaks were able to benefit in professional terms from the removal of Czechs, and soon also of Jews, from public and professional life, at the higher level of decision-making, real power lay with Germany. The high employment rate enjoyed was also merely a result of wartime production, since Germany used Slovakia as one of its bases for the arms industry. Feelings of wellbeing are also always comparative. While most Slovaks were generally very subdued at the time Czechoslovakia broke up, they could nonetheless observe that the situation in their own country was calmer and more ‘normal’ than in neighbouring countries. Germany attempted to use Slovakia as a model to demonstrate the benefits of cooperation to other East European nations, despite the total Nazi contempt for the Slav Untermenschen (‘sub-human’), which would certainly have led to a worsening of the position of the Slovaks had Germany succeeded in winning the war. For two groups, however, the situation was entirely negative. Ethnic Slovaks living on the territory which had been ceded to Hungary were subjected to even greater oppression than in the latter decades of the AustroHungarian empire, and also suffered economically. The fate of Slovakia’s Jews was far worse. Anti-Semitism was rife, and persecution of the Jews, their exclusion from public and professional life, and the theft of their property began as soon as the Slovak state was established. A set of anti-Jewish laws were adopted in September 1941, and between March and October 1942 nearly 60,000 Slovak Jews were deported to Poland, allegedly to labour camps. The Slovak government paid the German Reich 500 marks for each Jew deported. The entire action was particularly discomforting to the Vatican, given that the Slovak president, Tiso, was a Catholic priest, although, like Tiso himself, the Vatican appeared to have been particularly concerned about the fate of Jews who were confirmed Catholics.46 Its protests were ignored. Although the mass deportations stopped in autumn 1942, only to start again when the Germans troops took over Slovakia in the wake of the Slovak National Uprising in autumn 1944, their persecution continued. The figures for Slovak Roma murdered by the fascists are even harder to discern than those for the Jews. The political system of the Slovak state is not easy to characterise.47 The communist description of it as a ‘clerico-fascist’ state was an attempt to taint Catholicism with Nazi crimes, rather than a technical description of its functioning. Tiso, who had been installed again as prime minister in March 1939, was elected president by the parliament in October of that year, with Vojtech Tuka becoming prime minister. Tiso was formally designated the Slovak Führer, or vodca, in October 1942. His defence was always that he merely chose the ‘lesser evil’ for Slovakia in what was a hopeless situation in 1939. Nevertheless, the party’s authoritarian bent and inclination always to present itself as the sole representative of the Slovak nation lent itself easily to the one-party state founded in 1939. Banning many organisations48 and 13


attempting to exercise full control of political and economic life was thus a natural instinct for the party. It had different goals from the Nazis, and therefore never entirely adopted its methods. Nor did the Germans require it to, despite occasional exasperation at the chaos and clientelism of Slovak life. It sufficed if it caused no foreign policy disruption.49 The demise of the Slovak state began in earnest in 1944. Internal resistance to the regime, which had been far from popular among broad swathes of the population from the outset, grew as the economy faltered and the Germans’ military vulnerability became obvious. Opposition culminated in the Slovak National Uprising, which began at the end of August 1944, and was to become, after the Warsaw Uprising, the second most significant act of armed and civilian resistance to Nazi rule in wartime Europe. While portrayed by some as an act of betrayal by Slovaks against their own state, it was a crucial event in ensuring the future status of the Slovaks, since it enabled them to enter the post-war period, together with the Czechs, as an Allied rather than a defeated nation. The Uprising was a moral victory, but a military defeat. It began somewhat prematurely as a result of a German military occupation of Slovakia, agreed with the Tiso government, on 29 August. The centre of the Uprising was in the mountainous area around Banská Bystrica in Central Slovakia, and some 60,000 soldiers and 18,000 partisans took part, as well as many soldiers – mainly former prisoners of war – from other countries. The battles lasted two months, until the fall of Banská Bystrica on 27 October.50 It brought together senior officers of the Slovak army as well as two distinct groups of resistance fighters – communists whose allegiance was to Moscow (but who had of necessity been operating independently for much of the war), and a ‘Civic bloc’ linked to Benesˇ’s Czechoslovak government in exile in London, which comprised members of former pro-Czechoslovak political parties and protestants dissatisfied with the dominant Catholic profile of the Slovak state. Although the end of the Uprising brought terror to Slovakia, as it was occupied by Germany, what soon benefitted the country was that the Slovak National Council which had led the Uprising declared the renewal of the Czecho-Slovak state. The Soviet Army, together with a Czechoslovak brigade, entered Slovak territory from Poland during harsh battles in the Dukla pass in October 1944, and gradually fought its way through Slovakia, including those parts occupied by the Hungarians, finally reaching Bratislava on 4 April 1945. Tiso and many of his political allies fled to Austria, where they ended up as prisoners of the Americans, to be tried later by the Czechoslovak authorities. President Benesˇ arrived in Kosˇice in eastern Slovakia via Moscow on 3 April, and on 5 April the Kosˇice Government Programme was introduced by the new Czechoslovak government chosen by Benesˇ. The Czech Lands remained largely passive to the end, with fighting in Prague breaking out only after Hitler’s suicide in Berlin. Although the American army occupied 14


Pilsen in the west of the Czech Lands, it did not move on, and when the war ended, German troops were still in Prague, which was ‘liberated’ by the Soviet Army only on 9 May as a final act of the war. Benesˇ and the new Czechoslovak government arrived there on 10 May. Benesˇ’s government comprised a ‘National Front’ incorporating both communists and representatives of the former Czechoslovak parties. There was agreement on many major policy issues, such as the exiling of Germans and Hungarians in retribution for their collaboration, plans for land reform and the nationalisation of major industrial enterprises. It also agreed that Sub-carpathian Ruthenia should be ceded to Soviet Ukraine. The government’s relationship with the Soviet communists differed radically from the situation in most of East Central Europe, because, alone with Poland, Czechoslovakia was a liberated rather than an occupied country, and thereby technically had a right to determine its own future. Since Slovakia had fought with Germany for much of the Second World War – as long, for example, as Romania, which changed sides at about the same time as the Slovak National Uprising had taken place – Slovakia’s privileged position was due not only to its own internal struggle, but also to its link to the Czechs and the desire of the western Allies to recreate pre-war Czechoslovakia.

The democratic interlude For the next three years, until the communist takeover in February 1948, Czechoslovakia benefitted from a democratic interlude, with both the American army and the Soviet army withdrawing on 1 December 1945, and free elections being held in May 1946. The relationship of the Slovaks and Czechs with the Soviet Union did not at first appear particularly problematic. They traditionally enjoyed pan-Slav sympathies towards the Russians, were wary of the west because of the betrayal at Munich, and therefore saw their state as a natural bridge between east and west. It was also possible to recognise the Slovaks as a separate nation from the Czechs because the demographic composition of the state was changing. With the agreement of the Allies at Potsdam in 1945, the Sudeten Germans were expelled during the course of 1946.51 About 75,000 Hungarians were also deported in exchange for Slovaks living in Hungary, though statistical records show an even larger decrease in the number of Slovak Hungarians, often because individuals reidentified themselves in ethnic terms for a variety of reasons.52 The consequence of the population shifts was that Czechoslovakia could now easily be described as a state of two fraternal nations without any third community credibly staking its own claim. Whereas in the First Republic there were approximately one-and-a-half times as many Germans as Slovaks, by the time of the 1950 census, the Slovaks were not only the second largest nation in the country, but were nine times more numerous than the next largest national group, which was now the Hungarians.53 15


Some problems were occasioned, however, by the need to rework the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. Partly because a strong Slovak National Council had existed alongside a Czechoslovak government-in-exile at the end of the war, the state was reconstructed with an asymmetric power structure (a phenomenon that was to reoccur after 1968), in which structures based in Bratislava did not have counterparts for the Czechs. Many Czechs also harboured a deep resentment of the Slovaks, who were considered to have betrayed Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Arguments that the Slovaks had chosen the ‘lesser evil’ after the failure of Czech foreign policy in 1938 were largely dismissed, and a suspicion of Slovak nationalism developed that was still palpable in the 1990s. Tiso and Tuka were hanged.54 However, the most fatal blow to any Slovak hopes of obtaining federalism or autonomy was dealt by the influence of communism. Communism is in its essence a heavily centralising force, based on the ideology of an ultimate, unchallengeable truth administered by a leadership that represents the common good of the people. It does not recognise a legitimate plurality of interests, whether economic, regional or national, and it was thus ideologically hostile to Slovak demands to autonomy. More mundane power interests also disposed the communists against the Slovaks. Slovak communists were less heavily dependent on Stalin, since many of them had spent the war with the partisans, while the Czech communist leadership under Gottwald had been in the Soviet Union. Given Stalin’s paranoia, this roused his suspicion. Electoral arithmetic also militated against Slovak autonomy. The elections of May 1946 were, by the standards of the time, reasonably free and fair, notwithstanding the fact that a number of pre-war parties were banned on the excuse that they had collaborated with the Germans. In the Czech Lands, they were won by the communists, who gained 40 per cent of the vote, with the remainder spread among three other established parties who were allowed to stand. In Slovakia, on the other hand, the communists had received only 30 per cent of the vote, while the Democratic Party, founded during the Slovak National Uprising by the non-communist groups participating, gained 62 per cent. Hlinka’s party was, not surprisingly, one of those that had been banned before the election, and the strength of the Democratic Party was due in part to the success of its leadership in reaching an agreement with leading non-collaborationist Catholics in Slovakia. This led to accusations from the Czechs and the communists that it was acting as a successor to Hlinka’s party. However, given that the majority of the Slovak population was, of course, neither protestant nor communist but Catholic, the move was highly effective in electoral terms. Consequently, while the communists gained 38 per cent of the vote in Czechoslovakia as a whole, the balance of power was completely different in the two parts of the country. The Czechoslovak communist leader, Klement Gottwald, had a clear claim to the premiership, but this was a result of Czech rather than Slovak political preferences. The Slovak National Council 16


and the Board of Commissioners (effectively its government) were dominated by the Democratic Party. From June 1946 onwards, therefore, their powers were reduced and any talk of a federal Czechoslovakia ceased. While both the fact that the Czechs and Slovaks were two nations and the principle of ‘equal with equal’ were accepted, this did not translate itself into institutional structures. Whether the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia was inevitable or not is debatable. Had the communists had less domestic support, or had the democratic forces put up more organised resistance, the country might not have moved into the communist sphere of influence. The clearest outward sign that Czechoslovakia was slipping into the Soviet orbit came in 1947, when Stalin pressured the Czechoslovak government not to go to Paris to discuss the Marshall Plan for providing American aid to post-war Europe. At the same time, the communists were using three main instruments of power to strengthen their position domestically. One was control of the interior ministry and the organs of State Security, which were to become notorious in the communist period, and were known by their initials Sˇ tB. Another was control of local government via the communist ‘National Committee’ system. The third was the exploitation of economic change, most particularly in pressing for agricultural reform and the breaking up of large estates, and also the distribution of land taken from expelled Germans. A fatal defect in the post-war Czechoslovak democracy was lack of communication between the non-communist parties, and also between them and the president, Benesˇ. This made it hard for them to withstand communist tactics. The geographic separation of the democrats in the Czech Lands and those in Slovakia, and their lack of party ties, exacerbated this problem by distancing Czech democrats from Slovak ones. Slovaks were largely powerless to prevent the slide of power towards the communists. The Democratic Party was vulnerable because of the general Czech willingness to believe allegations of populist/pro-Tiso sympathies among Slovaks. In 1947, the Sˇ tB attempted to implicate one of its leaders, Ján Ursiny, who was Czechoslovak deputy prime minister, in an anti-state conspiracy when links were uncovered between a member of his staff and the emigré populist leadership.55 Pressure was also put on the Democratic Party members of the Board of Commissioners, which was chaired by the communist Gustáv Husák despite having a Democratic Party majority. This was done by the same method used by the communists in Prague the next February, namely the organisation of mass demonstrations and the threat of a general strike. These aimed both to show that the ‘bourgeois’ leaders were not in tune with the people, and to intimidate, or at least demoralise, opponents of the communists. Issues such as post-war economic deprivation, and promises of the compulsory purchase of all land holdings above 50 hectares, were easy for the communists to exploit. In November 1947, the Democratic Party gave in and allowed for changes to be made in the Board of Commissioners, 17


which left it in the minority. However little power the body actually wielded, it was a significant move in weakening the major bastion of opposition to communism. The turning point in Czechoslovakia’s descent into communist dictatorship came in Prague in February 1948, when, exasperated by the uncontrolled activities of the communists in the police, the National Socialist, Populist and Democratic Party ministers of the Czechoslovak government resigned. This was intended to put pressure on the communist ministers, but in fact, because of bad liaison with both the social democrats and President Benesˇ, the resignations were accepted and the communists took over the government, aided by mass demonstrations of workers’ militias on the streets.

The Stalinisation of Czechoslovakia The communists acted quickly to consolidate their power after ‘victorious February’. Husák simply removed the Democratic Party members of the Board of Commissioners in February 1948, and its chair and vice chair of the Slovak National Council resigned. The party then effectively dissolved, with one faction becoming the Party of Slovak Renewal. This, together with a Slovak ‘Freedom Party’ and two smaller Czech parties, remained in being until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, acting as a loyal helper of the communists while providing the outer shell of a pluralist structure that was devoid of any content. The Communist Party of Slovakia itself was technically made a subordinate part of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in September 1948, supposedly at the request of the central committee of the Slovak party.56 Communist reprisals against the Democratic Party took place very quickly, and a first trial, including Ursiny, the party’s deputy chair, concluded with convictions and long prison sentences as early as April 1948, with more convictions the following month. A new constitution was passed in May, and at the end of the month elections took place in which, like those at the end of 1938, voters were only presented with a single list of candidates, which they could accept or reject. In Slovakia, 84.9 per cent voted in favour – significantly lower than the national average of 89.2 per cent.57 President Benesˇ was already ailing, and resigned in June, leaving the way open for the communists’ Gottwald to be chosen by the communist-dominated government to replace him. The communists also began rapidly to transform both the economy and society. Enterprises with more than 50 employees and land holdings of more than 50 hectares were nationalised. Although the land had been promised to small farmers, pressure to form co-operative farms had begun by the end of 1948. The church, which – as an ideologically incompatible, highly structured, and socially powerful organisation – was attacked by communists 18


everywhere, was a particular target in Slovakia, both because the Catholic church had had such unfortunate links with fascism during the war, and because the influence of secularism was traditionally strong among the Czechs, who played the major role in formulating policy in Slovakia. In 1950 all monasteries were closed down, and later all convents as well, with many of their inhabitants ending up in labour camps. The Greek Catholic church, which had been strong among the Ruthenes in the east of the country, was taken over by the orthodox church. The most powerful single sign of Stalinist rule, however, was the commencement of purge trials. These were particularly violent in Czechoslovakia, in part as a communist response to the country’s strong democratic traditions. Of all the Soviet bloc states, it was the one that had maintained democracy for longest after the end of the Second World War, albeit for less than three years. The purges did not hit merely genuine opponents of the communist regime, but also many convinced and loyal communists themselves. Once democratic resistance to communism had been crushed, the Communist Party was in a position to start settling scores internally. Some of the first victims in 1950 were the Slovak partisan leaders who had commanded the Slovak National Uprising. They were viewed with suspicion by ‘Moscow communists’ who were more naturally loyal to Stalin, and not averse to removing rivals for power. The largest of the Czechoslovak purge trials, in 1952, led to the execution of both former secretary general of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Rudolf Slanský, and the Slovak Vladimír Clementis, who had been foreign minister from 1948 to 1950. What is particularly notable about the Stalinist persecution in Czechoslovakia is the extent to which it continued even after Stalin’s death in 1953. The trial in which Gustáv Husák, former chair of the Board of Commissioners and post-1968 Czechoslovak Communist Party leader and Czechoslovak president, was accused of ‘bourgeois Slovak nationalism’ and sentenced to life imprisonment took place in 1954. Ironically, de-Stalinisation in Czechoslovakia was slowed by the fact that the Czechoslovak ‘little Stalin’, Gottwald, died shortly after Stalin’s funeral. This enabled the Party to instal a new leader, Antonín Novotný, who was actually no less hardline a communist than his predecessor, but who nonetheless escaped Soviet pressure to replace leaders tainted by having ruled in the period of the worst Stalinist excesses. The Hungarian Revolution of November 1956, bloodily repressed by Soviet troops, put a temporary end to the pressure to de-Stalinise society which had followed Khrushchev’s Secret Speech denouncing Stalin in February 1956. Although a commission to review the trials was set up in 1955, Husák and many others were not released until an amnesty in 1960. Only when Khrushchev made his second de-Stalinisation speech in 1961 did the pressure on the hardline Czechoslovak communists grow. Husák was formally ‘rehabilitated’ in 1963.58 Czechoslovakia began the 1960s with a new, ‘socialist’, constitution, in 19


which it claimed, as the first of the Soviet bloc countries, to have constructed the basis of socialism. It stated in the preamble that ‘Socialism has prevailed in our Fatherland!’, whereas the 1948 constitution had merely ‘resolved to build up our liberated state as a People’s democracy’.59 The state was renamed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, rather than remaining the Czechoslovak Republic. It also anchored the ‘leading role of the Communist Party’ in Article 4, thereby constitutionally legitimating the existing reality where all major decisions were taken by the Party rather than the government and parliament, which merely implemented the Party’s decisions. However, of greatest importance to future developments in Slovakia was that it was a highly centralising constitution. Although the Slovak National Council remained in existence, the Board of Commissioners was abolished. It also rearranged the sub-divisions of the country in such a way that Prague was a separate province (kraj), while Bratislava was merely a city in the province of Western Slovakia.60 This was to form one of the grievances that culminated in the democratisation movement of late 1967 and 1968. Further concerns affecting Czechoslovak communists in the 1960s were economic. Communist ideology was based on the idea of eternal growth. Things could only get better; they could not stagnate. During the 1950s, in spite of brutal nationalisation, collectivisation of agriculture and industrialisation, and wildly unrealistic Soviet-style 5- or 7-year plans which had to be amended or even virtually abandoned, there were impressive growth rates. In Slovakia in particular, where modernisation had been at a lower level than in the Czech Lands, village life had been opened up: there were opportunities for regular, secure employment in new industries while commuting from village homes; the introduction of co-operative agriculture, after the initial shock of losing individual ownership of land, gave security and welfare benefits previously unknown; and young people were trained in the technical professions necessary for industrial enterprises and large scale agriculture, and the most able academically could go to the cities to study, returning to their villages at weekends. Road building also greatly improved the links between communities in often mountainous areas and the outside world. In the 1960s, however, it became clear, particularly to economists, that the growth rates could not continue. In 1963 positive growth ceased completely. A technical intelligentsia had been trained in communist universities, but these educated communist specialists were more conscious of the system’s failings. They realised that political changes in the way that the economy was run were necessary in order to move the economy forward. The cultural intelligentsia also began to become more openly critical. The slow de-Stalinisation process in Czechoslovakia had left a pent-up desire for change and greater freedom of expression which was more marked than in many neighbouring countries. Despite the fact that many writers – at least those not silenced by the censors and state-run publishing – had been bought 20


off by the regime with material privileges, it was Writers’ Union congresses, most particularly in June 1967, which produced the sharpest critiques of a form of communism that clearly did not meet the needs of a modern society.61 The final fatal manifestation of Czechoslovakia’s delayed de-Stalinisation was the Communist Party leader, Novotný, who had, since 1957, also been president of Czechoslovakia. He was not merely innately Stalinist, having resisted both de-Stalinisation in the 1950s and the amelioration of structural economic problems in the 1960s, but he was also deeply and offensively antiSlovak. The culmination of his crass behaviour towards the Slovaks was a visit in August 1967 to Slovakia’s leading cultural centre, the Matica slovenská in Martin. During his brief visit he offended the Slovaks in every way possible, ignoring crowds who had come to meet him, showing disapproval of Matica’s activities, and actually returning gifts he was given. Even the preparations for the visit had alienated Alexander Dubcˇek, who had been first secretary of the Slovak Communist Party since 1963, to the point where he remained in Bratislava during the visit.62 From then on, Novotný could expect no support from Slovak communists. Novotný’s final weakness was that he did not enjoy particularly close relations with Khrushchev’s successor at the helm of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev. Novotný was by this time the longest-serving leader of a Warsaw Pact state, with the exception of East Germany’s Walter Ulbricht, and his self-confidence and arrogance, both personal and with regard to Czechoslovakia’s socialist achievements, was not endearing to the new leader of the communist world. Brezhnev visited Czechoslovakia in December 1967, when the mood was already tense following brutal police repression of an essentially rather unpolitical student demonstration in Prague at the end of October,63 and antagonism between Dubcˇek and Novotný in the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party was increasingly open. Novotný had expected Soviet support, but this was not forthcoming, and Brezhnev’s main concern was to avoid any conflict in the communist world.64

The Czechoslovak Spring and its aftermath In January 1968, Novotný was replaced as party leader by Dubcˇek. Dubcˇek was a generally uncontentious candidate, since he was trusted by the Russians as a fluent Russian speaker who had spent his childhood in the Soviet Union, where his family had been taken by their idealistic communist father.65 As a Slovak, removed from the intricacies of Prague politics, he was not unacceptable to any factions among communist Czechs either. A Slovak was thus placed in the strongest position of power in the common state. Dubcˇek was not a charismatic leader in the sense of being a great orator. His appeal was of a gentler kind, in keeping with the mood of a 21


society traumatised by twenty brutal years of communism. In stark contrast to the cold, aloof communist leaders to which people were sadly accustomed, the films and photos show him cheerfully dancing with grandmothers at a village ball, or diving in the local swimming pool. When one his speeches coined the phrase ‘socialism with a human face’, it was so eternally memorable precisely because Dubcˇek himself was the human face of socialism. He was also essentially a party apparatchik, and his rather weak leadership was one of the reasons why events soon got out of hand during what is normally described as the ‘Prague Spring’, though more commonly referred to as the ‘Czechoslovak Spring’ in Slovakia. In retrospect, there were very few structural political and economic changes in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The ‘Action Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’ issued in April 1968 – a sensational but confused and imprecise document written in an interesting variation of traditional communist jargon – remained little more than a discussion document.66 The far-reaching personnel changes needed to facilitate its implementation could only take place at an Extraordinary Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, scheduled for autumn 1968. In the event, the Congress ended up as an emergency meeting in the wake of the Warsaw Pact invasion of 21 August 1968. The changes in the spring of 1968 were therefore confined largely to the level of what was, nearly twenty years later, called glasnost. People talked out loud about the things that had never been discussed in public for twenty years. The public listened in delight to political leaders telling them that the country was in a dreadful mess – something everyone actually already knew, but the wonder was to hear it finally admitted. The parliament which, for twenty years, had merely rubber-stamped decisions made by the party, began to act like a real parliament, and deputies stood up and engaged in debate as if their opinions really mattered. The censors had nothing to do any more as censorship was abolished, but still had to sit around in the office because under socialism no-one was made redundant. People applied for their passports and families went off to Italy on holiday, while students took summer jobs in British holiday camps. An amazed western Europe delighted as a shabby, cheerful throng emerged from behind the supposedly impenetrable Iron Curtain as if it wasn’t there. Then, in the dead of an August night, as some holidayed abroad and others relaxed at their country cottages, the tanks came in as the Warsaw Pact invaded from every side in the only joint military action in its history, mobilised against one of its own members. Society in the former Czechoslovakia divides generationally between those who remember what they were doing when they heard, and those that do not. The Czechoslovak Spring was a dream before its time. The Warsaw Pact invasion was justified by what became known as the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ – that a threat to socialism in one ‘socialist’ state is a threat to all. Objectively, the Gorbachev experiment, and the ‘domino reaction’ with 22


which communism in Eastern Europe fell in 1989 as a consequence, proved the doctrine to be perfectly correct. The reforms in Czechoslovakia under Dubcˇek could never have led to a better form of communist-led socialism; they were an attempt to square the circle. This was not evident in 1968, when the Communist government enjoyed a level of support in the public opinion polls (which blossomed at the time) unknown in democratic societies other than during a war,67 and the notion that the Communist Party would rule by consent did not seem far-fetched. Yet this begged the question of what would happen when consent was withdrawn, which in a democracy must always eventually come to pass. Throughout the spring and summer of 1968, the Soviet communists warned Dubcˇek, to no avail, that he should rein in his country’s new-found freedom. Their deepest concerns related to greater freedom of media information, attacks on the leading role of the party, and the possibility of opposition parties being formed, which was already becoming increasingly likely by early summer. The later lessons of the perestroika period in the Soviet Union proved that such developments must inexorably lead to the downfall of the entire communist system. Dubcˇek did not realise this; Brezhnev did. And as in so much of Slovak history, it was outside forces that constrained the limits of domestic politics. The extent of the failure, and the dire consequences, of the Czechoslovak Spring were not immediately apparent after the invasion. A week of impassioned street protests subsided after the ignominious Moscow Agreement was signed by the Czechoslovak communist leaders who were carted off to Moscow in the wake of the invasion.68 Yet Dubcˇek remained leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party until April 1969, when he was replaced by his fellow Slovak Husák, who in 1968 had been regarded as a reformer. It was only gradually that the ‘normalisation’ process took hold.69 Anyone who had shown engagement with the aims of the Czechoslovak Spring was removed from office, and hundreds of thousands of communists were expelled from the party. Some were saved by signing statements condemning the reforms as counter-revolution; for others, that was insufficient. ‘Normality’ was considered to be a society controlled by the Communist Party as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. However, while strong formal control was reasserted, the public it controlled was more apathetic and disaffected than elsewhere, and the communists controlling it more lacklustre. Unlike in Hungary, the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia had been stripped through expulsions of its most innovative and dynamic members. It was an organisation uniquely incapable of meeting the challenges of the modern age. At the same time, whole swathes of professional jobs vacated by the expelled were filled by a younger generation, many only students in 1968, who were not senior enough to have acted in a way that tainted them fatally during the reform period. Yet they were nonetheless attitudinally deeply affected by 1968. Such people contributed greatly to the misleading sense of calm in post-1968 Czechoslovakia. They were outwardly very passive and 23


conformist to the formal demands of communist society because of the sense of powerlessness engendered by the brutal smashing of the dreams of their optimistic youth. But their underlying contempt of the normalisation regime was almost total. 1968 remains yet another contentious issue between Slovaks and Czechs. Of all the political reform projects of 1968, the only one which survived the Warsaw Pact invasion was the idea of federalising Czechoslovakia. A constitutional act passed at the end of October 1968 federalised the state, laying down in its first article that ‘The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic is made up of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. Both Republics shall have equal position within the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.’70 The difficulty, however, was that federalism – the devolution of power – was incompatible with the communist tendency to centralise power. As the normalisation process took hold in 1970, further constitutional amendments were passed that weakened the ability of the new federal system to devolve power, and the very brief period where there were considered to be two national economies – one Czech, one Slovak – ended. Given that the state interfered radically more in the economy in a Soviet-style socialist system than in a democratic one, this issue was a crucial one. The reality was that power in Czechoslovakia was still in the hands of the Communist Party. Here, the asymmetry that had marked Czech–Slovak relations since the inception of the common state continued. A Communist Party of Slovakia existed alongside the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, but there was no Communist Party of the Czech Republic. Slovak organs input into the running of Slovakia, whereas Czechs participated directly in the running of the whole state. At the level of parliamentary organs – a less important locus of power and decision-making – there was a Czech National Council and a Czech government to match the Slovak National Council and the Slovak government. Yet parliaments never had much power in communist regimes. Federalisation never really interested the Czechs, and was a concession to the Slovaks. Post-1968 resentment between the two nations went deeper than this, however. A common Czech contention is that during the Prague Spring, while the Czechs were more interested in democratisation, the Slovaks were concerned only with federalisation – increasing Slovakia’s power. This overlooks the fact that structures which provide access to power are a prerequisite for effective democratic participation. For the Slovaks, democratisation and federalisation were never alternatives. A further Czech grievance related to the fact that Husák, the new, Sovietapproved Communist Party leader, was a Slovak. Czechs perceived that he favoured Slovakia economically, ensuring that Slovaks received half-shares of everything in the country, whereas population would have entitled them only to one-third. However, while the Slovak economy did develop rapidly in the Husák years, Slovaks were more inclined to view this as a mere 24


continuation of the extremely rapid industrialisation and urbanisation they had been experiencing consistently since the Second World War. In the more developed Czech economy, the 1970s and 1980s were a time when the deficiencies of Soviet-style economic management, which found it difficult to modernise to a higher level by favouring the service sector over heavy industry, were becoming increasingly apparent. The Slovaks also found the post-invasion period slightly less depressing than the Czechs for two other reasons. ‘Purges’ – meaning in this context removal from the Communist Party – were less brutal in Slovakia, where fewer people had taken exposed leadership roles in the changes. The party lost about 28 per cent of its members between January 1968 and December 1970 (both through voluntary departure and expulsion in its various forms),71 but statistics show that fewer Slovaks were removed from the Party than Czechs.72 Aside from the direct gaze of Prague, and moderated by the endemic use of informal contacts often based in the villages from which almost the entire Slovak elite had originated, more careers could be salvaged in Slovakia. Reforming communist academics, who in the Czech Republic became boiler-stokers, window-cleaners or well-measurers, were in Slovakia quietly assigned to jobs in the library or an office. Slovaks also gained a little in terms of life chances from the federalisation of the state. It increased the importance of Bratislava, which had become the second largest Czechoslovak city as a result of its rapid post-war expansion and was now officially the capital of the Slovak Republic. In addition, much more attention was paid to proportional representation of Slovaks in federal ministries. Many Slovaks moved with their families to Prague to occupy the newly-opened career opportunities, and others commuted weekly. Their presence was often greeted by Czechs with an ambivalence bordering on disdain, and many Slovaks were torn by the decision of whether to move out of Slovakia in order to participate in the upper, Czechoslovak echelons of state and party structures. The situation in earlier Czechoslovak times, where Slovak workers moved to the Czech Lands in order to find employment, and Czech officials travelled east to fill gaps in the Slovak administrative and educational structures, was reversed. Educated Slovaks now travelled west to further their careers, whereas other mobility between the two parts of the country was actually reduced.73 With no-one seemingly having noticed, the Czech and Slovak Republics had become more separate from each other over the decades, and federalisation increased this tendency. Ironically, the nearer the state came to the constitutional aim, expressed in Article 4 of the 1968 constitution, that the economic and social differences between the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic should be eliminated, the less the two parts of the country interacted with each other. This was to play a major role in the political debacle of the early 1990s. An interesting side effect of these factors was that the Communist Party of Slovakia was a somewhat less moribund organisation than the Communist 25


Party of Czechoslovakia. In the 1970s, as citizens withdrew from politics, contented themselves with virtually the highest standard of living in the communist bloc, and started to have more children, the Party in Slovakia did manage to retain or recruit a few dynamic individuals with a vision of the future, while the country as a whole was marked by stagnation. In the Czech Republic, on the other hand, the Party was dominated by an older generation too unimaginative and cautious even to have been tainted by the Prague Spring, and a disillusioned younger generation who regarded a Party card as a distasteful prerequisite for being allowed to get on with whatever profession they had chosen.

Perestroika and the ‘Velvet Revolution’ This was the situation in which Slovakia found itself when Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in March 1985 and the communist world was given the green light for some measure of reform and democratisation. The Russian word perestroika was introduced into the English language because its literal translation – ‘restructuring’ – was a term too bland and devoid of meaning to encapsulate the exciting changes taking place in one of the world’s superpowers. In Slovakia, however, it was dutifully translated literally as prestavba and the communists waited to see what to do next. Gorbachev’s policies posed considerable problems for the Czechoslovak leadership. His reforms bore a marked resemblance to those of the Czechoslovak Spring. Initially inspired by the unmistakable signs of economic decay, as had been the case in Czechoslovakia in the mid-1960s, Gorbachev’s attempts to improve the workings of the communist system soon stalled with the realisation, by 1987, that the economy could not be reformed without political changes. Democratisation – that is, a reallocation of power – was also necessary, but Gorbachev, like Dubcˇek, started off under the illusion that a Communist Party which diversified to represent the pluralist interests in society might be able to rule by consent. Perestroika’s similarity to events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 presented something of a challenge to both the Czechoslovak and Slovak leaderships of the late 1980s because they were almost identical in personnel terms to those installed to ‘normalise’ the country at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1986, all but two of the fourteen members of the presidium of the Czechoslovak Communist Party had been in the party leadership in 1971,74 and likewise, in the presidium of the Slovak Communist Party, only two of eleven members had not been in the leadership in 1971.75 Since most of these men (there was, in fact, also one lone woman in the Slovak presidium) had come to power after putting down the ‘counter-revolution’ of 1968, Gorbachev’s reforms confronted them with an insuperable dilemma. Conceding the legitimacy of the 1968 reform attempts would mean that they had no right to rule (which was, in any case, the perception of most of the Czechoslovak 26


population), and it was hard for them to pursue the Gorbachev direction in any intellectually coherent fashion while hiding the similarities to earlier Czechoslovak efforts. Consequently, official Czechoslovak support for perestroika was muted. It was often said at the time that there was no perestroika in Czechoslovakia, but this was not entirely true. Change was noticeable at several levels. While the communist leadership was extremely reticent about political reforms and emphasised the necessity of paying attention to the ‘lessons’ of 1968, the need to modernise the economy was acknowledged. This was facilitated by some personnel changes, most noticeably the replacement of Gustáv Husák as first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (but not as president) by the Czech Milosˇ Jakesˇ in December 1987. In the following year, the Slovak prime minister and the first secretary of the Communist ‚ Party of Slovakia were replaced. In addition, the dogmatic Vasil Bilak, who had belonged to the group of traitors who had ‘invited’ the Soviet Union to invade in 1968, was ousted from the presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,76 thereby removing from politics the most deeply unpopular Slovak (though many Slovaks were quick to point out that he was actually a Ruthenian). Jakesˇ in no way represented any liberalising tendency in the party – he had been in charge of purging it of 1968 reformers in the early 1970s – but he did introduce tentative economic reforms, particularly by legalising some forms of freelance economic activity. Given that Czechoslovakia had had one of the smallest private sectors in the Soviet bloc, and that the reforms were scarcely radical enough to tempt most moonlighters out of the black economy, this still left the country very far behind its southern neighbour, Hungary, which had already introduced joint ventures with western companies. More significant, however, was the mood in society encouraged by perestroika. Professionals in many walks of life were emboldened to push harder for changes that they had long desired: the compulsory Soviet example needed in order to formally legitimate a good idea was now usually available thanks to the fresh Soviet experiments and the debates widely promulgated through glasnost. Civil society also received a new impetus as the chance of making a difference increased and the dangers of persecution diminished (slightly). Much international attention had been paid to the Charter 77 dissident movement established in 1977, whose signatories were mainly to be found in the Czech cities of Prague or Brno, but activity in Slovakia had a slightly different focus. First, there was a less clear divide between the state on the one hand and dissidents on the other. The greater informality and lower level of paranoia prevailing in official organisations in Slovakia allowed some expression of alternative views: state structures were more easily penetrable than in Prague. This was notable in the area of environmental politics, where 27


many Slovaks had a genuinely strong interest in the preservation of the country’s rural heritage, as well as sharing the Czechs’ concerns about industrial pollution. Since the communist regime was ostensibly a friend of the environment, pursuing such activity allowed citizens implicitly to criticise the regime by drawing attention to its failures without explicitly attacking the regime’s ideological tenets. A regime that controlled every aspect of life was by definition responsible for all its deficiencies too. In autumn 1987 the official environmental protection organisation published a sensationally critical account of the problems of the Slovak capital entitled ‘Bratislava out loud’ (Bratislava nahlas), whose 2,000 copies circulated around the city with amazing speed. While the official reaction was hostile, it was notable that the publication appeared at all.77 Second, throughout 1987 and 1988 a Czechoslovak petition demanding greater religious freedom obtained more than half a million signatures, the majority of which were gathered in the more rural Slovak Republic, which had a higher level of church attendance.78 What was remarkable about the petition was the fact that the least politicised stratum of the Czechoslovak population was simply not afraid to sign it – perhaps because the regime lacked any obvious sanctions against the older, non-professional female village-dwellers who encountered the petition on leaving mass. This protest culminated in March 1988, when the police hamfistedly attacked a large religious demonstration gathered in Bratislava’s Hviezdoslav Square that included many older women bearing candles and singing ‘Ave Maria’.79 It was, however, the attitude of the younger generation which was crucial in bringing down Czechoslovak communism. By the late 1980s, the demoralised generation that had watched their youthful dreams crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968 were middle-aged and had children of their own. The young people had not been battered by bitter experience into believing that resistance was impossible. They were largely western in their cultural orientation, particularly in music. However, in Slovakia a high proportion of young people had been born in villages and moved to the city to go to college or undertake professional training, usually returning home at weekends. They were thus also in the happy position of being able to value the traditions of rural life without suffering its social constrictions. Yet in many ways, the western influence in Slovakia was as strong as in the Czech Lands. Like Hungarians, Slovaks looked to Vienna rather than Moscow for their model. Because Slovak historical resentment from the age of empire was firmly directed towards Hungary, Austria had a more wholly positive image for them than either Austria or Germany did for the Czechs. In the west of Slovakia, they could watch Dallas on Austrian television, and glean whatever their German plus the pictures permitted them from Austrian TV news. The Hungarian minority habitually watched Hungarian television, which was very much more objective than Czechoslovak broadcasts. Large numbers of Slovak families also had relatives living in the west, and took 28


whatever opportunities they could find to travel there. In 1988 restrictions on travel were eased so that anyone with sufficient hard currency could apply for an exit permit to go abroad on holiday. They almost all came back, often struggling home across Slovakia from Prague or Vienna with more boxes and suitcases of consumer goods than they could carry. With the exception of the ‘candle demonstration’ in Bratislava in March 1988, the steady build-up of demonstrations which led to the Velvet Revolution was centred on Prague, with far smaller ones taking place in Bratislava: 21 August 1988 (twentieth anniversary of the invasion); 28 October 1988 (seventieth anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia); 10 December 1988 (fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights); 15 January 1989 (twentieth anniversary of the self-immolation of Jan Palach); and then 21 August and 28 October over again, as well as smaller demonstrations about other religious and ecological issues. The authorities alternately repressed some demonstrations, and were more tolerant of others, but neither strategy stemmed the flow. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the role of young people in the demonstrations, it was the students’ anniversary which brought about the turning point. 17 November was International Students’ Day, and 1989 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazis’ repression of Czech universities. In Bratislava, about 200 students demonstrated on Thursday, 16 November demanding a dialogue about problems in the education system, but they were not confronted by the police.80 The next day, however, a far larger demonstration took place in Prague. Since 17 November was an official event in the communist calendar, this had been organised by the official communist youth organisation and was formally permitted by the authorities. After several hours of a crowd which grew to some 50,000 people demonstrating in Prague, the police trapped a forward group of several thousand as they approached Wenceslas Square, and then, eventually, moved forward and attacked, battoning them down as they attempted to flee along the only escape route opened for them.81 The event was not covered in the official media, so that news filtered through to Bratislava largely via western broadcasts and personal contacts. On 18 November, individual groups of Slovak intellectuals were discussing what was happening and what should be done, and largely by word of mouth, about 500 people met on the evening of 19 November and formed a movement they called ‘Public Against Violence’ (VPN), which became the counterpart of the Civic Forum (OF), established simultaneously in Prague. VPN’s coordinating committee met for the first time the next day. Its most effective means of communicating with OF was by individuals travelling to Prague. Popular protest increased. By Monday 20 November, the Bratislava theatres were all on strike and students were beginning to hold assemblies instead of going to classes, and by the next day activity had spread all over Slovakia: Wednesday’s newspapers reported demonstrations in Kosˇice, 29


