Pan-slavist oil?

 

- Why am I so lonely?
I used to rule the world! 

The real problem isn´t "Czechia" (apparently the new name for the Czech Republic in English). Try India. Or China. 

That being said...it *is* interesting that the Czechs still buy most of their oil from Russia, given the fact that their present administration claims to be pro-Western. 

Reminds me of how Vaclav Klaus pretended to be a Milton Friedman-inspired neo-liberal...only to heavily subsidize the Czech economy and establish friendly ties with guess who...yepp, a somewhat younger version of citizen Putin in the Kremlin. 

The traditional anti-German geopolitics of the Czechs always had a pronounced pro-Russian tilt, and here we go again, it seems...

NATO ally spending five times more on Russian energy than Ukraine aid

Ge Hitler Sudetlandet!

 

Och den polska korridoren? Bert Karlsson kapitulerar. 

Bert Karlsson om Ukraina och Ryssland

The Third Man and his Woman

 

“The Third Man” is a 1949 British film, written by none other than Graham Greene and with a classical theme composed by Anton Karas. And yes, Orson Welles stars the main character, Harry Lime. The plot is set in Vienna shortly after World War II, when Austria was occupied by the Allies, including the Soviet Union. The failed writer Holly Martins is invited to Vienna by his long lost friend, Harry Lime, only to find that Lime died the day before they were scheduled to meet. Martins soon realizes that there is something strange about the “car accident” that supposedly killed Lime. He is also entangled in a romance with the actress Anna, Harry´s former love interest. And I don´t think I´m revealing any secrets by telling you that, of course, Lime is still very much alive and involved in some very shady activities…  

“The Third Man” is often regarded as the best film ever made. I saw it already as a child, and did indeed regard it that way, but after watching it again the other day (after what must be like four decades!), I realized that I´ve apparently become more hard to impress. It´s not bad, with its nocturnal chases, strange camera angles, and sometimes weird characters. But *the* best film ever made?

I dunno, dude.

Half of the film is dragging in the extreme. Yes, that would be Martins´ love affair with Anna. And while its pointless to criticize a 1949 film for being old fashioned, well, the tropes *are* old. Anna is “the confused Woman”, constantly in irrational emotional turmoil. The “bad fiction writer down on his luck” (Martins) feels a bit old, too. One trope was funny, though: the old landlady in Anna´s house was very convincing. A bit like my grandmother! Not sure what to make of the British police officers in Vienna, who are very gentlemanly, correct and do everything by the book.

The only really interesting character is the mysterious Harry Lime, a completely cynical and slightly psychopathic black marketeer with an (unrealistic) “intellectual” side. As a kid, I must have misunderstood the plot, thinking that Lime was originally a very good man, making his transformation into evil mass murderer even more chilling. In fact, Lime had always been a cheat and a rascal. Suddenly, his turn towards crime seems more plausible, with Martins looking extremely naïve not to realize what his “friend” was capable of. In passing, I noted that the film never really explains its central premise: why did Lime invite Martins to Vienna in the first place? How stupid *is* Martins supposed to be, really? But sure, he doesn´t come across as the sharpest knife in the box…

“The Third Man” ends with Harry Lime kind-of-voluntarily letting Martins kill him, perhaps in a last ditch attempt to “redeem” himself somehow. Or was he just afraid of getting caught? Well, actually the film ends with the Woman acting as irrationally as always.

I don´t have a good melodramatic close (or zither tune) to this review, so I just end here.   

Nazi Vimanas

 

Operation Paperclip has never been so much fun...

These rumors, tall tales and (sometimes) true Wunderwaffe would have been a footnote in history had it not been for the UFO craze after World War II (and still ongoing). 

Bohemian fall

Credit: Martin Divisek/EPA

70,000 Czechs demand that the Russians come back and invade their country anew?! 

Thousands gather at "Czech Republic First" rally over energy crisis

Den nationella rörelsens fall?

Vår ofrivillige grannbloggare (Hübinette förstås) fortsätter att gotta sig... 

Kommer Rysslands invasion av Ukraina 2022 bli en repris på Tysklands invasioner 1939?

Vem borde egentligen känna skam idag?

