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Czechoslovakia Slovaks
While Bohemia and Moravia were among the more favored nations
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovakia's position was far less
enviable. Hungarian rule systematically excluded Slovaks from the
political arena. They were consistently gerrymandered out of
parliamentary seats and administrative posts, even in local
government. In 1910, when Czechs could be found throughout the
Austrian bureaucracy, Slovaks held only 5 percent of the judicial
offices and 3 percent of the civil service positions in Slovakia.
Electoral laws reinforced this inequity: Austrian-dominated lands
had universal adult male suffrage, while lands under Hungarian
rule had limited suffrage and significant educational and age
restrictions. Hungarians were far more aggressively
assimilationist than their Austrian counterparts following the
establishment of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary (also known
as the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1867
(see The Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918
, ch. 1). Whereas Czech institutions and fraternal
associations thrived under the relatively benign tolerance of
Austrian rule, the Hungarians closed Slovak secondary schools,
repressed Slovak cultural organizations, made Hungarian the
official language in 1868, and pursued a course of thoroughgoing
Magyarization.
The contrast between the economy of the Czech lands and that
of Slovakia was as dramatic as their differing political
heritages. Slovakia was agrarian, while the Czech lands were
among the most industrialized regions in Europe. But the contrast
went beyond that: Czech farmers represented a relatively
prosperous, literate, and politically articulate group of
middle-income agriculturlists; Slovaks farmers were peasant
farmers in tenancy on Hungarian estates.
Whereas Czechs wished to create a Czechoslovak nation,
Slovaks sought a federation. The First Republic, with its
predominantly Czech administrative apparatus, hardly responded to
Slovak aspirations for autonomy. In the Slovak view, Czech
domination had simply replaced Hungarian, since Czechs who were
unable to find positions in Bohemia or Moravia took over local
administrative and educational posts in Slovakia. Lingusitic
similarity and geographic proximity proved to be an inadequate
basis for a nation-state. A Lutheran minority of Slovaks
(educated and influential in government) was generally
sympathetic to the republic, but the Slovak Catholic clergy, the
rural bourgeoisie, and the peasantry wanted autonomy. The Slovak
Republic (1939-45) was, among other things, the culmination of
Slovak discontent with Czech hegemony in the country's affairs
(see Slovak Republic
, ch. 1). Perhaps one measure of how
profoundly important ethnicity and autonomy are to Slovaks was a
Slovak writer's 1968 call for a more positive reappraisal of the
Slovak Republic. Although as a Marxist he found Monsignor Jozef
Tiso's "clerico-fascist state" politically abhorrent, he
acknowledged that "the Slovak Republic existed as the national
state of the Slovaks, the only one in our history. . . ."
Comparable sentiments surfaced periodically throughout the 1970s
in letters to Bratislava's Pravda, even though the
newspaper's editors tried to inculcate in their readership a
"class and concretely historical approach" to the nationality
question.
The division between Czechs and Slovaks persisted as a key
element in the reform movement of the 1960s and the retrenchment
of the 1970s, a decade that dealt harshly with the aspirations of
both Czechs and Slovaks. Ethnicity still remains integral to the
social, political, and economic affairs of the country. It is not
merely a matter of individual identity, folklore, or tradition.
The post-1948 government has put a high priority on
redressing the socioeconomic imbalance between the highly
industrialized Czech lands and underdeveloped Slovakia. Slovakia
made major gains in industrial production in the 1960s and 1970s.
By the 1970s, its industrial production was near parity with that
of the Czech lands. Although Slovak planners were quick to note
that capital investment continued to lag, it was clear that
Slovakia's share of industrial production had grown tremendously.
Slovakia's portion of per capita national income rose from
slightly more than 60 percent of that of Bohemia and Moravia in
1948 to nearly 80 percent in 1968, and Slovak per capita earning
power equaled that of the Czechs in 1971.