Banská Bystrica, Zˇ ilina, Zvolen, Trnava and Martin.82 Wednesday also saw the trial of the catholic dissident, Ján Cˇ arnogurský, which attracted a crowd of protesters demanding his freedom outside the courtroom. Daily rallies began on SNP (Slovak National Uprising) Square in Bratislava, and Alexander Dubcˇek appeared before the crowd, as VPN demanded access to press and television. Full television coverage of the events was particularly important because the demonstrations were concentrated very much in the cities and the supply of the more liberal newspapers to the countryside was unreliable. There was also a need to spread the movement for change out to ordinary working people, rather than relying heavily on students and the intelligentsia. Events moved quickly. A week after the 17 November demonstration, Dubcˇek appeared in Prague alongside Vacláv Havel, the dissident Czech playwright and Civic Forum leader, and late that night, the entire presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia resigned. Jakesˇ was replaced by the unknown Karel Urbánek. On Saturday, in freezing weather, between half a million and a million people met in Letná, Prague, the largest open space in the city they could think of after the crowds had clearly outgrown Wenceslas Square, while some 70,000 people assembled in Bratislava. Havel announced that Ladislav Adamec, the Czechoslovak prime minister, had met a delegation from OF, and that President Husák had stopped the prosecution of Cˇ arnogurský and a number of other dissidents. Ten days after 17 November, a 2-hour general strike gained wide support across the country, symbolising that the working class and intellectuals were pulling together for the first time since the communist takeover. The Czechoslovak communist regime was thereby effectively defeated. From then on, the regime collapsed more quickly than any other in the communist world. When the Czechoslovak government next met the citizens’ movements the day after the strike, it was talking not only to Havel (last released from jail in May 1989), but also to the VPN representative Cˇ arnogurský, who had been released the previous Saturday. In Bratislava, VPN began negotiating with the Slovak government, and one of its first demands – the removal of Article 4 of the constitution, guaranteeing the lead role of the Communist Party – was almost immediately conceded by the Federal Assembly in Prague on 29 November. Wholesale changing of personnel began thereafter. On 30 November, the communist chair of the Slovak National Council was replaced by another, but more reform-minded, communist, the chair of the East Slovakian Regional People’s Committee (parliament) Rudolf Schuster. Ten years later, Schuster was to become the first directly elected president of the Slovak Republic. Husák named a new federal government on 3 December, but it was unacceptable to OF and VPN because it was still communist-dominated, and on 7 December, another government was formed under the previous deputy prime minister, Marián Cˇ alfa, who was ethnically Slovak, but a ‘federal 30


Slovak’ who lived in Prague. On 10 December, Husák formally appointed Cˇ alfa’s ‘Government of National Understanding’, which comprised 10 communists and 11 non-communists, and then resigned. Cˇ arnogurský continued his rapid ascent from the prison cell by becoming deputy prime minister of Czechoslovakia. On 8 December, the Slovak government was replaced, and the communist Minister of Justice, Milan Cˇ icˇ (later to become a highly respected chair of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic), became prime minister. His government, appointed on 12 December, comprised 6 communists and 9 non-communists. The year was rounded off by the election of Dubcˇek as chair of the Federal Assembly on 28 December, and the election of Havel as president by a unanimous vote in parliament. The changes in the political leadership were also matched by changes in workplaces throughout the country. Throughout December and January, groups of individuals with varying amounts of support and ability and a wide range of motives set up their own ‘Public Against Violence’ organisations, and in sometimes chaotic meetings, employees elected themselves new directors. The management of everyday life continued more smoothly than one might have expected in the circumstances. Communism had taught people to identify quickly who was now in charge and what the new party line was, and many communists and non-communists merely absorbed the fact that VPN were now in charge and carried on as previously. The major economic changes would only come later. In other respects, however, life changed markedly. On Saturday 9 December, an estimated 100,000 Czechoslovak tourists went to Vienna – for Bratislavans, an echo of the fondly-remembered days of the First Republic. The next day, there was a symbolic march through the ‘Iron Curtain’ from Devín to Hainburg, the first small Austrian town over the border. Devín, a castle at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers just outside Bratislava which had links to Sˇ túr and the Slovak National Awakening, was a favourite tourist haunt, spoilt only by barbed wire and soldiers on its river side deterring anyone who might think of joining the Austrian fisherman sitting peacefully on the far bank, just outside Hainburg. On 10 December 1989, more than 100,000 Slovaks finally went to look at the castle from the other side. The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia took just six weeks from the 17 November demonstration in Prague to the appointment of Havel as president. The speed of the collapse was not entirely suprising. Czechoslovakia had a very well-educated population with relatively good access to information from the west plus a communist leadership with virtually no legitimacy at all because it had risen to power in the wake of foreign invasion. The regime imploded because in the late 1980s it was unwilling to negotiate with society, and incapable of doing so when finally forced to at the end of 1989. The revolution was ‘velvet’ not only because the communists gave up power so easily, but also because Czechoslovakia was the only communist federation where the citizens of the constituent republics moved in tandem to 31


remove the regime. Civic Forum and Public Against Violence were formed simultaneously, in response to the same events, and the same deeper political, economic and social problems. They had compatible demands, and similar visions of the future. In the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, federations were pulled apart because new elites with widely differing aspirations in the various republics used different causes to mobilise their populations against communism. That Czechoslovak democracy, after such a promising beginning, should then prove unable to preserve the common state of Czechs and Slovaks therefore came as a shock to many, both at home and abroad.

The division of Czechoslovakia There are many explanations for the division of Czechoslovakia that finally took place three years after the Velvet Revolution. There has been a tendency to blame ‘Slovak nationalism’, since – as in the interwar period and in 1968 – the Slovaks appeared to interfere with the Czechs’ agenda of furthering democracy and economic reform by making strident demands for autonomy and a furthering of their national identity. However, it may also be argued that the Slovaks actually showed a greater understanding than the Czechs of the fact that they lived in a Czechoslovak state comprising two separate nations. They took it for granted that they were different from the Czechs, and did not regard this as inherently problematic, but rather as a fact that had to be respected in the governing of the country. The Czechs, on the other hand, often showed discomfort when dealing with Slovak otherness. Being the larger nation, it was easier for them to conflate Czechoslovak and Czech identity, while for Slovaks it was clear that these were different concepts.83 The failure of post-1989 Czechoslovakia was its inability to organise adequate Slovak participation in political decision-making at the federal level in Prague under the new conditions of democracy. The problems started as early as December 1989. It was assumed that in the new Czechoslovak democracy, the president and the prime minister should be of different nationalities. President Husák – a Slovak – clearly had to go because he was hopelessly tainted by the normalisation period, and some people’s thoughts therefore turned to Dubcˇek becoming president, which would have granted the more ceremonial office to the Slovaks. However, in Prague a ‘Havel to the Castle’ campaign had already begun to support the former dissident becoming president. Since this required the country to have a Slovak prime minister, the Czech OF looked around and chose the Slovak communist, Cˇ alfa, as federal prime minister. That Cˇ alfa was a communist (he in fact left the party in January 1990) was less problematic than the fact that he had lived in Prague and worked in the federal government for most of his career, and tended to speak Czech. In terms of the vital democratic function of interest articulation and representation, therefore, Cˇ alfa was not a Slovak. (Indeed, 32


after the division of Czechoslovakia, he remained in Prague and became a Czech citizen.) In the chaotic days of late 1989, this distinction was overlooked. In essence, the representation of Slovaks was being viewed in a purely formal sense, in rather the same way that women and collective farmers had been given seats in the communist parliaments which rubberstamped the Communist Party’s decisions. Ironically, the structure of the citizens’ movements risked resembling that of the Communist Party, which had been the wielder of real power in communist Czechoslovakia. OF, being Prague-based, was the counterpart of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, taking decisions for the entire country, while VPN, like the Communist Party of Slovakia, had its jurisdiction largely restricted to Slovakia, with the exception of the voice of Slovaks who happened to be in Prague. This was absolutely not the intention; but given that there were only half as many Slovaks as Czechs anyway, the fact that they also lived much further away from the federal capital could not help but to reduce their influence even further. A further unfortunate communist legacy, which was not recognised as such at the time, was, indeed, the fact that – as in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia – the largest city of the largest republic was used as the federal capital, thereby tending to centralise power in a communist fashion rather than dispersing it as in most democratic federations. The Czech elites in Prague had very much easier access to the federal government and the president than the Slovak elite: the Czech parliament building was literally just below the president’s castle. For Czechs, the Czech National Council was merely a less important counterpart to the Federal Assembly. For Slovaks, the Slovak National Council was something both geographically and qualitatively different from the Federal Assembly. That the Czechs never seriously considered moving the federal capital to Brno (Czechoslovakia’s third largest city, which was perfectly located on the main railway and motorway route from Bratislava to Prague) suggests that they had little empathy with Slovaks and the amount they were forced to travel. Another communist inheritance not helpful to democratic consensusbuilding was the actual voting procedure in the bicameral Federal Assembly, which demanded an unusually high level of consensus. This had been established by the 1968 constitution, but had been irrelevant in the days when parliaments accepted the proposals of the Communist Party with little dissent. The problem of a constitution that demanded the kind of unanimity that only existed in a communist fantasy world84 soon became evident when the first real dispute hit post-communist Czechoslovak democracy. In his initial speech to parliament on 23 January 1990, President Havel proposed changing the name of the state from Czechoslovak Socialist Republic to Czechoslovak Republic. This provoked a Slovak counter-proposal that Czecho-Slovak should be hyphenated so that the outside world knew that the country contained two nations, and not just one nation with a long name 33


that could be abbreviated to ‘Czech’. After much debate and negotiation about history and grammar, which was labelled the ‘hyphen war’, a proposal that the country be renamed the ‘Czechoslovak Federal Republic’ was voted on in the Federal Assembly. It passed in the ‘Chamber of the People’, where two-thirds of the deputies were Czech, in proportion to the population, and over 78 per cent of the deputies who voted in the ‘Chamber of the Nations’ (where 50 per cent of deputies were Slovak) were in favour of the name. However, in this second chamber, the proposal had not technically been passed.85 This was because the constitution required that a three-fifths majority of all Slovak deputies in the Chamber of the Nations, including those who abstained or were absent, should vote in favour. In other words, for anything to pass, there had to be almost no opposition in parliament at all. In the end, agreement was reached on the name ‘Czech and Slovak Federal Republic’. Unfortunately, the parliament of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic never managed to agree on passing a new constitution, even after the first democratic elections of June 1990. These were something of a triumph for democracy in that they were marked by an extraordinary 96 per cent turnout.86 The citizens’ movements became the largest party in each part of the Republic, and their representatives took the posts of Federal prime minister, Slovak prime minister and Czech prime minister, while also forming fairly broad coalition governments. However, the unity of political purpose then began to unravel on several different levels. First, the thorny question of which competencies should belong to the Slovak and Czech National Councils and which to the Federal Assembly was never satisfactorily renegotiated. Second, differences in Czech and Slovak attitudes towards economic policy became acute as the very beginnings of economic transformation led to unemployment in Slovakia rising to 12 per cent while remaining minimal in the Czech Republic. Third, the broad citizens’ movements split in both republics as differing attitudes to specific policy issues emerged. A crucial turning point in Slovak politics was spring 1991, when the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) split from away from Public Against Violence, taking with it most of the citizens’ movement’s public support, but only a minority of its parliamentary deputies. The key figure in the argument – and in Slovak politics as a whole for at least the next decade – was the Slovak prime minister, Vladimír Mecˇiar, who became chair of HZDS. A lawyer who had been interior minister in the first post-1989 Slovak government, Mecˇiar had been chosen by VPN as prime minister after the June 1990 elections. He was always something of an unknown quantity to the Bratislava elites, having worked for a provincial factory after studying law at night school, but he was an impressive and highly intelligent man with a photographic memory. The most gifted of all Slovak politicians, by spring 1991 he had tapped into the undercurrents of popular unease about the 34


indifference of Prague politicians to the consequences of economic policy in Slovakia, and the failure of the Czechs to recognise that the Slovaks might have valid reasons for emphasising their otherness. Yet for VPN, he was becoming dangerously unaccountable, with suspicious links to the Soviet Union, a hazy past and a question mark over his handling of secret police files while interior minister.87 They therefore removed him from the premiership in April 1991, replacing him with the leader of what was, after the split in VPN, the largest of the coalition parties – the Christian Democratic Movement of the erstwhile Catholic dissident Cˇ arnogurský. This was a dangerous move in a democracy, since opinion polls showed that Mecˇiar was by far the most popular politician in the country.88 The second free elections in Czechoslovakia took place in June 1992. They had always been scheduled to take place only two years after the previous elections, on the (unfortunately incorrect) assumption that by then new constitutions would have been passed for both the federation and its constituent republics. Mecˇiar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia nearly gained an outright majority of Slovak deputies, while the party of the centre-right economic reformer Václav Klaus, one of the successors of Civic Forum, became the largest party in the Czech Republic. Mecˇiar and Klaus entered negotiations on a future federal government but ended up deciding to divide the state instead. It was an agreement between political elites that was not, initially, supported by the public in either part of the country.89 Mecˇiar had been aiming for the establishment of some sort of confederation, but since Klaus was determined only to support a ‘functional federation’ which could proceed smoothly towards the economic reform he considered the paramount priority, they agreed on what was, for both, the second choice – independence. Over the course of the autumn, the laws technically necessary to divide the state were passed by a reluctant Federal Assembly that was voting for its own extinction, and two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia were accepted by the international community at the beginning of 1993.90 Such a drastic solution to Czechoslovakia’s problems could scarcely have been adopted with such alacrity in a consolidated democracy. Public opinion would have been more skilled in mobilising itself in opposition. Politicians, too, would have taken more time to negotiate a solution to their differences. However, a post-communist society is faced by an exceptionally great need to pass a multitude of vital legislation with great speed, and the slow and dysfunctional structures inherited from the old communist constitution simply did not permit this. Slovak reaction to the relatively speedy and unexpected attainment of their own Slovak state was muted rather than euphoric, yet within a few years, it was a development that few would have considered reversing. Although riven by internal political disputes throughout the 1990s as they finally had to sort out their own problems with no-one else to blame – neither 35


Budapest, nor Prague, nor Moscow – the Slovaks proved reasonably well able to run their own state and negotiate integration into European structures. In the end, it could be argued that Czechoslovakia ended because it was no longer necessary. The Slovaks entered the Czechoslovak period as a small nation on the verge of assimilation by a larger and undemocratic neighbour. They emerged from communism seventy years later into a much friendlier world where international structures such as the EU and NATO were looked to for protection against hostile forces. Since neither the Czechs nor the Czechoslovak army had ever defended Slovakia against their big neighbours – the Germans in 1938–9, and the Russians in 1948 and 1968 – the alliance with the Czechs had been most instrumental as a political defence against Magyarisation. This was scarcely necessary in the democratic environment of the late twentieth century. Having to reach the outside world via Prague only distanced Slovaks from outside contact, while at the same time rendering their country invisible.

Notes 1 In 1910, Hungarians and Germans each made up over 40 per cent of Bratislava’s population, with only some 15 per cent being Slovak. Even by 1921, just under 40 per cent of the population was Slovak or Czech. Owen V. Johnson, Slovakia 1918– 1938: Education and the Making of a Nation. Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, p. 24. 2 Alexander Avenarius, ‘Epilogue: the basic problems of Slovak history and historiography’, in Elena Mannová (ed.), A Concise History of Slovakia, Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2000, pp. 307–14. 3 Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995. 4 Elena Mannová and Roman Holec, ‘On the road to modernization 1848–1918’, in Mannová, A Concise History, p. 224; Johnson, Slovakia 1918–1938, p. 34. ‚ 5 Lubomír Lipták, Slovensko v 20. storocˇ í, Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000, p. 19; Mannová and Holec, ‘On the road to modernization’, p. 191. 6 Lipták, Slovensko v 20 storocˇ í, p. 19; Johnson, Slovakia 1918–1938, p. 25; Mannová and Holec, ‘On the road to modernization’, p. 189. 7 R.W. Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, Prague: Fr. Borový, 1924, p. 38. ‚ 8 Lubomír Lipták (ed.), Politické strany na Slovensku 1860–1989, Bratislava: Archa, 1992; Victor S. Mamatey, ‘The establishment of the republic’, in Victor S. Mamatey and Radomír Luzˇ a, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–1948, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973, pp. 8–9. 9 Lipták, Politické strany na Slovensku, pp. 16–18; Jozef Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1955, p. 38; Lipták, Slovensko v 20 storocˇ í, p. 25. 10 For a more sceptical view on this, see Lipták, Slovensko v 20 storocˇ í, p. 23; Johnson, Slovakia 1918–1938, p. 46. 11 Dusˇan Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 1998, pp. 162–3. 12 Prohlásˇení nezávislosti cˇ eskoslovenského národa zatímní vládou cˇ eskoslovenskou, Prague: Patriae, 1998, p. 10.

36


13 Jan Rychlík, Cˇ esi a Slováci ve 20. století: Cˇ esko-slovenské vztahy 1914–1945, Bratislava: Academic Electronic Press Bratislava/Ústav T.G. Masaryka Praha, 1997, pp. 57–9. 14 Ibid., pp. 46–7; Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, pp. 176–7. 15 Ibid., pp. 181–4. 16 Ibid., pp. 184–5. 17 Vacláv L. Benesˇ, ‘Czechoslovak democracy and its problems’, in Mamatey and Luzˇ a, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, p. 40. There was also, of course, a substantial Roma minority in Slovakia, but this remained both statistically and politically invisible until the 1990s. 18 Joseph A. Mikusˇ, Slovakia: A Political and Constitutional History, Bratislava: Academic Press/Slovak Academic Press, 1995, p. 170. 19 Oskar Krejcˇí, Kniha o volbách, Prague: Victoria Publishing, 1994, pp. 134–41. 20 Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, pp. 57–8. 21 Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, pp. 99–100. 22 Carol Skalnik Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of a State, 1918–1987, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 21. 23 Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, pp. 32–50. 24 Federální statistický úrˇad, Historická statistická rocˇ enka, Prague: SNTL/ALFA, 1985, p. 869. 25 Lipták, Slovensko v 20. storocˇ í, p. 17; Mannová and Holec, ‘On the road to modernization’, p. 223. 26 Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia, p. 15. 27 Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, pp. 13–16; Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, pp. 39–40. 28 Johnson, Slovakia 1918–1938, p. 241. 29 Ibid.; Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, p. 51. 30 Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia, p. 50 ff.; see also Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974, pp. 73–135, and Eva Broklová, Cˇ eskoslovenská demokracie: Politický systém Cˇ SR 1918–1938, Prague: SLON, 1992. 31 Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia, p. 71. 32 Ibid., p. 189. 33 Ibid., p. 191–3. 34 Dusˇan Kovácˇ, Slováci – Cˇ esi – Dejiny, Bratislava: AEP, 1997, pp. 116–17; Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia, p. 63. 35 Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1914–1945, p. 122–3; James R. Felak, ‘At the Price of the Republic’: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, 1929–38, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994. 36 Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, p. 200. 37 Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1914–1945, pp. 133–4. 38 Ibid., p. 137. 39 Dorothea H. El Mallakh, The Slovak Autonomy Movement, 1935–1939: A Study in Unrelenting Nationalism, Boulder, Colorado: East European Quarterly, 1979, p. 121. 40 Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, p. 181. 41 Kovácˇ, Cˇ esi – Slováci – Dejiny, p. 75; Dejiny Slovenska, p. 212. 42 Ibid., p. 216. 43 Ivan Kamenec, Slovenský stát, Prague: Anomal, 1992, pp. 5–6. 44 Zora Bútorová and Martin Bútora (eds), Slovensko rok po: Cesty a krizˇ ovatky nového sˇtátu ocˇ ima jeho obyvatel’ov, Prague: SLON, 1994, pp. 17–19; Názory, vol. 2, no. 3, 1991, pp. 41–2.

37


45 One of the most rosy, nationalist accounts of the period is given by Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia. 46 Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, p. 229; for a controversially apologetic view of Tiso’s ˇ urica, Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov, Bratislava: role in the Holocaust see Milan S. ‚D Slovenské pedagogické nakladatelstvo, 1996. 47 For the fullest English language account, see Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, The Parish Republic: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party 1939–1945, Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. 48 Karen Buerkle, ‘The history of civic associations in Slovakia’, in Michal Vasˇecˇka and Karen Buerkle (eds), Civil Society in Slovakia: Past, Present, and Prospects for Future Development, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2002 forthcoming. 49 Kamenec, Slovenský stát, pp. 77–9. 50 Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, The Lust for Power: Nationalism, Slovakia, and the Communists 1918–1948, Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1983, pp. 61–77; Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, pp. 231–44. 51 Some two million Germans were transferred during 1946, including about 120,000 from Slovakia, while the total decrease in the number of Germans in Czechoslovakia during the war and immediate post-war period was about three million. Jaroslav Krejcˇí and Pavel Machonin, Czechoslovakia 1918–92: A Laboratory for Change, Macmillan: Basingstoke, 1996, pp. 31–3. 52 Sˇ tefan Sˇ utaj, Mad’arská mensˇina na Slovensku v rokoch 1945–1948, Bratislava: VEDA, 1993; Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, p. 247. 53 Federální statistický úrˇad, Historická statistická rocˇ enka, p. 62. 54 Brad Abrams, ‘The politics of retribution: the trial of Jozef Tiso’, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 10, no. 2, 1996, pp. 255–92. 55 Jozef Jablonický, ‘Kriminalizovanie Demokratickej strany – prípad Obuch a spol.’, Quo vadis, Slovensko, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996, pp. 65–71. 56 Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, pp. 254–67; Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia, pp. 98–100. 57 Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, pp. 262–4. 58 Jan Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století: Cˇ esko-slovenské vztahy 1945–1992, Bratislava: Academic Electronic Press Bratislava/Ústav T.G. Masaryka Praha, 1998, pp. 146–69. 59 Mikusˇ, Slovakia, pp. 255, 294. 60 Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1945–1992, p. 180. 61 Vladimir V. Kusin, Political Grouping in the Czechoslovak Reform Movement, London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1972, pp. 66–70. 62 Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, pp. 283–4; Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1945– 1992, pp. 213–4. 63 H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 79–80. 64 Kieran Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 63–4. 65 William Shawcross, Dubcˇ ek: Dubcˇ ek and Czechoslovakia 1918–1990, London: Hogarth Press, 1990. 66 For English translation, see The Action Programme of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Spokesman Pamphlets No. 8, 1970. 67 In one poll taken in July 1968, 100 per cent of respondents said they had confidence in Dubcˇek. Generally, Slovaks were slightly more enthusiastic about Dubcˇek than Czechs, and support of the leadership solidified after the invasion. See Jaroslaw A. Piekalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling in Czechoslovakia, 1968–69:

38


68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81

82 83

84 85 86

Results and Analysis of Surveys Conducted During the Dubcˇ ek Era, New York, Washington, London: Praeger Publishers, 1972, chapter 9. For details, see Zdeneˇ k Mlynárˇ, Night Frost in Prague, London: C. Hurst, 1980. For the normalisation period, see Milan Simecka, The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia, London: Verso, 1984. Mikusˇ, Slovakia, p. 313. G. Wightman and A.H. Brown, ‘Changes in the levels of membership and social composition of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 1945–73’, Soviet Studies, vol. 27, no. 3, 1975, pp. 396–417. Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1945–1992, p. 281; Williams, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath, pp. 232–4. Detailed figures are in Jirˇí Manˇak, Cˇ istky v Komunistické straneˇ Cˇ eskoslovenska 1969–1970, Prague: Ústav pro soudobé deˇ jiny AV Cˇ R, 1997. Leff, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia, pp. 282–97; Karen Henderson, ‘Czechoslovakia: The Velvet Divorce’, in Don MacIver, The Politics of Multinational States, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999, pp. 125–6. The two were Josef Haman and Vladimír Herman; of the others, Milosˇ Jakesˇ had been chair of the Central Control and Revision Committee in 1971, and Jan Fojtík a Central Committee secretary. The two were Pavel Hrivnak and Ignác Janák; Miloslav Hrusˇkovicˇ had been a candidate member of the Czechoslovak presidium in 1971. Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století 1945–1992, pp. 298–9. Juraj Marusˇiak, ‘Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku v rokoch normalizácie’, in Jan Pesˇek and Sonˇa Szomolányi (eds), November 1989 na Slovensku: Súvislosti, predpoklady a dôsledky, Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Sˇ imecˇku, 1999, pp. 54–75. The text of the petition can be found in Jozef Zˇ atkuliak (ed.), 1989 November a Slovensko: chronológia a dokumenty (1985–1990) Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Sˇ imecˇku, 1999, pp. 185–7. Sabrina Petra Ramet, ‘The Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia 1948–1991’, Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. 24, no. 4, 1991, pp. 377–93. The fullest descriptions of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Bratislava, used here and below, come from a discussion between key actors, which can be found in Ingrid Antalová (ed.), Verejnost’ proti násiliu 1989–1991, Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Sˇ imecˇku, 1998 and in Ingrid Antalová (ed.), Verejnost’ proti násiliu: Fórum, Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Sˇ imecˇku, 1999. For details of events in Prague, see Bernard Wheaton and Zdeneˇ k Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988–1991, Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview, 1992; Jirˇí Suk, Obcˇ anské fórum Listopad-Prosinec 1989: 1. díl – události, Prague: Doplneˇ k, 1997; Jirˇí Vsˇetecˇka et al., Jirˇí Dolezˇ al, Cˇ eskoslovensko: Rok na námeˇ stích 1989, Prague: Academia, 1990. Smena, 22 November 1989. A 1991 survey discovered that 71 per cent of Czechs, but only 26 per cent of Slovaks, thought of themselves as ‘Czechoslovak’, as well as being ‘Czech’ or ‘Slovak’. AISA, Czechs and Slovaks Compared: A Survey of Economic and Political Behaviour, Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, Studies in Public Policy No. 198, 1992, p. 30. Karen Henderson, ‘Czechoslovakia: the failure of consensus politics and the break-up of the Federation’, Regional and Federal Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 1995, pp. 111–33. Milan Sˇ utovec, Semióza ako politikum alebo ‘pomlcˇ ková vojna’, Bratislava: Kalligram, 1999. Gordon Wightman, ‘The collapse of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia and the

39


87 88

89 90

June 1990 parliamentary elections’, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 44, no. 1, 1991, pp. 94–113. Marián Lesˇko, Mecˇ iar a mecˇ iarizmus, Bratislava: VMV, 1996, gives several competing accounts of many crucial issues concerning Mecˇiar’s past. Trust in Mecˇiar peaked in early April 1991, when a survey by the Slovak Statistical Office’s Institute for Research of Public Opinion showed that he was trusted by 82.3 per cent of Slovaks (Názory, vol. 2, no. 4, 1991, p. 31). In May 1991, the Czechoslovak Statistical Office’s Institute for Research of Public Opinion found that 82 per cent of Slovaks (but only 33 per cent of Czechs) disagreed with Mecˇiar’s removal from the Slovak premiership (Informace z výzkumu 91–113, 30 May 1991). For a summary of public opinion poll findings, see Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘The politics of ethnicity in post-Communist Czechoslovakia’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1994, pp. 153–88. For a full account of the division of Czechoslovakia, see Abby Innes, Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001.

40

2 SLOVAK POLITICS IN AN INDEPENDENT STATE

Slovakia really became visible to the outside world for the first time when it became an independent state on 1 January 1993. Yet the image it presented was very mixed. An examination of Slovak politics presents some of the many paradoxes in the life of the country. On the surface, the 1990s were marked by extreme turbulence, dangerous polarisation of the political community and damning international criticism which led to Slovakia’s exclusion from the first round of European integration because it failed to fulfil the ‘democratic criteria’ set by NATO and the European Union. However, although the EU refused to start detailed accession negotiations because of the ‘instability of the country’s institutions’,1 Slovakia’s political system was in many senses remarkably stable. This is surprising, given that it was put under considerable strain by the third Mecˇiar government 1994–8. When the Slovak Republic became an independent state in January 1993, it had a rather hastily drafted constitution that was later subject to a great deal of criticism and substantial amendment. Yet it actually served the new state rather well, and helped democracy to survive the tense early years of the new republic. Voting behaviour and the party system also demonstrated gradual change rather than rapid and unpredictable swings, and civil society strengthened slowly but surely. Even the issue of national minorities, which had been a major focus of international criticism, receded somewhat in the late 1990s. What this suggests is that Slovakia probably did not have a fundamental problem with its ‘political culture’, contrary to what was sometimes supposed during the early years of independence. The division of Czechoslovakia produced the impression that the Czechs and Slovaks must be very different, and there were fears that without the influence of the Czechs, the Slovaks would gradually drift eastwards. This appeared to have become fact when both NATO and the EU separated Slovakia from the other three Visegrad states, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, in 1997. However, by the end of the century the worst traumas of the ‘state-building’ process seemed to have been overcome, and Slovakia’s basic similarity to the other Visegrad states was reasserting itself. 41

P O L I T I C S I N A N I N D E P E N D E N T S TAT E

In order to present the main characteristics of the Slovak political system, three main areas will be examined: political institutions in Slovakia; elections and the party system; and the situation of minorities. However, so that these can be presented comprehensibly against the dynamic backdrop of the contentious political events in the period, this chapter will begin with a chronological overview of the main events in the first decade of the independent state’s existence.

Slovak politics after 1992: an overview The second Mecˇiar government (1992–1994) The Slovak National Council passed the constitution of the Slovak Republic on 1 September 1992, less than three month’s after Vladimír Mecˇiar’s election victory. Renamed the National Council of the Slovak Republic, it remained the country’s parliament after independence, while the deputies of the now defunct Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia, which had been elected at the same time in June 1992, became redundant. At the beginning of the parliament’s term, the Slovak prime minister Mecˇiar and his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) were two seats short of an overall majority, and relied on the support of the Slovak National Party (SNS), which also had one minister in the government, although it was not formally a coalition partner. SNS, as its name implies, was politically on the nationalist right, and had been the only parliamentary party that had actually included Slovak independence in its party programme. The Mecˇiar government suffered from three main problems throughout the first year of independence. First, the removal of arguments with the Czechs as a political focus and mobilising force for HZDS and SNS meant that the internal divisions within the parties on issues such as economics and democratic development were highlighted. Second, Mecˇiar had to avoid a parliamentary stalemate which would lead to new parliamentary elections being called in the new state because his movement’s popularity was declining in the opinion polls, partly as a result of economic difficulties, and sank as low as 15 per cent in May 1993,2 compared with 37 per cent in the June 1992 elections. Third, HZDS was already affected by a problem which became chronic as the decade progressed: it was unable to cooperate and compromise with other political forces, and alienated possible political partners by a permanent striving to concentrate power within its control. The Slovak political spectrum began to realign as soon as the Czechoslovak question ceased to top the agenda at the beginning of 1993. In March, ‚ the economics minister, SNS chair Ludovit Cˇ ernák, resigned from the government, and the HZDS foreign minister, Milan Knˇazˇ ko, was dismissed by Mecˇiar and also left his party,3 together with seven other deputies. Mecˇiar 42


now led what was quite clearly a minority government, reliant on the tacit support of SNS and the post-communist Party of the Democratic Left ‚ (SDL). In October, HZDS finally formed a coalition with SNS, and two SNS ministers joined the government in November. It was clear, however, that part of SNS, including Cˇ ernák, had been hostile to the arrangement. The first Slovak president, Michal Kovácˇ, was elected by parliament in February 1993. Kovácˇ was a deputy chair of HZDS, and had been speaker of the last Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. He was not, however, Mecˇiar’s favoured candidate for the presidential post: his first choice, Roman Kovácˇ (no relation – Kovácˇ is Slovak for Smith), had been unable to gain the necessary three-fifths majority of deputies in the first round of presidential elections in January. Michal Kovácˇ was considered to be more independent of Mecˇiar, and gained the support of 106 of the 150 deputies, having promised to relinquish his HZDS membership on election as president. His independence of mind increasingly manifested itself during the year, and in October 1993, he alienated Mecˇiar totally by vetoing the prime minister’s nomination for the post of privatisation minister, Ivan Lexa.4 In the first three months of 1994, the political problems that had beset Mecˇiar’s government in 1993 reached crisis point. Both member parties of the government coalition, HZDS and SNS, split internally when a number of influential deputies formed separate ‘platforms’ within the party. In February, the SNS chair Cˇ ernák was replaced by the more extreme nationalist Ján Slota, whereupon the former left SNS together with five other deputies and formed the National Democratic Party. In the same month, HZDS foreign minister Jozef Moravcˇík and vice-premier Roman Kovácˇ (once Mecˇiar’s favoured candidate for the presidency), departed from HZDS together with a further six deputies. As a consequence, Mecˇiar once again presided over a minority government. For much of February, parliament was in deadlock. Mecˇiar now favoured early elections in June, a move which could only be undertaken with the three-fifths parliamentary majority that Mecˇiar had never had. He also wanted to call a referendum supporting the removal from parliament of deputies who changed party. The opposition – the Christian Democratic ‚ Movement (KDH), the post-communist SDL and the two Hungarian parties in parliament – opposed June elections, but were indecisive about finally bringing down Mecˇiar’s government. Having once already, in spring 1991, risked removing Mecˇiar without the majority support of public opinion, they were reluctant to repeat the mistake. The deadlock was finally broken on 9 March 1994, when the rebellious President Kovácˇ delivered a highly critical ‘state of the nation’ speech in parliament,5 following which a KDH deputy proposed a vote of noconfidence in the prime minister, and Mecˇiar resigned. He had hence been ousted as prime minister mid-term for the second time.

43


The Moravcˇ ík government (1994) The government formed in March 1994 was designed from the outset to be an interim one, since parliament had agreed on the holding of early elections ‚ at the end of September. It was a broad left–right coalition containing SDL on the left, KDH on the right, and the three sets of HZDS and SNS defectors (under Knˇazˇ ko, Moravcˇík and Cˇ ernák) as the centre. It was also, again, a minority government, and was reliant in parliament on the tacit support of the Hungarian parties. Moravcˇík became prime minister, and for the next six months, Slovakia’s by now rather shaky international reputation began to recover. The style of governing became more open, and a second wave of voucher privatisation was prepared over the summer. The Moravcˇík government was, however, short-lived. Some intricate coalition-building among new and old parties failed to produce any political force to match the strength of HZDS in the election held at the end of September. Mecˇiar therefore again emerged from the election as chair of by far the largest party, with 35 per cent of the vote and 41 per cent of the seats in parliament.6 The third Mecˇ iar government (1994–1998) It took Mecˇiar more than two months to form a new government at the end ‚ of 1994. Rejected by his favoured coalition partner, SDL, he ended up in early December forming a government that was a mirror image of the previous left–right coalition. It was another left–right coalition, but this time on the nationalist side of the political spectrum. SNS on the right and the rather maverick far-left Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) were often to prove embarrassing partners over the next four years for the allegedly centrist HZDS. The alliance of the three parties7 began on the infamous night of 3–4 November 1994, after the new parliament had met for the first time on 3 November. At a second sitting boycotted by the remaining parties, the three future government parties began a process of concentrating power in both parliamentary and state organs which was to mar the whole of the parliament’s term of office. A first démarche – a form of diplomatic warning – from the European Union (see Chapter 3) followed shortly afterwards. What is perhaps worthy of note is that the third Mecˇiar government, which did so much to create a negative image of Slovakia abroad, comprised three parties which had together obtained the support of less than 48 per cent of Slovak voters. Although it started out with a parliamentary majority of 83 of the 150 deputies, it lacked the crucial three-fifths majority of deputies necessary to change the constitution. Futhermore, Mecˇiar’s personal power throughout his third term of office was constrained both by the rebellion of his two smaller coalition partners at a few crucial moments, and by a constitutional structure and political culture able to preserve political pluralism even in a democracy which increasingly appeared less than perfect.

