Shaped by propaganda: how Slovaks became pro-Russian
August 21, the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, is a good reason to reflect on the relationship of some Slovaks to former occupiers.
How is it possible that a nation whose freedom was smashed on the tracks of thousands of Russian tanks in 1968 and lived under Russian occupation for 21 years became Russia's fifth column in Europe?
First, let's clarify the basic concepts.
Czechoslovakia was invaded and occupied by the Russians, not by fictitious "Soviets".
The language of the occupation was Russian, not "Soviet", the order to invade came from Moscow, not from Alma Ata or Minsk.
Those who experienced it knew it exactly: the inscriptions on the walls of Czech and Slovak cities did not proclaim "Soviets, go home!" – they called for the departure of the Russians and "Ivan".
They also named the murderers of people killed on the streets of our cities Russians – they did not call them Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Georgians, or members of any other nation imprisoned in the Russian Empire renamed to the Soviet Union in the 20th century.
Today, only people over 65 remember the invasion. People over 50 still remember the teachers were "comrades", the red flags on the windows of schools and offices, the omnipresent Lenins, the slogans "With the Soviet Union for eternal times and never otherwise" and the Russian military barracks in the cities.
People under 40 –more than half of population – do not remember anything from the occupation.
They only know what their parents told them about the life under the Russians, or what they caught from Czech films such as Cosy Dens, Kolya, Those Wonderful Years That Sucked, Burning Bush, Waves...
What some young people hear about the occupation from their ancestors may be in stark contrast to reality. It is not just old age forgetfulness that comes into play.
The fact that some Slovaks – communist functionaries, secret police officers etc. - benefited from the occupation also plays a role.
Their descendants may hear about the time of Russian occupation as a golden age.
The occupation may seem like a lost paradise even to some of the losers to the changes after 1989 - and there are many of them.
Of course, Czechs, Poles and other nations also suffer from memory lapses. They also had communist collaborators and secret police members who benefited from Moscow's rule. They also have the losers of the transformation after 1989. They too know the frustrations from the failures of democracy.
Nevertheless, it is Slovaks (and Hungarians) who became Russia's fifth column in Europe.
What makes Slovaks different?
Some roots are recent, others date back to the 19th century. Failure of Slovak education system is one. It fell victim of post-1989 politics and failed miserably.
We have long since stopped expecting the cultivation of historical awareness and culture from our education system. This is not just a matter of the failure of schools under the central control of the Ministry of Education.
Some autonomous universities as well as some institutes of the Slovak Academy of Sciences are also deep into "friendship" with Russian universities managed by the KGB.
Slovak local governments did not de-Russianize our streets after 1989. Not only provincial cities, but also the national capital, supposedly the most pro-western and the most democratic city of Slovakia.
A third of a century after the departure of the occupiers, you can be born in Bratislava on Moscow Street, go to school on Tupolev Street, work on Baikal Street and end your life on Lomonosov Street.
You can live your entire life in Russia, yet never leaving "progressive, liberal and European" Bratislava. There are 36 Russian streets in Bratislava: the occupiers carefully marked their "Russkiy Mir on the Danube".
The change is fully in the hands of local government, but the fathers and mothers of Bratislava and many other Slovak towns and cities did not learn to understand the significance of symbols.
It is said that renaming streets would be expensive. Yes - culture is expensive. However, its absence is much more expensive.
We keep hearing that Europe has its roots in ancient Greece, Rome and Jerusalem. Bratislava has neither Athens, nor Rome, nor Jerusalem Street. But it has Ryazan, Rostov, Irkutsk, Saratov and many other "Russian" streets.
What more can I say? True Eurasians - just free yourself from the tyranny of the EU!
Enough of lamentation over the deep desire of Bratislava's mayors and deputies to lie "forever and never otherwise" under Moscow. Let's see where this desire came from.
Its roots go back to the 19th century. Each Slovak pupil can recite verses about "turning to that old oak, which defies the pernicious times " from Ján Kollár's pan Slavic poem "The Daughter of Sláva" published in 1824.
In this poem "the old oak" is tsarist Russia, country Kollar never visited.
Kollar's desire to turn to Russia was later overcome by none other than the (otherwise childless) father of the nation, Ľudovít Štúr himself.
99.9% of Slovaks have never read his "Slavdom and the world of the future" (written in German as Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft ), but everyone knows that this is Štúr's "political testament", in which he articulates his passionate love in Russia, the country he too never visited. The book was supposedly written in German in 1852, but was unheard of about until 1867, when it was published.
Guess where and in which language? In Moscow and in Russian, indeed. According to legend, the Russian publisher got the manuscript from "an unnamed close friend of Štúr" in 1862.
Competing legend says Štúr (who died in early 1856) himself delivered manuscript to Russian embassy in Vienna. You can choose which one you want to believe, both stories cast a deep shadow on the origin of the "political testament" of the "father of Slovak nation".
If the book is not a forgery, then a graduate of a German university and an evangelical Štúr so deeply hated Western Christianity, the ideas of the republic, democracy and the free market, and his own language, that he saw the future of Slovaks and " the beautiful Slovakia of the future" in serfdom, conversion to Orthodoxy, and use of Russian as a literary language of Slovaks.
How likely it is? To Slovaks who are not able to believe it I always recommend to read it - book is freely available on the web.
Like the vast majority of today's Slovaks, Štúr has never been to Russia.
Like a large part of today's Slovaks, frustrated Štúr dreamed it all up. Like today's Slovaks, Štúr did not bother to study even the most basic texts about real Russia, such as de Custin's "Letters from Russia".
The "Letters" were published in 1843, Štúr had plenty of time to read them.
It seems that as an intellectual Štúr has completely failed. But there is also another possibility - namely that Štúr did not write "Slavdom" at all, and the book is a forgery of the Russian secret police, in today's language a tool of hybrid war against Austria. Conspiracy?
Maybe - but the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", or the forgeries of the Czech Kralovedvorsky and Zelenohorsky manuscripts show that it would not be anything unique.
No manuscript of Štúr's alleged work exists and all the traces of "Slavdom" lead to Russia.
Publications in the Expert Opinion section are not editorial articles and solely reflect the author's point of view