Bohemian Rhapsody

For quite some time, the Czechs liked to portray themselves as more enlightened, democratic, Protestant, and Western-oriented than the Slovaks, who were accused of being generally backward and Catholic. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Slovaks were also painted as dangerous "populists" and probably Russophiles. 

I used to believe something like this myself. Then, I started digging into Czech history...

It *is* true that Slovakia was something of a backwater for about 1000 years. It´s also true that Bohemia was a culturally advanced region, Prague in particular, during the a portion of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Emperor Rudolf II´s court is famous in this regard. But note that this wasn´t an exclusively Czech thing. It was equally German (or Austrian). Bohemia was a kingdom within the "Holy Roman Empire".

Czech nationalism during the 19th century was to a large extent pan-Slavist and pro-Russian. During World War I, the Czechs got the best of all possible worlds. They were oriented towards both France, the United States and...Czarist Russia. The Czechoslovak Legions played a prominent role in the Russian Civil War. For this reason, the relations between the Soviet Communist regime and Czechoslovakia were originally quite non-existent.

During the 1930´s, Czechoslovakia changed its foreign policy and entered an alliance with Stalin´s Soviet Union. Note that Czechoslovakia was at this point still a capitalist democracy. There was also an alliance with France. 

During World War II and the period 1945-48, Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes (a moderate Czech Social Democrat) headed a "national front" dominated by the Communist Party. In the elections after the war, the Communist Party became the single largest party in the Czech lands. It did *not* become the largest party in Slovakia... 

The bad experience of Communism (1948-1989) made the Czechs pro-Western, pro-American and anti-Russian. Playwright and pro-Western dissident Vaclav Havel was elected president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia and then transitioned to president of the Czech Republic. However, then something odd happened...

The next president, Vaclav Klaus (who originally claimed to be a Milton Friedman neo-liberal), turned out to be a pro-Russian Euro-skeptic climate change denialist. The third president, Milos Zeman, is apparently a former Communist and also regarded as soft on Putin. And in 2017, the Czech Republic voluntarily elected a "populist" prime minister, one Andrej Babis. What makes this even more piquante is that Babis is ethnically Slovak! So after accusing their Slovak cousins for being "Russophile populists" for 20+ years, the Czechs eventually elected one of these hideous Slovak populists Czech head of government!

Am I the only person who thinks we may have been played by Czech propaganda all this time? 

Only available in Slovak

This is probably the most obscure book I will ever review here on my blog.

"Slovenske Mestske a Obecne Erby" is a book by Jozef Novak, published in 1967 in Bratislava by Slovenska Archivna Sprava. It was the first volume in a series called "Edicia Pomocne Vedy Historicke a Archivnictvo".

Yes, folks, we're talking about a book published in Communist Czechoslovakia.

The book deals with heraldry, more specifically the coats of arms of Slovak towns and villages. It's written in a relatively accesible style (at least if Slovak is your first language), but the author is obviously a scholar. The notes abound with references to archival sources, including medieval documents, seals and earlier works on Slovak heraldry. Or rather Hungarian ditto, since Slovakia was an integrated part of the Hungarian Kingdom until 1918.

The author explains the evolution of Hungarian heraldry in some detail. Originally, Hungarian towns used coats of arms based on those of the ruling dynasty (the House of Arpad). Later, this became impossible due to frequent dynastic conflicts and the rise of powerful local rulers. To feign neutrality, the towns therefore preferred to show patron saints on their coats of arms. A third phase saw the emergence of distinct town symbols, beholden neither to the ruling house nor the Church, reflecting the increased power and confidence of the towns during the Early Modern Period. 

Apparently, the coat of arms of Banska Stiavnica is unique in Slovakian history, since it adopted a distinct town symbol already during the 13th century, no doubt because of its immense economic importance (silver mining). 

During the 19th century, coats of arms were seen as antiquated and "feudal", and the local governments often stopped using them altogether. Those who continued using them often didn't know what coat of arms was the right one! 

An administrative reform in 1902 tried to remedy the situation, even decreeing that all town seals in Hungary should be remade by the same person, Ignac Felsenfeld. A special commission studied relevant archival material to decide on the "right" emblems. As a heraldry nerd, Jozef Novak naturally believes that the earliest coats of arms are more "pure" than later ones, while the commission rather preferred the latest designs, since towns during earlier periods often used strikingly similar symbols. 