A general improvement in services, especially in health and
education, accompanied Slovakia's industrial growth. In the
mid-1980s, the number of physicians per capita slightly exceeded
that for the Czech lands, whereas in 1948 it had been two-thirds
the Czech figure. From 1948 to 1983, the number of students in
higher education in Slovakia per 1,000 inhabitants increased from
47 percent of the Czech figure to 119 percent
(see Health and Social Welfare
, this ch.).
Postwar political developments affected Slovaks less
favorably. Party rule in Czechoslovakia took a turn that quashed
Slovak hopes for federation and national autonomy. In the 1950s
purges, prominent Slovak communists who had played major roles in
the 1944 Slovak National Uprising were tried and sentenced as
"bourgeois nationalists"
(see Stalinization
, ch. 1). Eventually,
Czechs also fell victim to the purges, but Slovaks remained
convinced that Prague Stalinists were responsible for the trials.
Neither the 1948 nor the 1960 constitution offered much scope for
Slovak autonomy. In the 1960s, Laco (Ladislav) Novomesky echoed
the feelings and frustrations of many Slovaks when he commented
that they had become "a tolerated race of vice-chairmen and
deputy ministers, a second-class minority generously accorded a
one-third quota in everything. . . ."
The regime of Antonin Novotny (first secretary of the KSC
from 1953 to 1968) was frequently less than enlightened in its
treatment of Slovakia. Novotny himself demanded "intolerant
struggle against any nationalism" and suggested that the real
solution to Czech-Slovak relations would be mass intermarriage
between the two groups. The Slovaks found this recommendation--to
deal with ethnic differences by eliminating them--all too typical
of Prague's attitude toward them.
Political developments in the late 1960s and 1970s provided a
portrait of Czech and Slovak differences. Slovak demands for
reform in the 1960s reflected dissatisfaction with Czech hegemony
in government and policy making. Whereas Czechs wanted some
measure of political pluralism, the Slovak rallying cry was "No
democratization without federation." It was less a difference in
emphasis than a study in contrasts, and the Slovak focus was
institutional change--"federalizing" the government apparatus
with largely autonomous Czech and Slovak structures. Slovaks
called for the full rehabilitation of the "bourgeois
nationalists" and a reappraisal of the 1944 uprising
(see Slovak Resistance
, ch. 1).
Even economic demands split along ethnic lines, although
there was considerable variation within both republics in
response to calls for economic reform. Czech KSC planners called
for implementing the New Economic Model, an integrated economic
system allowing substantial autonomy for individual enterprises
and intended to promote a general increase in efficiency
(see The Reform Movement
, ch. 1). Slovaks wished economic reform to be
adapted to their particular needs. Rather than a single,
integrated economic system, they had in mind parallel Czech and
Slovak national economic organizations.
Czech reaction to these concerns annoyed Slovaks further. In
the Czech view, their own focus on the rehumanization of Marxism
was universalistic, whereas the Slovak preoccupation with
national autonomy was provincial and anachronistic--certainly too
trivial for those whose concern was "socialism with a human
face."
The Constitutional Law of Federation of October 27, 1968,
responded to the Slovak desire for autonomy. Significantly,
however, the KSC remained strongly centralized. Developments in
the 1970s further weakened the two republics' newly established
government structures. KSC efforts, although not necessarily
motivated by anti-Slovak feelings, were heavily weighted in favor
of centralization
(see Political Setting
, ch. 4). A thoroughgoing
adherence to Soviet dictates undermined autonomy as effectively
as any overtly anti-Slovak sentiment might have. Whatever the
ultimate fate of federalization, its prominence as an issue among
Slovaks--the general populace as well as party members--gave an
indication of how important the Czech-Slovak division remained. A
1960s survey found that 73 percent of Slovak respondents
supported federalism; 94 percent wished that Czech-Slovak
relations might be restructured. A subsequent survey in the
mid-1970s, when the new federal structures were in place, found
that Slovaks thought the new government organization, in contrast
to much of their historical experience, treated Czechs and
Slovaks equally.
Data as of August 1987
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