44


Events in Slovakia in 1995 furthered emphasised the conflictual nature of Slovak politics, and gave the international community alarming signals in three areas. Politically, the most spectacular incident of the year was the abduction of President Kovácˇ’s son, Michal Kovácˇ Junior, on 31 August. He was stopped in his car in broad daylight just outside the village near Bratislava where he lived, knocked out with a mixture of electric shocks and alcohol, and then found – after an anonymous phone call to the Austrian police – lying in the back of his car outside the police station in Hainburg, the first Austrian town over the Slovak border from Bratislava. The incident was clearly designed to embarrass President Kovácˇ, since the German branch of Interpol wanted to question Kovácˇ Jr in relation to an extremely complex fraud case. This led to the abduction victim’s being held by the Austrians for nearly 6 months before being returned to Slovakia. The conduct of the Slovak police enquiry into the abduction soon led to grave suspicions of government and secret service (SIS) complicity in the abduction.8 The incident must be viewed in the light of other political attacks on the president from the third Mecˇiar government, including a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in May, and a demand by the government in September that he resign, as well as a reduction in the budget of the president’s office.9 However, the president remained resolute throughout, demonstrating a certain solidity of Slovakia’s political institutions: a government determined to remove the president proved both constitutionally and practically unable to achieve this goal. In foreign policy, the Mecˇiar government’s stance was rather schizophrenic. Its programme, presented in January 1995, heavily emphasised European integration at a declaratory level.10 A Basic Treaty with Hungary was agreed in March 1995, which could have helped smooth the country’s path to NATO membership by removing the major dispute Slovakia had with a neighbouring country.11 However, other actions indicated rather different priorities. There was a lengthy delay in ratifying the Basic Treaty because of SNS objections, and by October 1995, the European Union was so alarmed by domestic political developments that it issued a second démarche, most particularly as a reaction to the political attacks on the president. On the economic front, the second wave of voucher privatisation commenced by the Moravcˇik government in summer 1994 was cancelled in June 1995, and citizens were given government bonds in place of their alreadypurchased vouchers. Privatisation by direct sale – frequently to those with close government links – became a characteristic of government policy, and Slovakia’s reputation for clientelism, or ‘crony capitalism’, was founded. The government’s second year in office was also marked by further signs that it was attempting to centralise control. Mecˇiar was clearly considering how to alter the rules of the political game in order to perpetuate his hold on power. At a HZDS congress in March 1996, he mooted the possibility of 45


introducing a first-past-the-post or mixed electoral system, which would have benefited HZDS since it was the largest single party.12 However, this proposal was too detrimental to the interests of his smaller coalition partners to have a chance of succeeding. Nevertheless, when the state administration boundaries in Slovakia were altered later in the year, there was widespread suspicion that the seventy-nine new districts might later be used as parliamentary constituencies, despite government denials that this was the intention.13 Other legislation, such as the Law on Foundations, which was designed to complicate the setting up of non-governmental organisations, and amendments to the Penal Code allowing prosecution for the rather vague ‘intention’ to destroy the constitutional order, caused further alarm. Additionally, the Hungarian minority felt increasingly insecure in the face of threats to the use of Hungarian, both from the new law on the state language passed the year before, and from attempts to introduce bilingual education in Hungarian-language schools.14 Two incidents in particular suggested, however, that the Mecˇiar government could be capable of violating the law in its struggle to retain power. The first was inconclusive. In April 1996, Róbert Remiásˇ, who was the contact person of a key witness in the Kovácˇ Jr abduction case, was killed when his car exploded. Although there was initially no firm evidence as to the cause of the explosion,15 opposition voices claimed that this had been the first political murder in Slovakia. In the second incident, however, the culpability of the government was indisputable, and later confirmed in a Constitutional Court ruling that the governing parties chose to ignore. In November 1996, Mecˇiar was hit by the first defection from the parliamentary ranks of HZDS since the 1994 elections when the deputy Frantisˇek Gaulieder announced that he was becoming an independent. This was a particularly sensitive issue for the prime minister since parliamentary defections had removed him from the premiership twice already, and it was thought that several more HZDS deputies were ready to change affiliation. The HZDS parliamentary chair, Ivan Gasˇparovicˇ, reacted by illegally stripping Gaulieder of his mandate in December on the basis of a partly-forged resignation letter which clearly countered Gaulieder’s expressly stated intentions to remain in parliament. The culpability of HZDS in this act was clear, since undated ‘resignation letters’ had been demanded from all their candidates in the 1994 elections.16 With parliamentary elections due again in autumn 1998, Slovakia’s political battle lines became ever more clearly drawn, and the struggle for power more intense. The opposition, which had previously been markedly divided, attempted consolidation on the centre-right of the party spectrum. The Christian Democratic Movement, the Democratic Union and the smaller Democratic Party began by forming a ‘blue coalition’ in October 1996, and they were later joined by the small Green and Social Democratic parties. The five parties formalised their cooperation in July 1997 with an agreement to 46


stand together as the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) in the next year’s elections.17 An early product of the opposition parties’ combined efforts was a petition circulated in January 1997 to demand a referendum on introducing the direct election of the president. This aimed to avoid the situation where, at the end of President Kovácˇ’s term in office, the presidency would remain vacant because the polarised parliament would prove unable to elect any new candidate with the necessary three-fifths majority of deputies. Although the petition quickly gathered well over the requisite 350,000 signatures, and the president duly called the referendum for 25–26 May, it was sabotaged by the HZDS interior minister. The Mecˇiar government was determined from the outset to prevent the direct election of the president in a two-round election with a run-off between the two leading first-round candidates because this was a contest that, based on the evidence of public opinion surveys, they were highly unlikely to win. The president also enraged the government by calling the referendum for the same day as a governmentsponsored referendum on whether or not Slovakia should join NATO (an absurdly hypothetical question, since it was already clear that NATO was not about to issue an invitation). As the law required a turnout of at least 50 per cent for a referendum result to be binding, holding the two referenda together made it more likely that direct election of the president would be endorsed with the necessary turnout. The interior minister therefore exploited a slightly ambiguous Constitutional Court ruling on the legality of the presidential election question and refused to distribute ballot papers containing this question. The NATO referendum simultaneously collapsed because of a turnout of around 10 per cent.18 This provoked the resignation of the HZDS foreign minister, career diplomat Pavol Hamzˇ ik. The government’s interference with the referendum process was a final indictment for Slovak democracy at a crucial moment for European integration. In July 1997, NATO issued invitations to negotiate entry to Slovakia’s three closest neighbours, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, but excluded Slovakia. A week later, the European Commission delivered the same message by recommending Slovakia’s three neighbours, as well as Estonia and Slovenia, for negotiations on EU accession, but specifically excluded Slovakia because of its failure to fulfil the EU’s ‘democratic criteria’. The government’s determination to secure domestic power, even at the price of sacrificing its foreign policy goals, was unwavering. Between the European Commission’s July recommendation and the final European Council decision to exclude Slovakia in December 1997, the government deputies in parliament refused to comply with a Constitutional Court ruling to reinstate the excluded deputy Gaulieder, and the government explicitly stated that it did not need a law on the use of minority languages, despite having promised the European Union that it would pass one. Ironically, 47


however, although the Slovak Republic was fast becoming a political pariah beloved only of the region’s dictators, its economy was, superficially at least, far healthier than anyone had predicted at the time of the division of Czechoslovakia. As the fateful election year 1998 began, the newly formed Slovak Democratic Coalition was forging ahead of Mecˇiar’s HZDS in the opinion polls. However, by May HZDS had just crept back into the lead, largely because the newly-formed Party of Civic Understanding (SOP), founded by the ambitious Mayor of Kosˇice, Rudolf Schuster, appeared to be syphoning off much ‘soft’ SDK support.19 In this tense atmosphere, HZDS began last-ditch efforts to secure its position, by both attempting to assure its election victory, and by providing defences in the case of election defeat. On 1 March 1998, President Kovácˇ’s 5-year term of office finally ended, and – as anticipated by the opposition – parliamentary deputies were totally unable to agree on a suitable neutral candidate to replace him. Consequently, a number of presidential powers were temporarily transferred to the prime minister, as stipulated in the constitution. Mecˇiar reacted as if this emergency solution were a totally acceptable and normal state of affairs, and disgusted the EU both by granting a general amnesty to anyone involved in either the abduction of Kovácˇ Junior or the wrecking of the May 1997 referendum, and also by recalling twenty-eight of Slovakia’s fifty-nine ambassadors – all within 48 hours of obtaining these presidential powers.20 In May 1998, government amendments to the electoral law were passed by parliament. Two changes were particularly controversial. First, coverage of the election campaign was proscribed in all but state-controlled (that is, government controlled) electronic media. Second, in a provision clearly aimed against the SDK, parties were prevented from standing together in coalitions in the election. The SDK circumvented this by legally registering itself as a political party, and a coalition of the three main Hungarian parties also formed itself into the Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK). HZDS retaliated in August by asking the Supreme Court to ban the SDK on the grounds that it was really a coalition and not a party. Although the Supreme Court refused to oblige, HZDS’s reluctance to fight its leading opponent in open elections showed an alarming aversion to political pluralism. The election campaign itself was distorted by outrageous pro-government and anti-opposition propaganda on the state-run television channels, and HZDS itself ran an extraordinary and lavish campaign in which a succession of foreign stars aided Mecˇiar in a series of stage-managed events usually linked to either opening or laying the foundation stones for new motorways. These were proclaimed not to be part of the election campaign, since Mecˇiar was allegedly acting in his capacity as head of government and state, rather than as HZDS party leader. SDK responded by helping to mobilise Slovakia’s extremely well-organised civil society, aided by a number of nongovernmental organisations who led a dynamic ‘voter awareness’ campaign, 48


designed particularly to bring out the (largely anti-Mecˇiar) first-time voters. There was considerable nervousness about potential electoral fraud, and the opposition was assiduous in drawing public attention to every conceivable way in which the government might seek to manipulate the election results.21 Closely scrutinised by both the Slovak public and the international community, the Mecˇiar government would have been hard put to ‘steal the election’, even if that had been its intention. When OSCE monitors arrived 3 days before the elections in late September, what they encountered was generally a most meticulously-run voting procedure with a commendable level of citizen participation in local election commissions. Voter turnout shot up to over 84 per cent. The Dzurinda government (1998–2002) After the 1998 elections, HZDS remained the largest single party in parliament by one seat, and declared that it had ‘won’. However, it was quite impossible for it to form a government, since even together with its only potential coalition partner – the nationalist SNS – it had less than 40 per cent of the seats. The corollary of this was that the four opposition parties – ‚ SDK, SDL, SMK and SOP – now enjoyed the three-fifths parliamentary majority necessary to change the constitution. They immediately announced their intention to form a government, but the HZDS parliamentary chair Gasˇparovicˇ, who was vested with the presidential power of issuing the invitation to form a government, allowed the old government to remain in office until the last moment legally possible. Mecˇiar himself finally emerged on Slovak television 3 days after the election result was announced, and made a quite extraordinarily bitter resignation speech, in which he alleged that he was going to disappear for 6 months. He resigned and gave up his parliamentary seat on the first day the new parliament sat at the end of October. The next day, a new government was sworn in, with the SDK leader Mikulásˇ Dzurinda, originally a Christian Democrat, as prime minister. Again, Slovakia had a government comprising a broad spectrum of parties from the left and the right of the political spectrum, but one that this time also included representatives of the Hungarian minority. The events of 1998 did nothing immediately to improve Slovakia’s international position. The European Commission’s first ‘progress reports’ on the EU candidate states were published a mere 3 working days after Dzurinda entered office, so the judgement on Slovakia inevitably contained a catalogue of criticisms about his now-departed predecessor.22 Ominously, it expressed greater concern than in 1997 about the economic situation in Slovakia, while nothing had been done to alleviate its original disquiet about Slovak democracy. However, the aim of the new Slovak government was to solve all these 49


problems and achieve European integration as rapidly as possible. This was in a sense unproblematic, since the reforms required by the EU and NATO largely corresponded with the government’s own assessment of Slovakia’s urgent political and economic priorities. International pressure was helpful, however, in assuring a degree of unity in the government between the rather disparate forces which it comprised. After their election victory, the governing parties’ common desire to defeat Mecˇiar was replaced by the more positive goal of regaining Slovakia’s international acceptance. Although bickering about individual personal and policy issues often impeded legislation and policy implementation, the government parties stayed together. Relations with the Hungarian minority improved rapidly, and also took on a qualitatively different dimension because of SMK participation in running the country. The political environment in the country also altered, as the new government willingly permitted the opposition the proportional representation in parliamentary committees which had been sought in vain under the third Mecˇiar government. In addition, the government’s three-fifths majority allowed it to amend the constitution and arrange for the direct election of the president. This appeared at first to have been a mistake. The original October 1998 government coalition agreement set out that the ex-communist Rudolf Schuster, who had founded the SOP largely as a vehicle for his presidential ambitions, would be their presidential candidate. However, while the governing coalition could have used its three-fifths majority to have Schuster elected by parliament before the end of 1998, by fulfilling their promise to support direct election of the president they had thrown the competition open. In April 1999, Mecˇiar reappeared from the political wilderness and accepted the challenge to be the HZDS candidate for the presidency, notwithstanding the fact that he would clearly lose. Although a total of nine candidates stood in the first round of the election in May, it was largely a duel between Schuster and Mecˇiar. Schuster obtained 47.4 per cent of the vote in the first round – just short of the 50 per cent majority necessary to win outright – and Mecˇiar obtained 37.2 per cent. In the second round runoff between the two leading candidates, Schuster’s vote increased to 57.2 per cent.23 However, the 42.8 per cent of the vote that went to Mecˇiar did little to persuade the international community that the most famous living Slovak was a spent political force. As the constitutional situation in Slovakia was regularised, the issues of everyday politics became more important. It had become evident shortly before the 1998 elections that Mecˇiar’s Slovak ‘economic miracle’, whereby the country maintained good results at a macroeconomic level despite a minimum of foreign direct investment, had been financed in part by reckless borrowing. When the National Bank of Slovakia switched from a fixed to a floating exchange rate for the Slovak crown on 1 October 1998 – within a week of the election – the currency slumped by 17 per cent.24 The Dzurinda 50


government therefore had to enforce sometimes harsh economic reforms to restore macroeconomic stability in 1999, and this inevitably led to tensions in a coalition which contained a substantial left–right divide on economic and welfare issues. The beneficial results of economic reform were not immediate, and GDP growth declined in the course of 1999. An increase in unemployment from 12.5 to 16.2 per cent25 in its first year alone also did little to help the government’s popularity. The opposition was highly critical of the government’s economic performance. However, while the governing parties’ support in the public opinion polls declined, the main beneficiary of this was not Mecˇiar’s HZDS, but a new party called Smer (‘Direction’) set up by a ‚ popular SDL defector, Róbert Fico, in October 1999.26 HZDS found it hard to adapt to the role of an opposition party, and truculently refused to chair any parliamentary committees in protest at the fact that the new government would not divide the three major political offices – Prime Minister, President and Chair of the National Council – on a proportional basis with the opposition. (It should be noted that Mecˇiar himself had occupied all three major offices, and all the committee chairs, with members of his government parties in 1994). SNS, on the other hand, although generally considered a more extremist party than HZDS, was happy to provide one of the four deputy chairs of the National Council. HZDS and SNS frequently moved votes of no confidence in Dzurinda or his ministers throughout the parliament, despite the low chance of any succeeding. Most problematically, however, in early 2000 they collected together the requisite number of signatures to demand a referendum on whether there should be early elections. The referendum, which was duly held in November 2000, had little hope of success since a 50 per cent turnout was required for the result to be valid, meaning that for government supporters, boycotting the referendum was a highly effective way of opposing it. In the event, only 20 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote. What was most discomforting was that the referendum attempt demonstrated the opposition’s reluctance to accept the results of the 1998 election. Given that the Dzurinda government had a comfortable majority in parliament (unlike, for example, the Czech government of the time), and that the country was not in any kind of crisis situation, the referendum was little more than an expensive opposition publicity stunt financed by the hapless taxpayers. Relations between the government and opposition were also soured by attempts to deal with the illegal activities that had taken place during the third Mecˇiar government. Prime Minister Dzurinda, who was acting president prior to the direct election of Schuster, annulled the amnesties granted by Mecˇiar to those involved in the Kovácˇ Jr kidnapping and ‘spoilt referendum’ cases, but after a long and complex series of legal judgements, prosecutions were stopped. Nonetheless, legal investigations were launched against a number of other leading HZDS supporters who were suspected of illegally enriching themselves during the privatisation process.27 Most 51


controversially, in April 2000 masked police broke into Mecˇiar’s own property and arrested him for questioning after he repeatedly ignored subpoenas to give evidence. While this somewhat theatrical overreaction on the part of the authorities looked absurd on television, the forces of law and order had genuinely been confronted by a difficult dilemma because of the ostentatious fashion in which Mecˇiar challenged them. The two major opposition parties, HZDS and SNS, did however both undergo substantial changes after the 1998 elections. HZDS held a ‘transformation congress’ in Trnava in March 2000, and restyled itself as ‘Movement for a Democratic Slovakia-People’s Party’. It thereby finally declared itself to be a party on the right of the political spectrum, and identified itself with both the interwar, Catholic-based People’s Party, and with Christian Democratic and People’s Parties elsewhere in Europe.28 However, the party’s intention to join ‘like-minded’ parties in the European Democratic Union (EDU) was likely to prove problematic, both because of the suspicion with which HZDS was viewed internationally, and because the EDU already contained one Slovak party, the Christian Democratic Movement, whose consent would have to be gained before Mecˇiar’s party joined. Mecˇiar also remained the party’s chair and ‘shadow’ prime minister, which was generally considered to diminish its coalition potential after future elections. Change was somewhat more turbulent within SNS, whose chair, Slota, was replaced by Anna Malíková in October 1999. Party in-fighting continued, however, and in July 2001 the membership of the majority of the party’s parliamentary deputies was suspended at another tense meeting. Malíková’s strength was that she was a far less embarrassing leader than Slota, who was prone to make outrageous remarks when under the influence of alcohol, and referred to his successor as a ‘mad cow’.29 However, SNS under Malíková remained an unacceptable coalition partner to other Slovak parties. Since it opposed NATO membership, even the transformed HZDS shunned it, despite the relatively close affinity of the two parties’ voters.30 The most effective opposition to government policy came, ironically, from the government parties themselves. The government was technically a coalition of four parties, but since the Slovak Democratic Coalition and the Party of the Hungarian Coalition had, as their names suggested, originally been coalitions (of five and three parties respectively), the government united a broader spectrum of parties. While the Hungarians generally appeared satisfied with their new party and kept most intra-party disagreements out of public view, SDK proved problematic from the outset. It had been formed of five parties, but actually contained six, since the 1998 electoral law had forced its parliamentary candidates to leave their original five parties and formally become SDK members. Its two right-wing components, the Christian Democrats and the Democratic Party, regarded the coalition as a temporary election instrument and wished to preserve the identity of their parties, although most of the ministers they nominated to the government could see 52


the advantages of continuing a united approach. Eventually, Prime Minister Dzurinda (originally a Christian Democrat) formed a new party which aimed to be a broad, centre-right union of Christians, liberals, conservatives and democrats, and called itself the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ).31 However, the new party was only supported whole-heartedly by the liberal Democratic Union, which dissolved itself and gave all its ministers and all but two of its deputies to the SDKÚ. The Christian Democrats remained as a party, albeit somewhat smaller and more conservative than before. The tiny Democratic Party split three ways, with its most prominent member – Deputy Prime Minister for Economics Ivan Miklosˇ – eventually joining SDKÚ, while other deputies either left the party and became independents, or remained in it but left the SDK parliamentary faction. The also tiny Social Democrats left SDK and joined the parliamentary faction of another government party, SOP, together with the two dissident Democratic Union deputies who had failed to join SDKÚ. The likewise largely irrelevant Greens remained loyal to SDK in parliament.32 Such fluidity of allegiance in the largest ruling ‘party’ was scarcely conducive to decisive government. SDK had quite enough problems with its ‚ coalition partners without tearing itself apart. The post-communist SDL – itself a party internally split between modern social democracy and conservative communist-style thinking – was openly hostile to much of the government’s social and economic policy, despite the enlightened contribution of their respected finance minister, Brigita Schmögnerová, to ‚ the improvement of the Slovak economy. Both SDK and SDL became embroiled in various forms of financial scandals which led to the resignation of three ministers during 1999 and 2000, as well as protracted arguments about party nominees in state agencies running ‘strategic industries’. The fourth ministerial resignation within the first two years of government occurred in July 2000, when the SDK health minister resigned after the incompetence of the Slovak hospital system nearly killed President Schuster, who appeared miraculously to bounce back from death’s door as soon as he was flown to Austria for treatment. SOP was the quietest of the coalition partners, perhaps because it had achieved its (unspoken) aim of gaining its founding leader, Schuster, the presidency, or maybe because it was sobered by the dramatic decline in its public support to well below the threshold of electability. It, too, was hit by financial scandal when its new leader, ex-HZDS foreign minister Hamzˇ ik, was forced to resign his post as deputy prime minister for European integration in spring 2001 because he had failed to report adequately on suspected misuse of EU funds. Perhaps the thorniest issue, however, was the participation of the Hungarian SMK in the government. SMK had been regarded with utmost suspicion ‚ by the post-communist SDL even while the government was being formed in the wake of the 1998 elections, and they argued about much afterwards. The 53


Hungarians presided over a centre-right party that was supportive of the government’s economic reforms, but consistently felt that their own (distinctly ethnocentric) priorities were the part of the government programme most neglected by their coalition partners. They disagreed with their partners over changes to the constitution that did not remove the concept of ‘the Slovak people’ from its preamble; they failed to vote in favour of a new law on the use of minority languages because it did not fulfil their own demands; ‚ they had a running battle with SDL on a complex issue of land ownership; and they disagreed on local government reform because, among other issues, no local government region with a Hungarian majority was created. In the summer of 2001 they teetered on the brink of resigning from government, but pulled back when both their firmest Slovak allies and foreign representatives warned that the collapse of the government could severely damage Slovakia’s chances of joining the EU – a cause to which the Hungarian minority was devoted, since it would bring them closer to their co-ethnics in Hungary. The overall picture of the Dzurinda government was, in the end, one of foreign policy success combined with a mixed balance sheet in domestic politics. Slovakia started to negotiate EU accession in February 2000, two years after its neighbours, and succeeded in overtaking Poland in little more than a year. It was also accepted into the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2000; and it became one of the two leading candidates for the second wave of NATO eastward expansion. At home, however, the government’s support waned as unease about the state of the health and education service joined unemployment as a major source of public concern, and major policy objectives like the total reform of local government still awaited implementation 3 years after it had come to office. The party system, if anything, looked even more unstable than in the 1990s. Most dangerous of all, however, was the disillusionment of the electorate. Its high hopes of 1998 had not been realised. Well over a third of voters still solidly supported the opposition parties HZDS and SNS; forward-looking, reform-minded citizens were disquieted by the government’s inability to distance itself from the whiff of corruption, and had continued doubts about the propriety of the privatisation process; new parties presenting ‘new faces’ gained the support of about a quarter of the electorate in opinion polls; and while only the Hungarian minority remained firm in supporting its traditional party, many Hungarian speakers viewed the government merely as the least bad it could realistically expect. For the international community anxiously weighing up Slovakia’s suitability for EU and NATO membership, the great uncertainty surrounding the result of the elections due in 2002 was not encouraging.

54


Political institutions in Slovakia Slovakia’s constitution was controversial from its inception. It was largely the product of only one part of the political spectrum – the supporters of the second Mecˇiar government elected in June 1992. Although the chair of the Slovak National Council, HZDS member Ivan Gasˇparovicˇ, stated in his address when it was signed that the draft had undergone ‘extensive public discussions’ and that ‘both the professional and general public expressed their views on the draft’,33 in fact all such debate had been obfuscated by the uncertainty about the continuation of the federation, and whether the Slovak Republic was to be an independent state or part of a larger entity. The constitution was passed in haste, and never legitimated by a popular referendum. Nevertheless, in the vote on the constitution taken in parliament on 1 September 1992, 114 of the 150 deputies were in favour, with sixteen against, and four abstentions.34 Only the Christian Democratic Movement voted against the constitution, although, in a gesture that did not bode well for future inter-communal relations in the new state, the deputies of the two Hungarian political parties represented in parliament left the chamber before the vote. Since the parliament had been elected by a system of proportional representation (PR), and did not therefore institutionally distort the public will or exclude significant minorities, the positive vote in favour by 76 per cent of deputies can be considered evidence of a fair degree of consensus. Furthermore, the basic institutional structure of the new Slovak democracy showed a marked continuity with existing practice. Slovakia’s political structures were largely inherited from Czechoslovakia – both the interwar First Republic, and the post-1989 democracy. It is true that the Czechs, who had much fonder memories of the First Republic than the Slovaks, took over somewhat more from the interwar political system than the Slovaks. However, Slovakia’s political system retained two features that were particularly important for preserving democracy and the representation of plural interests. It continued the system of proportional representation for elections, and it had a parliamentary rather than a presidential form of government. This enabled the basic political framework of the new state to meet with wide acceptance in spite of the sharp polarisation, and the outright enmity, between government and opposition that prevailed for much of its first decade of existence. The constitution was criticised for having omissions and containing unclear provisions, but it did not appear designed permanently to exclude opponents of the current rulers from power. The difference between a parliamentary and a presidential system is important. In a presidential system, a directly elected president is responsible for forming a government. This creates a ‘winner takes all’ situation, where power is concentrated in the hands of the political faction that wins the presidency. It can lead to more decisive policy-making, which may assist reform in a state embarking on the complex transition to democracy and a

55


market economy; but it may equally impede democratisation if the elected president abuses his or her powers.35 It does little to diffuse power and responsibility. In a parliamentary system, on the other hand, the most important figure is the prime minister, whose government has to be composed with regard to the delicate balance of forces within the parliament. In Slovakia, prime ministerial power has been reined in by the exigencies of coalition government. Even a prime minister who is leader of the largest party in the government has to pay heed to the demands of coalition partners. The prime minister’s power is also constrained by the need for majority parliamentary support, and this is endangered if deputies from the governing parties become discontented and change their party allegiance after the elections – as Mecˇiar discovered to his cost during his second term in office from 1992–4. The second respect in which the Slovak political system helped to provide balanced representation of diverse political interests was the use of proportional representation to elect the parliament. In Slovakia, unlike in interwar Czechoslovakia and the post-1992 Czech Republic, PR is not actually anchored in the constitution, and the electoral law could be changed by a simple majority in parliament. However, in practice this has proved very hard to do since a coalition government contains parties that will all have different views on the election systems based on their own narrow party interests. PR systems are sometimes criticised for a number of different reasons. Even when, as in Slovakia, a party only receives seats if it obtains 5 per cent of the vote, the parliament may be more fragmented than in the case of a ‘first past the post’ majoritarian system of the British type, as parties have no incentive to merge into larger organisations. This makes it harder to implement a coherent, decisive reform programme than in a two-party system. It is also easier for small extremist parties to enter parliament and use it as a platform to court further support. However, in the Slovak case a ‘first past the post’ system, where the candidate with the highest number of votes gains a seat, could have had problematic consequences. Such systems may create two-party systems, but they are equally likely to create one-party systems, where one dominant party is repeatedly returned to power, and there is no alternation in government.36 Furthermore, democracy is not endangered by small anti-democratic parties with 5, 10 or 15 per cent of the popular vote, but rather by larger anti-democratic parties with 30 per cent or more of the vote. Majoritarian electoral systems magnify the effects of relatively small shifts in voter opinion and, particularly in new democracies with unstable party systems, it is relatively easy for a party with the support of only a third of the voters to gain a parliamentary majority large enough to change the constitution.37 This then paves the way to dictatorship and perpetuation of power. Slovakia would be particularly vulnerable to constitutional changes if there were a majoritarian electoral system, since – as in the Czechoslovak 56


period – this requires only a three-fifths majority of deputies (Art. 84), rather than the two-thirds majority common in many other countries. Since Slovakia has a parliamentary system of government, the major basis of power in Slovakia lies in the parliament, and it is therefore worth examining in more detail the constitutional provisions relating to it. While both Czechoslovakia and, after 1992, the Czech Republic, had a bicameral parliament, the National Council of the Slovak Republic comprises a single chamber with 150 elected deputies. However, this is a perfectly normal arrangement for a small state the size of Slovakia,38 which had just over 5 million inhabitants in 1992, and is also a product of historical inertia, insofar as a unicameral Slovak parliament already existed in Bratislava. Separation of legislative and executive power is technically guaranteed by the fact that members of the Slovak government cannot at the same time be parliamentary deputies (Art. 109) – another provision which distinguishes Slovakia from both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. However, in practice the link between government and parliament is very strong. First, a deputy who takes up a ministerial post is only required to give up their seat in parliament for the duration of their time in government (Art. 77). If they are dismissed or resign as a minister, they may return at once to parliament, replacing the deputy who was called in as a substitute when the government was formed. Second, although the president appoints and recalls the prime minister, and also names other members of the government at the suggestion of the prime minister, a newly formed government has 30 days to present its programme to parliament and ask for a vote of confidence (Art. 113). A government cannot, therefore, even begin to govern without majority support in parliament. It must also retain that support, since both the prime minister and the government as a whole, and individual ministers, can be subjected to a vote of confidence in parliament at any time when requested by a fifth of deputies (Art. 88). Third, both ‘party discipline’ and ‘coalition discipline’ are weak in Slovakia, and even a government comprising parties that theoretically enjoy a parliamentary majority cannot be assured that its legislation will pass. If the government approves draft legislation without the consensus of all coalition partners, the dissenting party’s deputies may vote with the opposition in parliament. Likewise, individual deputies may vote against legislation supported by their own parties. As a consequence of this, a prime minister’s real power depends on the precise results of the parliamentary election and on their personal influence over deputies. Vladimír Mecˇiar was extremely powerful as prime minister. During his second and third terms as prime minister, members of his own party alone occupied two-fifths or more of the seats in parliament, so his much smaller coalition partners were clearly subordinate in strength. In addition, because of his personal charisma, he was always the towering figure within HZDS, with the ability to make or break party colleagues. Mikulásˇ Dzurinda, on the other hand, had to operate as an ‘honest broker’, 57


permanently conciliating divergent interests among a multitude of party and parliamentary factions. Even at the beginning of the parliament elected in 1998, his SDK only occupied 28 per cent of parliamentary seats – less than half of those controlled by all four government parties together. Furthermore, his authority was severely undermined within the SDK itself by the fact that it was a coalition of five parties, and not even his own party, the Christian Democratic Movement, was prepared to support him wholeheartedly, since its chair and founder, former premier Ján Cˇ arnogurský, had a divergent personal and political agenda. The Slovak constitution determines that executive power in Slovakia lies in the hands not only of the government, but also of the president. As Art. 101 of the Slovak constitution puts it, ‘The President shall represent the Slovak Republic in external and internal relations and with his/her decisions ensures the normal functioning of the constitutional authorities’. The president also has a number of powers of appointment.39 Despite the fact that Slovakia does not have a presidential form of government, the issue of the presidency has been of great practical importance for a number of reasons. The president is supposed to be the uniting figure in the country’s political system. It was an irony of fate that on the very day that the Slovak constitution was passed in September 1992, a car crash on the motorway between Bratislava and Prague fatally injured the one obvious candidate for the office of Slovak president: Alexander Dubcˇek, the leader of the Czechoslovak Spring in 1968. He was not only externally by far the most famous and respected Slovak, but also internally the most unifiying figure in Slovak politics. He had been elected to parliament in 1992 as the leader of the small Social Democratic Party of Slovakia, and was not controversially identified as belonging to either side of the nationalist divide in Slovak politics. He had (like Mecˇiar) initially joined the citizens’ movement Public Against Violence, but had then proceded to move to the very sparse centre ground between the two main factions in Slovak politics. He represented values that were rooted in an earlier, and more universally acceptable, period of Slovak history. He could even be linked symbolically with the nineteenth century Slovak national movement, since by an extraordinary coincidence he had been born in the same house as the nineteenth-century national hero ‚ Ludovit Sˇ túr.40 In 1993, his historic contribution was evaluated positively by 91 per cent of Slovaks – more than twice the approval rating of his two nearest competitors: Tomásˇ Masaryk, the interwar Czechoslovak president, and Vladimír Mecˇiar.41 Dubcˇek’s death left Slovakia, both externally and internally, without any counterpart to the Czech Havel. Democratic Slovakia’s first president, Michal Kovácˇ, ended up symbolising not the unity but the polarisation of Slovak politics. Although, in 1993, Kovácˇ was elected president by a threefifths majority of the Slovak parliament, as foreseen by the constitution, by the time he left office five years later it was unthinkable that the divided 58


parliament should reach such a level of consensus on a successor. This highlighted one of the many deficiencies of the hastily drafted Slovak constitution – namely that, unlike the constitutions of most other parliamentary democracies, it contained no ‘tie-breaking’ provisions determining what should be done in the event of the parliament proving fundamentally incapable of choosing a president. In retrospect, this was perhaps not as entirely negative a phenomenon as it seemed at the time. Although Slovakia disgraced itself internationally by simply not having a president for nearly fifteen months after Kovácˇ left office in March 1998, its electorate went to the ballot box in September 1998 acutely aware that it lived in a state in a severe political crisis.42 The eventual solution to the problem of choosing a president was the first major change to the Slovak constitution, which came into force in January 1999 and determined that the people should elect the president. Directly elected presidents are often more powerful than those indirectly elected by parliaments because they have popular legitimacy, but this did not happen in the Slovak case because the president’s powers were not strengthened when direct election was introduced. Contrary to accustomed patterns elsewhere in the world, in an East Central European context the directly elected president tends to be an institution that checks power rather than one that concentrates power. The third branch of government, which exists alongside the legislative and the executive, is the judiciary. This has also been a source of controversy in Slovakia. Reforming the legal system has been problematic throughout the post-communist world. Under communism, judges and lawyers were subject to careful selection and control according to political criteria throughout their careers, from applying for their law studies onwards. However, they were impossible to replace quickly after communism fell because of the complexity of their training and the need for practical experience. For example, Art. 134 of the Slovak constitution stipulated that Constitutional Court judges had to be at least 40 years old and have at least fifteen years’ experience in the legal profession, which effectively guaranteed that they had successfully completed a communist-style legal education. The situation was further complicated both by the exceptionally strong politicisation of society, and by an unfortunate provision of the 1992 constitution that appeared to subject judges to a probation period under political scrutiny. Although Art. 144 of the constitution stated that judges should be independent and bound only by law, Art. 145 then stated that judges were elected by the parliament for a 4-year term, whereafter they might be elected for an indefinite term. This article was criticised both within Slovakia and by the European Commission, and when the constitution was subjected to extensive revision in 2001, the appointment of judges was left to the president and a newly-formed Judicial Council, with parliamentary involvement reduced to proposing candidates for the Constitutional Court. 59


While the technical procedures for the functioning of Slovak justice had been corrected, the practice remained problematic. Apart from the widespread problems of delays in judicial procedures, which caused the EU concern throughout the candidate states, there was also a common perception in Slovakia that judges were corrupt, and trust in the courts was low. The Constitutional Court, which had been required to rule on many highprofile political disputes during the Slovak Republic’s existence, enjoyed a somewhat better reputation.43 Of all the political structures in Slovakia, however, the issue subject to the most protracted and complex debate was the creation of effective local government. Unlike questions relating to national government, little was decided by the constitution. It laid down that the municipality (obec) was the basis for local self-government, and that there would also be higher territorial units (i.e. regions). It decided that the mayor, who was to exercise executive power in the municipality, would be directly elected by local residents, and the 2001 constitutional amendments extended this principle to the head of higher units (commonly referred to as the zˇ upan) (Art. 69). What remained open, however, was the question of how many regions there were to be, and, more crucially, what the competencies of elected regional governments would be. These were problems that were intricately intertwined with the removal of communist legacies. Since communism tended to centralise power at the apex of the communist party, there had been little devolution of decision-making. There had been no real distinction between the functions of the state administration overseen by national ministries and those carried out under the supervision of elected local councils. Although, technically, local ‘national committees’ were elected, since elections in communist Czechoslovakia were not democratic, these offices were – like the ministries themselves – but one more extended arm of the communist party. Although both the government and the municipal councils were democratically elected after 1989, the difference between civil servants working for the ministries of the central government and local government employees was complicated by the fact that Slovakia was still struggling to pass a public service law at the beginning of the new millennium. Since, under communism, virtually everyone had been employed more or less directly by the state, there were no separate provisions concerning the employment and career development of public servants. On top of this, the tendency – rampant in Slovakia – to use informal rather than formal contacts and procedures, plus low state sector salaries, made all bureaucratic procedures vulnerable to corrupt and clientelistic practices. Imminent membership of the European Union, on the other hand, made the existence of democratically-elected regional authorities imperative, since they were a key element in the distribution of regional and structural funding. Transparency and impartiality were also required. Although the Dzurinda government embarked on campaigns to combat 60


corruption, and a Freedom of Information Act was implemented at the beginning of 2001, the culture of bureaucracy was only likely to change slowly. The first democratic local elections took place in December 1990, when mayors and local councils were elected at the level of the municipality. However, since there were nearly 3,000 municipalities in a country with a population of little over 5 million,44 many of them were extremely small, and consisted of only one village. They were consequently also under-financed. Although it had always been intended that regional self-government should also be established, in practice this was not a priority for the third Mecˇiar government. Like its communist predecessor, it had little interest in devolving central power, and therefore proceeded to reform the territorial division of the state administration without bothering to deal with regional selfgovernment at the same time. In 1996, eight regions (kraje) were established in place of the four that had existed previously, as well as seventy-nine districts (okresy) in place of the previous thirty-eight. The head (prednosta) of the district office was a political appointment in the gift of central government. This led to discontinuity in administration, since the postholder was likely to be subject to change after national elections. The task of creating the regional tier of self-government fell to the Dzurinda government after 1998, but proved one of the most controversial of all the issues it faced. The Party of the Hungarian Coalition was primarily concerned about how the Hungarian minority would be distributed among the new regions. An enormous amount of time was spent deciding on the number of regions. Although the government initially agreed on twelve regions, the governing parties’ deputies split in parliament when voting on an opposition amendment to reduce the number to eight, and the bill was passed in July 2001 stipulating that there should be only eight regions. The actual powers that the councils were to have were finally agreed in October 2001, largely thanks to an ultimatum by the Hungarian Coalition, which threatened otherwise to leave the government. Both ministries and district state administrations had been extremely reluctant to see their fiefdoms reduced in size, and were therefore often less than cooperative in assisting preparations for the transfer of competencies. The first regional elections were finally held in December 2001. These were a victory for HZDS, who won the contest for the directly-elected regional leaders in every region except Bratislava and Kosˇice. It also became manifest that the election system used for the regional councils was excessively majoritarian: in one of the eight regions (Trencˇín) all forty-five deputies elected belonged to HZDS.45 With the establishment of regional self-government, it appeared that Slovakia had finally tuned its institutional structure to face its second decade of existence. Although it had been established with a sound framework of parliamentary government, the devil had been in the detail. Unfortunately, 61


conflictual Slovak politicians wasted somewhat more energy than necessary in sorting them out.