Since the colors of many coats of arms were unknown (probably because they were only used as symbols on wax seals), the commission decided what colors to use, showing a strong preference for silver charges on blue shields, making Hungarian heraldry look weirdly uniform. 

The book doesn't deal with developments under Communism, when many Slovak towns and localities unofficially kept their coats of arms - or changed them in very unheraldic ways (although it's possible this didn't happen until after the book was published). 

I happen to know that many Slovak towns use the "wrong" coats of arms, compared to the ones Novak has unearthed from the archives. Often, the devil is in the details, as when Pezinok's coat of arms shows Mary on a green shield, when the actual motif should be Anna holding an infant Mary on a blue shield... 

Or perhaps not, since the Catholics insist that the lady on the escutcheon *is* the Virgin Mary, while the Lutherans apparently interpreted her as Anna! This per the current website of Pezinok. 

The color is still wrong, though. 

Perhaps it's time for another commission? 

Facing Russia

"The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1921-1939" by Elizabeth White is, despite the general title, a book specifically about the Prague branch of the Right SRs during the period mentioned.

The SRs were one of the largest political parties in Russia before the October revolution, representing the "populist" or "Narodnik" revolutionary tradition, which called for socialism based on the peasantry. Alexander Kerensky, the de facto leader of the Provisional Government, was an SR. Victor Chernov, the speaker of the Constituent Assembly, was also an SR. The Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky in 1917 and dissolved the Constituent Assembly in 1918...

Under the impact of the October Revolution, the SR Party split in two. The Left SRs supported the Bolsheviks and were briefly part of a Bolshevik-dominated coalition government. They broke with the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. The Right SRs, by contrast, fought the Bolsheviks from the start. Both Kerensky and Chernov were Right SRs. After the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War, Kerensky went to France, while Chernov set up shop in Czechoslovakia. 

The Right SRs were split into several different factions, with the group in Paris being "on the right" within the Party. Their "socialism" was probably nominal. The Paris SRs cooperated with the "bourgeois" Kadet Party and moved closer to religion, seeing Orthodoxy as a genuine expression of Russian national identity. The Prague SRs, by contrast, upheld the socialist-Narodnik line, and represented the SR Party in the Socialist International. They were thus the left wing of the Right SRs! 

Strictly speaking, the Prague SR was a fusion of two factions, the group around Chernov being the most leftist. Chernov had opposed Russian entry into World War I and even participated in the famous radical socialist anti-war conferences in Zimmerwald and Kienthal. The other group consisted of "defensists" who had supported the Russian war effort but broken with the pro-Allied line when the Western powers intervened in Russia during the Civil War to aid the White Guards. (As democratic socialists, the Right SRs had conflicts with both the Bolsheviks and the monarchist Whites.)

Czechoslovakia supported the Right SRs and other Russian emigre groups during the 1920's. The collaboration began during the Russian Civil War, when the Right SRs worked with the Czechoslovak Legions in Siberia. When the Legions finally left Russia, some Right SRs accompanied them. The liberal or moderately socialist Czechoslovak leadership seems to have promoted the Right SR group in Prague above all other Russian factions. The Prague SRs were funded by the Czechoslovak government. Both president Masaryk and future president Benes were personally involved in supporting the Prague SR group. 

Interestingly, most Prague SRs were not impressed by the New Economic Policy or NEP launched by Lenin after the Russian Civil War, despite its supposed "pro-peasant" orientation. They regarded the NEP as a mere tactic, and even criticized it "from the left" for being too capitalist! SR magazines printed articles about peasant resistance in the Soviet Union during the NEP, resistance directed against tax collectors. The lack of democracy and attempts by the Soviet regime to control the cooperative movement were sharply criticized. Most Prague SRs didn't like Bukharin, who had rallied the Bolshevik "masses" against the SRs during the anti-SR trial of 1922. The Prague SRs correctly predicted that the Bolsheviks would abandon NEP, despite the defeat of the United Opposition. However, they didn't expect Stalin's "left" turn to be succesful, instead predicting a collapse of the entire Soviet system. 

