Our “Slovak Question”

Ludvík Vaculík

(Translated by Michael Henry Heim)

By nationality I am a Czech cut from Moravian cloth, by upbringing, civil stance and ambition a Czechoslovak. From childhood I have thought in terms of the Czechoslovak state, having no reason – other than poetry or my own amusement – to separate out Bohemia and Moravia. I have considered all Czechoslovak my own and all great Slovaks Czechoslovaks. I have admired the Czechoslovak State Railway for its long tracks and venerated the dear Czechoslovak flag, to say nothing of the Czech and Slovak national anthems, which as recently as last year resounded in Prague as one. The Czech state did not exist for me; Czech symbols and interests exclusively Czech took a back seat. Moreover, I believe that most of us are bad Czechs in this sense. Petr Pithart used his underground writings to criticise us for it back in the Husák days, and when recently, as Prime Minster of the Czech government, he came out with a program of Czech statehood it struck me as an evil omen. Wouldn’t setting up a Czech state be a step in the wrong direction?

We Czechs owe a lot to the Slovaks, though our debt has little to do with the debates currently raging. It is a debt so heavy that many a weak Czech will fail to grasp it; it is a debt so subtle that Slovaks safely fighting over the name of the state can afford to overlook it. I have written an article about it more than once and even submitted an article about it to a Slovak journal exactly a year ago, but they rejected it – without a rejection letter – because it was too risky. (It eventually appeared in the underground journal Fragment K). Our debt consists roughly of the following: whereas we enjoyed taking over Slovak territory body and soul, we did not think of taking over the Slovak way of seeing, feeling and thinking; we did not consciously accept Slovak consciousness. Most of us accept the distinct nature of Slovak language and culture, yet instead of embracing it wholeheartedly we keep our distance. And while it is perfectly clear that a Czech who adds a piece of Slovak to himself will be the bigger for it, who among us feels the need to read even one Slovak cultural or political journal and ingest more Slovak material than the state crams down our throats?

The Slovaks themselves are unconsciously making it hard for us to understand our debt to them by forcing the primitive end of the issue on us for an immediate, superficial solution. We have removed the word “socialist” from the name of our republic because the word did not guarantee the attribute, but we have inserted the word “federative” as if it indeed did guarantee the attribute. If federation poses any concrete problems, they must be duly and legally resolved. By depriving us of the name Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks have wounded our supranational pride, a rather generous and ambitious pride, prompting us, as it has, to give up certain things for them. Being a Czechoslovak is a worthy challenge: being only a Czech – with respect to the Slovaks, at least – will be a piece of cake.

The Slovaks’ grievances have deep roots, deeper than can be expected by administrative fiat, their nature deriving from both individual and social psychology. I feel that the Slovaks are ill-prepared for relations with other nations on a free and equal footing. They have never had an autonomous state except between 1939-45, and that, being wartime affair, is not rightly imputable to them, though it helped them to conceptualise a genuine state of their own.

A nation either vindicates its independence or sinks to the level of a group within the whole. We chose the Germans as the main foil to vindicate ours; all other things being equal, the Slovaks would have chosen the Hungarians. But the Hungarians were defeated by other forces and the Slovaks entered a joint state with a third party quite docilely.

Further: It would have been better had they been able follow our lead and build their own industry, cultivate their own intelligentsia and teachers; instead, lack of time forced them to take what we gave them, and to this day they question the quality of the goods. After the fall of fascism they should have come to terms internally with their fascist affair; instead, they got off the hook by applying to rejoin the more or less hands-clean Czechoslovakia.

Further: Communists were very weak in Slovakia after the war, but under the influence of a centralising Prague the Slovaks ended up with our communist régime. This failed to register as a crisis because Czech communism gave Slovaks more material support than it gave Czechs.

Further: When we tried to free ourselves from dictatorship in 1968, the Slovaks considered it our business and set their sights on autonomy. Whereas we were severely punished for rebelling, they, having kept their distance, got off relatively lightly. Nor does it occur to them that the autonomy they acquired as a result of our rebellion made our punishment all the more painful.

Further: We must – our very lives depend upon it – we must crush the totalitarian régime once and for all, and what do they talk about but prestige, once more leaving the main job to us as if to say to say, You Czechs brought us your communism; now you can cart it away. Poorly served by their own history and roundly spoiled by our seventy-five year intervention in their lives, they may well misconstrue how a proud, independent nation functions and fall back on an alibi for their possible future frustrations, an alibi with our name on it again. Is that what we need?