Elections and the party system Article 2 of the Slovak Constitution states that ‘The power of the state is vested in the citizens who shall exercise it directly or through their elected representatives’. Because elections are so central to the democratic process, both the electoral system and the results of Slovak elections need to be examined in greater detail. Parties are likewise an essential part of the political process. They assist citizens in making informed choices in elections by organising policy preferences into (hopefully) coherent programmes, and they facilitate the process of government by structuring the way politicians communicate with both their allies and their opponents. In post-communist societies, party systems often appear chaotic. The transition to democracy was extremely rapid. For example, in Czechoslovakia, the June 1990 elections took place just six months after the communist regime was toppled, so the first democratic elections were held before citizens had had a chance to identify their preferred policy goals on a complex level. Moreover, neither the voters nor the politicians had a particularly clear idea about what candidates would actually do if and when elected. Unlike in more established democracies, which had formed more slowly, parties tended to be formed ‘from above’, among the politicians who found themselves elected to the initial democratic parliaments, rather than ‘from below’, as representatives of societal interests who had organised politically at grass-roots level in order to gain parliamentary representation. Parties help shape election laws, but in the post-communist world, election laws also help shape party systems. The Slovak election system has been relatively stable since 1990, and has influenced how parties develop. Slovakia adopted the electoral system used in Czechoslovakia in the 1990 and 1992 elections, which was proportional representation with a ‘5 per cent’ clause. Each party standing in an election presents a list of candidates, and if the party obtains more than 5 per cent of the vote, it is entitled to a proportional share of the 150 seats in the National Council of the Slovak Republic. These are allotted to the party’s candidates who were highest on the party list. Because some of the vote in each election is ‘wasted’ on parties getting less than 5 per cent of the national vote, each party in parliament ends up with a percentage of the seats that is slightly higher than its percentage of the vote. The percentage of votes ‘wasted’ declined during the 1990s as voters became accustomed to the way the electoral system works, and were less inclined to vote for small parties unlikely to cross the 5 per cent threshold into parliament. Although the term ‘proportional representation’ is often used generically to describe electoral systems unlike the British or American ones, there are always some subtleties in the way PR electoral systems work. One of these is 62


constituency size. In the 1994 election, Slovakia was divided into four electoral territories, in accordance with the division of the country into state administration districts: Bratislava, Western Slovakia, Central Slovakia and Eastern Slovakia. Each party presented a separate list of candidates for each region, and the regions had a number of seats allocated to them according to the size of the population. However, the leftover votes in each region – that is, votes that were insufficient to gain a whole deputy for any one party – were added together for each party on a national basis, and the party leadership could then choose which of its candidates would enter parliament as a result of this ‘second scrutiny’. The electoral law was amended by Mecˇiar’s third government in May 1998, and in the September 1998 election, Slovakia was made into a single electoral territory.46 Each party therefore presented only one list (of up to 150 candidates) for the whole country, which is fairly unusual in PR systems. One reason for this change was that the state administrative boundaries of Slovakia had been changed in 1996, so that Slovakia no longer functioned as four, but rather as eight, regions. The second, it was commonly supposed, was that the HZDS-led government preferred one single electoral territory for the whole country rather than eight because this meant that the charismatic Mecˇiar stood at the top of the HZDS candidate list everywhere in the country, rather than just being presented to the voters of Central Slovakia, his electoral stronghold. Due to the prevailing uncertainties about the future territorial division of the state during the Dzurinda government, the single national constituency still remained in the run-up to the 2002 elections. A further feature of the Slovak election system has been that parties can join together in pre-election coalitions which present a joint list to the electorate. A coalition is required to get 7 per cent of the vote in order to enter parliament if it contains two or three parties, and 10 per cent of the vote if it contains four or more parties. This provision was introduced in postcommunist Czechoslovakia in order to give a chance of parliamentary representation to small parties who had not had much time to organise. By standing together in coalitions, they were more likely to obtain enough votes to enter parliament. At the same time, the higher threshold for coalitions does something to discourage their formation, and counters the danger that coalitions will fall apart immediately after an election, leading to the sort of unstable and highly fragmented parliament that the 5 per cent threshold provision is specifically designed to avoid. The third Mecˇiar government introduced a change to the electoral law in May 1998 which effectively annulled the possibility of pre-election coalitions by insisting that each component in a coalition gained 5 per cent of the vote. From an objective point of view, it was perfectly rational and reasonable for the government to decide that, by 1998, parties had had long enough to organise themselves so that they should no longer need to circumvent the ‘5 per cent clause’ by forming coalitions.47 What was objectionable was that Mecˇiar’s gov63


ernment enacted the amendment to the electoral law not in its early years in office, but a mere four months before the 1998 elections, when its opponents had already organised their electoral coalitions for the forthcoming poll. It was blatantly obvious that HZDS was primarily motivated by the specific desire to avoid defeat by the five-party SDK coalition which had recently overtaken it in opinion polls. However, SDK circumvented the electoral law change by registering its coalition as a political party. When the new government was formed after the 1998 elections, it reacted to the politically-motivated ban on pre-election coalitions by returning the election law to its previous form – a dubious move that did little to consolidate a still fluid party system. The effect of the electoral system in general was to produce a multi-party system which is, paradoxically, both relatively simple and rather complicated, as emerges when looking at the parliamentary election results from 1992, 1994 and 1998. Table 2.1 presents the party system in its simplest form, and shows the percentage of the vote gained by the five main political formations, together with other parties who occasionally won parliamentary seats. While it is a simplification that hides many complexities, it also reflects the relative degree of stability that has existed in Slovak voting. Table 2.2 gives the number of parliamentary seats held by each party or coalition immediately after the elections, with the parties arranged according to the government they joined. Table 2.1 Slovak elections 1992–1998: percentage vote Party/coalition

1992

1994

1998

Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) or Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) 1998 ‚ Party of the Democratic Left (SDL) or Common Choice 1994 Hungarian Coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) Other parliamentary parties Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) Democratic Union (DÚ) Party of Civic Understanding (SOP)

37* 9

35* 10

27

‚ (SDL) — —

7* 9 —

1 (SDK) 8*

Non-parliamentary parties (wasted vote) Percentage vote for government parties

24 45

13 48

6 58

26* 15*

15 7 8*

10 10 5*

9* 9

* Party which joined the government. Source: Calculated from Federální statistický úrˇad, Cˇ eský statistický úrˇad, Slovenský sˇtatistický úrad, Statistická rocˇ enka ’91 Cˇ eské a Slovenské federativní republiky (Prague: SEVT, 1991), p. 630; Cˇ eský statistický úrˇad, Statistická rocˇ enka Cˇ eské republiky ’93 (Prague: Cˇ eský spisovatel, 1993), p. 441; Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Vol’by do Národnej rady Slovenskej republiky konané 30.9 a 1 October 1994 (Bratislava: 1994), pp. 13–17; Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Výsledky hlasovania vo vol’bách do Národnej rady Slovenskej republiky 25.–26. September 1998 (Bratislava: 1998), p. 15.

64


Table 2.2 Slovak elections 1992–1998: number of parliamentary seats gained Party/coalition

1992

Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) with Agrarian Party of Slovakia (HZDS/RSS) Slovak National Party (SNS) Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS)

74*

Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) Democratic Union (DÚ) Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) ‚ Party of the Democratic Left (SDL) Common Choice (SV) Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement/ Coexistence Hungarian Coalition (MK) Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) Party of Civic Understanding (SOP)

18

17 15

29

(SV) 18 (MK)

—

—

Total seats of government parties

74

83

15* ‚ (SDL)

14

1994

1998 43

61* 9* 13*

17

14 0 (SDK) (SDK) 42* 23* (SMK) (SMK) 15* 13* 93

* Party which joined the government. Source: Calculated from Cˇ eský statistický úrˇad, Statistická rocˇ enka Cˇ eské republiky ’93 (Prague: Cˇ eský spisovatel, 1993), p. 441; Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Vol’by do Národnej rady Slovenskej republiky konané 30.9 a 1 October 1994 (Bratislava: 1994), p. 97; Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Výsledky hlasovania vo vol’bách do Národnej rady Slovenskej republiky 25.–26. September 1998 (Bratislava: 1998), p. 27.

Over the three elections as a whole, an average of six party or coalition lists managed to gain over 5 per cent of the vote and enter parliament at least once: five in 1992, seven in 1994 and six in 1998. This does not tell the full parliamentary story, though, since it relates only to the voters’ choices. There were always some parliamentary deputies who later left their parties and formed new parliamentary groupings mid-term, meaning that the party composition of the parliament never looked the same at the beginning and end of the electoral period. It is, indeed, the tendency of Slovak parties to split, merge and form new coalitions, and this can disorientate a reader looking at more detailed analyses of Slovak politics. Generally, however, five political parties have so far remained constants in the political life of the independent Slovak Republic, and all participated in government at some point in the first decade of its existence. 1

Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) Created by Vladimír Mecˇiar in 1991, this was the party that crafted Slovak independence, and remained into the new millennium the country’s largest single political force, having the support of some 30 per cent of the Slovak electorate. Its raison d’être was the assertion of Slovaks’ rights. For the entire 1990s, it 65


2

3

4

5

showed a conspicuous degree of confusion about whether it was a leftwing, a right-wing or a centre party, before finally deciding in spring 2000 that it was a right-of-centre People’s Party.48 This was a reasonably accurate placement. Although often described as ‘left’ in its early days – partly because of the high number of ex-communists it appointed as government ministers – this hardly squared with Mecˇiar’s comment that Slovakia needed a ‘stratum of rich people’, or with many of its policies when in power. Slovak National Party (SNS) Founded in 1990, it claimed, somewhat implausibly, to be the oldest of all Slovak parties, because it had adopted the name of the major Slovak party in the late nineteenth century. Since it supported Slovak independence from its inception, it was the natural ally of HZDS. The SNS leadership was, however, more inclined to xenophobia and anti-western, particularly anti-NATO, rhetoric than HZDS. It averaged below 10 per cent of electoral support in the 1990s, but split in two in 2001. Party of the Democratic Left (SDL’) As a communist successor party, it distinguished itself from its former Czech comrades in the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia by espousing social democracy and joining the Socialist International, but its support, at little over 10 per cent, was no better than theirs. It never reached the 30 per cent levels of its successful social democratic neighbours in Poland and Hungary, and HZDS deprived it of the more nationally-minded supporters who gravitated toward parties of ex-communists in Bulgaria ‚ and Romania. Consequently, SDL’s former communists tended to end up in government as a junior partner of the non-nationalist centre-right. In early 2002, the party split. Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) Formed just after the Velvet Revolution, this was perhaps the least complicated party from a west European point of view, since the political views of both its voters and its leaders were generally recognisable as precisely what the party’s label claimed – Christian democracy. It tended to obtain around 10 per cent of the vote, with considerable fluctuation, and had a good track record of forming coalitions with other parties, both for joint party lists and for governments. However, its rather ideological support for conservative Christian values became more conspicuous after Dzurinda and his followers left in 2000. Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) The electorate and leadership of the Hungarian parties was more of a constant in Slovak politics than the coalition’s actual shape. It was supported by approaching 10 per cent of the electorate – similar to the proportion of Hungarians among the Slovak population – and therefore represented a simple cross-section of the country’s ethnic Hungarians. However, the three parties that eventually merged in the SMK all presented centre-right platforms. 66


It is notable that four of the five major party formations identified themselves as being right of centre. This reflects the fact that ‘socialism’ had been discredited as a concept by the communists, so that ‘right’ was considered a more attractive label than ‘left’. However, given the crowding on the right side of the political spectrum, it is not surprising that the smaller or more ephemeral parties that gained support from the remaining 30 per cent of voters tended to be more leftist in orientation. These parties included the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) in 1994; the Party of Civil Understanding (SOP) in 1998; and Smer in the run-up to the 2002 election; and also the tiny Social Democrats (SDSS) and Greens (SZS), who survived through the 1990s by alternately allying themselves with the left (in the ‚ ‘Common Choice’ coalition with SDL in 1994) and with the right (in the Slovak Democratic Coalition of 1998). Some parties also described themselves as ‘liberal’, most notably the Democratic Union (DÚ) formed in 1994. In 2000, it joined with part of the Christian Democratic Movement to form the Slovak Christian and Democratic Union (SDKÚ), which defined itself as centre-right, thereby leaving the liberal label again vacant. A final political grouping worthy of note – because of its input into policymaking and the development of civil society rather than its popular appeal – comprised members of the largely Bratislava-based intellectual elite who helped found Public Against Violence in 1989, but failed to join a mainstream party thereafter. After electoral failure as the Civic Democratic Union in 1992, many of them joined the Democratic Party in 1994 in an uneasy alliance with young business people who appreciated their intellectual commitment to developing a free market but did not necessarily identify with their other preoccupations. The Democratic Party finally splintered after entering government under the umbrella of the Slovak Democratic Coalition in 1998. Arguably, Slovakia suffered badly from having a cosmopolitan intellectual elite which was invaluable in pressing the transition in 1989 and 1990, yet which – in part because of its strong pro-federation orientation – was rather deficient in its ability to build bridges with the mass Slovak public whose support was, in a democracy, a vital prerequisite for continued effective political action. The rather confused shape of the Slovak party system was not entirely due to an electoral system which, by establishing proportional representation, encouraged politicians to opt to be big fish in small ponds. The multi-party system was also a result of the multiple cleavages within Slovak society.49 Slovak voters were not neatly divided into left-wing reformers and right-wing conservatives, as in a classic, British-style two party system. In Slovakia, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ were used to refer to economic views only. Confusingly, because the status quo of the quasi-left communist period had been an economic system with excessive and obsessive state interference in the economy as well as a notable lack of personal freedom, dynamic and progressively-minded individuals who wished rapidly to change Slovakia into 67


a ‘standard’ European country after 1989 tended to designate themselves as ‘right-wing’. Conservative, often older, people, who felt threatened by change and had more closed mind-sets vulnerable to nationalist propaganda, were, on the other hand, sometimes designated as ‘left-wing’, because they supported causes such as the retention of subsidised rent and fuel and higher pensions, and state aid to the ailing industrial dinosaurs of the communist period whose closure would lead to compulsory redundancies. Other issues also affected how citizens voted. The population was divided ethnically, with the 10 per cent Hungarian minority voting fairly solidly for Hungarian parties. Slovak voters were further divided according to whether they were more nationally-minded supporters of Mecˇiar’s HZDS or the Slovak National Party, or more cosmopolitan in their outlook. The anti-Mecˇiar right was divided between more rural, conservative Catholics who voted for the Christian Democrats and younger, urban private sector employees. Educated state sector workers were divided between supporters of the postcommunist Party of the Democratic Left and those who opted for liberal parties of more recent origin. The electorate was also volatile, with many voters changing party between elections. Such pluralism of interests and interest representation appears incongruent with the deep polarisation of Slovak politics conspicuous in the 1990s. To explain this, it is helpful to differentiate the two sets of factors that are salient in determining voter choice. One is the value orientations and policy choices of the voters, and the second is the demographic factors that often determine these choices. The party system results from the interplay of both. Voters’ attitudes and policy preferences are primarily affected by two issues: national orientation and economic views. The major feature of Slovak politics in the 1990s was the salience of the former. It is not unusual in postcommunist states with an ethnic minority for that community to have formed its own political party during the post-1989 democratisation, as the Hungarians did in Slovakia, but the fact that the ethnically Slovak part of the electorate also split according to national orientation was a major factor dividing the Slovak political system in two. HZDS and SNS voters are marked by a strong antipathy to the Hungarian minority,50 whom they perceive as a threat, and they are also more inclined to view the independent Slovakia as a beleaguered small state unfairly picked upon by the west.51 Mecˇiar was prone to portray his opponents as people who had opposed Slovak independence, and frequently accused them of being ‘anti-Slovak’ or ‘bad Slovaks’. In fact independence was not, by the late 1990s, seriously questioned by any of his political rivals, whose concerns focused far more on the forward-looking agenda of getting the country into the EU and NATO. The left–right economic split, which forms the basis of so many west European party systems, was by no means absent in Slovakia, but was nonetheless secondary to perceptions of nationhood. One way of looking at the Slovak party system is that it comprises three separate left–right spectra. The 68


Hungarian Coalition – since its supporters voted solely according to ethnicity – contained almost a cross-section of economic views within a single party, although it defined itself as ‘centre-right’. The second left–right spectrum was a ‘nationally-orientated’ Slovak camp comprising the SNS on the right; HZDS, which initially maintained that it was a centrist party, in the middle; and – from 1994–8 – ZRS on the left. The camps designated ‘centreright’ and ‘centre-left’ formed the third left–right spectrum, with (at various times) parties such as the Christian Democratic Movement, the Democratic Union, the Slovak Christian and Democratic Union and the Democratic ‚ Party on the right, and the post-communist SDL on the left, together with SOP and the smaller Social Democrats and Greens. The defining characteristic of Slovak politics was that, because of the ‘Hungarian factor’, these two non-nationalist Slovak camps automatically went into coalition together both in March 1994 and September 1998, whereas in the west they would have formed the backbone of the government on the one hand and the opposition on the other. Because they were more ethnically tolerant, they could also form coalitions with the Hungarian Coalition, which often held the balance between the two Slovak left–right spectra. The coalition pattern therefore confirms that degrees of nationalism in Slovakia were more important in determining party profiles than attitudes towards economic left–right issues. Also crucial for Slovakia’s political development was the fact that the more nationally orientated Slovak parties and voters had a less developed sense of democratic pluralism. Sociological surveys showed repeatedly that the voters concerned had more authoritarian notions of how society should be ruled, and a less open attitude towards the outside world, which was reflected in the actions of the Mecˇiar governments they elected.52 It was this that threatened Slovakia’s international position, since, by the second half of the 1990s, Mecˇiar governments had gained the reputation of being governments with which the international community found it hard to do business, both politically and economically. Looking at demographic factors in combination with policy preferences and value orientations takes us further in explaining the polarisation of the Slovak party system. Post-communist societies have ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ from the changes that took place after 1989. The young, the educated, and those living in cities are in a better position to thrive in the changed environment, while pensioners, those without specialist training, and rural-dwellers do badly. To a considerable extent, these groups overlap. Slovakia was a society which modernised and urbanised exceptionally rapidly after 1945. The pre-war generation, who had walked to primary school barefoot in the mountains, watched the communists build factories down the valley, and saw their children or grandchildren go off to university and then move to Bratislava or Kosˇice. The people who remained in the villages tended to be older or to be less educated; and the older tended in any case to be less educated. 69


It is such ‘transformation losers’ whom the public opinion surveys show to be least likely to have enlightened political views, and most likely to vote for parties that participate in Mecˇiar governments. There are also regional differences in voting behaviour. Mecˇiar’s support has been strongest in the mountainous northern and central regions of Slovakia.53 In the east of Slovakia, the country’s second largest city, Kosˇice, retained a cosmopolitan spirit, and rural conservatism had a greater ten‚ dency to express itself in support for the post-communist SDL, or KDH, and not in support for HZDS or SNS. Bratislava remained largely hostile to the rural values of the closed society that Mecˇiar represented, and in the south of the country the presence of the Hungarian minority injected a strong ethnic element into electoral choices.54 The effects of all these demographic factors on voting behaviour can be highlighted most easily by looking at an analysis of voting patterns for the second round of the presidential elections in May 1999. This is particularly relevant to an examination of the polarisation of Slovak society, as it was the first national Slovak election ever to involve a clear choice of just two candidates. Vladimír Mecˇiar, as a representative of the more nationally-orientated Slovak camp, stood in a run-off against Rudolf Schuster, a representative from the centre-left camp who was also supported by the centre-right and the Hungarian minority. Schuster gained 57.18 per cent of the vote in the country as a whole, and Mecˇiar 42.81 per cent. However, in cities of more than 100,000 (i.e. Bratislava and Kosˇice), Schuster’s support was 75 per cent, while it was only 57 per cent in cities between 50,000 and 99,999, and sank to 46 per cent in villages with less than 200 inhabitants.55 Public opinion polls showed that his support among voters under 25 was 71 per cent, and declined gradually through the age groups so that only 43 per cent of those aged 60 and over intended to vote for him.56 Among those with only primary education, 47 per cent supported Schuster, while this figure rose to 79 per cent among those with higher education.57 Likewise, Mecˇiar was the preferred candidate of agricultural workers (62 per cent), manual workers (58 per cent) and the unemployed (53 per cent), while students, office workers, entrepreneurs and managers (67 per cent) were more likely to support Schuster.58 Regional preferences were just as strong: Trencˇin and Zˇ ilina, in the north-west nationalist heartlands, were the only two of the eight regions which opted for Mecˇiar (with 64 and 63 per cent of votes), whereas in the Bratislava and Kosˇice regions, Schuster’s vote reached 68 and 73 per cent respectively.59 Most notable of all, however, was that while 96 per cent of ethnic Hungarians expressed support for Schuster, the figure declined to 50 per cent (with 5 per cent undecided) among ethnic Slovaks.60 What is particularly interesting here is that Schuster was far from the exact opposite of Mecˇiar, since he came from the ‘middle ground’ of Slovak politics. He was 64 years old when he stood for president, and had been a prominent Communist politician in Eastern Slovakia in the 1980s. The 70


non-nationalist centre-right parties accepted him as their candidate only as a result of complicated negotiations when the Dzurinda government was formed in October 1998.61 He was also – unusually for a Slovak politician – a fluent Hungarian speaker, and, as the spelling of his name suggests, came from an ethnically German background. All this only further emphasises that the major divide in Slovak politics was not one of left and right, but rather between those who adapted to the consensus-building and compromise of democratic politics, and those who did not. The above factors suggest a number of explanations for the polarisation of Slovak politics in the post-communist period. First and foremost, it is a new state, but the elites who led it to independence in 1992 were not those who had steered the battle against communist rule in 1989, and neither Mecˇiar nor his opponents had prior experience of taking sole responsibility for momentous changes. Nationalists were clumsy in conducting international relations, while reformists of a more cosmopolitan bent sometimes felt a closer affinity to Prague than to the villages of central and eastern Slovakia whose voters they needed to win over.62 Second, Slovakia is also a relatively small state, which enabled people to continue to use personal links to achieve personal life aims in the way to which they had become accustomed when its rulers were non-Slovak elites to whom they had severely limited formal access. Elite inexperience was thus also reflected in the tendency for individual, personality-driven politics to prevail. Among the more reformist part of the political community, which opposed Mecˇiar, parties split and reformed according to the personal ambitions of, and personal contacts between, politicians, with little regard to the available constituencies of electoral support based on the objective interests and preferred policies of the voters at large. Slovakia remained, even into the new millennium, a classic example of a post-communist democracy where parties were formed from above, within the parliament, and not as a result of social forces organising themselves politically in order to gain policy-making power through parliamentary representation.63 Third, Slovakia is not just a new state, but also one which modernised very rapidly under communism. For many older people, Slovakia’s founding father Vladimír Mecˇiar epitomised their vision of progress. He had achieved educational and political success despite coming from a poor, rural background, and he retained an ability for blunt speaking in a language that many ordinary Slovaks understood. He was a symbol of the first generation of educated Slovaks who proved successful in the modern world while maintaining their links to family in the countryside. This gained him the strong personal loyalty of over a quarter of the population, which was enough to maintain him as a leading Slovak politician throughout the turbulent early years of post-1989 Slovak politics. As a consequence of all these factors, Mecˇiar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia was the only large, established political party. Yet even this was vulnerable to the point where there was a question mark over its 71


long-term survival as the new millennium dawned. Although it appealed consistently to a genuine constituency among voters, this was an older, more backward-looking part of society that was inherently likely to be prone to gradual erosion. More importantly, the strength of Mecˇiar’s personal charisma provoked doubts about the extent of the party’s appeal when he retired, and also – given his dubious personal and political track record – made his party almost ‘uncoalitionable’ while he was at its helm. The party system remained, therefore, unstable, because both the underlying cleavages in society and the politicians’ ability to respond to them were a source of uncertainty.

The situation of minorities in Slovakia The position of ethnic minorities merits a separate section because, of all the issues in Slovak politics since independence in 1993, it has received the most international attention. In a period when Slovakia has been striving for integration into European structures, meaning that the opinions of the international community are acutely important, the minority question has done more to damage Slovakia’s image than any other. Coming so soon after nationalist pressure had led to the division of Czechoslovakia, Hungarian concerns about the gradual suppression of their rights in the independent Slovakia were bound to create concern. Moreover, by the time that worries about the position of the Hungarian minority abated with the formation of the Dzurinda government in late 1998, they were superseded by the problem of members of Slovakia’s Roma minority seeking political asylum throughout Europe, from Ireland to Finland to the Czech Republic. Slovakia’s two main minority groups could hardly have been more different. Numerically, the Hungarian minority is relatively easy to define. The 1991 census showed that 10.76 per cent of the Slovak population identified themselves as Hungarians,64 while provisional results of the 2001 census showed a lower figure of 9.7 per cent.65 These are entirely credible figures, given that an average of approaching 10 per cent of the population votes for Hungarian parties in Slovak elections. The Hungarian community is also distinct by language, and some three-quarters of its children go to schools where teaching is in Hungarian.66 The Roma, on the other hand, comprised only 1.44 per cent of the population of Slovakia according to the 1991 census. This was clearly a gross underestimation, which provided scope for widely divergent guesses about the real number of Roma in the country, generally believed to be between 5 and 10 per cent of the population.67 It was expected that many more Roma would identify themselves as such in the 2001 census, but in fact the number only increased from 75,802 to 89,920. The Roma are harder to enumerate by language use as well: they speak a number of languages – Slovak, Hungarian, and variations of Romany – but there is no real educational infrastructure for teaching them in their own 72


language.68 The other minorities in Slovakia are all much less numerous than even the official figures for the Roma, and mostly speak Slavonic languages.69 As discussed above, national orientations are particularly important because they affect how Slovakia is governed. It has indeed sometimes been suggested that it was the fact that Slovakia is not an ethnically homogeneous state – unlike its Visegrad neighbours Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic – that hampered the anchoring of democracy in the 1990s.70 Historical complexes play a crucial role: what the international community, and more importantly Hungarians in Slovakia, regard as a minority problem is viewed psychologically on a different level by many Slovaks because, until the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, it was the Hungarians who were the dominant majority in the Slovak lands, and the Slovaks who were a minority. In the 1920s, the British historian Robert Seton-Watson described Slovak politicians as making ‘the impression of a helpless animal fascinated by the approach of the boa-constrictor’.71 He was referring to their reactions as the Hungarian Bolsheviks invaded the newly formed Czechoslovak state in spring 1919, just a few months after Slovakia had been removed from Hungarian rule. Decades later, when Slovakia emerged from communism and became an independent state, the remnants of this once very real postimperial fear of Hungarian domination remained a potent force in the minds of a very substantial minority of Slovaks. Their reactions to the perceived Hungarian threat were, unfortunately, no more appropriate than those described by Seton-Watson. The more nationally minded part of the Slovak political community still insisted, at the end of the twentieth century, on viewing themselves as a beleaguered people subjected to persistent attempts at assimilation by the culturally self-confident Hungarians in areas of southern Slovakia where ethnic Slovaks were in a minority.72 In the south of Slovakia, older Slovaks also have living memories of the forced assimilation to which they were subjected by Hungarians when the lands where they lived were returned to Hungary in 1939. In the post-1989 democracy, this defensive Slovak agenda clashed badly with the defensive agenda of Slovakia’s Hungarian-speaking citizens, who really were an ethnic minority in this normal understanding of the word. For western observers, the idea that anyone could be genuinely scared of Hungarians was so utterly absurd that the approach of successive Mecˇiar governments to relations with the Hungarian minority met with blanket opprobium. The fears of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, on the other hand, were much easier to comprehend, and also more amenable to remedy by political and legal agreements. Moreover, the striking 10 per cent decrease in the number of Slovak citizens identifying themselves ethnically as Hungarians between the 1991 and 2001 censuses clearly showed that it was the Hungarian fears of assimilation that had substance. The burdens of history also affect the Hungarian community. Older 73


Hungarians remember the brutality of Slovak reprisals when the southern Slovak lands were returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945. The principle of collective guilt embodied in the presidential decrees (called the ‘Benesˇ decrees’) of summer 1945 led to many being expelled or fleeing to Hungary.73 The right to Czechoslovak citizenship was restored to the remaining ethnic Hungarians in 1948, reflecting the fact that Czechoslovakia and Hungary were now ‘fraternal’ states in the Soviet camp. Unfortunately, after the communist takeover of 1948, no-one had any rights in the democratic sense of the word, so the period of post-war discrimination merged into the Stalinist terror of the late 1940s and early 1950s to form a single darkest day in the minds of Hungarians in Slovakia.74 However oppressive Hungarian rule over Slovaks had been, it could scarcely compete with the horrors of communist purges – notwithstanding the fact that these also affected Slovaks in Slovakia and Hungarians in Hungary. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as de-Stalinisation took hold in the Warsaw Pact states, Hungarian-language education was gradually restored in Slovakia, and the Prague Spring of 1968 saw the passing of Constitutional Act No. 144, which was rather progressive for the times in its recognition of the rights of national minorities.75 By 1989, the situation in southern Slovakia was rather curious. Under late communism, the formal legal situation and reality diverged in many spheres, and this applied to the position of ethnic minorities. Everyday life was conducted in Hungarian in the areas of Slovakia where most people spoke this language, and the communists happily hung up red banners with the normal revolutionary platitudes printed in Hungarian, since this was obviously going to be the most efficient language of indoctrination. No language laws were necessary for this: the communists simply did what best suited their aims, and political acquiescence was acceptable to them in any language. Hungarians were, in fact, generally bilingual,76 and young men in particular had to learn Slovak during military service if they had not picked it up earlier. Consequently, ethnic Slovaks tended to feel more excluded by the use of Hungarian than vice versa. As the goalposts of political life moved in the course of the 1990s, both ethnic Slovaks and Hungarians attempted to formalise their rights. The reintroduction of democracy and a multi-party system in 1989 enabled the Hungarians to organise politically along ethnic lines, although there was also a Hungarian Independent Initiative within VPN, the citizens’ movement. Nationality-based parties were very common in all early post-communist elections, as ethnicity was one of the few constants with which it was easy for confused citizens to identify in a rapidly changing world. In Slovakia, over 20 per cent of voters chose ethnicity-based parties in the June 1990 elections, while in the Czech Republic, over half a million people voted for a ‘Moravian and Silesian’ association.77 Minority fears were not entirely baseless: as the structures of access to resources (both economic and political) were revolutionised, an opaque distribution system and the widespread use of 74


personal contacts made it inherently likely that whole ethnic groups might lose out in the transformation process. One of the most emotive arguments of the early post-communist period in Slovakia was an attempt to pass a language law asserting the position of the Slovak language in October 1990. The eventual compromise reached was that Hungarian-speakers had a right to use their mother tongue in dealings with officialdom in areas where they constituted more than 20 per cent of the population (a proportion first established in the 1920 Czechoslovak constitution), but that public servants would not be under any obligation to speak Hungarian. However, the language issue remained a bone of contention throughout the 1990s. There were arguments over whether village name signs could be displayed in both languages; about whether all women’s surnames had to end in the Slovak female suffix – ová (notwithstanding the fact that this generally rendered foreign names laughable at best, and often, particularly in the case of Hungarian names, verging on the unpronouncable as well); about whether Hungarian language schools should be forced to issue school reports in Slovak only; and even about the language in which shop assistants should say ‘good day’ to their customers. The third Mecˇiar government passed a new language law in November 1995 that strengthened the use of Slovak as the state language, while omitting to pass a law on the use of minority languages. It failed to correct this omission in defiance of pressure from the European Union, and it was left to the Dzurinda government finally to pass the law on minority language use in 1999. Yet not even the Dzurinda government’s law was voted for by the Hungarian deputies, despite the fact that their party was one of the coalition partners.78 Relations with Hungary posed further problems. These were burdened from the outset by Czechoslovak/Hungarian disputes about the GabcˇikovoNagymaros dam, a grandiose hydro-electric scheme of the sort so beloved by communist regimes which affected the Danube River on the Slovak/ Hungarian border (see Chapter 3). Slovakia was also sensitive to any apparent attempts by the Hungarian government to interfere in Slovak affairs or to claim a right to speak on behalf of Hungarian-speakers in Slovakia on the grounds that they were part of a single Hungarian nation of 15 million people. (Hungary had a population of about 10 million.) The Hungarian tendency to believe that the Treaty of Trianon – the 1920 treaty that deprived the Hungarian state of two-thirds of its territory – had been unjust was translated in many Slovak minds into an irredentist desire to change borders and create a Greater Hungary. However, an important point to emphasise about Slovak–Hungarian intercommunal relations in Slovakia is their peaceful nature. This should come as no surprise in a part of Europe which has been successful in developing functioning democracies on their way to EU membership within a very short period of time. What is also striking when looking at public opinion polls is that nationalist anxieties have been far less pronounced 75


among Slovaks in the ethnically mixed areas of southern Slovakia than in the mountains and valleys of the north, where less than 1 per cent of the population is ethnically Hungarian. Those who live alongside Hungarians have been more likely to think relations between them were good,79 and less likely to think that they were threatened with assimilation by the Hungarians. The only issue which did, however, seem to provoke a stronger reaction among Slovaks in mixed areas than with those who would be unaffected by it was the issue of ‘autonomy’.80 The notion of granting autonomy to areas inhabited by ethnic minorities is a particularly controversial one in Eastern Europe in general because, where lands inhabited by minorities are contiguous with states where that national group constitutes a majority, historical precedent suggests that the minority population may use its autonomous structures to raise demands that the area concerned should be transferred to the neighbouring state. Furthermore, ‘autonomy’ is an imprecise concept. It may refer to autonomy in the spheres of education and culture only, or to complete territorial autonomy, where a region gains substantial rights to decide its own path in almost every domestic political arena where the state exercises power. Hungarian politicians in Slovakia have themselves differed and vacillated about the extent of the autonomy which they desire. For Slovaks living in the areas concerned, autonomy is controversial because it produces a ‘zero sum game’, in which what one side gains represents a loss to the other side. The granting of minority rights, such as being allowed to spell your name the way you want or having a bilingual sign designating the name of your village, does not impinge on the lifestyle of the state’s ethnic majority. The granting of some form of regional ‘autonomy’, on the other hand, threatens to impose minority status on an ethnic community which forms a majority in the state as a whole, and is hence perceived to disadvantage it. It was not, however, the fears of Slovaks about being somehow subordinated to the Hungarians that concerned the international community. It was the Hungarians who formed the country’s largest minority, and whose worries were easiest to understand. For them, the hostility among Slovaks towards the Hungarian language, which first became manifest during the argument about the legal status of the Slovak language in autumn 1990, was a particularly bad omen as the division of Czechoslovakia loomed during 1992. Since 1918, the Hungarians of Slovakia had lived – with the exception of the wartime period when they were returned to Hungary – in a state that was predominantly Czech. This had been a reasonably acceptable status quo, as Czechoslovakia was, by its very name, a state combining more than one identity, and Czech–Hungarian relations were burdened with little historical baggage. The Hungarians had had their place in the larger Czechoslovak state, and 84 per cent of Hungarian Slovaks stated in 1993 that they would have voted against the division of Czechoslovakia if there had been a referendum.81 Yet in 1993, they suddenly found themselves in a state that was 76


predominantly Slovak rather than Czech. Not only did they lack enthusiasm for the new state – whose establishment had not, in any case, even been endorsed by a majority of its ethnically Slovak citizens – but, just as crucially, it was far harder for them to develop a sense of belonging to an independent Slovakia under Mecˇiar because it appeared not to accept them, and regarded them as a threat, rather than as valued citizens. The Hungarian minority was forced, therefore, throughout the terms in office of the second Mecˇiar government which presided over the division of Czechoslovakia, and the third Mecˇiar government from 1994–8, to concentrate on a defensive agenda of fighting to preserve existing cultural rights. Funds from the state budget for supporting minority culture were cut and also abused, for example by being given to a pro-government newspaper, Slovenská republika, for publishing regular supplements in minority languages. Since the newspaper in question regularly featured blatantly racist anti-Hungarian cartoons, often on the front page, the chances of it being an effective tool for supporting Hungarian culture were nil. Threats of creeping assimilation were also suspected when the education minister in the third Mecˇiar government, a Slovak National Party member, attempted to promote ‘alternative schooling’, which essentially entailed introducing bilingual education for children who had previously been taught in Hungarian. The wellmobilised Hungarian community put up such stiff opposition that the scheme was abandoned. As damaging, however, as the acts of the Mecˇiar governments was the rhetoric with which they spoke. The unveiled hostility with which they referred to Hungarians, and the negative portrayal of everything Hungarian in Slovakia’s history, could not help but evoke mistrust and suspicion among the minority. The minority, in turn, increased the emphasis it put on the need for autonomy or strong local government, since other methods of selfrealisation in public life appeared unavailable. These demands, in turn, produced an allergic reaction among many Slovaks. The underlying difficulties in the relationship between Slovaks and the Hungarian minority were manifold. The first was the communist legacy, and the problems in asserting individual rights which had been left in its wake. This led to the tendency to seek collective rights, supported by legislation. Yet such an approach merely legalised and hence emphasised the prominence of ethnic difference. For example, the right to use one’s native language in communicating with the state depended legally on whether the proportion of the local population belonging to the group concerned exceeded 20 per cent, yet the individual citizen’s needs did not. The real problem was that the notion of the state having an obligation to communicate with the citizen rather than vice versa had no tradition. Ironically, the historically-based aversion of Slovaks to encouraging more widespread acceptance of Hungarian in the country as a whole – which would not have been unreasonable as it was the mother tongue of 10 per cent of all citizens – could only strengthen 77


the tendency of Hungarian-speakers to remain in the areas where they were concentrated, thus reducing the likelihood of both assimilation and integration. The ‘20 per cent’ provision also legally marked out some areas of Slovakia as being in some sense Hungarian, which appears a rather risky undertaking given the paranoid Slovak fear of Hungarian irredentism and possible future border changes. Logically, trying to spread the state’s ‘Hungarianness’ over the country as a whole would have been the best defence against parts of it being in some way claimed by Hungarians. Yet issues of national identity were too sensitive to submit to mere logic. Likewise, successive Slovak governments’ failure to strengthen the provision of Hungarian-language higher education only increased the numbers of Hungarian-speaking Slovak citizens who enrolled at colleges in Hungary, thereby strengthening the minority orientation towards Budapest that Slovak nationalists found so disconcerting. In the end, neither the Slovaks nor the Hungarians were great supporters of either multiculturalism or the promotion of multiple identities. The Hungarians, as a minority, felt that maintaining their distinctiveness was the best way of preserving their identity, whereas Slovaks, as a relatively small and new nation, were reluctant to dilute their state’s cultural identity. A second difficulty the Slovaks and Hungarians had in sorting out their relationship was that the decision to emphasise legal rights based on ethnicity, and the tendency of the Hungarians to appeal to international bodies when they felt their rights were not being sufficiently protected, inevitably triggered disputes about what the normal democratic western standard of minority rights actually was. When subject to closer scrutiny, this ‘standard’ proved surprisingly elusive, since few recommendations and charters of international bodies were actually adhered to even in all EU member states.82 The third Mecˇiar government decided that attack was the best method of defence, and became adept at responding to international criticism by citing examples of respected consolidated democracies whose law and practice in dealing with minorities were technically inferior to Slovakia’s. As a tactic for gaining international acceptance, this policy was an abject failure. Every EU state had found its own individual solution to internal problems of difference, and expected Slovakia to do the same. Ultimately, the international community’s primary requirement was that new democracies should attempt to reduce the levels of inter-ethnic conflict, lest they one day escalate out of control. The problem the Hungarian minority had was that its civil rights in the mid-1990s were far superior to those of, say, the much larger Russian minority in Estonia, which had a problem even in gaining citizenship. The Hungarians’ grievances related primarily to the fact that their existing rights were being undermined, and that they had reason to fear for the future. The Slovak government’s problem was that, while the Estonian government was endeavouring to improve the situation of its minority, Slovakia was moving in what was evaluated internationally 78


as being the wrong direction, since it was clearly exacerbating the inter-communal tensions likely to cause instability that might threaten democracy. When the Dzurinda government took office, the symbolic importance of appointing a Hungarian as deputy prime minister for human rights and minorities, thereby demonstrating a positive desire to solve problems, was as important as the concrete legislative steps that followed. The Slovak democracy’s lack of experience in handling minority issues became, however, most acute when, at the turn of the millennium, the issue of the Slovak Roma superceded that of Slovak Hungarians as the focus for the concerns of the international community. The Roma community differed markedly from the Hungarians, who were very well organised politically. Whereas Hungarians voted at the ballot box, the Roma voted with their feet. Shortly after the September 1998 elections, the British government reimposed visa requirements on Slovak citizens – which had been lifted in the wake of the Velvet Revolution – as a direct response to mass asylum requests from Slovak Roma. This single act did more constructively to focus the attention of the Slovak middle classes on the Roma question than any other. They were forced to address a problem which would otherwise have remained well down on their list of political priorities. In communist Eastern Europe, the Roma were traditionally viewed as a social problem or an ethnic group, rather than as a national minority. They had suffered badly under a communist system that was intolerant of difference, and consequently they had generally been optimistic in 1989 that the new democracy might alleviate their oppression. In practice, however, the Roma were catastrophically affected by the advent of unemployment, during which they were the first to lose their jobs, both because of their lack of educational qualifications (on all criteria, they were classic transition ‘losers’) and because of rampant racial discrimination. They were also the first to fall into what in the west had long been known as the ‘poverty trap’: because Roma tended to have families of above-average size, even if employment might have been available, it could not be guaranteed to produce an income higher than social security payments in a society where the staples of life, such as rent, electricity and basic foodstuffs, were no longer subsidised. The only ‘advantage’ the Roma enjoyed was that a willingness to travel led some of the more resourceful to work out that they would be more generously subsidised, and more likely to find lucratively remunerated unskilled work, in western Europe. For the EU member states, still struggling to deal with their own much smaller Roma minorities, the far more numerous Roma communities in many candidate states were a formidable problem. Initial responses aimed at preventing an abuse of their political asylum procedures, but this begged the question of what would happen when EU enlargement opened borders. The EU was therefore desperately anxious that candidate states should start to tackle the underlying structural discrimination which led Roma to emigrate. 79


It was, however, a far more complex problem than that of the wellorganised Hungarian minority. Even issues that were easy to identify – like the tendency of the Slovak educational system to send a massively disproportionate number of Romany children to ‘special schools’ for those with learning difficulties, thereby excluding them from an early age from the possibility of gaining viable qualifications and skills – would not, if resolved, produce instant results. Meanwhile, populist politicians were able to play upon citizens’ fears about the high rate of petty crime among Roma, which were particularly potent in a society where crime itself was part of the angst of post-communist transition.83 The international community was aware that the Roma issue was not (unlike the question of Hungarian minorities) amenable to quick solution. All it could require was evidence that the Slovak government was prepared to address the issue and seek constructive solutions. Under the Dzurinda government, some progress was made.84 What remained to be seen was whether future governments would build upon its initial efforts. This required a consolidation of democracy as a whole, and structures which enabled all citizens to assert their rights. Finally, the minorities issue is important because it illustrates more clearly than any other an influence that was gradually coming to dominate the entire development of the Slovak political system at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and that was also reflected in constitutional changes and the development of the party system: the exigencies of the EU accession process. Processes that in other consolidating democracies might have taken years of argument were in the post-communist candidate states closely guided by the demands of the European Union’s acquis communautaire – the laws and regulations which it had been developing over decades. Despite occasional undertones of a communist-style paternalism or imperialism, this was generally a helpful influence in the chaotic world of Slovak politics. What it also meant, however, was that another major change in Slovak political life was likely to take place after accession to the EU. Whether the processes of rapid change would slacken off, or whether they would continue apace pushed on by an unstoppable momentum leading to convergence with western Europe, remained to be seen.

