Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.25]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.slovak-l
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 10:23:46 PST
From:         Joe Pannon <pannon@BCSFSE.CA.BOEING.COM>
Subject:      Questionable Slovak Historical Continuity

Apparently, for Igor Jurisica 1,100 years of coexistence is not enough.
He looks beyond that to prove historical rights by Slovaks:

 >1. Slovaks were on the Carpathian basin long time before Hungarians came.
 >   But as I said, the borders were always different so you cannot claim
 >   that because for 1K years Hungarians lived there it should be theirs.
 >   Why not consider 2.5K years a judge on that?

Well, Igor, I was hoping not to get into this silly game of who can go
farther back in history to prove prior claim to a real estate.  Not that I
don't think history is unimportant, but how far should we go back?  Does
it make sense to go back in time before the first milleneum when the
outlines of modern Europe were formed?  Or is it reasonable at all to even
compare events that happened in living memory of current generations
(such as Trianon) with events of thousand or more years ago which only
historians can dig up?  If we follow this track, as you and Lubosh
suggested, claiming Slovak continuity from ancient Czech and Moravian
empires, Hungarians might claim it from Attila's Huns through the Avars
as they, too, were distant relatives to Hungarians.  Do you see how
silly this could get?

But since you brought it up, let me ask you just how old is the word "Slovak"
itself?  To the best of my knowledge, the first mention of that word is
attributed to Anton Bernolak and it came into circulation in 1809 in Jan
Dobrovsky's study.  No mention of "Slovak" people can be found anywhere
before that, but I am willing to listen if you can cite me something that
proves otherwise.  The medeival Czech historian Cosmas enumerated all known
Slavic people in the 12th century and he mentioned no "Slovak" people, either.
So, this name is of fairly modern origin, about as old as the name "Romanian".

Of course this doesn't mean that the people we today call "Slovaks" did not
exist before, just their current name.  Because of that, it's not that easy
to determine with reasonable certainty, just what Slavic people lived in the
Carpathian basin before the arrival of Hungarians in 895.  There were Slavs
there, no question about it, but they could just as well have been Moravians.
Svatopluk was a Moravian ruler, after all, and a vassal to the Frank Empire.
He also offered no resistance to the invading Hungarians.

Frankly, I don't know what exactly is the current official history about the
origins of Slovaks because it has changed a few times in the last 70 years.
Interestingly, there are several theories about the Slovaks originally being
South-Slavs from the Illiricum who moved to their current homeland during the
early Hungarian centuries.  This is what the noted scholar of Upper Hungary,
Matyas Be'l (also appropriated by Slovaks as their own Matej B...) maintains
in his book "German Grammar", published in 1718, in Lo"cse/Levoce.
This theory is also supported by Czeh historian Jaromir Korcak in a book
published in 1937 under the title "Geopoliticke Zaklady Ceskoslovenska" where
he accepts and reinforces the opinion of ethnographer Jan Auerhahn according
to whom the Slovaks show South-Slavic characteristics. Samuel Czambel, the
noted Slovak linguist also considered the Slovak a Southern Slavic language.

There is a reference to this in a work of the scholarly Byzantine Emperor
Constantinos (entitled "De administrando imperio") in which he mentions that
the Hungarian kings moved the Slavs who lived dispersed in the territory
under their control to the northern part of the country.  I can only assume,
that the purpose was to populate the previously sparsely populated montenous
and forested regions of Northern Hungary.

I can go on and on with this to point out that it's not at all certain that
the current Slovaks can claim a historic continuity to the area known today
as Slovakia, predating the Hungarian conquest.

Indeed, during the course of history, nations have come and gone, and so did
borders.  There is no reason to believe that we reached the end of history
and nothing will change from now on.

Regards,
Joe Pannon
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