Slovakia: Beyond Caricatures

[jd in .hu]

Beyond Caricatures
Amid a cartoonish election campaign starved of substance, a new
collection of writings on Slovak identity is food for thought.

by Martin Ehl
9 June 2010
http://www.tol.org/client/article/21526-beyond-caricatures.html

Sometimes, the media images of the Slovak parliamentary election
campaign seem like caricatures. This weekend at the castle in
Bratislava, the government unveiled an equestrian statue of King
Svatopluk, who, according to historians, was neither a king nor even a
resident of the castle. Government politicians have been opening one
stretch of highway after another but aren’t interested in the protests
of local people, such as those in Povazska Bystrica, where a concrete
monster of a highway bridge was built over their heads without anyone
asking them about it.

Considerably more comprehensive, less media-driven, and, let’s say,
more critical in its examination of the development of Slovak society
is a recently published book by the nongovernmental Institute for
Public Affairs. Titled Who are We?, and subtitled Mental Maps of
Slovakia, this isn’t the purely sociological treatise that the name or
the team of editors from the ranks of leading Slovak political
scientists and sociologists might suggest. It is rather a collection
of 50 texts by personalities who have influenced Slovak public life
over the past 20 years. Alongside the sociologists are journalists,
economists, historians, athletes, and foreigners who have settled in
Slovakia. The entries take a variety of forms, from academic studies
to free-flowing essays, reportages, and recollections.

For journalists, it’s still valid that firsthand reporting and direct
participation in the field can’t be beat, but a guide such as this is
priceless, in the very least as a source of inspiration and potential
topics that, in the current pre-election period, have been relegated
to the back burner by various scandals and ceremonial statue
unveilings.

For instance, Michal Vasecka’s instructive study provides the
background to the current dispute with Hungary, as he describes the
“ethnicization” of the public space in Slovakia, whereby the greater
part of the country’s minorities lost their influence through
historical circumstances – a phenomenon that the current government
supports through various national myths about rural Slovakia as the
healthy core of the nation. And the title of a piece by Tom Nicholson,
a Canadian who lives in Slovakia, says it all: Slovakia: A Bewildered
Contentment.

Economist Eugen Jurczyca, now one of the leaders of the political
opposition, explains the development of economic thought and economic
policy, which he says has moved in a continuous cycle of “handouts,
indebtedness, painful stabilization, and painful problem-solving.” The
book also includes chapters on feminism, as well as the countryside,
the Church, and even why and where Slovaks like to go on vacation.

As Martin Butora, a sociologist and the lead editor of the book,
writes, “In 20 years of development Slovakia has outdistanced itself
and its mentality.” The book Who are We? attempts to map out this
change and indicate subjects for further thought. Butora thinks the
moral dimension of modernization and the legal state make good
starting points, especially when these days – and not only in Slovakia
– grand ideas, grand goals, and grand leaders are missing after
achieving membership in the EU and NATO and laying the basis of
liberal democracy. “A certain grayness of democracy is a reality of
life,” Butora writes in the book’s introduction.

The elections in which Slovaks will vote this weekend are definitely
not gray. In a way, Slovakia is again at a crossroads between nation-
building populism and the standards of liberal democracy. Czechs are
missing a similar guide for use in their own country. In their post-
election debates over budget cuts, populism, and lobbyists it would be
damned useful.
Martin Ehl is the foreign editor of the Czech daily Hospodarske noviny.