Notes 1 European Commission, ‘Agenda 2000: For a stronger and wider Union’, Bulletin of the European Union, Supplement 5/97, p. 41. 2 Budování státu, vol. IV, no. 5, May 1993, p. 16. 3 Budování státu, vol. IV, no. 3, March 1993, pp. 12–15. 4 See Petr Kopecký, Parliaments in the Czech and Slovak Republics: Party Competition and Parliamentary Institutionalization, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, pp. 149–53. 5 An abridged English version of the speech can be found in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 11 March 1994, pp. EE/1943 A1–5.

80


6 Karen Henderson, ‘The Slovak Republic’, in Bogdan Szajkowski, Political Parties of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Successor States, Harlow: Longman, 1994, pp. 525–44. 7 There were technically four parties, since HZDS had formed an electoral coalition with the virtually unknown Agrarian Party of Slovakia, which remained without visible influence in the course of the next four years. ‚ 8 For details, see Luba Lesná, Únos presidentovo syna, Bratislava: GMT, 1998. 9 Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Domestic political developments and the political scene in the Slovak Republic’, in Martin Bútora and Peter Huncˇík (eds), Global Report on Slovakia: Comprehensive Analyses from 1995 and Trends from 1996, Bratislava: Sándor Márai Foundation, 1997, pp. 11–31. 10 For English version, see BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 23 January 1995, EE 2208 A3. 11 Sharon Fisher, ‘Treaty fails to end squabbles over Hungarian relations’, Transition, vol. 1, no. 9, June 1995, pp. 2–7. 12 Slovenská republika, 25 March 1996, p. 2. 13 For calculations of the effects of using the new districts for electoral purposes, see Vladimír Krivý, ‘Nové kraje a okresy by posilnili pozíciu HZDS’, Národná obroda, 26 June 1996. 14 For details, see Bútora and Huncˇík, Global Report on Slovakia 1995/1996. 15 It later emerged that there was forensic evidence of explosive having been placed near the petrol tank, and there was considerable evidence of SIS involvement. See Kieran Williams and Dennis Deletant, Security Intelligence Services in New Democracies: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 136–7. 16 Gaulieder’s account can be found in Sme, 28 July 1997, p. 5. 17 Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Vnútropolitický vývoj a systém politických strán’, in Martin Bútora and Michal Ivantysˇyn (eds), Súhrnná správa o stave spolocˇ nosti a trendoch na rok 1998, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1998, pp. 90–2. 18 See Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov and Martin Bútora (eds), Slovenské referendum ’97: zrod, priebeh, dôsledky, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1997. ‚ 19 Olga Gyárfásˇová and Miroslav Kúska, ‘The development of voting preferences and voting behavior’, in Martin Bútora, Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Zora Bútorová, Sharon Fisher (eds), The 1998 Parliamentary Elections and Democratic Rebirth in Slovakia, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1999, pp. 221–32. 20 Juraj Hrabko, Amnestovaní, Bratislava: Kalligram, 2001, chapter 1. 21 See Karen Henderson, ‘Problems of democratic consolidation in the Slovak Republic’, Society and Economy in Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest), no. 3, 1999, pp. 141–78. 22 Commission of the European Communities, Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession, COM(1998) 703 final. 23 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Výsledky hlasovania vo vol’be prezidenta Slovenskej republiky (2 vols.), Bratislava: May 1999. 24 Eugen Jurzyca et al., ‘The economy of the Slovak Republic’, in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Michal Ivantysˇyn, Tom Nicholson (eds), Slovakia 1998–1999: A Global Report on the State of Society, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1999, p. 214. 25 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická správa o základných vývojových tendenciách v hospodárstve SR v 1. sˇtvrt’roku 2001, no. 1, 2001, p. 45. 26 For most of the remainder of the parliament’s 4-year term, opinion polls showed Fico as the most popular Slovak politician, after Mecˇiar, ‚ and Smer the second most popular party after HZDS. See Zora Bútorová, Olga Gyárfásˇová, Marián

81


27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40

41

42 43

Velsˇic, ‘Public opinion’, in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Miroslav Kollár, Tom Nicholson (eds), Slovakia 2000: A Global Report on the State of Society, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2001, pp. 199–232. See Vladimír Lesˇka, Vnitropolitická situace SR v roce 2000 prˇed vyhlásˇením referenda o prˇedcˇ asných volbách, Prague: Ústav mezinárodních vztahu˚ , October 2000, p. 43. Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Domestic politics’, in Mesezˇ nikov, Kollár, Nicholson, pp. 17–84. Sme, 30 July 2001, p. 2. An IVO survey from July 2001 showed that SNS was the most popular ‘second preference’ of HZDS supporters. Sme, 7 August 2001, p. 7. Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Domestic politics’, p. 47. Up-to-date lists of which deputies belong to which parliamentary faction, or ‘club’, can be found on the parliament’s website, www.nrsr.sk. Joseph A. Mikusˇ, Slovakia: A Political and Constitutional History, Bratislava: Academic Press/Slovak Academic Press, 1995, p. 360. Dusˇan Kovácˇ, Dejiny Slovenska, Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 1998, p. 322. For discussion of this topic, see Arend Lijphart (ed.), Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1994. Additionally, in post-communist states – notably post-Soviet ones – the majoritarian element in mixed systems has produced greater fragmentation than the PR element. Karen Henderson and Neil Robinson, Post-Communist Politics, London: Prentice Hall, 1997, pp. 170–4. Arend Lijphard calculates that bicameral parliaments are usual in states with populations above about 10 million – the size of the Czech Republic. See Arend Lijphard, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in ThirtySix Countries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 202–3. Detailed discussion of the role of the Slovak president is contained in Ladislav Orosz and Katarína Sˇ imunicˇová, Prezident v ústavnom systéme Slovenskej republiky, Bratislava: VEDA, 1998. For accounts of Dubcˇek’s life, see William Shawcross, Dubcˇ ek: Dubcˇ ek and Czechoslovakia 1918–1990, London: Hogarth Press, 1990; Alexander Dubcˇek, Nadeˇ je umírá poslední, Prague: Nakladatelství Svoboda – Libertas, 1993; Hubert Maxa, Alexander Dubcˇ ek: Cˇ lovek v politice (1990–1992), Bratislava/Brno: Kalligram/Doplneˇ k, 1998; Tereza Michalová (ed.), Dubcˇ ek známy a neznámy, Bratislava: Prospero, 1998. Zora Bútorová & Martin Bútora, ‘Events and personalities in Slovakia’s history’, in Zora Bútorová (ed.), Democracy and Discontent in Slovakia: A Public Opinion Profile of a Country in Transition, Bratislava: Institute of Public Affairs, 1998, p. 196. Karen Henderson, ‘Don’t blame the constitution’, The New Presence (Prague), September 1999, pp. 10–11. For example, a survey of the Institute for Research of Public Opinion of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, conducted in February and March 2001 among 1028 respondents selected by quota method by standardised interviews, showed that 70 per cent of respondents tended to distrust the courts, leaving it behind most Slovak institutions, such as state radio and television, private television, the army, local government, the churches, the Constitutional and Supreme

82


44

45 46 47 48 49

50 51

52 53

54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Courts, the president, trade unions and the procuracy. See Názory, vol. 12, no. 1 (2001), pp. 19–25. Vladimír Slavík, ‘Priestorová organizáci verejnej správy v Slovenskej republiky v rokoch 1990–1996’, in Frank Delmartino, Elke Vermessen, Silvia Miháliková, ‚ Lubomír Falt’an (eds), Nové podoby verejnej správy, Bratislava: SAV, 1997, pp. 91–110. For regional election results, see www.statistics.sk. For commentary and text of the 1998 election law, see Dusˇan Sˇ veda, Marcela Petrlová, Lívia Sˇ kultétyová, Parlamentné vol’by, Bratislava: epos, 1998. ‚ See Lubosˇ Kubín & Marián Velsˇic, Slovensko a jeho volebné pravidlá, Bratislava: VEDA, 1998. For an analysis of HZDS’s policies, see Tim Haughton, ‘HZDS: the ideology, organisation and support base of Slovakia’s most successful party’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 53, no. 5 (2001), pp. 745–69. For discussion of cleavages in the Slovak party system compared with the Czech Republic, see Kevin Deegan Krause, ‘Public opinion and party choice in Slovakia and the Czech Republic’, Party Politics, vol. 6, no. 1 (2000), pp. 23–46; Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield, ‘The structuring of political cleavages in postcommunist societies: the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia’, Political Studies, vol. 46, no. 1 (1998), pp. 115–39. See Vladimír Krivý, Hodnotové orientácie na Slovensku – skupinové portréty, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1998, p. 20. This emerges, for example, in views of HZDS and SNS voters about the reasons for Slovakia’s exclusion from negotiating NATO and EU membership in 1997. See Zora Bútorová and Martin Bútora, ‘Slovakia and the world’, in Bútorová (ed.), Democracy and Discontent in Slovakia, p. 179. See Krivý, Hodnotové orientácie na Slovensku; FOCUS, Aktuálne problémy Slovenska December 1994, Bratislava: 1994; Bútorová, Gyárfásˇová, Velsˇic, ‘Public opinion’, in Mesezˇ nikov, Kollár, Nicholson, Slovakia 2000, p. 215. Detailed regional analysis of voting behaviour and value orientations can be found in Vladimír Krivý, Viera Feglová, Daniel Balko, Slovensko a jeho regióny: Sociokultúrne súvislosti volebného správania, Bratislava: Nadácia Médiá, 1996. Vladimír Krivý, Cˇ o prezrádzajú volebné výsledky? Parlamentné vol’by 1992–1998, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1999. Vladimír Krivý, ‘Výsledky volieb v rokoch 1998 a 1999’ in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Michal Ivantysˇyn (eds), Slovensko 1998–1999: Súhrnná správa o stave spolocˇ nosti, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1999, p. 142; Názory, vol. 10, no. 2 (1999), pp. 24–6. Ibid., p. 29; see also Sme, 1 June 1999 for figures of MVK survey. Názory, vol. 10, no. 2, p. 27. MVK figures were 45 and 71 per cent (Sme, 1 June 1999). Ibid. Názory, vol. 10, no. 2, p. 23. Ibid., p. 28. President Schuster’s own account of the negotiations can be found in Rudolf Schuster, Návrat do vel’kej politike, Bratislava: PressPrint, 1999. The idea that it is elite failure rather than deficits in popular political culture that explains Slovakia’s problems in the 1990s is presented in Sonˇa Szomolányi, Kl’ukatá cesta Slovenska k demokracii, Bratislava: STIMUL, 1999. See also Shari J. Cohen, Politics Without a Past: The Absence of History in Postcommunist Nationalism, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999.

83


63 On party organisation, see Mária Ondruchová, Organizácia politických strán a hnutí na Slovenksu, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 2000. 64 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická rocˇ enka Slovenskej republiky 1992, Bratislava: 1993, p. 42. 65 See website of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, www.statistics.sk. 66 Edwin Bakker, Minority Conflicts in Slovakia and Hungary, Capelle a/d IJssel: Labyrint Publication, 1997, p. 76. 67 In 2001, the EU still stated that ‘it could be as high as nearly 10 per cent’. Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession, SEC (2001) 1754, Brussels, 13 November 2001. 68 See Michal Vasˇecˇka, ‘Roma’, in Mesezˇ nikov, Kollár, Nicholson, Slovakia 2000, pp. 169–98. 69 The 2001 census stated that there were 44,620 Czechs and 24,201 Ruthenes in Slovakia. See www.statistics.sk/webdata/slov/scitanie/tab/tab3b.htm. 70 See, for example, Milada Anna Vachudová and Tim Snyder, ‘Are transitions transitory? Two types of political change in Eastern Europe since 1989’, East European Politics and Society, vol. 11, no. 1 (1997), pp. 1–35; Michael Carpenter, ‘Slovakia and the triumph of national populism’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 30, no. 2 (1997), pp. 205–20. 71 R.W. Seton Watson, The New Slovakia, Prague: Fr. Borový, 1924, p. 24. 72 As but one example, see the essay collection published in English by the Ministry of Culture and officially distributed during the third Mecˇiar government: Pavol Sˇ tevcˇek (ed.), Slovaks and Magyars: Slovak–Magyar Relations in Central Europe, Bratislava: Správa kultúrnych zariadení MK SR, 1995. 73 See Dagmar Cˇ ierna-Lantayová, Podoby cˇ esko-slovensko-mad’arského vzt’ahu 1938–1949, Bratislava: VEDA, 1992; Sˇ tefan Sˇ utaj, Mad’arkská mensˇina na Slovensku v rokoch 1945–1948, (Bratislava: VEDA, 1993. 74 A concise English-language account of the Hungarian minority’s contemporary problems with a historical overview of the entire post-war period can be found in Information Centre of the Hungarian Coalition in Slovakia, The Hungarians in Slovakia, Bratislava: 1997. 75 Bakker, Minority Conflicts, p. 50; Kieran Williams, ‘The Magyar minority in Slovakia’, Regional and Federal Studies, vol. 6, no. 1 (1996), p. 3. 76 Public opinion research by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic in the early 1990s showed that only 5 per cent of Hungarians could only communicate in Hungarian. ÚVVM, Názory na vybrané problémy Slovákov a Mad’arov zˇ ijúcich v národnostne zmiesˇaných oblastiach juzˇ ného Slovenska, Bratislava: Sˇ tatistický úrad SR, 1994, p. 21. 77 FSÚ, Cˇ SÚ, SSˇ Ú, Statistická rocˇ enka ’91 Cˇ eské a slovenské federativní republiky, Prague: SEVT, 1991, pp. 628–30. 78 Ondrej Dostal, ‘Ethnic minorities’, in Mesezˇ nikov, Kollár, Nicholson, Slovakia 2000, pp. 153–68. 79 Pavol Fricˇ, Fedor Gál, Peter Huncˇík, Christopher Lord, Mad’arská mensˇina ‚na Slovensku, Prague, Hic et nunc, 1993, Tables 1, 4, pp. 64–5; Zora Bútorová, Olga Gyárfásˇová, Miroslav Kúska, Aktuálne problémy Slovenska na prelome rokov 1995–1996, Bratislava: FOCUS, 1996, pp. 112–15; ÚVVM, Názory na vybrané problémy, p. 41. 80 Karen Henderson, ‘Minorities and politics in the Slovak Republic’, in Snezˇ ana Trifunovska (ed.), Minorities in Europe: Croatia, Estonia and Slovakia, The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 1999, pp. 143–73. 81 FOCUS, Aktuálne problémy Slovenska po rozpade Cˇ SFR Október 1993, Bratislava: 1993, p. 82.

84


82 Williams, ‘The Magyar minority’. 83 Vasˇecˇka, ‘Roma’. 84 In a comprehensive report to the EU by the Slovak Republic on all aspects of accession preparations in summer 1991, the section on measures for dealing with Roma issues was one of the longest. See Správa o pripravenosti SR na cˇ lenstvo v EÚ za obdobie september 2000–jún 2001, www.government.gov.sk, pp. 14–21.

85

3 SLOVAKIA AND THE WORLD

Slovakia escaped from invisibility and entered on to the international stage as an independent state on 1 January 1993. Its situation was not ideal. In a federal state, foreign affairs are one of the key policy-making areas which lie within the competence of the ‘centre’ rather than the constituent republics, and the Slovak Republic’s diplomatic service had been hurriedly constructed, mostly in the latter half of the previous year. Bratislava lacked much of the basic infrastructure for running a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ranging from physical assets such as suitable buildings to the personnel requirement for qualified staff. Creating these placed heavy demands on its hard-pressed budget. The Slovak Republic had a three-fold disadvantage compared with established democracies when it came to diplomatic personnel. First, like all postcommunist societies, it had an urgent need to bring new blood into its foreign affairs structures because experienced diplomatic staff were largely Moscowtrained and had been heavily vetted for their allegiance to the communist state because they enjoyed rare possibilities to travel and live in the noncommunist world. They were therefore to some extent suspect in the new democratic environment. Second, there was a common perception that Czechs as the dominant nation in the federation had been particularly advantaged in diplomatic work, which was prestigious of itself as well as providing access to the much sought after opportunities for foreign travel. There were relatively few Slovaks with experience of the higher echelons of the Czechoslovak diplomatic service, and this problem was compounded by the fact that Slovaks often did not have the language skills so vital for international work.1 Third, since the Foreign Ministry had been based in Prague, not all of the Slovaks who had worked there were willing to transfer to Bratislava on the break-up of the federation, as this often entailed leaving behind their flats and weekend cottages and uprooting their children, and sometimes Czech partners, from the milieu in which they had grown up. Slovakia also lacked what has been referred to as the ‘software’ for conducting a successful foreign policy.2 The state lacked experience in formulating and implementing its own foreign policy and identifying its specific 86

S L O VA K I A A N D T H E W O R L D

interests in the international arena. Nothing could be learnt from its previous period of ‘independence’, during the discredited Slovak state from 1939–45, because it had existed only under oppressive external German influence in a period of war. Even the documents of Slovakia’s own history were concentrated in archives in Prague or Budapest.3 While the Czechs generally regarded themselves as a defenceless small nation whose fate had been dictated by larger foreign powers in 1938, 1948 and 1968, they had nonetheless enjoyed more sovereignty over their country’s affairs than the Slovaks, particularly in the interwar period. In addition to all this, the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs proved initially to be one of the politically most turbulent in Slovakia. Slovakia’s first Minister for Foreign Relations, Milan Knˇazˇ ko of Public Against Violence, had been given the title in September 1990, but he lost the post in spring 1991 when he threw in his lot with Mecˇiar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). Although reappointed after Mecˇiar’s victory in the June 1992 elections, Knˇazˇ ko soon left office again when he led the first wave of defections from HZDS in March 1993. Two of his many successors in the office also left the post when they abandoned hope in Mecˇiar.4 Only when the senior career diplomat-turned-politician, Eduard Kukan, took the post for the second time between 1998 and 2002 did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally attain some stability.5 In many respects, however, Slovakia’s standing on the international scene could have been much worse in early 1993. Although the Slovaks were at that time still widely regarded as the culprits responsible for the demise of Czechoslovakia, and Mecˇiar’s nationalist tendencies were regarded with great suspicion, Europe was confronted by far more pressing problems elsewhere. The eruption of the wars of Yugoslav succession in 1991, as well as the sporadic outbreaks of armed conflict and coup attempts in the former Soviet Union throughout the 1990s, engendered international respect for the peaceful, legal manner in which the Czechs and Slovaks had agreed to go their own separate ways. Furthermore, it was far from clear that the Czech and Slovak Republics were going different ways. At the beginning of 1993, the high level of political agreement between the two states about their legal status allowed both newly independent countries to be granted membership of leading international organisations. On 19 January 1993, the Slovak Republic became the 180th member of the United Nations; the Czech Republic was the 179th. In the same month, both states were accepted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Slovakia was given four seats in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Czech Republic, like Czechoslovakia before, had six seats. The European Community (EC) – for Slovakia by far the most complex and important of the international organisations – recognised both the new states in January 1993, but had to renegotiate its ‘Europe Agreement’ with 87


both republics. Consequently, the new Europe Agreements only came into force in February 1995, at the same time as Bulgaria and Romania, and one year behind those of Poland and Hungary. What was crucial in all this was that independence did not of itself greatly damage Slovakia’s standing in the international community. It was recognised as a successor state to Czechoslovakia on an equal footing with the Czech Republic. It was thereby also acknowledged to belong to the small group of more advanced post-communist states that had the highest realistic chance of integration into European structures. When the presidents of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland had met in Visegrad, Hungary, in February 1991 and reached a number of agreements, most notably on economic cooperation, it was accepted that the ‘Visegrad Three’ were the most likely candidates for EC and NATO membership. Despite the suspicion with which Slovak Prime Minister Mecˇiar was regarded internationally, at the beginning of 1993 this remained the common assumption about what was now the ‘Visegrad Four’. Yet by July 1997, the Slovak Republic had thrown away its advantageous starting position in the integration stakes. In both the NATO enlargement process and negotiations for EU accession, it had decoupled itself from the remaining three Visegrad states, and in March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO without Slovakia. In the EU negotiation process, Slovakia was overtaken by two states which in 1990 were still languishing in communist federations, Slovenia and Estonia. While the change of government in Slovakia that took place in autumn 1998 did much to improve the state’s tarnished image, the country nonetheless ended the millennium with a lingering question mark over its future. The reasons for Slovakia’s self-exclusion from the process of European integration lay largely within the realms of its domestic politics. For most of the 1990s, proclaimed foreign policy goals were in practice subordinated to the demands of political infighting within Slovakia. Part of Slovakia’s problems stemmed from the fact that it was a new state in a sense that the Czech Republic was not. The Czechs had far more experience of taking the lead in running a country, and although they had been disconcerted by the ending of Czechoslovakia, they slipped almost effortlessly into their new, purely Czech, identity. There was no doubt what the Czech state symbolised, and where it belonged. The Slovaks, on the other hand, were unclear about what their newly independent state represented in terms of history and values. This affected not merely Slovak efforts at European integration, but also relations with their neighbours. Ironically, their least contentious relationship was that with their western neighbour, Austria, which they generally viewed positively. This was because relations with Austria were not burdened by unresolved questions of history. Problems arose when dealing with the Hungarians, the Czechs and the Russians (although the latter were no longer, due to Ukrainian independence, immediate neighbours). All had, at different 88


times in the twentieth century, played a dominant role in determining the domestic political structures of Slovakia. As a consequence of this, analysis of the Slovak Republic’s international position cannot be divorced from its domestic politics. The country’s internal political polarisation was starkly reflected in its international relations, which for the first decade of its existence were either fraught and conflictual or relatively problem-free depending entirely on whether a Mecˇiar-led government happened to be in power. The often contradictory stances of Slovak government policy in the Mecˇiar years were a reflection of its desire, on the one hand, to bolster the country’s self-esteem by demonstrating that it was a state as good as any other and hence an essential element in the European integration process, coupled on the other hand with an unwillingness to compromise on its domestic aims of strengthening and perpetuating its own political power. This chapter will therefore proceed by focusing in particular on Euro-Atlantic integration, and Slovakia’s attempts to join the European Union (until November 1993 the European Community) and NATO. Detailed attention will be paid to its tortuous relationship with the EU. The nature of the EU means that membership is not solely a question of international relations: adoption of its acquis communautaire entails changes to domestic legislation which profoundly affect the life of every citizen, and also provides them with the chance to benefit from the right to travel freely and to work in other EU member states. Partly as a consequence of this, the issue highlights the interplay of domestic politics and international relations. The chapter will then look separately at Slovakia’s relations with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia, as well as its participation in regional initiatives. This will be dealt with in greater brevity. While bilateral relations assumed some importance in the early and mid-1990s, by the end of the decade it was clear that they were in many respects subordinate to the exigencies of Euro-Atlantic integration. The bilateral relations that mattered most were those with major international decision-makers, such as Germany within the EU, and the USA in NATO.

European integration The collapse of communism in Europe came as something of a surprise to the European Community and NATO. While it was generally recognised that Soviet-style ‘socialism’ was a decaying system that could not survive unchanged into the twenty-first century, the expectation – even after Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 – was rather that it would reform and gradually converge with the rest of the continent. This view reflected in part the ‘sovietologist’ bias which dominated communist studies as an academic discipline. Familiarity with Czechoslovakia, where it was clear from private conversation with almost anyone that citizens regarded 89


their government as a very, very sick joke (or indeed with Poland, where the Communist Party was struggling to maintain any semblance of authority at all throughout the 1980s) suggested far more strongly that such systems were ripe to all fall like dominos – as eventually, in 1989, they did. The EU However predictable the demise of communism in East Central Europe may have been, its collapse and the aftermath initially left the west having to react to the unexpected. The EC’s initial response to the changes of the late 1980s had been a process of differentiation between communist states. Trade and cooperation agreements were signed with Hungary in September 1988 and Poland in September 1989, and by the time the leaders of the EC states met at the Strasbourg European Council in December 1989, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development had been established to provide aid to liberalising states in the ‘east’ such as Poland and Hungary.6 It also established the Phare programme, which was named from the French acronym for ‘Poland and Hungary Assistance for Economic Restructuring’. However, by this point in time events had already moved on, and in September 1990, Phare aid was extended to cover Czechoslovakia, as well as Bulgaria and the (then still existing) German Democratic Republic and Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia signed a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EC in May 1990. Throughout 1990 the preparation of Association Agreements with the newly democratising states of East Central Europe was discussed, and in December 1991, the first such agreeements – formulated as ‘Europe Agreements’ for states in transition – were signed with Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. This was the agreement that had to be renegotiated separately with the Czech and Slovak Republics after the break-up of Czechoslovakia.7 However, the key impetus for enlargement of the European Union was given at the Copenhagen European Council of June 1993. It was the twiceyearly European Council summits, held in June and December of each year, which were to produce all the landmark decisions in Slovakia’s progress towards EU integration. The presidency of the EU rotated between member states every six months, and at the end of each presidency a meeting of the government leaders of the member states passed judgement on proposals made by the European Commission in Brussels. The Copenhagen European Council was crucial for Slovakia for two reasons. First, it made a fundamental political (but not legal) commitment on the part of the EU that it would expand to embrace the new democracies in the eastern half of the continent. Second, it established the much-quoted ‘Copenhagen criteria’, which determined when enlargement would take place. Since these were to prove fateful for Slovakia, the relevant part of the ‘presidency conclusions’ will be quoted in full: 90


The associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the Union. Accession will take place as soon as a country is able to assume the obligations of membership by satisfying the economic and political conditions. Membership requires: – that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities; – the existence of a functioning market economy, as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union; – the ability to take on the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.8 The EU followed up this decision in principle by a ‘pre-accession strategy’ agreed at the Essen European Council in December 1994. This strategy comprised the Europe Agreements already signed with the six former Warsaw Pact states, as well as an extended Phare programme aimed more specifically at helping recipient states prepare for EU accession, and further development of what was termed the ‘structured relationship’ between the EU and candidate countries – a system of not entirely well-functioning committee meetings.9 At the Cannes European Council of June 1995, the European Commission’s ‘White Paper’ on the internal market was adopted. This was a detailed document that explained to the candidate states how they must amend their legislation in order to make their economic laws compatible with those of the European Union.10 In the same month, a further four countries – Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – signed Europe Agreements with the EU. Slovakia began to develop serious problems in its relationship with the EU on the advent of the third Mecˇiar government at the end of 1994 – precisely the period when the practical preparations for realising the EU’s 1993 promise to expand eastward began. It is true that the second Mecˇiar government, which oversaw the break-up of Czechoslovakia in late 1992, had been viewed with considerable suspicion abroad. It was regarded as nationalist because of its role in forcing Slovak independence, its rather confrontational attitude towards the Hungarian minority, and also its at first informal, and then formal, coalition with the more extreme Slovak National Party (SNS). Other reservations were based on its lukewarm stance on economic reform, both in Czechoslovak days and afterwards, and a general feeling that the Slovaks had not broken with the communist past as convincingly as the Czechs. However, Mecˇiar’s second government was also relatively short-lived, and was ousted within fifteen months of achieving Slovak independence. The interim Moravcˇík government in the summer of 1994 was viewed far more positively.

91


When Mecˇiar returned to power following the autumn 1994 elections, the situation was less favourable than during the second Mecˇiar government, and rapidly deteriorated. Since the elections brought HZDS 13 fewer of the 150 parliamentary seats than in June 1992, it had no alternative but to seek coalition partners immediately. The only two parliamentary parties willing to join a Mecˇiar government – the nationalist right SNS and the new, maverick left Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) – were the two parties even less acceptable to the west than HZDS, but Mecˇiar had to include both of them in government in order to secure a parliamentary majority. This set the scene for four years of almost schizophrenic foreign policy, during which the Slovak government paid lip service to the aims of European integration, yet appeared either unable or unwilling to understand the need to temper its domestic policy actions in order to achieve this goal. The EU issued its first démarche on 23 November 1994. It was a polite formal warning from the European Council, the decisive body in the European Union which comprises all the governments of the EU member states. It reminded Slovakia that the European Union ‘expected the continuation of political efforts to consolidate democracy, to create a stable market economy, to build up regional cooperation especially with Hungary and to further remove any tension in connection with the Hungarian minority’.11 While the démarche was carefully worded, it reminded Slovakia that its relationship brought obligations for the Slovak government as well as advantages, and mentioned, rather obscurely, that the EU was ‘concerned by some aspects of political development since the elections’. This was a reference to two particular issues. One was the ‘long night’ of 3–4 November 1994, when the newly-elected parliament first met and HZDS and its two allies joined together to remove the opposition from almost all key posts in state and parliament. The other was the threats to strip the fifteen Democratic Union (DÚ) deputies of their parliamentary mandates on spurious legal grounds.12 Arguably, the démarche had some effect since Mecˇiar eventually left the DÚ in parliament. Despite this inauspicious beginning, when Mecˇiar finally formed a government and presented its programme to parliament in January 1995, foreign policy was placed right at the top and it was stated that ‘the government considers the implementation of the programme of European integration its foremost task’.13 However, it fulfilled this promise only on the most superficial level. Mecˇiar proudly handed the French foreign minister Slovakia’s formal application to join the EU on 27 June 1995, thereby meeting his selfimposed deadline of the end of June, and ‘beating’ his Czech counterpart Václav Klaus by more than six months. He stated that Slovakia wanted to be a full member of the EU around the year 200014 (at that time a fashionable date among optimists about eastern enlargement). More surprisingly for the international community, Mecˇiar had actually succeeded in March 1995 in signing a Basic Treaty on Good Neighbourly Relations and Friendly 92


Cooperation with the Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Horn.15 Here, however, the extremist inclinations of Mecˇiar’s coalition partners began to bite as SNS blocked ratification of the Basic Treaty for a year. When it was finally ratified by the Slovak parliament on 26 March 1996, the EU presidency welcomed this with a statement that simultaneously expressed concern about certain amendments to the Slovak criminal code passed in the same parliamentary session, which, it was suggested, might not accord with the EU’s Copenhagen criteria.16 These provisions had been Mecˇiar’s trade-off with SNS in return for their agreeing to ratification of the treaty. Despite the superficially pro-integration orientation of the third Mecˇiar government, domestic developments continued to impinge on relations with the EU, and on 26 October 1995, a second EU démarche followed the first. It expressed ‘deep concern at the current institutional tensions in Slovakia’, and referred to ‘the possibility of measures being taken against the President of the Republic which could harm the constitution and the EU’s common democratic practices’.17 It also reminded Slovakia again that, as an associate country in a pre-accession period, the criteria approved at the Copenhagen Summit were applicable to it. While no specific reference was made to the bizarre abduction of President Kovácˇ’s son at the end of August 1995, there was clearly concern regarding the Slovak government’s formal demand for the president’s resignation in September 1995 – a demand that he ignored on the grounds that there was no constitutional (or any other) basis for his resignation.18 The démarche also made reference to the importance of the free expression of political views, which was particularly relevant in light of the increasingly tense relationship between the ruling parties and the (largely opposition-minded) print media, as well as the pro-government bias of Slovak Television broadcasting. The Mecˇiar government ignored the content of the démarche, even arguing that it had not actually been a démarche at all but rather a ‘communiqué’ or ‘aide-mémoire’.19 Meanwhile, as EU–Slovak relations became a major source of controversy in domestic politics, the Slovak word ‘demarsˇ’ – an unknown concept to most citizens of the EU – entered the everyday vocabulary of the average Slovak. The EU did not bother to issue any more démarches, but continued to take pains to explain to the Slovak authorities what they found unacceptable and why. The other two major institutions of the European Union, the directlyelected European Parliament and the supranational European Commission, were also active in passing comment on Slovak affairs. The European Parliament made its most forthright protest in the wake of the second EU démarche of October 1995. On 16 November, it passed a ‘Resolution on the need to respect human and democratic rights in the Slovak Republic’, which was more explicit than the démarche in criticising the way the Slovak authorities appeared to be obstructing the investigation into the kidnapping of President Kovácˇ’s son.20 The European Parliament continued its pressure on Slovakia, and other critical resolutions followed, most notably when the 93


Slovak deputy Frantisˇek Gaulieder was expelled from his parliamentary seat in December 1996.21 In the end, however, it was actually the European Commission that produced the most damning indictment of the Slovak Republic. The Madrid European Council of December 1995, which took place six months after Mecˇiar’s government had applied to join the EU, had asked the European Commission to prepare its avis (opinion) on the applicant states from Central and Eastern Europe, because it envisaged opening accession negotiations with some of them six months after the end of the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), which opened in March 1996. The IGC concluded with the draft Treaty of Amsterdam in June 1997, and on 15 July 1997 the European Commission presented the extensive Agenda 2000 documents, which contained both its vision of the future of the European Union, and its opinions on each of the ten post-communist applicant states. The ‘final recommendations’ of Agenda 200022 proposed opening accession negotiations with five post-communist states – Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia – as well as with Cyprus. It was considered that all of them ‘could be in a position to satisfy all the conditions of membership in the medium term if they maintain and strongly sustain their efforts of preparation’. However, Slovakia was excluded from this group by a further principle clearly established for the first time by Agenda 2000: that a candidate state had to fulfil the political ‘Copenhagen criterion’ relating to democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities, before negotiations started. This was the hurdle at which Slovakia fell, because the Commission felt that it was the only one of the ten post-communist candidate states that did not fulfil these conditions. On the other two Copenhagen criteria, relating to economic factors and the ability of a state to assume the obligations of membership, Slovakia’s profile was far nearer to that of the five ‘first group’ post-communist states recommended for accession negotiations than to the situation of Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania – the states with which it now formed a ‘second group’. Slovakia therefore found itself in the position of the ‘odd man out’. The remaining four states awaiting the commencement of accession negotiations were far behind Slovakia in economic terms, so that they looked at that point unlikely to satisfy these criteria even in the medium term. It was not clear that Slovakia had a medium-term problem in satisfying the EU’s criteria. The country was falling behind because it was politically unacceptable in the short term. Political flaws, however, can be far simpler to remedy than structural economic problems and difficulties in the functioning of bureaucratic procedures. The European Commission’s reasons for declaring that Slovakia failed to fulfil the political criteria was that ‘the situation with regard to the stability of the institutions and their integration into political life is unsatisfactory’. 94


The points it raised were familiar: the failure to respect the rights of the opposition to membership of parliamentary committees; the Gaulieder case; the constant tension between the government and the president, and the general fact that, in dealing with other institutions, the government ‘frequently adopts an attitude which goes beyond the confrontations traditionally accepted in a democracy’; the spoiling of the May 1997 referendum; and government control of civil society. There was also critical mention of the situation of the Hungarian and Roma minorities, most particularly the lack of a definitive law on the use of minority languages.23 However, concerns about minority rights were not unique to Slovakia; they were also expressed in the case of ‘first group’ states accepted as negotiating partners. The European Commission’s recommendation to relegate Slovakia to a ‘second group’ of candidate states was endorsed by the Luxembourg European Council of December 1997. However, Slovakia was included in a general accession process that was to commence with a European Conference in March 1998. This meant that the ‘screening’ process, whereby the Commission checks the compatibility of a state’s legislation with that of the EU, could commence. It was also agreed that the Commission would produce annual ‘progress reports’ on each candidate state.24 Effectively, these would be updates on the opinions. The first progress report on Slovakia was issued in November 1998, in the week after a new Slovak government had been sworn into office. Consequently, it read primarily as an indictment of the outgoing Mecˇiar government, moderated only by some optimistic remarks about the elections and the fact that ‘a different political climate is emerging’.25 However, the Commission was concerned by the ‘lack of transparency due to government interference’ in the way the economy was run, and noted a slowing in the ‘overall pace of Slovak approximation’ – that is, it was not amending its laws to match those of the EU quickly enough. In short, the timing of the report was extremely disadvantageous for Slovakia. By the time the next ‘progress reports’ were issued by the European Commission in October 1999, the general understanding of the importance of European integration had changed fundamentally.26 The war in Kosova, and the invaluable assistance provided to NATO by the non-members Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, had focused political attention on the need also to embrace weaker states in the integration process in order to secure the stability of Europe as a whole. The 1999 reports therefore recommended that the EU should commence accession negotiations with all five ‘second group’ states, as well as Malta (which had recently reactivated a previously dormant application), notwithstanding the fact that Bulgaria, and more particularly Romania, could not realistically be expected to fulfil the economic Copenhagen criteria even in the medium term. The desirability of inclusiveness made the EU abandon the principle that it was only worth negotiating with states that looked likely to fulfil all membership criteria within the next five years. 95