The role of Slovak history we have fallen into is a thankless one, and I for one feel we should put an end to it. Without self-pity. Yes. Laughing in the mirror.

We Czechs have suffered high fevers from the myriad contagions that sweep through our country: the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, nationalism and internationalism (Pan-Slavic, socialist), fascism and communism. Each time we have had to pick ourselves up and form ourselves anew. Every Czech Catholic has a bit of Hussite in him; every Czech realist is a bit of a romantic. Each of us is somewhat German and somewhat Slovak. All of us new-baked democrats and liberals are slightly socialist. Our dough is a mixture of euphoria and depression.

The Slovaks, on the other hand, seem to stand by until events come sloshing up over their borders. They therefore have neither reason nor time to experience them deeply or do much about them; they simply wait them out, sit tight until something else comes along. Even the uprising against the Nazis was too limited in space and time to confront each Slovak with the basic existential and moral questions of who you are and what you want. Thus we cannot be certain today whether what was clearly an anti-German movement was automatically pro-Czechoslovak: a third party cashed in on the benefits.

Lacking a foil to vindicate their maturity, the Slovaks have chosen us. But whereas we know you don’t get anything for nothing, they know they can pump something out of us again, which is why when things started easing up a bit this year and they started casting about for a harmless enemy, they hit upon us. Is that what we need?

During a recent stay in Bratislava I kept being asked why we Czechs were so hot and bothered about the nationalist hullabaloo. It was all the doing of careerists, cranks and connivers, my friends said. I was glad to hear it. But I expected the wise majority to bring the mad minority into line – or at least to outshoot it. Not at all. Instead, the wise men tell us it is wiser to retreat when the cause is unimportant. And now that unimportant cause may become the law of the land.

I know these lines will pain my Slovak friends, friends whom until recently I had to meet in secret to talk about literature and politics, about life and why we live it. I know that on most matters we would still agree. We looked forward to this day for a long time; we scarcely believed we would live to see it. Yet we also knew it would to some extent divide us and accentuate what makes us different. Well, now the day has come, and I can and must say in public what I could then say only in private – namely, that this is a perfect time for the cream of Slovak society to seek the reasons for their discontent within themselves. At last, free of the fear of jeopardy from without, the Slovak nation can afford a bit of dissension in the ranks as it seeks its fortune, the better to come together on a higher plane of maturity. A little tension will virtualise it, energise it. Demeaning it by venting its frustration on the Czechs would be a great pity and a great mistake.

My friend Milan Šimečka – who, though Czech, is a long-time resident of Bratislava – has written to us that our little Slovak brother wants a crib of his own and expects his big Czech brother to give it to him. But we know our little brother all too well: he’ll want it near the window in summer and near the stove in winter. You don’t want a crib, little brother; you want a cosy little cottage.

After their initial bout of indignation, grief or fury people on both sides must take a look at the situation and decide what it will mean to them, and what it takes and what it gives in return. Why should the Slovaks glean piecemeal from us what they can have in one fell swoop? From our standpoint dissociation from the Slovaks, which is completely in our hands, will mean – judging from past experience – the loss of certain economic losses. Politically, it means the loss of the Hungarian and Ruthenian minorities and problems they entail. It will mean the gain of a border between us and the Soviet Union. It will mean we have a single government and can at last deal with matters quickly and efficiently without special attention to the Slovaks. If we don’t need to worry about nationality squabbles, we may be able to put through our democratic reforms more speedily. We will certainly catch up with the more developed countries more speedily. We will have more room to find a way of life that can stand up to aggressive market techniques and consumerism. If we devote the twenty years wasted in federation with Slovak to fruitful relations with Austria, we may come to a functional federation or union whose members will be wise enough to refrain from holding up operations with their depressions, complexes, and recriminations. What about relations with the Slovaks? Can’t economic relations – and other kinds, for that matter – be settled contractually, as they are between, say Denmark and Sweden?

Perhaps we should look at the Slovaks’ initiative as a marvellous opportunity to start a new life. After three hundred years of subjugation by the Habsburgs and seventy years of oppression by another power we can finally have a clear conscience and fresh prospects. Everything can be so different! And the reason that the opportunity is particularly marvellous is that it comes at just the right time: had it come last year we would have been suspected of handing the Slovaks over to the Soviet Union; had it come twenty years ago – of refusing to help our little brother. And if one of the motives was to shore up our armed forces, well, Czechoslovakia didn’t do too well in that area either. Besides, security in today’s Europe is not at all what it was when we Czechs were Czechoslovaks.

How quickly things have changed! All we need to do is recognise it.