National Communist Roots Of The Slovak Post-1989 Illiberalism (ASN 2023, NY)
Creators: name: Hudek, Adam
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: The paper analyzes the similarities between the “national communism” of the Czechoslovak “Normalization era” between 1970s and 1980s and the “national populism” of the 1990s in the case of Slovakia. The overall argument of the paper is inspired by approaches of political scientists Gil Eyal and Soňa Szomolányi regarding the research of continuities and discontinuities of elites in the environment of post-communist Slovakia. The paper analyzes how the remodeled Slovak national communist program contributed to establishing the course and shape of the Slovak triple (or even quadruple) transformation. It shows how the main point of reference of the debates which led to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 was already set out during the “Normalisation” in the form of the national communist narratives. The continuity was not only in the discourse but also in its representatives. Slovak elites were very much determined by their socialization experience during the normalization period. At the same time, the Czech-Slovak divisions from before 1989 were further cemented in disputes over the priority of national or civic principles in the early 1990s. The main focus is on the intellectual as well as personal ties between the Slovak national communism, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and establishing the ideological roots for the Slovak “illiberal democracy”, the first one in Central Eastern Europe. The paper analyses how the remodeled Slovak national communist program contributed to establishing the course and shape of Slovak transformation in the first half of the 1990s. It deals with former communist intellectual elites trying to keep their privileged status as “guardians of national traditions and culture” after the fall of communism. The post- dissent elites were hostile towards the representatives of the official normalization intellectuals, which means that after 1989, their careers and especially their esteemed status were severely threatened. The agenda of the former national communists was thus to serve the needs of the political currents opposing the political hegemony of both the West-oriented dissident leaders of the Velvet Revolution as well as technocrats planning the economic transformation. They supported or even helped to establish the ethno-populist and nationalist political currents in Slovak politics, which cared less about democracy and more about national issues. The former communist intellectuals returned to the job they did during the Czechoslovak Normalisation regime – legitimizing their political patrons in exchange for material safety and influence on the national and cultural content of the Slovak development. In the early 1990s, they became hugely successful in implementing the nationalist agenda in the Slovak transformation. By combining their networks from the past and the possibilities offered by the democratic transition, they contributed to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 as the first step to creating a Slovak version of “illiberal democracy.” The Slovak development is by no means understood as unique. The paper uses it as a case study identifying developmental traits which can be researched in the other socialist dictatorships.