The EU did not, however, abandon the criterion that political conditions had to be fulfilled before negotiations started. Nor did it need to. The renegade Slovak Republic had by now, it judged, fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria. A further principle emphasised in late 1999 was that of ‘differentiation’. The Commission recommended allowing ‘each applicant country to progress through the negotiations as quickly as is warranted by its own efforts to prepare for accession’. This provision was of crucial import for Slovakia for two reasons. First, it allowed Slovakia to draw ahead of the other ‘second group’ countries, and in March 2000, the EU differentiated between the ‘second group’ states when it decided how many ‘chapters’ it should initially open for negotiation with each. EU laws and regulations were divided into a total of 31 chapters, covering a wide range of issues from the Common Foreign and Security Policy to culture and audiovisual policy. Second, differentiation increased Slovakia’s chances of ‘catching up’ with its closest neighbour, the Czech Republic, with which it still shared a Customs Union. The policy of differentiation very soon began to bear fruit for Slovakia. Both 2000 and 2001 brought positive progress reports for the country, and at various times during 2001 it managed to ‘overtake’ two of the first group states – Poland and Estonia – in terms of the numbers of negotiating chapters it had provisionally closed.27 In short, the notion that there were two ‘groups’ of candidates had been wiped away, since only two of the twelve states involved in negotiations – Bulgaria and Romania – were so substantially behind that for them accession in the first wave of eastern enlargement appeared out of the question. However, the remaining chapters that the leading states still had to close included many of the most difficult ones, so the final outcome of the ‘race’ was still uncertain. When Slovakia would finally join the EU remained, therefore, very much an open question. Three factors were of importance here. The first was the country’s own capacity and willpower. As in all post-communist states, its administrative structure is unwieldy and underpaid, and without a competent regulatory system and well-functioning courts, economic competition cannot be guaranteed. The other Visegrad countries, which had benefited historically from being the location of the state capital cities, were somewhat ahead of Slovakia in terms of bureaucratic organisation and competence even before they gained their two-year start in the accession negotiations. The second factor – which caused most anxiety abroad – related to domestic political developments. The spectre of Mecˇiar still haunted the image of Slovakia. What the country lacked in order to become a consolidated democracy was both a government and a constructive opposition who would be acceptable partners for the European Council. How Slovak politics could develop in this direction remained unclear. The strength of HZDS at the beginning of the millennium made it appear unlikely that alternation in power between the non-nationalist parties of centre-right and centre-left was 96


a realistic possibility. Although HZDS proclaimed loudly in the year preceding the 2002 elections that it would continue Slovakia’s pro-integration policy when next in government, there had in the past been a marked gulf between its words and deeds in matters of democracy. The third factor was the internal politics of the EU. Much has been written about the EU’s need to reform its budgetary and institutional structure before it increases in size from fifteen to over twenty members. All fifteen member states, as well as the European Parliament, also have to approve any new members before enlargement takes place, leaving the entire process a hostage to potential domestic political disputes within the existing members. In this situation, the decisive moment turns around political will. For enlargement to take place, the EU must remain committed to the conviction that this is essential for Europe’s short, medium and long term stability. In the European integration stakes, however, Slovakia has always possessed one considerable advantage. Being a rather long, thin country, it is the perfect shape to cause maximum inconvenience to its neighbours if it is ‘left out’. One of the most demanding tasks facing the accession states is that of joining the EU’s Schengen area, where internal border controls have been removed. This means that their non-EU borders become the outer borders of the EU as a whole, so that anyone crossing them effectively has free access to most of the EU member states.28 The difficulty that will be faced by Poland in securing its lengthy borders with Belarus and Ukraine, or by Hungary in securing borders with Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Ukraine will be substantial. Were they to join both the EU and the Schengen area before Slovakia, they would be faced with yet another long external border along which they would have to install complex infrastructure that would only be of use for a relatively short period prior to Slovakia’s joining the EU. Slovakia in the 1990s may have proved a difficult state for the EU to deal with; but excluding it could produce equally awkward problems in the new millennium. NATO Slovakia’s awkward shape was also important in NATO’s expansion. As a military organisation, the logistic problems of crossing both the land and air space of non-member states was an ever-present difficulty particularly highlighted by the war in Kosova. After the first wave of eastward enlargement in 1999, the exclusion of Slovakia left the new member Hungary without a single one of its immediate neighbours in NATO. However, NATO and EU enlargement were in several respects fundamentally different. First, they are intrinsically dissimilar organisations in functional terms. This fact was commonly overlooked by the public in aspirant member states, where membership was regarded in part in symbolic terms as a ‘return to Europe’, a sign that they belonged to the west rather 97


than the east. Yet because NATO was focused solely on one aspect of a state’s function – ensuring military security – gaining membership was technically a far simpler process. Unlike EU accession, joining NATO made no immediate difference to citizens’ everyday lives. The three Visegrad states selected for negotiations on both EU and NATO membership in 1997 were already fully-fledged NATO members in March 1999, when they were still in the early stages of ploughing through the details of all the legislative amendments they needed to make for EU accession. The second difference was that the once communist world was central to NATO’s existence in a way that it was not to the EU. The end of the Cold War therefore raised major questions about the organisation’s purpose. The position of Russia, which entered the EU enlargement debate only peripherally, was a central consideration in expanding NATO. The third difference, which in some ways ran parallel to the second, was that the views of the United States were crucial in the NATO enlargement process. This is not just because the USA is a member of NATO while the EU is a purely European organisation. It is also because the USA has a leading role in formulating NATO policy that has no counterpart among the EU member states, the strength of Germany notwithstanding. While the decision-making procedures of the EU’s Council, Commission and Parliament frequently appeared labyrinthine, they were nonetheless far more transparent than those of NATO. The problems that Slovakia encountered in dealing with both organisations had much in common, however, since its domestic political situation in the 1990s proved the major obstacle. The USA was as vocal as the EU and its member states, and sometimes more outspoken, in expressing its criticism of the Mecˇiar governments, and the US ambassador was always the most influential member of the diplomatic corps in Bratislava, whose views were widely reported in the Slovak press. Both the American government and non-governmental organisations were generous in supporting projects that aimed to further Slovakia’s democratisation process. When the Dzurinda government took office in 1998, improving US–Slovak relations was a major priority, particularly with a view to achieving NATO membership, but also because of American influence in other bodies, such as the OECD (which it eventually joined in 2000). However, Slovakia had had no immediate problems with its defence policy in the initial period after the revolution of 1989, when the major concern of the Soviet Union’s former satellites was that the Warsaw Pact should be disbanded and Soviet troops removed from their soil. By 1 July 1991, the Warsaw Pact had formally ceased to exist, and there were no more Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia.29 From here onwards, NATO enlargement was on the agenda of the new democracies. The instability in the Soviet Union, beginning with the clampdown in the Baltic republics in early 1991, had heightened awareness of the need for protection against the east among the 98


states which had previously been relieved at escaping from its domination. They were happy to see the dissolution of military blocks replaced by the already existing Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, later OSCE).30 NATO’s first response was the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, established at its Rome summit at the end of 1991. This was somewhat unsatisfactory for the states of East Central Europe, as it included all former Warsaw Pact states, including ex-Soviet ones, and did not differentiate between them.31 However, the USA was spurred on towards NATO enlargement by the EU’s commitment to enlargement at Copenhagen in 1993.32 The creation of the Partnership for Peace in 1994 was followed by the publication of the Study on NATO Enlargement in September 1995. This stated that (in contrast to the EU’s Copenhagen criteria) ‘there is no fixed or rigid list of criteria for inviting new member states to join the Alliance’.33 However, it established that NATO enlargement would encourage and support democratic reforms, ‘including civilian and democratic control over the military’.34 Much of the detailed painstaking work in building up Slovakia’s army during the 1990s was geared towards this priority.35 There were also some more explicit criteria which related to the consolidation of democracy. First, new members would be expected to ‘conform to basic principles embodied in the Washington Treaty: democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’.36 Equally important for Slovakia, it stated that: States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.37 It was this imperative that compelled the third Mecˇiar government to avoid escalation of tension with its southern neighbour, Hungary, which was particularly fraught at that time because of the arguments within Slovakia regarding the status of its Hungarian minority. However, while minority issues were a salient concern in the mind of the international community in connection with Slovakia’s membership of the OSCE and Council of Europe in 1993 and much of 1994, in the era of the démarches from November 1994 to October 1995, and in the ‘post-démarche’ era up until the end of the third Mecˇiar government, it was the very essence of Slovak democracy that was called into question.38 This was not helped by the referendum debacle of May 1997, when Mecˇiar’s interior minister sabotaged the opposition’s attempt to gain a public mandate for the direct election of the president. Since a (quite unnecessary) referendum on NATO membership initiated by the government was due to be held on the same day, the two issues inevitably became interlinked.39 99


NATO was not as painstaking and explicit in its criticism of Slovak democracy as the European Union. When NATO’s Madrid Summit of July 1997 invited the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to begin accession talks, Slovakia slipped silently back into invisibility. Among the other ‘aspiring members’, the Madrid Declaration singled out the ‘positive developments towards democracy and the rule of law in a number of southeastern European countries, especially Romania and Slovenia’,40 but made no comment on the failure of the one unsuccessful Visegrad state. Slovakia remained in the ‘grey zone’. It was this omission which the Dzurinda government had to correct when it entered office in October 1998. The new prime minister gave a clear signal about his government’s priorities when he made his first foreign visit after taking office to Brussels, the seat of both NATO and the EU.41 The Slovak government soon had an opportunity to prove its positive intentions regarding cooperation with NATO by immediately supporting its actions in Kosova in March 1999, and opening Slovak air space to NATO military aircraft.42 This gesture was motivated by a mixture of the government’s value orientations in respect to human rights, as well as calculations of Slovakia’s national interests in achieving European integration. However, it was certainly not instrumental for the government in courting personal popularity in the short term. Slovak public opinion suffered from an innate proYugoslav bias, bolstered by racial prejudice against Albanians, as well as a historically-based tendency to sympathise with the underdog in any military conflict.43 From an objective point of view, it might seem slightly bizarre that the Slovaks did not support Kosovar independence when they themselves had proved unable to co-exist in a common state with the Czechs, who had never resorted to anything remotely resembling the violent repression of civil and human rights which Albanian Kosovars suffered under Serbian rule. On an emotional level, however, Slovaks tended to see themselves as the Serbs, and the Kosovars as an irredentist Albanian minority on a par with the Hungarians in Slovakia. The war was, in the short term, highly detrimental to Slovak public opinion on NATO membership. Mecˇiar’s HZDS was at that point relatively open about its pro-Milosˇevicˇ sympathies, not helped by the fact that the presidential election duel between Mecˇiar and Schuster took place during the course of the war.44 This was problematic, as Slovaks had always tended to be rather lukewarm about NATO in comparison to the stronger support for EU membership.45 The turning point in public attitudes to NATO only came two years later, when HZDS – still the most popular single party in Slovakia, with the support of between a quarter and a third of the electorate – finally came out unequivocally in support of NATO membership. Since foreign policy had been the great success of the Dzurinda government, Mecˇiar hoped to increase his own election chances by assuring wavering voters that these achievements would not be endangered by his return to power. By the 100


summer of 2001, public opinion, considered very important by NATO itself, also swung strongly in support of NATO.46 While some Slovaks were still concerned about the cost of membership, the traditional support for neutrality had declined.47 The difficulty, however, was that NATO’s decision on a second wave of eastern expansion was due to be taken at the Prague summit of November 2002, less than two months after scheduled parliamentary elections. Since western democracies generally judged Mecˇiar and HZDS on what they did rather than what they said, it was still highly unlikely that the country could attain NATO membership with HZDS in government. Particularly on the American side, the aversion to Mecˇiar and HZDS governments was well known. Once again, therefore, Slovak domestic politics remained a crucial factor in deciding the country’s chances of foreign policy success.

Living with the neighbours While membership of the EU and NATO were Slovakia’s two major foreign policy objectives from the mid-1990s onwards, its foreign policy also had to deal with relations with its neighbours. In the early 1990s all the new democracies tended to be preoccupied with the ‘return to Europe’, and therefore prioritised their own relations with western Europe, while neglecting their previous comrades from Warsaw Pact and Comecon days. However, they were generally encouraged by the international community to develop cooperation with each other as a forerunner to integration into European structures. The Visegrad summit between the Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Polish presidents in February 1991 produced a declaration which explicitly mentioned cooperation ‘on the road to European integration’, and in 1992 this spawned the Central European Free Trade Area, which later expanded to include other post-communist states. Czechoslovakia also became a member of the Central European Initiative, which included Austria and Italy, in 1992. In all these cases, Slovakia retained independent membership after January 1993 as a successor state of Czechoslovakia.48 Membership in the Carpathian Euroregion, which embraced parts of Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and Romania and had originally been conceived in 1992, proved more controversial, since to Mecˇiar’s government it looked suspiciously like a Hungarian attempt to link together part of its former empire.49 The difficulty was that Slovakia was an awkward partner for much of the 1990s. While anxious to play its role as an independent state in the international community, nationalist complexes often lay very near the surface.

101


The Czech Republic Slovakia’s relations with the Czech Republic have always been good. Although the two peoples had proved unable to form a single polity together, being completely foreign countries did not suit them very well either. The division of Czechoslovakia and numerous subsequent squabbles have sometimes obscured this fact. However, on a personal level, Czechs and Slovaks like each other. Sociological surveys which ask respondents what sort of foreigner they would most like to move in as a neighbour usually find that Slovaks choose Czechs as their preferred neighbour.50 This is not surprising: former Czechoslovak citizens have problems regarding each other as foreigners at all, since their lifestyle is so familiar. Yet at the same time it was surprising how quickly the two countries drew apart after 1 January 1993. On a non-political level, the amount of traffic on the motorway between Bratislava and the southern Czech city Brno diminished rapidly: Slovaks no longer needed to traipse off to Prague for official business in the capital, and if they were driving to western Germany, they preferred the route through Austria. More importantly, however, the common currency was abandoned much earlier than anticipated, in February 1993. The Czech prime minister, Václav Klaus, was anxious to distance himself from his more eastern neighbours, as he liked to project his country as an equal of those in western Europe.51 He therefore rejected the notion of having ‘above standard’ relations with Slovakia, and after the division of Czechoslovakia, Klaus and Mecˇiar went more than four years before having their first bilateral meeting, in October 1997.52 Only when a Social Democratic government came to power in Prague in 1998 – shortly before Mecˇiar’s own election defeat – was the idea of ‘above standard’ relations again happily embraced. By 2000, the final questions relating to the division of property were resolved,53 and the departure from power of both Klaus and Mecˇiar also gave impetus to a revival of broader Visegrad cooperation.54 The truth is that relations between Czechs and Slovaks were never entirely like those between foreigners. Border disputes, where they had existed, related in the main to villages where residents had allotments and weekend cottages on the wrong side of the border, and these were finally settled when the swapping of two villages was agreed in 1996.55 The Customs Union between the two states outlived the common currency. Also, while the Czech Republic – unlike Slovakia – did not initially permit dual citizenship, thereby forcing Slovaks living there (as well as Czechs living in Slovakia) to choose a single identity, Slovaks were able to work in the Czech Republic without any of the bureaucracy that normally surrounds the employment of foreigners. The border remained porous, criss-crossed by a myriad of small roads and tracks, to the despair of EU bodies trying to combat illegal immigration from east to west. In this respect, the uncertainty about the date and sequencing of the two states’ EU accession caused a number of practical

102


problems. While the Czechs were clear that they were not going to wait for the Slovaks to catch up before joining the EU, they were nonetheless loathe to contemplate the economic disruption of abandoning the Customs Union, and their attitude towards tightening up the Czech–Slovak border for use as the EU’s outer, Schengen border was lukewarm. Fortifying the Czech– Slovak border just in case the Czech Republic joined the EU before they did was an even lower priority for the Slovaks, who preferred to invest resources in tightening up their somewhat shorter border with Ukraine, which was likely to be the EU’s outer border for many years. In practical terms, therefore, it was clearly very much in the interests of both Slovakia and the Czech Republic that both states should join the EU at the same time. The relations between the two peoples would be well served by the more fluid borders and structures of twenty-first century Europe. Hungary Relations with Hungary were never going to be easy given the intense politicisation of the issue of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Nevertheless, in comparison with events in Hungary’s southern, Balkan neighbours, Slovak– Hungarian relations were actually a model of how diplomatic negotiation within a supportive international environment can lead to the defusing of even emotive disputes between nations. The initial problem the two countries faced was that Slovakia had inherited the main dispute in Czechoslovak–Hungarian relations: the Gabcˇikovo-Nagymaros dam on a section of the River Danube running along the Slovak–Hungarian border. Communist regimes were, in general, enamoured of gigantuan hydro-electric schemes, and remarkably lacking in foresight about the ecological damage that might accompany their implementation. Hungary and Czechoslovakia had signed an interstate treaty agreeing on the building of the Gabcˇikovo-Nagymaros system in 1977, but as Hungary democratised and ecological lobbies began to be taken seriously in the late 1980s, it stopped its part of the construction at Nagymaros in 1989, and unilaterally annulled the treaty in May 1992.56 The Slovaks, for the first time taking a foreign policy decision independent of Prague, claimed that it was too late to halt the project because of the enormous costs already incurred, plus the genuine need for the electricity generated, and therefore proceeded during the course of 1992 with a variant of the scheme that effectively diverted the Danube north into Slovak territory. While circumventing the need for the Hungarians to finish their part of the construction, this also exacerbated the original problem, since the Hungarians feared that changing the river’s course might affect the actual legal definition of the two countries’ border, which ran along the Danube. In 1993 both sides eventually agreed to accept a judgement by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.57 Predictably, the Court took a long time to reach its judgement, and then 103


came out in 1997 with a compromise decision that fully satisfied neither side. However, it was more inclined towards the Slovak case that Hungary had no legal right to break the 1977 agreement, although also judging that Slovakia should not have proceeded thereafter with the implementation of a different scheme which, while not requiring Hungarian cooperation, nonetheless materially affected Hungary by almost emptying the original Danube of water in the affected section.58 The court’s demand that both sides should resume negotiation brought lengthy further discussions, but no agreement, under either the Mecˇiar government or its successor. There were also disputes relating to minority rights. In June 1993, Slovakia was finally admitted to the Council of Europe, but there had been fears that Hungary – already a member – might exercise its veto to protest about the situation of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. (In the event, Hungary abstained from the vote.) Further complications in relations between the two states stemmed from the third Mecˇiar government’s clumsy handling of the Basic Treaty between Hungary and Slovakia, signed by the two countries’ prime ministers in March 1995. This appeared to be an achievement which both sides badly needed in order to further their aspirations for integration into the wider Europe. However, Mecˇiar soon realised that he had conceded more than might be necessary by agreeing to the Council of Europe’s Recommendation No. 1201, which was considered to recognise collective minority rights, and there were attempts by the Slovak side to remove this to a non-binding annex. The Slovak parliament had difficulty ratifying the agreement because of opposition from the Slovak National Party – a member of the government – and it was eventually passed in 1996 after a trade-off that included a draft law proposing amendments to the penal code containing a section on ‘Defence of the Republic’ demanded by the nationalists. Thanks to the continuing functioning of checks and balances in the Slovak political system, these amendments never entered into law. The framework for political cooperation with Hungary existed. From here on, relations between the two countries generally depended on the constellation of the governments in power. Dzurinda’s government, installed in October 1998 with an ethnic Hungarian as one of the deputy prime ministers, did much to smooth out remaining difficulties between the two states. There were some notable successes, like the construction and opening of a new bridge across the Danube linking the Slovak town of Sˇ túrovo with the Hungarian Esztergom, which had not existed since the end of the Second World War. It was the Hungarian side, under the more nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban, which caused further complications in 2001 by initiating the ‘Act on Hungarians living in Neighbouring States’, commonly referred to as the ‘Status Law’.59 This extraordinarily tactless piece of legislation attempted to discriminate between the citizens of neighbouring states on the basis of their ethnicity, allowing persons officially certified as Hungarians to enjoy extensive employment and social rights within 104


Hungary. Ostensibly designed to prevent an influx of ethnic Hungarians into Hungary proper after it acceded to the European Union, and also to help them preserve their cultural identity at home, it met with an allergic reaction from both the Slovak and the Romanian governments, who considered that it somehow infringed upon their sovereignty. From a Slovak point of view, the law would become irrelevant when and if Slovakia and Hungary acceded to the EU at the same time, since member states were not allowed to exercise such discrimination between the citizens of other member states. The EU attempted to distance itself from the dispute, while urging the Hungarian government to reach agreement with its neighbours before implementing the law.60 As with so many Hungarian–Slovak disputes, the ‘Status Law’ was an illustration of the potential irritations through which historical sensitivities could impact on their relations. The fact remained, however, that it was strongly in Hungary’s interest for both states to join the EU at the same time. The view of the political representatives of the Hungarians in Slovakia was that they should not solve problems through a revision of borders, but by awaiting the disappearance of borders.61 This programme was completely compatible with the EU’s vision of European integration. Russia Slovakia’s relations with the states of the former Soviet Union, most notably Russia, constituted the murkiest element of its foreign policy, particularly during the second and third Mecˇiar governments. However, it is notable that one of the factors leading to Mecˇiar’s first ousting from the office of Slovak prime minister by the Slovak parliament in April 1991 was the fact that he had conducted unauthorised discussions about Slovak arms deliveries to the Soviet Union during his visit there at the end of the previous month.62 Mecˇiar’s alleged allegiance both to communism and to the country that had imposed it on Czechoslovakia were always suspect. Relations with Russia, like so much else in Slovakia, became closely entwined with domestic political conflict during the 1990s. Close links with Russia came to be regarded, on a symbolic level, as amounting to the negation of democratic progress and a return to the past.63 However, according to European Commission public opinion surveys, very few Slovaks – just 6 per cent in late 1995 – actually believed that their country’s future lay with Russia, which was a lower percentage than in five other post-communist states that had applied for EU membership.64 A Slovak survey conducted in the same year indicated that only 3 per of cent of citizens thought Slovakia should establish closer ties with the Russian Federation, which was little higher than the average vote for the Communist Party of Slovakia – the unreformed rump of the communist era party which never gained the 5 per cent of the vote necessary to enter parliament. Nonetheless, 19 per cent of 105


respondents as a whole, and well over a third of those who supported the parties then in opposition, stated that Slovakia was going in the direction of closer ties with Russia under the third Mecˇiar government. Significantly, supporters of the parties in the Mecˇiar government were more inclined to believe that Slovakia was going down its own road, or towards integration into the EU.65 Neutrality, rather than alliance with Russia, was the dream that tempted Slovak nationalists. To maintain that Slovakia was headed eastward was, therefore, essentially an argument instrumentalised by the opposition as a means of criticising Mecˇiar during the 1990s. The then prime minister was in many ways himself responsible for the impression of pro-Russian sympathies that surrounded him. He was notorious for responding to criticism from the EU by stating that if the west did not want Slovakia, it would go east. The fact that he spoke fluent Russian but no western languages formed a natural affinity between Mecˇiar and Russian politicians, and the fact that – unlike politicians from the EU – the latter did not insist on passing judgement on his government’s policies also endeared them to him. The reality of Slovak relations with Russia, beyond the rhetoric of the domestic political debate, was somewhat different. The Russian ambassador to Slovakia during the Mecˇiar years, Sergei Yastrzhembski, was certainly a political heavyweight who, after his return to Moscow, went on to a position of influence in the presidential entourage. However, Russian influence on Slovakia even in the Mecˇiar years was limited by the fact that strong links with the economically-challenged erstwhile superpower had only so much to offer the more advanced East Central European state in real terms. Fraternising with Russia was essentially part of Mecˇiar’s balancing act between east and west, through which he attempted to avoid the political constraints of wholehearted commitment to the country’s more natural westward path. Yet the idea of Slovakia forming some kind of vital bridge between east and west was always an illusion.66 Slovakia faced the problem that its relationship with Russia could not realistically ever be one of equal with equal because of the huge disparity in the size of the two countries. Russia was pragmatic in its foreign policy throughout the 1990s and, though it welcomed Slovak support, Slovakia was simply not weighty enough to assist Russia in major aims such as preventing NATO’s eastward enlargement. In the end, NATO ignored Slovakia and enlarged without it. Where Russia was important for Slovakia’s development was rather in the economic sphere. Unpicking the links between the self-seeking privatisers around Mecˇiar and the nouveaux riches Russian elites was one of the Dzurinda government’s greatest challenges when it came to power after the 1998 elections. This was exacerbated by the general lack of economic transparency which had developed in Slovakia during the 1990s, and complicated by issues of the ‘deblocation’ of the debt to Slovakia that Russia inherited from the former Soviet Union.67 Slovakia was also dependent on energy 106


imports from Russia. The success of Dzurinda’s government in distancing itself from Russia was therefore partial. It unpicked some of the more unfavourable contracts that the Mecˇiar government had signed with Russia, and visas were introduced for Russians in 2000. However, this alone could not guarantee the eradication of Russian organised crime and economic corruption in Slovakia. The Dzurinda government did, however, succeed in regaining the trust of the west as a loyal ally seeking Euro-Atlantic integration. This inevitably involved a distancing from Russia, though there was still something to gain from maintaining good relations with a large, if unstable, state in Slovakia’s eastern hinterland. The other neighbours Slovakia had three other direct neighbours apart from those states that had once impinged on its sovereignty. Austria was its conduit to the west, and the border was problematic only insofar as it was the one that the inhabitants of western Slovakia wanted to go through most often, thereby producing the longest queues of cars. Slovaks generally admired Austria, and any paranoia in the relationship between the two countries was on the Austrian side. Although Austria was generally supportive of Slovakia’s integration attempts, as EU enlargement drew nearer, the Viennese began on occasion to panic that their city’s commuting proximity to no less than four postcommunist democracies might threaten their prosperity with an influx of cheap labour.68 They sometimes overlooked the fact that their country had for decades had an overly large capital city perched incongruously in the top right-hand corner of the country, leading nowhere but to the temporarily closed world behind the iron curtain precisely because these lands naturally belonged historically to their economic orbit, and must rightfully return there. Shopkeepers and hypermarket builders adapted to the new geopolitical reality somewhat more quickly. Poland’s relations with Slovakia were even less problematic. Polish and Slovak were similar languages, particularly where the dialects converged. The two countries were joined by a long, and mostly mountainous, border that separated rural communities enthusiastic for any cross-border traffic which might increase their low level of prosperity. Relations between the two states were best embodied by the shared waymarked walking paths along the mountain ridges which had been freely enjoyed by ramblers from both sides even in the communist period. The idea that they might one day form the fortified outer Schengen border of the European Union were Poland to accede before Slovakia was barely contemplated. Relations with Ukraine were slightly more complex. While Slovaks sought easier access to Austria, and Poles and Slovaks to each other, traffic between Ukraine and Slovakia was largely from east to west (and not always back). 107


The Ruthenian areas of Ukraine to the east of the Slovak border had once been part of both Hungary, and later Czechoslovakia, and were also plagued by high unemployment. They were very negatively affected when Slovakia imposed visa restrictions in 2000, and despite efforts to alleviate the problem, it was a sign of things to come since Ukraine was consigned to ‘outsider’ status in the EU eastern enlargement process. However, despite the earlier historical links, Slovakia was generally less concerned by the spectre of isolation from Ukraine than Poland, which had a far longer and less mountainous border with the country, and more to gain economically from cross-border trade. Nevertheless, in security terms, Slovakia was more vulnerable to political and military instability in the Commonwealth of Independent States than the Czech Republic.69

Slovakia’s place in the world It is conspicuous that, in spite of the title of this chapter, discussion has focused almost exclusively on Slovakia’s position in Europe. Although foreign affairs specialists in Slovakia have lamented the lack of a strategy in Slovakia’s international relations,70 reality has left little room for one. When it was so urgent for Slovakia to determine its foreign policy direction, immediately after independence, Mecˇiar’s governments failed to do so. By the end of the decade, it was clear that a ‘back to Europe’ aim for integration into Euro-Atlantic structures left little scope for independent policy-making. The truth was that Slovakia had finally gained its sovereignty in an age where globalisation and European integration were rendering the concept less absolute, so that it was doomed never to become experienced in exercising it. However, even in the Mecˇiar period, Slovakia was always more than an object of western decisions about what it would or would not be allowed to join amid its sometimes conflictual bilateral negotiations with its neighbours. It failed to join NATO in the first wave of eastward enlargement for purely domestic political reasons, and not because of any military failure. The army remained one of the most trusted institutions in Slovakia throughout the turbulence in its domestic politics,71 and participated in numerous UN peace-keeping missions throughout the time in office of the third Mecˇiar government.72 Although Slovakia did not succeed in its efforts to gain a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council in the late 1990s, it was nonetheless distinguished by the appointment of its foreign minister, Eduard Kukan, as the special envoy of the UN Secretary General for the Balkans at the height of the war in Kosova. Slovakia’s apparent failure in foreign policy in the early years of independence was largely a result of the exceptional demands of the EuroAtlantic integration process, which posed specific requirements regarding domestic democratic consolidation – often its lamentable weak point in comparison with its Visegrad neighbours. On the broader international 108


stage, it was a perfectly acceptable small state that achieved as much, if not more, than could reasonably be expected from a new state with a population of little more than five million.

Notes 1 Public opinion data from January 1992 indicated that 24 per cent of Slovaks, but 37 per cent of Czechs, could communicate in at least one western language. FOCUS, Aktuálne problémy Slovenska December 1994, Bratislava: 1994, p. 25. 2 This term is taken from Miroslav Wlachovský, ‘Foreign policy’, in Martin Bútora and Péter Huncˇík (eds), Global Report on Slovakia: Comprehensive Analyses from 1995 and Trends from 1996, Bratislava: Sándor Márai Foundation, 1997, p. 49. 3 Svetoslav Bombík, Blizˇ sˇie k Európe: sˇtúdie a cˇ lánky, Bratislava: Slovenská nadácia pre európske sˇtúdie, 1995, pp. 46–7. 4 The second and third Mecˇiar governments went through five foreign ministers in less than six years between 1992 and 1998. Three office-holders – Knˇazˇ ko, Moravcˇík and Hamzˇ ík – went on to become senior politicians in parties which participated in the 1998–2002 Dzurinda government. 5 Kukan had entered politics as foreign minister in the 1994 Moravcˇík government, and was not one of the Mecˇiar defectors. 6 Alan Mayhew, Recreating Europe: The European Union’s Policy towards Central and Eastern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 14–15. 7 For text of the Europe Agreement with the Slovak Republic, see Official Journal of the European Communities, L 359/1–30, 31 December 1994. 8 Council of the European Union, Presidency Conclusions: Copenhagen European Council, Brussels: 1993. 9 On the pre-accession strategy, see Michael Alexander Rupp, ‘The pre-accession strategy and the governmental structures of the Visegrad countries’, in Karen Henderson (ed.), Back to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union, London: UCL Press, 1999, pp. 89–105. 10 The Slovak language version was published as Komisia Európskeho spolocˇenstva, Príprava asociovaných krajín strednej a východnej Európy na integráciu do vnútorného trhu Únie: Biela kniha, Bratislava: JORI-PRESS, 1995. 11 Sme, 21 September 1995, p. 4. 12 See Karen Henderson, ‘Slovakia and the democratic criteria for EU accession’, in Henderson, Back to Europe, pp. 221–40. 13 For an English version of the government programme, see BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, EE/2208 A/3, 23 January 1995. 14 Marián Lesˇko, ‘Príbeh sebadiskvalifikácie favorita’, in Martin Bútora and Frantisˇek Sˇ ebej (eds), Slovensko v sˇedej zone: Rozsˇirovanie NATO, zlyhania a perspektívy Slovenska, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1998, p. 34. 15 Sharon Fisher, ‘Treaty fails to end squabbles over Hungarian relations’, Transitions, vol. 1, no. 9, pp. 2–7. 16 ‘Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on Slovakia’, 6253/96 (Presse 79), Brussels, 3 April 1996. 17 Agence Europe, Europe, no. 6593, 27 October 1995, p. 5. 18 Lesˇko, ‘Príbeh sebadiskvalifikácie favorita’, p. 36. 19 Národná obroda, 26 October 1995, p. 1; Sme, 27 October 1995, p. 2. 20 European Parliament, ‘Resolution on the need to respect human and democratic rights in Slovakia’, Official Journal C 323/116, 4 December 1995.

109


21 European Parliament, ‘Resolution on the case of Frantisek Gaulieder, Member of the Slovak Parliament’, Official Journal C 20/145, 20 January 1997. 22 European Commission, ‘Agenda 2000: For a stronger and wider Union’, Bulletin of the European Union, Supplement 5/1997, p. 57. 23 European Commission, ‘Agenda 2000: Commission opinion on Slovakia’s application for membership of the European Union’, Bulletin of the European Union, Supplement 9/1997, pp. 15–20. 24 Council of the European Union, Presidency Conclusions: Luxembourg European Council, Brussels: 1997. 25 Commission of the European Communities, Regular Report of Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession, COM (1998) 703 final, Brussels, 17 December 1998. 26 For the 1999 progress reports, see Commission of the European Communities, COM (1999) 500–14 final, Brussels, 13 October 1999. 27 See www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/ and www.euractiv.com for the current state of play of accession negotiations. 28 The exceptions currently are the UK and Ireland. 29 Stuart Croft, John Redmond, G. Wyn Rees, Mark Webber, The Enlargement of Europe, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 25–6. 30 Adrian Hyde Price, The International Politics of East Central Europe, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996, pp. 240–3. 31 Croft et al., The Enlargement of Europe, p. 27. 32 Martin Smith, ‘The NATO factor: a spanner in the works of EU and WEU enlargement?’, in Henderson, Back to Europe, pp. 53–88. 33 Study on NATO Enlargement, September 1995, p. 4, chapter 1, paragraph 7. 34 Ibid., p. 2, chapter 1, paragraph 3. 35 For details, see Matúsˇ Korba and Vladimír Kmec, Civilno-vojenské vzt’ahy a scenáre ich vývoja v SR, Bratislava: Slovenská spolocˇnost’ pre zahranicˇnú politiku/ Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2000; for general developments in the Slovak army, Trevor Waters, ‘Building an army from scratch: Slovakia’s uphill struggle’, Medzinárodné otázky, vol. 7, no. 4 (1998), pp. 47–59. 36 Study on NATO Enlargement, p. 23, chapter 5, paragraph 70. 37 Ibid., p. 4, chapter 1, paragraph 6. 38 This periodisation is taken from Alexander Duleba, ‘Slovenská zahranicˇná politika – bilancia sˇiestich rokov a perspekívy zmeny’, Mezinárodní vztahy, 1999 (1), pp. 36–54. See also Alexander Duleba, ‘Democratic consolidation and the conflict over Slovak international alignment’, in Sonˇa Szomolányi and John A. Gould (eds), Slovakia: Problems of Democratic Consolidation, Bratislava: Slovak Political Science Association/Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 1997, pp. 209–30. 39 The chaos surrounding the referendum resulted in a turnout of 9.5 per cent, most of whom would have been Mecˇiar government supporters. 46 per cent voted for NATO membership, but the result was legally invalid and meaningless. See Vladimír Krivý, ‘Súvislosti výsledkov hlasovania v zmarenom referende’, in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov and Martin Bútora (eds), Slovensko referendum ’97: zrod, priebeh, dôsledky, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1997, pp. 153–76. 40 Madrid Declaration on Euro-Atlantic Security and Cooperation, 8 July 1997, www.nato.int/docu/pr/1997/p97–081e.htm. 41 CSIS Eastern Europe Project/Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Slovakia’s Security and Foreign Policy Strategy: A Policy Paper of the U.S.–Slovakia Action Commission Security and Foreign Policy Working Group, Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001, p. 22. 42 Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Vnútropolitické aspekty kosovskej krízy na Slovensku’, in

110


43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Pavol Lukácˇ (ed.), Kosovo 1999 a slovenská spolocˇ nost’, Bratislava: Výskumné centrum Slovenskej spolocˇnost’ pre zahranicˇnú politiku, 2001, pp. 21–2. Ibid., p. 20. See Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Vnútropolitické aspekty kosovskej krízy’. It should also be noted that Milosˇevic´’s Socialist Party of Serbia had been one of the few foreign parties with which HZDS had good relations. In June 1999, an Institute for Public Affairs survey showed more Slovaks opposing than supporting NATO membership, while support for EU membership was ‚ always several times higher than opposition. Olga Gyárfásˇová, ‘Kosovská kríza a slovenská ‚ verejnost’: Lekcia z medzinárodnej politiky’, in Lukácˇ, Kosovo, pp. 40–53; Olga Gyárfásˇová, Marián Velsˇic, Foreign Policy Orientations in Slovakia, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2000. The European Commission’s Eurobarometer surveys produced similar results. For example, in October 2001, 64 per cent of Slovak respondents said they trusted the EU, and 18 per cent distrusted it, whereas only 40 per cent trusted NATO, and an identical percentage expressed distrust. European Commission, Applicant Countries Eurobarometer 2001: Public opinion in the countries applying for European Union membership, Results Summary, Brussels: 2001. ‚ Vladimír Krivý & Olga Gyárfásˇová, ‘Vstup do NATO podporuje jasná väcsˇina obcˇanov’, Sme, 7 September 2001, p. 23. Názory, vol.12, no. 2 (2001), p. 37. Hyde-Price, The International Politics of East Central Europe, pp. 108–39. Alexander Duleba, ‘Karpatský Eurorégion – genéza projektu transhranicˇnej spolupráce’, Medzinárodné otázky, vol. 2, no. 4 (1993), pp. 93–115. FOCUS, Aktuálne problémy Slovenska, p. 119; Názory, vol. 6, no. 1 (1996), pp. 30–36. Rudolf Chmel, Ivo Samson, Alexander Duleba, ‘Vzt’ahy Slovenska so susedmi a s Nemeckom’, in Martin Bútora and Michal Ivantysˇyn (eds), Slovensko 1997: Súhrnna správa o stave spolocˇ nosti a trendoch na rok 1998, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1998, p. 268. Ibid., p. 269. Politika v Cˇ eské republice, vol. 4, no. 2 (2000), p. 90–1. Juraj Marusˇiak, Juraj Alner, Pavol Lukácˇ et al., ‘The foreign policy and national security of the Slovak Republic’, in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Michal Ivantysˇyn, Tom Nicholson, Slovakia 1998–1999: A Global Report on the State of Society, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1999, p. 175. Budování státu˚ , vol. 7 (1996). The ratification of the agreement by the Czech parliament was politicised because of elections, and took most of the year. Karoly Okolicsanyi, ‘Slovak–Hungarian tension: Bratislava diverts the Danube’, RFE/RL Research Report, vol. 1, no. 49 (1992), pp. 49–54. Sharon Fisher, ‘The Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam controversy continues’, RFE/RL Research Report, vol. 2, no. 37 (1993), pp. 7–12. ‚ ‚ Mikulásˇ Huba and Lubica Trubínová, ‘Zˇ ivotné prostredie a trvalo udrzˇ atelný rozvoj’, in Bútora and Ivantysˇyn, Slovensko 1997, p. 521–2. The text can be found on the website of the Hungarian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, www.mfa.gov.hu/kulugy. See Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Hungary’s Progress Towards Accession, SEC (2001) 1748, Brussels, 13 November 2001, p. 91. The Hungarians in Slovakia, Bratislava: Information Centre of the Hungarian Coalition in Slovakia, 1997, p. 20. Report on Eastern Europe, vol. 3, 10 May 1991, pp. 1–6.

111


63 It has also been pointed out that Mecˇiar’s aspirations to personal power were more similar to the presidential-style political systems of the CIS countries than the more parliamentary systems of East Central Europe. Duleba, ‘Democratic consolidation’. 64 See European Commission, Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, no. 6, 1996, Annex Figure 9; Central and Eastern Eurobarometer, no. 8, 1998, Annex Figure 1. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania showed a higher percentage of citizens who believed their country’s future lay with Russia. 65 See FOCUS statistics in Zora Bútorová, ‘Public opinion’, in Martin Bútora and Péter Huncˇík (eds), Slovakia 1995: Comprehensive Analyses from 1995 and Trends from 1996, Bratislava: Sándor Márai Foundation, 1997, pp. 276–7. 66 The best critique of Slovakia’s illusions regarding the role of Russia in its foreign policy can be found in Alexander Duleba, The Blind Pragmatism of Slovak Foreign Policy, Bratislava: Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, 1996. 67 Vladimír Bilcˇík, Martin Bruncko, Alexander Duleba, Pavol Lukácˇ, Ivo Samson, ‘Foreign and defense policy of the Slovak Republic’, in Mesezˇ nikov et al., Slovakia 2000, p. 289. 68 The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia also border on the eastern part of Austria. 69 For a detailed discussion of Ukrainian politics and its significance for Slovakia, see Alexander Duleba, Ukrajina a Slovensko, Bratislava: VEDA, 2000. 70 See, for example, Bilcˇík et al., ‘Foreign and defense policy’, p. 233. 71 Regular reports in Názory, the quarterly journal of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic’s Institute for Public Opinion Research, showed that the army was the most trusted institution in Slovakia throughout most of the period of the third Mecˇiar and the Dzurinda government. When just overtaken by its closest competitor, Slovak Radio, in 2001, it still enjoyed the trust of 61 per cent of respondents – a substantial achievement given the general lack of trust in post-communist societies, and most particularly when compared with the trustworthiness ratings of the Slovak courts, government and parliament, which were 26 per cent, 21 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. Názory, vol. 12, no. 1 (2001), p. 18–25. 72 See Miroslav Wlachovský, ‘Armáda SR a národná bezpecˇnost’’, in Bútora and Ivantysˇyn, Slovensko 1997, pp. 306–10; also website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, www.mzv.sk.

112

4 THE ECONOMY IN SLOVAKIA

The economy of the Slovak Republic appears at first sight to present as many paradoxes as its political development. When Czechoslovakia split at the end of 1992, there were expectations that Slovakia’s prosperity would soon decline when it was no longer propped up by the more advanced Czech Lands. Yet at the beginning of the twenty-first century, EU statistics showed that while Czechs were indeed some 25 per cent better off than Slovaks, the Slovaks still enjoyed a standard of living which was nearly a quarter higher than that of their northern neighbours, the Poles.1 Although the Mecˇiar governments which ruled for most of the 1990s were considered laggards in the area of economic reform in comparison with the Czechs, and even more so the Poles, they produced surprisingly good macroeconomic indicators in spite of miserably low foreign direct investment. However, Mecˇiar left his successors with a difficult economic legacy, and GDP growth rates appeared to sink immediately after he left office,2 while the country was slower in shedding its invisibility to the eyes of foreign investors. Slovakia’s consistently high unemployment rate – a bone of contention even at the time of the Czechoslovak split – also rose to be the worst of all the applicants for membership of the EU at the beginning of the new millennium.3 Nevertheless, the Bratislava region was still as prosperous as the average EU member state, and although the government was concerned by worrying economic variations between the different regions of Slovakia, in some respects it had an admirably consistent basic infrastructure. A drive round even the remote rural roads in the hills of the east, in direct proximity to the Ukrainian border, presented the motorist with none of the horrors of the pothole-strewn highways in the Romanian countryside. Many of Slovakia’s advantages can be accounted for by the fact that Czechoslovakia was the most comfortable and modern state ever to exist under a communist regime, with the German Democratic Republic its only serious competitor. Communist Czechoslovakia, whatever its many faults, had been remarkably successful in homogenising the standards of living throughout the country, so that Slovaks – who had been much poorer than the Czechs before the Second World War – had almost caught up, thereby 113

T H E E C O N O M Y I N S L O VA K I A

sharing the highest standard of living in the Soviet bloc.4 It is something of an irony that the state divided precisely at the point where conditions in both its constituent republics were nearer convergence than at any point in history.5 It is hard to deny that coexistence with the Czechs had provided the Slovaks with benefits lacking to their Polish and Hungarian neighbours, so some divergence after the split was therefore inevitable. Apart from differences in the economic policies of their governments, the Czechs had many key structural advantages over the Slovaks. Since Slovakia had, in the main, modernised and industrialised under the communists after 1945, its economy was less diversified and hence more vulnerable than the Czech economy. Its geographical position was also less advantageous in the era of European integration: by the mid-1990s, the Czech Republic was surrounded by EU member states on three sides, while Slovakia had but one short border with Austria. Communications were impeded further by its mountainous terrain, and its lower level of urbanisation. The two states also differed in the sphere of political decision-making, and in the psychological universe where they were made. Although the Czech Republic turned out by the late 1990s to have been not quite the economic success story that it projected itself to be, Prime Minister Václav Klaus had nonetheless exploited a line of reformist rhetoric most helpful to the country’s image, particularly when juxtaposed with the moral rectitude of President Havel. Their good fortune was that Czechs looked back to a ‘golden age’ between the wars which happened to have been democratic, reasonably egalitarian, capitalist, and marked by a plethora of small and medium enterprises. However, the Czech images could not work in Slovakia as a motor for promoting economic reform – much to Klaus’s frustration when he was federal finance minister from 1990–2 – because it had modernised much more rapidly, and could not conveniently underpin its hopes for the future with mythologised cosy images from the past. In order to understand the economic situation in which Slovakia currently finds itself, this chapter will therefore begin with a slightly more detailed outline of Slovakia’s economic development in the last century, followed by an examination of the way in which economic issues, most particularly the privatisation process, were politicised during the very polarised years of the 1990s. It was a politicisation that spread beyond the domestic sphere, since the primary concern of many potential foreign investors was the political stability of the country. Yet by the time the new century began, the economic options available to any Slovak government had narrowed even further than in the 1990s. The advanced state of EU accession negotiations presented an ever starker choice of following the blueprint for developing a functioning market economy compatible with EU regulations in all their complexity, or being relegated to ‘outsider’ status on the European periphery.

114


The Czechoslovak period, 1918–1989 When the Habsburg Empire disintegrated in 1918, Czechoslovakia inherited some two-thirds of Austria-Hungary’s manufacturing industry, and became one of Europe’s most successful economies in the interwar period.6 Although the major part of the new state’s industrial base was to be found in the Czech Lands, Slovakia too developed notably from the 1880s onwards as the Hungarian government encouraged a belated industrial revolution with the aid of state subsidies and protection of domestic companies.7 This was the background to one of the earliest Czech-Slovak squabbles, since Slovakia’s nascent industries fared badly after 1918, when they were suddenly forced to compete in a single economy with more advanced Czech rivals, at the same time as losing their accustomed markets in the less developed parts of former Hungary.8 Some Slovak factories were closed, causing the republic to become less, rather than more industrialised. Its transport arteries also tended to go in the wrong direction, from north to south heading for Budapest, rather than east to west towards Prague. (At the beginning of the next century, the problems of communicating westward through a long, thin, mountainous country had yet to be entirely resolved: Slovakia still lacked a complete motorway link between the country’s two largest cities.) The process of ‘nostrification’, whereby the new Czechoslovak state removed control of its economy from the Austrians and Hungarians, led to a concentration of capital in Prague-based banks.9 That a capital city should play a major role in financial institutions is not unusual, and the Czechs were also in general more experienced in entrepreneurial activity than the Slovaks. Not only was their part of the country more industrial, but they had also had more chance to participate in the development of a capitalist system in the nineteenth century, while in Slovakia such activity was firmly in the hands of Hungarians and Germans.10 Although both Czechs and Slovaks benefited from major land reform after Czechoslovakia was founded, the landholdings of Slovak peasant farmers remained smaller and hence less productive than in the Czech Lands, largely because the area had no tradition of primogeniture in inheritance.11 There were also more landless farm labourers in Slovakia. The result of all these factors was that Slovakia began and ended the interwar period a far more agrarian society than the Czech Lands.12 Many Slovaks also suffered from a sense of grievance because they felt that the Czechs had failed to invest sufficiently in Slovakia, thereby reducing it to a market for Czech finished products, as well as a source of raw material and agricultural products. This was to an extent the reverse of Slovakia’s earlier situation, where the lowlands of Hungary had been the bread basket. The fact that the great depression affected Czechoslovakia particularly harshly, and agricultural areas most of all, added to the Slovaks’ rather negative memories of the interwar years.13

115


The industrialisation and relative urbanisation of Slovakia finally took place in the communist period, from 1948–89. During this time, the percentage of the work force employed in the industrial and service sectors doubled, while agricultural workers declined from 60 per cent to 12 per cent of the labour force.14 The increase in industrial production was, certainly, not entirely due to communism. Slovak industrial output had doubled even in the decade before the communist takeover. This was because Czechoslovakia had begun moving its arms industry eastward with the growth of the German threat in the mid- and late 1930s. Germany had then used Slovakia for arms production during the war; and there was a general impetus towards the industrialisation of Slovakia during the ‘democratic interlude’ from 1945–8.15 What was crucial, however, was that Slovak perceptions of the communist period were less negative than those of the Czechs because the period was more strongly linked to the idea of economic progress. There were three main reasons for this. First, it has been calculated that the Czech Lands completed the economic transition whereby less than 50 per cent of the population worked in the primary, agricultural sector soon after 1900, while Slovakia did so only in 195016 – two generations and three political systems later. Second, economic modernisation and urbanisation occurred exceptionally rapidly in Slovakia under communism.17 For example, the number of Slovaks living in cities of more than 10,000 was still increasing by 22 per cent per decade in the 1980s, while such a shift was minimal in the Czech Lands.18 Other East European societies underwent communist post-war industrial transformation from a level of agrarianism similar to that of Slovakia,19 but the process was not accelerated by the motor of a more advanced economy such as that of the Czech Lands. Third, Slovaks and Czechs experienced something completely different under communism. The Slovaks moved rapidly from the primary sector into the secondary, industrial sector, while the Czechs, who already lived in an industrial society, were artificially held up by the prejudices of Soviet-style communism from proceeding to the final period of economic transition where the tertiary, service sector exceeds 50 per cent.20 Czechs were therefore less likely to link communism with progress than the Slovaks. The pattern of economic development in twentieth-century Slovakia has been highlighted here because its consequence was that the Slovak Republic had to confront the traumas of post-communist economic reform from a far more vulnerable position than the other three Visegrad countries, and this goes a long way in explaining why it encountered far more problems during the 1990s. In 1990, Slovaks were faced with multiple difficulties that were not generally articulated both because of the political chaos of the era, and because complex, non-ideological self-reflection had not been a feature of communist economic thinking. First, Slovakia suffered from an economic structure that was severely perverted by the very rapid imposition of 116


communist patterns of industrialisation. Most notable here were towns that had been built around industrial monocultures. Typically, the workforce, and also the entire system of apprentice education, were dependent on a single enterprise, and frequently one which belonged to a branch of heavy industry such as arms manufacture that was about to become redundant. Second, Czechoslovakia as a whole was disadvantaged when compared with Poland and Hungary because of the degree of state control of the economy, enduring for the entire communist period from the 1950s to the post-1968 normalisation period, which was excessive even by communist standards.21 Third, political control of the Slovak economy in the first three years after the Velvet Revolution lay largely in the hands of Prague-based Czech elites for whom the everyday problems of the towns of central Slovakia were – even in the most literal geographical sense – remote. Finally, even when Slovakia eventually gained its independence in 1993, its economic situation was far more disorientating than that of Poland and Hungary. Both Czechs and Slovaks could, up to a point, compensate for their lack of experience of private enterprise and joint ventures with foreign companies through their higher standard of living and relatively low hard currency debt. Yet it was Prague, as a capital city, that had attracted many of the best professionals and accumulated ‘business capital’. The Czechs also had a deep, historicallybased conviction that they were the ‘captured west’, a country that should naturally have been on the same level of development as Germany or Austria, or anywhere else in the EU. However, the Slovaks – in spite of having what was, in comparison to Poland or Hungary, a good standard of living and rural infrastructure – lacked the leadership of a confident elite. The Polish and Hungarian capital cities, Warsaw and Budapest, were large urban centres with populations three or four times larger than Bratislava, and the politicians based there were used to running a country and making economic decisions. This experience and expertise was, at least in part, lacking in Bratislava, which had only been a capital city since 1993. Against this background, what is surprising about Slovakia is not the feelings of insecurity that often plagued it in the early years of post-communist transition, nor the economic policy problems that it faced in the 1990s, but rather the alacrity with which it had solved at least some of them by the end of that decade.

Economics and the ‘Velvet Divorce’ Economic realities played a much larger role in the division of Czechoslovakia than is sometimes appreciated. On the surface, economic reform in postcommunist Czechoslovakia proceeded well. In 1990, the country regained International Monetary Fund membership,22 and the federal parliament approved the major pillars of economic reform: liberalisation of prices, restrictive monetary and fiscal policies, the internal convertibility of the 117


currency and the liberalisation of foreign trade, and comprehensive and speedy privatisation.23 Ninety per cent of prices were liberalised on 1 January 1991, and over the next four months prices rose by around 50 per cent.24 This was the single worst case of inflation experienced by Slovaks, but also one which went a long way to solving long-standing problems of supply shortages, particularly in combination with the liberalisation of foreign trade. Since the early stages of privatisation in Slovakia took place at the end of the Czechoslovak period, they largely reflected the Czech privatisation programme. The ‘small privatisation’ began early in 1991 and included mainly service sector property such as shops and restaurants, which were sold off at auction.25 The first wave of ‘large privatisation’, which included larger stateowned industries, did not begin until spring 1992. It was conducted using a voucher system, whereby citizens paid 1,000 Czechoslovak crowns (then about 20 pounds sterling) to buy vouchers with which they could bid for shares in the companies on offer. This was designed to give ordinary citizens a stake in the economy in an effort to increase the popularity of the economic reform process, while allowing for the fact that few people had spare cash to invest. A further form of privatisation was restitution, whereby property confiscated after 1948 was simply returned to the people who had owned it in 1948, or to their heirs. The date was set to include those who had lost property in the communist-era nationalisation drive, but not those (including the millions of German expellees) who had lost property in the changes that took place immediately after the Second World War. Controversially, the restitution law also discriminated against more recent Czech and Slovak emigrés by insisting that only people who had Czechoslovak citizenship and resided in Czechoslovakia could take part. Restitution was a quick way of restoring private ownership, particularly of housing and agricultural land, while also compensating for past injustices and providing at least some citizens with capital assets. All these measures were relatively successful and by the end of 1992 about a third of Slovak GDP was created by the private sector, a figure which went on to double over the next three years.26 With the disbanding of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the communist trade bloc, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, trade flows were also redirected. The percentage of Slovak foreign trade with former Comecon countries decreased from 47 per cent in 1989 to 36 per cent in 1992, while trade with the European Community states over the same period increased from 26 per cent to 38 per cent.27 There were, however, two issues relating to economic reform that were to do much both to damage Czech–Slovak relations, and to bolster support for the more nationalist rhetoric of the Slovak prime minister Mecˇiar. The first was the fate of the arms industry, which was largely located in Slovakia, safely distant from communist Czechoslovakia’s NATO enemies. The 1990 118


federal elections had placed many prominent Czech ex-dissidents in power, unlike the 1992 elections which led to the ascendancy of Václav Klaus and the pro-market reformers in Prague. Among the more idealistic policies that they tried to implement was the promotion of world peace by halting all exports of weapons.28 This was designed in part to improve Czechoslovakia’s international reputation, which had not been helped by the fact that its most famous product was the explosive Semtex so beloved by the world’s terrorists. For the Slovaks, however, the ‘conversion’ of the arms industry came to symbolise Czech indifference to the specific economic problems of Slovakia. This was easily politicised, since the Slovak unemployment rate began shooting up four times higher than the Czech one from early 1990 onwards. It is noticeable that public opinion surveys began showing increasing Slovak reservations about rapid economic reform precisely at this point in time.29 The fact that most Czechoslovak arms production was doomed in any case with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and the reduction of east–west tension, received less attention. And after the split, when the economist Klaus, victorious over the idealists, proved only too happy to export Czech arms abroad, Slovak prejudices about Czech motives in attacking arms production were only confirmed. The second ‘neuralgic question’30 that poisoned Czech–Slovak relations was the issue of agricultural reform. The bill on the restitution of farmland was passed by the federal parliament in May 1991, which just happened to be the month after Mecˇiar was ousted from the Slovak premiership for the first time.31 The blame for problems in the agricultural sphere therefore landed with his successor, Ján Cˇ arnogurský. As in the case of conversion, the end of socialist agriculture was bound, of itself, to cause some hardship in rural life. The difficulty was that Slovakia had, in percentage terms, a larger agricultural sector than the Czech Republic, plus a pre-collectivisation pattern of extremely small land holdings which made the ending of large-scale collectivised agriculture inherently problematic. Any disruption to agricultural life was thus easily portrayed as the result of Czech insensitivity to the situation in Slovakia. In fact, even after the restitution of farmland, most Slovak farmers chose to remain in co-operatives, albeit restructured ones that had slimmed down in terms of their work force.32 The Slovaks were frequently portrayed in the 1990s as being more leftwing, and more nostalgic for communism, than the Czechs, yet this was largely due to the fact that what they were experiencing economically was objectively different from what was happening in the Czech Republic.33 It did not indicate that there was any intrinsic national difference between the mindsets of Czechs and Slovaks.34 The differences between left–right views in the two republics were in any case no greater than between those in the north and south of England, and different groups of Slovaks disagreed with each other on economic policy as much as with the Czechs. The only real ‘watershed’ question, to which Slovaks and Czechs gave diametrically opposed 119


answers, was that of ‘who is paying for whom’.35 The majority of Czechs were convinced that they were subsiding the Slovaks (which they were), while the majority of Slovaks denied this, and moreover quite firmly believed that they were subsidising the Czechs.36 This latter contention was usually backed up by arguments relating to the fact that Slovakia sent raw materials to the Czech Republic, and the Czechs then clocked up the credit for producing and also exporting the finished products. The underlying issue, however, was trust. Czechs and Slovaks were distrustful of each other. Vladimír Mecˇiar’s success in Slovak politics was based on making Slovaks believe that he had a special Slovak answer to the country’s economic policies which would avoid both the objectionable features of communism and the harsher edges of the economic reforms that were necessary to make Slovakia a viable, modern economy.

The economy in independent Slovakia Independence soon brought about a parting of the ways between the Slovak and the Czech economies. This was not so much because the two currencies were split more quickly than expected, in February 1993, or even because later in the year the Slovak crown was devalued by 10 per cent. Most significant was the fact that the Czechs proceeded with the planned second wave of voucher privatisation in May 1993, while under Slovakia’s second Mecˇiar government, privatisation almost stood still, apart from the completion of the first wave of large privatisation in the second half of 1992.37 The exception was in March 1994, on the eve of Mecˇiar’s second fall from power, when dozens of direct sales of state companies were hurried through the parliament. When the interim Moravcˇík government took over from Mecˇiar in spring 1994, it reverted to the original plan for holding a second wave of voucher privatisation, and began to register citizens on 1 September 1994 – less than a month before the next election. Although a third more Slovaks registered than for the first wave, the incoming Mecˇiar government cancelled the second wave, with all the citizens registering receiving 10,000 Slovak crowns worth of government bonds to mature in five years’ time. More ominously, on the ‘long night’ of 3–4 November 1994, when the new parliament met for the first time, the future government parties appointed a new supervisory board of the National Property Fund, now to have full authority over future privatisations, and this was composed solely of supporters of the new ruling parties.38 The law on large-scale privatisation was frequently amended during the term of the third Mecˇiar government, which embarked on an extremely untransparent privatisation policy generally held to represent a form of clientelism, whereby political loyalty was sufficient to secure a stake in Slovak industry at well below market prices. Economists opposed to Mecˇiar 120


compiled ever-lengthening lists of cases of irregular privatisation.39 Mecˇiar had once declared that Slovakia needed a ‘stratum of rich people’ – a domestic capitalist class – and his privatisation strategy, which did not welcome foreign companies, appeared designed to create one from his supporters. The government was also on occasion itself divided in an unseemly fashion when sharing out the spoils, most notably in the summer of 1996, when the Slovak National Party almost left the coalition in a protracted argument about the governing parties’ controlling interests in strategic industries and banks.40 Against such a political background, it is at first sight surprising that the Slovak economy did not fare worse under the third Mecˇiar government. Despite a notable lack of foreign investment, GDP growth rates were creditable throughout the government’s period in office and, although unemployment remained high, inflation was reduced to among the lowest rates in the post-communist world (see Table 4.1). Mecˇiar’s supporters liked to portray Slovakia as a ‘little European tiger’, defying conventional economic wisdom by achieving glowing macroeconomic results in spite of a very low level of foreign investment. The difficulty was that this was unsustainable, as it was not backed up by a programme of structural reforms. It was accompanied by more worrying signals, such as the growth in the trade and current account deficits. By the time that the next elections grew near in summer 1998, it was clear that the Slovak economy was living on borrowed time, and being propped up by foreign money borrowed under extremely adverse terms. Against this background, Mecˇiar’s grandiose motorway construction schemes, which he publicised so heavily in the 1998 election campaign, were distinctly less impressive. Consequently, in spite of the fact that the Slovak economy was never threatened with the sort of meltdown that afflicted Balkan states such as Albania and Bulgaria in the mid-1990s, the Dzurinda government faced an extremely difficult legacy when it took over in October 1998. This was exacerbated by a marked devaluation of the Slovak crown, which took place between the announcement of the election result and the new government taking office, and made the foreign debt situation more difficult, since borrowed money would be more be costly to repay. Since the Mecˇiar government had not managed to reduce unemployment, when its successor embarked on the long overdue austerity package, its popular image was tarnished by even higher unemployment rates. It also needed to confront a growing crisis that was developing in health and education. However, the major task confronting the new government was to restore the country’s economic respectability, which was a political issue that had contributed to the EU’s decision not to commence accession negotiations with Slovakia at the same time as the other three Visegrad states in early 1998. Joining the OECD – an achievement already attained by the other Visegrad states – was one of the Dzurinda government’s three major foreign 121

10.4

10.0

−6.5

−14.6 61.2

1992

1991 4.9 38.12 13.4 13.3

36.03 23.2 12.2

1994

−3.9

1993

Source: European Commission Regular Reports on Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession.

GDP growth GDP per capital (euro) Euro exchange rate Inflation Unemployment

1990

Table 4.1 Key economic data on Slovakia 1990–2000

6.8 2467 38.86 9.9 13.1

1995 6.2 2900 38.92 5.8 11.3

1996

6.2 3300 38.11 6.1 11.8

1997

4.1 3500 39.54 6.7 12.5

1998

1.9 3400 44.12 10.6 16.2

1999

2.2 3900 42.48 12.1 18.6

2000


policy goals, alongside NATO and EU membership, and also the first of the three aims that it finally achieved, in December 2000.41

The Slovak economy in the new millennium A balance sheet of Slovakia’s progress at the beginning of the century shows both positive and negative features. By November 2001, the European Commission concluded that: Slovakia is a functioning market economy. Provided that it makes further substantial efforts in medium term fiscal consolidation and in developing and fully implementing the announced structural reform programme, it should be able to cope with the competitive pressure and market forces within the Union in the near term.42 The fact that this was the most positive statement yet made on the EU side was a tribute to the achievements of the Dzurinda government over the three years that it had been in office. By the end of December 2001, it had closed twenty-two of the EU’s negotiating chapters, including all ‘four freedoms’ (free movement of goods, persons, services and capital), as well as energy and environment. The post-1998 government had also gone some way to solving other problems that had been neglected by the Mecˇiar government. Unravelling the untransparent privatisation deals that had taken place was difficult, although in a few cases the National Property Fund did manage to regain its stake in companies which had been privatised illegally. It also had to deal urgently with the East Slovak Steelworks (VSZˇ ) in Kosˇice, which had been the country’s largest exporter. However, by 1998 its assets had been so severely undermined that it was heavily in debt, and was eventually saved by being sold to US Steel. A further problem had been slowness in privatisation in certain sectors. In the banking sector, this was largely completed between 1999 and 2001. Utilities (gas, electricity, telecommunications) were also prepared for privatisation in the same period.43 Such ‘strategic enterprises’ and ‘natural monopolies’ had been a particularly contentious issue under the Mecˇiar government. A 1995 law banned the privatisation of state-owned strategic enterprises44 (although it had not always stopped them being sold illegally, as in the notorious case of the Nafta Gbely company), and a referendum had taken place, at the behest of Mecˇiar’s HZDS, at the same time as the September 1998 election where voters were asked to ban future privatisation of state enterprises in the energy field. (Like all Slovak referenda, it failed because less than half the electorate chose to vote in it.) The new government had acted with alacrity to amend the law on strategic enterprises in November 1998.45 The political downside to the much-delayed introduction of market forces was that sharp price rises in areas such as transport and domestic heating were extremely unpopular among voters, who were so used 123


to the heavy state subsidies of the communist era that they had little idea what the real cost of the gas and electricity they used actually was. The Dzurinda government also succeeded in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). After a disappointing year in 1999, foreign investment increased sixfold in 2000,46 partly thanks to sales of ‘natural monopolies’ to foreign buyers. The largest single transaction was the sale of a 51 per cent stake in Slovak Telecom to Deutsche Telekom.47 The inflows of FDI were helpful in covering Slovakia’s continuing current account deficit.48 The trade deficit also continued, but Slovakia’s structure of foreign trade was generally satisfactory. In 2000, nearly 60 per cent of exports went to EU countries, which also accounted for 50 per cent of imports.49 While the percentage of exports going to the EU was higher in a number of other candidate countries, the Slovak figure was affected by the fact that the second most important destination, after Germany, was the Czech Republic, which for understandable reasons of recent history accounted for about a sixth of all exports in the first half of 2001. When it came to imports, Russia just beat the Czech Republic for second place after Germany because of Slovakia’s reliance on energy imports from Russia (although this depended on the price of oil).50 The Slovak Republic is 80 per cent dependent on imports to cover its energy needs, since – like many countries in central and eastern Europe – the environmentally damaging lignite and brown coal are its major domestic fuel.51 Attempts to generate electricity by other methods have been contentious. The difficulties with Hungary over the hydro-electric dam at Gabcˇikovo have been described in the previous chapter. The EU has also expressed concern about the safety of Slovakia’s two nuclear power plants at Bohunice and Mochovce. The Dzurinda government agreed in September 1999 to close two of the units at Bohunice in 2006 and 2008, while upgrading has been scheduled for further reactors there. The newer Mochovce plant needed its safety improving before it opened, and it is unclear whether unfinished units there will be completed.52 A further achievement of the Dzurinda government was that in 2000, it changed the rules on market exit.53 Bankruptcy had previously been a technical possibility that rarely actually came about, and was an extremely lengthy process. The same applied, unfortunately, to all legal proceedings in the economic sphere. Because of the overloading of the judicial system, it was possible for both clients and suppliers to renege on agreements in the knowledge that even if their partner were able to claim legal redress, the process would take years. The European Commission’s report homed in on a number of other continuing problems in the Slovak economy, several of which have notable political implications. One major problem area was regional differences and long-term unemployment. The Commission noted that per capita income in purchasing power standards was 48 per cent of the EU average in Slovakia as 124


a whole, but had reached 99 per cent in Bratislava in 1998, compared with only 39 per cent in eastern Slovakia.54 A closer look at data from the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic shows clearly that this gulf in prosperity was linked to two separate factors: average wages and unemployment rates. While the Slovak average monthly wage was 10,945 Slovak crowns in 1999, it was as high as 14,133 Slovak crowns in the Bratislava region – the most populous of Slovakia’s eight regions – but fell to 8,917 Slovak crowns in the Presˇov region in north-east Slovakia. The Kosˇice region in the lower, south-eastern, part of Slovakia’s elongated eastern tail had the third highest average wages of all Slovak regions, at 10,605 crowns,55 but this was attributable to the fact Kosˇice itself was the only large city in the country apart from Bratislava.56 A look at unemployment rates, which averaged a high of 19.2 per cent at the end of 1999, showed that in the Bratislava region it was 7.2 per cent, compared with 26.0 per cent in both the Presˇov and the Kosˇice regions.57 The differences between the individual seventy-nine districts in Slovakia were even greater. A low of 4.2 per cent unemployment in one of Bratislava’s five districts can be compared with rates that were 15.0 per cent or above in all of Kosˇice’s four districts, and exceeded 30 per cent in ten districts in the south and east of Slovakia. Unemployment is closely linked with poverty. The latter is a concept open to numerous definitions, but one that also shows the extent of regional disparities in Slovakia. On this measure, Kosˇice fares worst of all Slovak regions. Although generally one of the most prosperous post-communist states, Slovakia is notable for having ‘islands of poverty’.58 The high levels of unemployment were one of the most frequent grievances articulated by opponents of the Dzurinda government precisely because they were so closely linked to poverty. However, although the complaints were most loudly voiced by ethnic Slovaks, there was also a structural ethnic dimension to unemployment in Slovakia, since its minority communities were concentrated in the peripheral regions of southern and eastern Slovakia. Studies of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, which is concentrated in the agricultural areas of southern Slovakia, show that it has a below average standard of living and an above average unemployment rate.59 Rimavská Sobota, the district with the highest unemployment rate at the end of 1999 (37.4 per cent), was some 45 per cent Hungarian.60 What is harder to encapsulate statistically is the link between unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, and the percentage of Roma in individual districts. However, although the real number of Slovak Romanies is grossly under-represented in official census data, it is notable that even the preliminary 2001 census data, which show 1.7 per cent Roma in the country as a whole, give the higher figures of 4.0 per cent and 3.9 per cent respectively for the two eastern regions, Presˇov and Kosˇice,61 which had particularly high unemployment rates. Combating unemployment in Slovakia has been difficult for a number of 125


reasons.62 Those most commonly mentioned are, first, low levels of education and training, which is a major factor in long-term unemployment.63 This applies particularly to the Roma, who face discrimination in the school system before they even reach the labour market. The second is a low level of labour mobility.64 This may seem strange, given that the rapid modernisation of Slovakia had caused a high level of movement from village to town. However, this has declined since 1980,65 and in the 1990s was no longer facilitated by the paternalist structures of workforce welfare in socialist enterprises. Liberalisation of the housing market has also been slow in Slovakia, with rent rises being particularly unpopular politically. Flat or house purchase has also been beyond the means of most, unless their families have somehow accumulated cash reserves, since the mortgage market has been underdeveloped. However, since home ownership was already widespread in the Slovak countryside under communism,66 the housing shortage in the cities and the lack of affordable rented accommodation decreases mobility. The third reason is that social security payments, plus the relatively common incidence of illegal employment,67 can make the search for employment financially irrational, particularly for those with large families who live in low-wage regions. Another problem area in the Slovak economy has been fiscal policy. Since the reformist 1998–2002 government was a broad left–right coalition, the scope for intra-coalition dispute in this area has been immense. Given that the Dzurinda government’s finance minister, Brigita Schmögnerová, was a member of the Party of the Democratic Left, while the deputy prime minister for the economy, Ivan Miklosˇ, belonged (at least initially) to the Democratic Party, which was the most economically right-wing component of the Slovak Democratic Coalition, it is surprising that political disputes did not cause even more friction in the government’s taxation policy. Part of the reason for this was that Schmögnerová belonged to the less conservative wing of the post-communist party, and in a post-communist economy which starts from a point of almost total state ownership, there is scope for even normal social democratic opinion to support privatisation and a reduction in public expenditure. Nevertheless, fiscal consolidation remained an area of concern for the European Commission in 2001.68 Reform of the health and pension insurance system was also unsatisfactory. Although a system of direct health insurance was finally introduced by the Mecˇiar government, the five major health insurance companies became indebted to the point where they were in danger of imminent collapse at the turn of the century.69 The pension system was also in need of a thorough overhaul. Slovakia, like all post-communist states, had rather low retirement ages, although it did not suffer from such an unfavourable age structure as many European states. The final bane of the Slovak economy was corruption. A branch of Transparency International was established in Slovakia in 1998, but 126


Slovakia’s ranking in its annual Corruption Perception Index improved little in the next three years70 despite the best efforts of the government, which waged a major campaign entitled ‘The Fight against Corruption’.71 While the dubious privatisation deals of the Mecˇiar era were the most noisily publicised corruption cases in Slovakia, there was a deeper underlying problem of acceptance of corruption in Slovak society at large. This was also targeted by the government’s campaign, but proved very hard to eradicate. The idea that it was natural to help one’s friends and relatives in any way possible, and only polite to reward with gifts any bureaucrat or nurse who was humane enough to do their job properly, even though they were not a relative or friend who might reasonably expect some future favour in return, was very deep-rooted. Public opinion surveys conducted between 1996 and 1998 found that between 30 and 45 per cent of respondents claimed to have given bribes (money or gifts) in the areas of health, education, the police or the courts within the previous five months. About two-thirds of respondents thought that bribes or favours were necessary in the area of health, and one-third in education.72 An indication of the underlying cultural problem can be found in the fact that these findings were published together with those investigating how often tips were given in hairdressers and restaurants. It appears likely that the two phenomena comprised a single continuum in the minds of most citizens as well. However, low-level corruption was also matched by illicit self-enrichment on a far grander scale. By the beginning of the new millennium, one weekly Slovak political magazine, Plus 7 dní, featured articles with photos of the luxurious houses being constructed at home and abroad by members of the past or present political elite and their friends and relatives with a regularity that became monotonous. The privatisation process, by which quite massive industrial wealth was transferred from public to private hands within just a few years, provided the scope for abuse of office on a level scarcely paralleled in market economies. Although the European Commission carefully followed anti-corruption drives in candidates’ states, it was unfortunate that its own record in this area was not unblemished in the late 1990s.

The Slovak economy in perspective In some respects, the extreme politicisation of Slovak politics made economic developments after independence appear more dramatic than they actually were. Both the privatisation ‘seesaw’, whereby throughout the 1990s strategies were reversed every time the government changed, and the conspicuous demotion of Slovakia from the Visegrad front runners in the EU and NATO enlargement processes in 1997, created a permanent impression that catastrophe was just around the corner. The reality was often more banal. Slovak democracy was never destabilised by rampaging street mobs. Industrial relations could have been much 127


worse, and the country lacked any radical trade union tradition. It inherited from Czechoslovakia a ‘tripartite’ system, called the Economic and Social Accord Council, whereby the government discussed policy with both trade unions and employers’ organisations. Although this malfunctioned during the Mecˇiar years so that no ‘General Agreement’ could be reached by the parties concerned, it was revived relatively successfully after 1998.73 Although, as might be expected in a time of austerity measures, there were demonstrations by the trade unions, the government remained prudently aware of the need to avoid escalating tension. The National Bank of Slovakia also at times played a major role in maintaining economic stability by pursuing a tight monetary policy, although at the same time it allowed the economy to be undermined by the massive accumulation of bad assets by state-owned banks. Like the trade unions, it was prepared on occasion to confront the Mecˇiar government without jumping wholeheartedly into the opposition camp. Furthermore, even in the years when the Mecˇiar government encountered most opprobrium from the international community, the Ministry of Finance was considered one of the more competent ministries. The Slovak economy in the 1990s was plagued by some exceptionally bad decision-making, while at the same time adhering to some rational economic principles. In the end, the population has never been faced with economic shocks of the kind that were common in most post-communist states, including Poland, which has often appeared to be a success story of economic reform. When Slovakia’s bank notes and coins were changed, it was not because hyper-inflation had rendered them anachronistic, but simply because the Czechoslovak crown could not continue without a Czechoslovakia. Slovaks never watched their life’s savings completely wiped out by inflation. Prices rose, but so did wages – although not always in tandem. Both increased approximately fourfold in the first ten years after communism fell, although the changes in both prices and remuneration were differentiated. While western goods and international telephone calls barely increased in price, food and transport price rises were more dramatic. Likewise, while normal salaries hovered between 1,000 and 4,000 crowns in 1988, twelve years later, a single family could contain members earning anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 crowns a month. The exchange rate of the crowns in the Slovak pocket generally changed in value rather gradually as well. In more than a decade, they have shifted relatively little from the late 1980s black market rate of about 50 crowns to one pound sterling. The crown was devalued from the official (and unrealistic) exchange rate of 15 crowns to the pound to the black market rate of 50 in 1990, and more or less stayed there. It improved to 45 crowns per pound when the pound sank, and then sank to a low of 70 crowns to the (now much stronger) pound after the National Bank of Slovakia floated the crown in October 1998. When the Deutschmark finally became history at the end of 2001, it was worth only a few crowns more on 128


the streets of Bratislava than when the Slovak communist Husák was in power in Czechoslovakia. Since inflation in Slovakia had been rather higher than in western Europe, Slovaks who went shopping abroad gradually found the prices there slightly less exhorbitant. While the Czechs fared somewhat better, virtually everyone else in the post-communist world fared very much worse. Even population figures demonstrate an astonishing stability. Although many people worried that the brightest and the best were all emigrating, the population crept up steadily from 5,276,186 in 1989 to 5,395,324 in 1999.74 Pessimists would attribute this to the high birth-rate among Roma, but the Roma were, ironically, the most notorious Slovak emigrants of all. In any case, the birth-rate was actually decreasing, as was to be expected once there was no longer a communist regime materially encouraging young people to have children in their late teens. The fact remains that the population has declined in many post-communist states. In Slovakia, it has not. The Slovak Republic has been not been particularly stable politically, but as a state it has not been fundamentally instable either. It has merely been subject to a high level of political contestation in every sphere, which is not necessarily a negative trait in a nascent democracy. It was born of a political and economic argument with the Czechs, and carried on arguing about politics and economics. However, the scope for argument on either topic is rapidly narrowing. The real effect of imminent EU membership is the abandonment of the illusion that there could be some kind of special Slovak path to economic transformation. Yet the goal of EU membership is realistic precisely because Slovakia had an underlying stability which enabled it to survive the domestic storms of state-building in the 1990s.

Notes 1 Commission of the European Communities, Making a Success of Enlargement: Strategy Paper and Report of the European Commission on the Progress Towards Accession by Each of the Candidate Countries, Brussels, 13 November 2001, Annex 2, p. 66. The three countries had GDP per capita (purchasing power standard) of 60 per cent, 48 per cent and 39 per cent of the EU average. 2 The GDP growth rate was 5.9 per cent, 5.8 per cent and 4.8 per cent for the first three quarters of 1998, but fell to 0.1 per cent in the final quarter. Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická správa o základných vývojových tendenciách v hospodárstve SR, no. 1 (2000), p. 11. 3 At 18.9 per cent for the year 2000, it compared badly with Poland at 16.1 per cent, the Czech Republic at 8.8 per cent, while the fourth Visegrad state, Hungary, had a rate as low as 6.4 per cent. See Commission of the European Communities, Making a Success of Enlargement, Annex 2, p. 66. 4 See Pavel Machonin, ‘Cˇ esko-slovenské vztahy ve sveˇ tle dat sociologického výzkumu’, in Fedor Gál a kolektiv, Dnesˇní krize cˇ esko-slovenských vztahu˚ , Prague: Sociologické nakladatelství, 1992, pp. 97–101. 5 Jirˇí Musil, ‘Czech and Slovak society’, in Jirˇí Musil (ed.), The End of Czechoslovakia, Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995, p. 77.

129


6 Václav Pru˚ cha, ‘Economic development and relations, 1918–89’, in Musil, The End of Czechoslovakia, pp. 40–1. ‚ 7 Ludovít Hallon, Industrializácia Slovenska 1918–1938 (Rozvoj alebo úpadok?), Bratislava: VEDA, 1995, pp. 11–14. 8 Ibid., p. 43–52. ‚ 9 Lubomír Lipták, ‘Slovakia in the 20th century’, in Elena Mannová (ed.), A Concise History of Slovakia, Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2000, p. 249. 10 Pru˚ cha, ‘Economic development and relations’, p. 43. 11 Ibid., p. 49; Jan Rychlík, Cˇ esˇi a Slováci ve 20. století: Cˇ esko-slovenské vztahy 1914–1945, Bratislava: Academic Economic Press Bratislava and Ústav T.G. Masaryka Praha, 1997, pp. 96–7. 12 For figures, see Pru˚ cha, ‘Economic development and relations, p. 43; Jaroslav Krejcˇí and Pavel Machonin, Czechoslovakia 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change, Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1996, p 116–17. 13 A public opinion poll by the Institute of Public Affairs in 1997 found more positive views on the First Republic than surveys conducted in 1990 and 1991. See Zora Bútorová and Martin Bútora, ‘Events and personalities in Slovakia’s history’, in Zora Bútorová (ed.), Democracy and Discontent in Slovakia: A Public Opinion Profile of a Country in Transition, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1998, pp. 191–202; Pavol Fricˇ, Zora Bútorová, Tatiana Rosová, ‘Cˇ esko-slovenské vzt’ahy v zrkadle empirického výskumu’, Sociológia, vol. 24, nos. 1–2 (1992), pp. 43–74. 14 Pru˚ cha, ‘Economic development and relations, p. 74; Krejcˇí and Machonin, Czechoslovakia 1918–92, p. 120. In the Czech Republic, the decline in agricultural workers was far less – from 33 per cent to 9 per cent. 15 Pru˚ cha, ‘Economic development and relations’, p. 63. 16 Musil, ‘Czech and Slovak society’, p. 79. 17 Peter Gajdosˇ and Ján Pasˇiak, Vývoj sociálno-ekologickej situácie slovenskej spolocˇ nosti, Bratislava: VEDA, 1995, pp. 63–86. 18 Musil, ‘Czech and Slovak society’, p. 84. 19 For comparative figures, see Paul M. Johnson, ‘Changing social structure and the political role of manual workers’, in Jan F. Triska and Charles Gati (eds.), Blue-Collar Workers in Eastern Europe, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981, pp. 29–42; Walter D. Connor, Socialism, Politics and Equality, New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. 20 Musil, ‘Czech and Slovak society’, pp. 79–80. 21 Figures for 1988 show a 99.3 per cent state share in the Czechoslovak economy, compared with 96.4 per cent for the German Democratic Republic, which was also renowned for its authoritarian form of communism, and 92.9 per cent for the more liberal Hungary. The relatively low state share of 81.2 per cent in the Polish economy was due largely to substantial private ownership in the agricultural sphere. See János Kornai, The Socialist System, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 72. 22 Rick Fawn, The Czech Republic: A Nation of Velvet, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000, p. 108. 23 Ivan Miklosˇ and Eduard Zˇ itnˇanský, ‘Economy’, in Martin Bútora and Péter Huncˇík (eds), Global Report on Slovakia: Comprehensive Analyses from 1995 and Trends from 1996, Bratislava: Sándor Márai Foundation, 1996, p. 87. 24 Ibid., ‚ p. 88. 25 Olga Reptová, ‘Legislatívny rámec privatizacˇného procesu’, in Viktor Nizˇ nˇanský ‚ and Olga Reptová (eds), Od spolocˇ ného k súkromnému: 10 rokov pivatizácie na Slovensku, Bratislava: M.E.S.A. 10, 1999, p. 20.

130


26 Ivan Miklosˇ, ‘Privatization’, in Bútora and Huncˇík, Global Report on Slovakia, p. 98. 27 Calculated from Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická rocˇ enka 1994, Bratislava: VEDA, 1995, p. 308. 28 Sharon Fisher, ‘The Slovak arms industry’, RFE/RL Research Report, vol. 2, no. 38 (1993), pp. 34–9. 29 Marian Timoracký, ‘Verejná mienka o cˇesko-slovenských vzt’ahoch’, in Gál, Dnesˇní krize cˇ esko-slovenských vztahu˚ , pp. 83–90. 30 Ján Buncˇák, ‘Predstavy o vývoji spolocˇnosti a spôsoboch jej modernizácie’, in Milan Tucˇek, Ján Buncˇák, Valentína Harmadyová, Stratégie a aktéri sociálnej transformácie a modernizácie v Cˇ eskej a Slovenskej republike, Brno: Doplneˇ k, 1998, pp. 45–7. 31 Peter Martin, ‘New law on land privatization passed’, Report on Eastern Europe, 19 July 1991, pp. 10–14. 32 Nigel Swain, ‘Agricultural restitution and co-operative transformation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia’, Europe–Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 7 (1999), pp. 1199–219. 33 Jadwiga Sˇ anderová, ‘Differences between Czech and Slovak perceptions of the economic transformation’, Czech Sociological Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (1993), p. 55. 34 See, for example, the conclusion of Stephen Whitefield and Geoffrey Evans, ‘Political culture versus rational choice: explaining responses to transition in the Czech Republic and Slovakia’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 20, no. 1 (1999), pp. 129–54. 35 Karen Henderson, ‘Divisive political agendas: the case of Czechoslovakia’, in Patrick Dunleavy and Jeffrey Stanyer (eds), Contemporary Political Studies 1994, Belfast: Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, 1994, pp. 407–19. 36 Fricˇ et al., ‘Cˇ esko-slovenské vzt’ahy v zrkadle empirického výskumu’. 37 Miklosˇ and Zˇ itnˇanský, ‘Economy’, p. 91. 38 Miklosˇ, ‘Privatization’, p. 105. 39 Ibid., pp. 112–16; Nizˇ nˇanský and Reptová, Od spolocˇ ného k súkromnému, pp. 129–50. 40 Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, ‘Vnútropolitický vývoj a politická scéna’, in Martin Bútora (ed.), Slovensko 1996: Súhrnná správa o stave spolocˇ nosti a trendoch na rok 1997, Bratislava: Insˇtitút pre verejné otázky, 1997, p. 22. 41 Vladimír Bilcˇík et al., ‘Foreign and defense policy of the Slovak Republic’, in Grigorij Mesezˇ nikov, Miroslav Kollár, Tom Nicholson (eds), Slovakia 2000: A Global Report on the State of Society, Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2000, p. 233. 42 Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress Towards Accession, Brussels, 13 November 2001, SEC(2001) 1754, p. 36. 43 Marek Jakoby et al., ‘The economy of the Slovak Republic’, in Mesezˇ nikov et al., Slovakia 2000, pp. 297–364. 44 Peter Pazˇ itný, ‘Privatizácia sˇtátnych monopolov’, in Nizˇ nˇanský and Reptová, Od spolocˇ ného k súkromnému, pp. 67–88. 45 Economist Intelligence Unit, Slovakia: EIU Country Report, 4th quarter 1998, p. 17. 46 Economist Intelligence Unit, Slovakia: EIU Country Report, May 2001, p. 30. 47 Jakoby et al., ‘The economy of the Slovak Republic’. 48 Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress, p. 30. 49 Commission of the European Communities, Making a Success of Enlargement, p. 67.

131


50 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Zahranicˇ ný obchod Slovenskej republiky, no. 6 (2001), p. 9. 51 Economist Intelligence Unit, Slovakia: EIU Country Profile 2000–01, p. 26. 52 Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s ‚ Progress, pp. 63–6; Mikulásˇ Huba and Lubica Trubíniová, ‘Environment and sustainable development’, in Mesezˇ nikov et al., Slovakia 2000, p. 431. 53 Anton Marcincˇin and Lívia Zemanovicˇová, Slovakia: Improving Corporate Governance, Bratislava: CPHR/INEKO, 2001, pp. 45–6. 54 Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress, p. 28. 55 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Vybrané údaje o regiónoch v Slovenskej republike, no. 4 (1999), pp. 34–5. 56 The population of Bratislava at the end of 1991 was 448,000, and of Kosˇice 242,000. The next largest cities, Presˇov, Nitra and Zˇ ilina, had 94,000, 88,000 and 87,000 respectively. Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická rocˇ enka Slovenskej republiky 2000, Bratislava: VEDA, 2000, pp. 595–7. 57 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Vybrané údaje o regiónoch v Slovenskej republike, no. 4 (1999), pp. 36–7. 58 World Bank, Slovenská republika: sˇtúdia o zˇ ivotnej úrovni, zamestnanosti a trhu práce, Bratislava: Slovenská spolocˇnost’ pre zahranicˇnú politiku, 2001, pp. xiv– xvii. 59 Information Centre of the Hungarian Coalition in Slovakia, The Hungarians in Slovakia, Bratislava: 1997, p. 15; Edwin Bakker, Minority Conflicts in Slovakia and Hungary? Capelle a/d IJssel: Labyrint Publication, 1997, p. 72. 60 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Bilancia pohybu obyvatel’stva v Slovenskej republike podl’a národnosti (2000), p. 13. It is notable that while the Statistical Office’s figures for 2000 show 45.23 per cent Hungarians and 2.83 per cent Roma, the preliminary 2001 census data (at www.statistics.sk) show 41.3 per cent Hungarians and 4.7 per cent Roma. 61 www.statistics.sk. 62 Jakoby et al., ‘The economy of the Slovak Republic’, p. 302. 63 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Problematika dlhodobej nezamestnanosti v Slovenskej republiky, Bratislava, 1996. 64 Peter Pazˇ itný and Alena Císarová, ‘Nezamestnanost’’, in Marek Jakoby and Viktor Nizˇ nˇanský (eds), Sl’uby a realita: Slovenská ekonomika 1995–1998, Bratislava: M.E.S.A. 10, 1998, pp. 117–21. 65 Martina Lubyová, ‘Labor market’, in Anton Marcincˇin and Miroslav Beblavý (eds), Economic Policy in Slovakia 1990–1999, Bratislava: Center for Social and Media Analysis/Slovak Foreign Policy Association/Institute for Economic and Social Reforms, 2000, pp. 181–2. 66 Surveys by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic in the late 1990s showed that half the population lived in family houses, with the percentage in 1998 being 29 per cent in the Bratislava, and between 46 and 62 per cent in the other seven regions. Among flat-dwellers, the proportion of home-owners was increasing gradually. Názory, vol. 9, no. 3 (1998), p. 26. 67 Lubyová, ‘Labor market’. 68 Commission of the European Communities, 2001 Regular Report on Slovakia’s Progress. 69 For details of the health system, see Rudolf Zajac and Peter Pazˇ itný, ‘Health care’, in Mesezˇ nikov et al., Slovakia 2000, pp. 385–404. 70 www.transparency.sk. 71 www.government.gov.sk.

132


72 Názory, vol. 9, no. 3 (1998), pp. 30–42. 73 Darina Malová, ‘Organized interests’, in Mesezˇ nikov et al., Slovakia 2000, pp. 123–37. 74 Sˇ tatistický úrad Slovenskej republiky, Sˇ tatistická rocˇ enka Slovenskej republiky 2000, p. 185.

133

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bakker, Edwin Minority Conflicts in Slovakia and Hungary? Capelle a/d IJssel: Labyrint Publication, 1997. Bútora, Martin, Mesezˇ nikov, Grigorij, Bútorová, Zora, and Fisher, Sharon (eds), The 1998 Parliamentary Elections and Democratic Rebirth in Slovakia. Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1999. Bútorová, Zora (ed.), Democracy and Discontent in Slovakia: A Public Opinion Profile of a Country in Transition. Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 1998. Cohen, Shari J., Politics Without a Past: The Absence of History in Postcommunist Nationalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. European Commission, ‘Agenda 2000: Commission opinion on Slovakia’s application for membership of the European Union’, Bulletin of the European Union, Supplement 9/1997. Felak, James Ramon, ‘At the Price of the Republic’: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, 1929–1938. Pittsburgh and London: Pittsburgh University Press, 1994. Innes, Abby, Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Jelinek, Yeshayahu A., The Parish Republic: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party 1939–1945. Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Jelinek, Yeshayahu A., The Lust for Power: Nationalism, Slovakia, and the Communists 1918–1948. Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Johnson, Owen V., Slovakia 1918–1938: Education and the Making of a Nation. Boulder and New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Kopecký, Petr, Parliaments in the Czech and Slovak Republics: Party Competititon and Parliamentary Institutionalization. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Krejcˇí, Jaroslav, and Machonin, Pavel, Czechoslovakia 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1996. Leff, Carol Skalnik, National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of a State, 1918–1987. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Leff, Carol Skalnik, The Czech and Slovak Republics: Nation Versus State. Boulder and Oxford: Westview, 1997. Lettrich, Jozef, History of Modern Slovakia. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1955. Mamatey, Victor S., and Luzˇ a, Radomír, A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–1948. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Mannová, Elena, (ed.), A Concise History of Slovakia. Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2000.

134

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Marcincˇin, Anton, and Beblavý Miroslav (eds), Economic Policy in Slovakia 1990– 1999. Bratislava: Center for Social and Media Analysis/Slovak Foreign Policy Association/Institute for Economic and Social Reforms, 2000. Mesezˇ nikov, Grigorij, Kollár, Miroslav, and Nicholson, Tom (eds), Slovakia 2000: A Global Report on the State of Society. Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs, 2000. Mikusˇ, Joseph A., Slovakia: A Political and Constitutional History. Bratislava: Academic Press/Slovak Academic Press, 1995. Musil, Jirˇí (ed.), The End of Czechoslovakia. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995. Seton Watson, R.W., The New Slovakia. Prague: F.R. Borový, 1924. Shawcross, William, Dubcˇ ek: Dubcˇ ek and Czechoslovakia 1918–1990. London: Hogarth Press, 1990. Simecka, Milan, The Restoration of Order: The Normalization of Czechoslovakia. London: Verso, 1984. Skilling, H. Gordon, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Szomolányi, Sonˇa, and Gould, John A. (eds), Slovakia: Problems of Democratic Consolidation. Bratislava: Slovak Political Science Association/Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 1997. Wheaton, Bernard, and Kavan, Zdeneˇ k, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988– 1991. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview, 1992. Williams, Kieran, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Wolchik, Sharon L., Czechoslovakia in Transition: Politics, Economy and Society. London and New York: Pinter, 1991.

135

INDEX

accommodation 126 Adamec, Ladislav 30 administration 7–8, 9, 12, 96 administration districts 63 Agenda 2000 94 Agrarian Party 8, 9 agriculture: collectivisation 18, 20; employment decline 116; reform of 17, 119 Albania 121 Albanian Kosovars 100 Amsterdam, Treaty of (June 1997) 94 Anschluss (1938) 11 anti-Semitism 13 apprentice education 117 arms industry 10, 13, 116, 117, 118–19 Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) 67 Ausgleich (1867) 2 Austria 1, 10, 11, 14, 28, 31, 88, 101, 107 Austro-Hungarian empire 4 ‘autonomy’ issue 76

Brno 33, 101 Budapest 1, 2, 117 Bulgaria 88, 90, 94, 95, 96, 121

banking sector 115, 128; privatisation 123 bankruptcy regulations 124 Banská Bystrica 14 Basic Treaty on Good Neighbourly Relations and Friendly Cooperation 92–3 Belarus 97 Benesˇ, Eduard 4, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18 Benesˇ decrees 74 bicameralism 6, 33, 57 ‚ Bilak, Vasil 27 bilingualism 74, 76, 77 birth rates 129 Board of Commissioners (Slovak National Council) 17, 20 Bohemia 11, 12 border disputes 5–6, 102 border security 97 boundary changes 46 Bratislava 1, 12, 20, 63, 70, 86, 101; environmental problems of 28; importance increased by federalisation 25; Velvet Revolution demonstrations 29, 30 Bratislava region 113 Brezhnev, Leonid 21 bribery 127 bridge construction 104 Britain 4, 11, 79

Cˇ alfa, Marián 30–1, 32–3 Cannes European Council (June 1995) 91 capital cities 1, 117 capitalist system 115 Cˇ arnogurský, Ján 30, 35, 58, 119 Carpathian Euroregion 101 Catholic Church: attacked by communists 18–19; Democratic Party and 16; lack of nationalist persuasion 3–4; links with fascism 13, 19 censorship 20, 22 Central European Free Trade Area 101 Central European Initiative 101 centralized power 24, 33, 60, 61 Central Slovakia 63 ‚ Cˇ ernák, Ludovit 42, 43, 44 Chamberlain, Neville 11 Charter 77 dissident movement 27 Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) 35, 43, 46, 55, 58, 66, 67, 69 Christian Democratic Party 52, 53 Christianity 2 Cˇ icˇ, Milan 31 citizens’ movements see VPN (Public against Violence) citizens rights 7, 80 Civil Democratic Union 67 civil rights 78 civil service 7, 60, 75 Clementis, Vladimír 19 clientelism 45 coalitions 69, 92; ‘blue’ 46–7; discipline 57–8; pre-election 63; third Mecˇiar government 44–5; see also SDK; SMK collectivisation 18, 20, 119 Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) 101, 118 Comenius University, Bratislava 8 Common Choice coalition 67 communications 114, 115 Communism/Communist Party 1, 8, 24, 25–6; collapse of 89–90; criticism by intelligentsia 20–1; Czechoslovakian economy 113–14; Czechoslovak Spring 23–4; economic development 116–17; ethnic Hungarians and 9;

136

INDEX Hungarian language 74; legacy of 33, 60, 77; perestroika 26; purges 18, 19, 25, 27; resignation of entire 30; Stalinisation of Czechoslovakia 18–19; takeover 16–17 constituencies 63 Constitution of the Slovak Republic 41, 50; Article 2 62; Article 4 30; Article 101 58; Article 134 59; criticisms of 55 constitutions: (1920) 6–7; (1948) 18, 20; (1968) 24, 25, 33, 74 convents 19 Copenhagen European Council (June 1993) 90, 93, 99 corruption 4, 46; campaign to combat 60–1; economic 107; judiciary 60; political parties 51–2, 53, 54; public acquiescence 126–7 Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International) 127 Council of Europe 104 crime 80, 107 Croatia 97 cross-border traffic 107 cultural identity 77–8, 105 cultural integration 3 currency 101, 128–9; devaluation 120, 121 Customs Union 102, 103 Cyprus 94 Cyril (Constantine) 2 Czechoslovakia 73, 113; coalition provision 63; demise of communism in 89–90; First Republic 1, 5, 6, 7–8, 11, 55; ‘hyphen war’ 34–5; postcommunist elections (1990) 62; Second Republic 11–15, 15–18, 18–20; Socialist Republic 20–34, 76–7, 117 Czech people: ‘captured west’ conviction 117; relationship with Slovaks 16, 24, 25, 32; relations with Slovaks 118–20 Czech Republic (1 January 1993) 2, 41, 73, 87–8, 96; bicameral system 57; economic advantages over Slovakia 114; EU and NATO membership 47, 94, 100, 113; Moravian and Silesian association 74; relations with Slovak Republic 102–3; Slovak exports to 124 Danube, River 6, 75, 103–4, 104 démarches 44, 45, 92, 93, 99 Democratic Party 16–17, 18, 46, 52, 53, 67, 69, 126 Democratic Union 46, 67, 69, 92 democratisation 20, 26, 55–6, 62, 74 demonstrations: communist 17, 18; Czechoslovak Spring 23; religious freedom 28; Velvet Revolution 29–30 Dérer, Ivan 9 de-Stalinisation 20–1, 74 Deutsche Telekom 124 devaluation 120, 121, 128 Devín Castle 31 devolution 61 differentiation policy 96 diplomatic personnel 86 domestic heating 123 dual citizenship 102 Dubcˇek, Alexander 21–3, 30, 31, 58 Dukla pass advance (1944) 14 Dzurinda, Mikulásˇ 49–54, 57–8, 61, 63;

distancing from Russia 106–7; economic reform 121, 123; market exit rules 124; minorities issue 79, 80; minority language law 75; NATO accession 98; relations with Hungary 104 Eastern Slovakia 63 East Slovak Steelworks 123 Economic and Social Accord Council 128 economy 10, 20, 27, 94; Czechoslovak period (1918–1989) 115–17; financial scandals 53; reform 17, 18, 50–1; Russian links 106–7; Slovak and Czech comparisons 24–5, 113–14; Slovak State 13 education 20, 28; bilingualism 77; bribes 127; Czech teachers 8; growing crisis in 121; language used in 3; Romany children 80 elections: democratic 34, 35, 48–9; local 61; postVelvet Revolution 31; presidential 50; regional council 61–2; 1940s 16–17, 18; voting patterns 70 electoral system 6, 8–9, 55; amendments to Slovak Republic 48; majoritarian 56–7; proportional representation 6, 25, 50, 55, 56, 62–3, 67; proposed reform of 45–6 emigration 3, 10, 129 employment rates (World War II) 13 energy industry 107, 123–4 entrepreneurialism 115 environmental politics 27–8 Estonia 47, 78, 88, 91, 94, 96 ethnic minorities 79–80, 94, 95 euro exchange rates 122 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 87, 90 European Commission 47, 59, 105; progress reports on Slovakia 49–50, 93–6, 122, 123, 124–5, 126 European Democratic Union (EDU) 52, 53 European integration 88, 89–101 European Parliament 93 European Union 41, 48, 78, 87–8, 89; démarches 44, 45, 92, 93, 99; economic regulations for accession 114, 123; Hungarian-Slovak dispute 105; illegal immigration 102; internal politics of 97; membership 129; misuse of funds 53; political asylum seekers 79–80; Slovakia 54, 90–7 executive power 57, 58, 60–2 exit visas 28 exports 124 Federal Assembly voting procedures 33 federalism 16, 17, 24, 25 Felvidék (upper lands) 2 Fico, Róbert 51 financial scandals 53 ‘first past the post’ electoral system 56 First World War 4 fiscal policy 126 foreign debt 121 foreign direct investment (FDI) 113, 121, 124 foreign trade 118 foreign policy 45, 86–109 France 4 fraud 49 freedom: information 61; movement of goods,

137

INDEX person, services and capital 123; press 93; religious 28 Freedom Party 18

industrialisation 20, 25, 116 industrial relations 30, 127 inflation 118, 122, 128 intelligentsia 20–1, 25, 29–30, 67 Intergovernmental Conference (1996) 94 International Court of Justice (The Hague) 103–4 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 117 investment: foreign direct 113, 121, 124; voucher system 118, 120 ‚ Ipel, River 6 Italy 4, 12, 101

Gabcˇikovo-Nagymaros dam project 75, 103–4, 124 Gasˇparovicˇ, Ivan 46, 49 Gaulieder, Frantisˇek 46, 47, 94 GDP growth rates 20, 113, 118, 121, 122 German Democratic Republic 90 German minority 6, 10, 11, 15 Germany 8, 11, 12–14, 116, 124 glasnost 22, 23 Gorbachev, Mikhail 22, 26 Gottwald, Klement 16, 18, 19 government: executive 55–6; foreign affairs 86–109; fragmented composition of 8–9; judiciary 59–60; legislative 57–9; ministers 18, 53, 57; parliament and 57 Great Depression (1929) 10 Greek Catholic Church 19 Green Party (SZS) 46, 53, 67, 69

Jakesˇ, Milosˇ 27, 30 Jews 13 joint ventures 117 judiciary branch of government 59

Habsburg Empire 2, 115 Hacha, Emil 12 Hamzˇ ik, Pavol 47, 53 Havel, Vacláv 30, 31, 32 healthcare 121; bribes 127 health insurance 126 Henlein, Konrad 10, 11 Hitler, Adolf 11, 12, 14 Hlinka, Andrej 9, 10, 12 Hlinka Slovak People’s Party 9, 10, 12, 16 Hodzˇ a, Milan 9 Horn, Gyula 93 housing market 126 human rights 29, 93, 94, 100 Hungarian minority 9, 15, 72–9; Dzurinda government and 49, 50, 52; electoral choices of 68, 70; European Commission’s reports on 95; insecurity of 46; Slovakian relations with Hungary over 99, 103, 104–5; see also SMK Hungarian Revolution (1956) 19 Hungary 10, 12, 23, 41, 73, 88, 101; border security 97; Czechoslovak Republic 5; economy 115; end of imperial rule 1; European aid 90; European Union 47, 94; GabcˇikovoNagymaros dam project 75, 103–4; imperial rule 2–3; joint ventures with Western companies 27; NATO 47, 100; post-communist Slovak nationalists and 9; relations with Slovakia 75, 99, 103–5; Slovak Republic treaty with 45; Slovak State 12 Husák, Gustáv 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 27, 31, 32 hydro-electricity schemes 75, 103, 124 HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia) 65–6; antipathy to Hungarian minority 68; coalition 64, 92; corruption allegations 51, 52; European Union 96–7; long-term survival 71–2; NATO 100–01; political orientation of 69; regional elections 61; second Mecˇiar government 42, 43; split from VPN 34; third Mecˇiar government 44, 46, 47, 48, 49 illegal immigration 102 imports 124

KDH see Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) Khrushchev, Nikita 19 Klaus, Václav 35, 92, 102, 114, 119 Knˇazˇ ko, Milan 42, 44, 87 Komárno 6 Kosova 95, 97, 100, 108 Kosˇice 12, 14, 29, 70, 125 Kovácˇ, Michal Junior, abduction of 45, 46, 48, 51, 93 Kovácˇ, President Michal 43, 45, 48, 93 Kovácˇ, Roman 43 Kukan, Eduard 87, 108 Kun, Béla 5 labour mobility 126 land: compulsory purchase 17; ownership 54; reform 18, 115 language 2; de-Germanisation 3; Hungarian 46, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77–8; law 75; minority 47, 54; official 7 Latin language 3 Latvia 91, 94 Law on Foundations 46 Leff, Carol Skalnik 9 legislation 57, 75 Lexa, Ivan 43 literacy rates 7 Lithuania 91, 94 local government 17, 54, 60–2 Luxembourg European Council (December 1997) 95 Mad’arsko language 3 Madrid European Council (December 1995) 94 Madrid Summit (Nato 1997) 100 Magyars 2, 3, 7–8 Malíková, Anna 52 Malta 95 manufacturing industry 115 market protection 115 Marshall Plan 17 Masaryk, Professor Tomásˇ 4, 11, 58 Matica slovenská 3, 21 mayors 60–1 Mecˇiar, Vladimír 51, 58; approach to Hungarian minority 73, 77, 99, 104; arrest for questioning 52; economic legacy of 113; first government 34–5; foreign policy 91–3; national orientation

138

INDEX 68; NATO 100–1; political success due to 120; privatisation strategy 121; pro-Russian sympathies 106; second government 42–3, 57, 77, 91; standing for election (1999) 50; third government 41, 44–9, 57, 61, 63, 75, 77, 78, 91, 92–3, 99, 104; voter support for 69, 70, 71–2 media 93; election coverage 48; Prague Spring 23; pro-government 77; Velvet Revolution 29–30 Methodius 2 migration of educated Slovaks 25 Miklosˇ, Ivan 53, 126 military security see NATO Milosˇevicˇ, Slobodan 100 Ministers of Foreign Affairs 87 modernisation 20, 69, 71, 114, 116, 126 monasteries 19 Moravcˇík, Jozef 43, 44 Moravia 2, 12 Moravia-Silesia 11 mortgage market 126 Moscow Agreement (1968) 23 motorways 115, 121 Movement for a Democratic Slovakia-People’s Party 52 multi-party system 64–7, 74 Munich conference (1938) 11 municipal councils 60–1 Nafta Gbely company 123 national anthem 12 National Awakening 2, 31 National Bank of Slovakia 128 ‘National Committee’ system 17 National Councils (Slovak): after independence 51, 57, 62; before independence 5, 14, 16–17, 33, 34 nationalisation 15, 18, 20 nationalism 4, 32, 68 national minorities 41, 68, 72–80; see also Hungarian minority National Property Fund 120, 123 National Uprising (1944) 13, 14, 15, 16, 19 nation states 6 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) 41, 45, 47, 50, 52, 88, 95, 106, 108; enlargement 54, 97–101 Nazi Party 10, 13, 14, 29 newspapers 30, 77 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) 46, 48, 98 North Atlantic Cooperation Council 99 Novotný, Antonín 19, 21 nuclear industry 124 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) 54, 121 OF (Civic Forum) 29, 30, 32, 33 one-party systems 56 opinion polls see public opinion surveys Orban, Viktor 104 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe 87 organised crime 107 OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) 99 Ottoman Empire 2

Palach, Jan 29 parliament 57–8; bicameral 6; compared with presidential systems 55–6; devolution 24; elections 31, 64–5; first year of independence 42–3; Prague Spring 22 Party of Civil Understanding (SOP) 67 Party of Slovak Renewal 18 ‚ Party of the Democratic Left see SDL (Party of the Democratic Left) penal code 46, 104 pension system 126 People’s Party 52 perestroika 23, 26 peˇ tka 8, 9 Phare programme 90 Pittsburgh Declaration (1918) 5, 12 Poland 5–6, 8, 73; economy 128; EU and NATO membership 41, 47, 54, 88, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101; irredentist policy 11, 12; PHARE programme 90; relations with Slovakia 107 political asylum 72, 79 political parties 8, 9, 16; electoral system and 62–5; ethnicity-based 74; five major 65–7; government 52–3; Hungarian 48, 53–4; opposition 49, 52; polarisation of 68–71; Slovak Republic 42–3, 44–5, 46–7; Stalinisation of 18; see also coalitions; individual political parties politics 4, 7, 10 population 72; after the war 15; increases in 129; Roma percentage of 125 poverty 125 Prague 1, 14, 20; financial institutions 115, 117; Slovaks working in 25; Velvet Revolution demonstrations in 29–30 Prague Spring (1968) 22, 74 presidential elections 47, 70 presidential system 55, 57–8 Presˇporok (Pressburg or Pozsony) 1 prices 117, 118, 128 prime ministers 57–8 privatisation 51, 114, 118, 120–1, 123, 127 property confiscation 118 proportional representation 6, 25, 50, 55, 56, 62–3, 67 prosperity comparisons 124–5 Protestants 4, 14 public opinion surveys 47; corruption 127; economic reform 119; European Commission 105; intercommunal relations 75–6; NATO 101; party support 42, 51, 70 purges 18, 19, 25, 27 racial discrimination 79 referendum 47, 48, 51, 99, 123 regions: differing prosperity levels 124–5; government 61–2; voting patterns 70 religion 7 religious freedom 28 Remiásˇ, Róbert 46 rented accommodation 126 restitution law 118, 119 retirement 126 Rimavská Sobota district 125 roads 20, 115, 121 Roma 13, 72–3, 79–80, 95, 125, 126, 129

139

INDEX Romania 7, 11, 88, 94, 95, 96, 97, 101, 105, 113 rural population 69, 115 Russian Federation 7, 88, 98, 105–7; energy imports from 124 Ruthenia 6, 19

Sudetenland 10, 11, 15

Schengen area 97, 107 Schmögnerová, Brigita 53, 126 Schuster, Rudolf 30, 48, 50, 51, 53, 70–1, 100 Schwechat airport 1 SDKÚ (Slovak Democratic and Christian Union) 53, 67 ‚ SDL (Party of the Democratic Left) 43, 44, 49, 53–4, 66, 69, 126 Second World War 12–13 Semtex 119 Serbia 97, 100 service sector 116, 118 Seton-Watson, Robert 73 Sidor, Karol 12 Slanský, Rudolf 19 Slota, Ján 43, 52 Slovak Christian and Democratic Union 69 Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 58, 64, 67, 126 Slovak National Party see SNS (Slovak National Party) Slovak State (1939–45) 1, 11–15, 87 Slovak Telecom 124 Slovenia 47, 88, 91, 94 Slovenská republika (newspaper) 77 Smer (‘Direction’) 51, 67 SMK (Party of the Hungarian Coalition) 48, 49, 50, 52, 53–4, 61, 66, 69 SNS (Slovak National Party): acceptability to the west 91, 92, 93; Dzurinda government 49, 51, 52; economy 121; before independence 4; minority rights 104; as one of five main parties 66, 68, 69; second Mecˇiar government 42, 43; third Mecˇiar government 44 Social Democratic Party (SDSS) 8, 9, 46, 53, 67, 69 socialism 19–20, 22, 67 social polarisation 69, 70 social security 126 SOP (Party of Civic Understanding) 48, 49, 53, 67, 69 Soviet Army 14, 15 Soviet Union 11, 32, 87, 98; invasion (1968) 10; perestroika 23, 26; Prague Spring 22; relationship with Slovaks 15; Stalinisation of Czechoslovakia 18–21; see also Russian Federation Sˇ robár, Vavro 9 Stalin, Josef 16, 17, 19 standard of living 113–14, 125 state-owned industries 118, 120, 123 state subsidies 115 ‘Status Law’ 104–5 Sˇ tB (State Security) 17 steelworks 123 Sˇ tefánik, Milan Rastislav 4 students ‚ 28, 29–30 Sˇ túr, Ludovit 2, 31, 58 Sˇ túrovo 6 Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia 11, 12 subsidies 120, 123

taxation 126 teachers 8, 12 telecommunications 123, 124 television 28, 30, 52, 93 Tiso, Jozef 12, 13, 14, 16 tourism 31 trade 124 Trade and Cooperation Agreements 90 trade routes 115, 118 trade unions 31, 128 Transparency International 126–7 transport 123 travel: mass visit to Austria 31; restrictions eased 22, 29 Trianon, Treaty of (1920) 75 Tuka, Vojtech 13, 16 Turks 2 two-party systems 56 Uhorsko language 3 Ukraine 97, 101, 107–8 Ulbricht, Walter 21 unemployment 10, 34, 51, 54, 79, 113, 119, 121, 122, 125–6 unicameralism 57 United Nations 87; Security Council 108 United States: Marshall Plan 17; NATO enlargement 98; occupation of Czech Lands 15; Slovak immigrants 3, 4, 5, 10 universal suffrage 6 universities 8, 78 Urbánek, Karel 30 urbanisation 20, 25, 69, 114, 116 Ursiny, Ján 17, 18 US Steel 123 utilities 123, 124 Vatican 13 Velvet Revolution (1989) 18, 29–32, 117 Vienna 3 Vienna Award (1938) 12 vocational training 20, 117 voters 67–8; turnout 49, 51 voting procedures 33 voucher privatisation 44, 45, 118, 120 VPN (Public Against Violence) 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 67, 74 wages 125, 128 Warsaw 117 Warsaw Pact 98, 101, 119; invasion (1968) 22 Warsaw Uprising 14 wartime production 13 Western Slovakia 63 workers organisations 31 workforce 117 working class 30 Writers’ Union congresses 21 Yastrzhembski, Sergei 106 Yugoslavia 32, 87, 90 ZRS (Association of Workers of Slovakia) 44, 69, 92

140

Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Slovenia (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Romania: The Unfinished Revolution (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Czech Republic: A Nation of Velvet (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Russia: A State of Uncertainty (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Hungary: the Politics of Transition (Postcommunist States & Nations)

Nations, States, and Violence

The Russian Far East: The Last Frontier (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Escape From The Insectoids

Escape from the Badlands

Escape from the Badlands

Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Escape from the Bunker

The Invisibility Gambit

Croatia: A Crossroads Between East and West (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Nations and States in South-east Europe

Escape from Undermountain

Escape From Leipzig

Escape from Childhood

No Escape from Destiny

Escape From Devil's Head

Escape From Leipzig

Escape from Five Shadows

Escape from Five Shadows

Escape from Davao

Escape from New Babylon

03 - Escape From Macho_v1.0

Escape From Hell

Escape From Hell

Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Slovenia (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Romania: The Unfinished Revolution (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Czech Republic: A Nation of Velvet (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Russia: A State of Uncertainty (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Hungary: the Politics of Transition (Postcommunist States & Nations)

Nations, States, and Violence

The Russian Far East: The Last Frontier (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Escape From The Insectoids

Escape from the Badlands

Escape from the Badlands

Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Escape from the Bunker

The Invisibility Gambit

Croatia: A Crossroads Between East and West (Postcommunist States and Nations)

Nations and States in South-east Europe

Escape from Undermountain

Escape From Leipzig

Escape from Childhood

No Escape from Destiny

Escape From Devil's Head

Escape From Leipzig

Escape from Five Shadows

Escape from Five Shadows

Escape from Davao

Escape from New Babylon

03 - Escape From Macho_v1.0

Escape From Hell

Escape From Hell

Recommend Documents