Chernov and his sub-faction had a somewhat different line. Chernov was more positive towards Bukharin. Above all, Chernov called for the right of non-Russian territories to leave the Soviet Union. To promote cooperation with non-Russian SRs (above all Ukrainians), he formed the Socialist League of the New East. This provoked a de facto split between the Chernovites and the ex-defensist group. The latter defended the territorial integrity of Russia and opposed non-Russian self-determination with nationalist and chauvinist arguments. 

The split between the two factions making up the Prague SR paralyzed its activities. Chernov's position on Ukrainan self-determination was extremely unpopular in Czechoslovakia, which controlled a territory with an ethnic Ukrainan population, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. By 1932, the Czechoslovak government had stopped funding both sub-groups of the Prague SR. In 1935, Czechoslovakia recognized the Soviet Union and signed a friendship treaty with it. The Soviets demanded that Benes must curtail Russian emigre activities in Prague. 

The Prague SRs took a "defensist" stance towards the Soviet Union during World War II. Despite this, the SRs who had remained in Prague during the war were arrested by the Soviets and sent to prison camps in the Soviet Union. 

Chernov spent some time in Palestine, fascinated by the "agrarian socialism" of the kibbutzim and moshavim. He was also involved in failed attempts to establish  agricultural communes in Canada and Mexico. Eventually, he settled in the United States. 

Chernov's anti-chauvinist position seems to have been his only redeeming trait. Otherwise, he comes across as an abstract elite intellectual. His analysis of the October Revolution was that Lenin had turned to the Lumpenproletariat. In reality, the "dark masses" of unskilled workers were the majority of the Russian working class. Many of them had only recently left life as impoverished peasants. Note the irony: a "socialist" leader of a "peasant party" repudiating both workers and peasants! 

With that, I close this review. 

Ready for unity at last?

“Det omaka paret: Tjeckernas och slovakernas historia” by Ingmar Karlsson is a recently published book in Swedish on a somewhat obscure topic (at least if you´re Swedish). Yes, it actually deals with the history of the Czechs and the Slovaks, two Slav peoples in Central Europe with a somewhat complex relation to each other. The author has previously published books on Turks, Kurds, Assyrians and European minority peoples (as in the Sorbs or the Ladino). I sure wondered why on earth he decided to tackle Czechs and Slovaks next! It turns out that Karlsson was Swedish ambassador to *both* the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the 1990´s. His wife is Slovak and his mother-in-law Czech (or perhaps Silesian Austrian). Karlsson met both Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar, the controversial top dogs on, respectively, the Czech and Slovak sides back in the days. Apparently, the meetings were pretty tense! 

As for myself, I have both Moravian, Slovak and Hungarian affinities, and therefore read “Det omaka paret” with great interest. I did manage to find perhaps four or five factual errors (some of them strange), but overall, I have to say that Karlsson knows his Czecho-Slovak history in and out, so much in fact, that I wouldn´t be surprised if he can read Czech and Slovak himself. In the end, even I learned a few things from Karlsson´s book, and I *do* read both languages, thank you.

Karlsson´s main point, which unfortunately is mostly true, is that Czechs and Slovaks (despite speaking mutually understandable languages) really have very little in common. The Czech lands, Bohemia in particular, were once the near-literal center of Europe, both politically and culturally. Prague was an important metropolis for centuries, from the 14^th century to the 17^th ditto. Bohemia experienced a “Protestant” Reformation a century before Martin Luther burst onto the scene in Germany. The Bohemian king was an elector of the “Holy Roman Empire”. Later, when the Czechs had been suppressed by the Germans, their lands were nevertheless industrialized, giving them an advantage over many other parts of Austria-Hungary when that empire came crushing down after World War I. By contrast, Slovakia was for almost 1000 years a Hungarian-controlled territory, simply known as Felvidék (“the Upper Lands” i.e. northern Hungary). For most of its history, it was strongly Catholic. It was also mostly populated by peasants, often impoverished smallholders.

When Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, the Slovaks were actually fewer in number than the Germans, the most visible national minority in the new Czech-dominated republic. The Czech leadership declared Slovaks to be part of a united “Czechoslovak” nationality, an artificial creation supposed to boost the Czech numbers at the expense of Germans, Hungarians and other national minorities. While some Czechoslovakist Slovaks did exist, most Slovaks soon threw their support behind the Catholic nationalist Slovak People´s Party, which opposed the central government in Prague. Since this party eventually collaborated with the Nazis, they were banned after World War II. Still, the differences between the two brother peoples persisted. In Bohemia and Moravia, the Communist Party became the single largest party in the post-war elections. In Slovakia, most voters preferred the Democratic Party, the only viable non-Communist party. (This was before the Prague coup in 1948, when the Communists took over completely.) 

Under Communism, Prague centralism was (of course) the order of the day, something which benefitted ethnic Czechs (or at least ethnic Czechs who were Communists!), although *some* positive things did happen in Slovakia - Karlsson believes that the industrialization of this previous rural backwater was a good thing, despite being carried out by an authoritarian regime. The supposed "federation" between the Czech and Slovak "socialist republics" created in 1969 was mostly a sham reform. 

Flash forward to 1989, and the usual pattern reemerges. Immediately after the fall of Communism, political developments took a different course in Bohemia-Moravia compared to Slovakia. In the Czech lands, a mimic of the Western party system emerged, with conservative, liberal and Social Democratic parties. In Slovakia, the political field (after a Catholic Christian Democratic interlude) became dominated by nationalist populist formations with nebulous platforms and strongman leaders. One of the main political issues was the constant conflict with the Hungarian minority. (The German minority was forced to leave the Czech lands after World War II, making Bohemia and Moravia more ethnically homogenous.) While few people *really* wanted to dissolve Czechoslovakia, the inability of the Czech and Slovak politicians to create a federation that would satisfy both sides eventually set the stage for the country´s partition into two independent states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Thankfully, the divorce was peaceful. And inevitable, if Karlsson is right (and I think he is).

The last chapter deals with recent events in the two nations. One thing that struck me recently is that the Czech Republic and Slovakia has become *more* similar the last 20 years or so, not less, which was the tendency immediately after independence. Slovak politics are still dominated by a nationalist populist party, albeit a different one than during the 1990´s. Vladimir Meciar´s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) has been replaced by Robert Fico´s Smer. Critics charge the dominant political factions with rampant corruption, xenophobia and pro-Russian leanings. But the Czech Republic has *also* become anti-globalist, tacitly anti-EU and pro-Russian, even electing a Slovak populist billionaire named Andrej Babis Prime Minister! (Yes, the Czechs have elected a *Slovak* Prime Minister.) This tendency started already during the time of Vaclav Klaus, whose reputation as an orthodox neo-liberal Friedmanite seems to be overblown, to say the least. In reality, most of the Czech economy was subsidized by the government of this supposed market reformer, who opposed Czech EU membership and wrote positively about Vladimir Putin.

It´s almost as if Czechs and Slovaks have finally become ready to create that united nation-state which has proved so elusive throughout history.

The irony!

When the Ashtar Command met the Gypsies

This will be a somewhat disjointed blog post about a visit to Slovakia. I don´t even remember the year I visited the country. Maybe it was 20 years ago. Maybe even earlier. I stayed for over a week in a Slovak-Polish border region known as Spis (pronounced Spish). Most of the time, I cruised the local churches and cathedrals, marveling at the Byzantine Revival architecture, listened to the strange tall tales about the medieval Carthusian monastery, and other such strange pastimes which I found worthwhile in my insufficiently misspent youth. A funny detail: some of the teenagers standing in line outside the Levoca cathedral, a tourist hub of some standing, were smoking pot! I suppose their youth really was misspent…

A large proportion of the population of Spis turned out to be Gypsy. I don´t remember the exact figure. Perhaps it was around 15%. Perhaps even somewhat more. So I decided to query my Slovak informants (one of whom spoke English) about the Gypsy problematique. Back in the days, I knew next to nothing about Gypsies over and above the obvious, and with a few exceptions, I had only encountered Finnish Gypsies, whose culture and even appearance was strikingly different from those in Slovakia. At the time, I had no idea that the Roma were an extremely heterogeneous group, really a cluster of several different “peoples” than a single one. I haven´t done any further research on Slovak Gypsies since, so I present this observations completely raw, as recollected by an innocent naïf over 20 years ago.

The Gypsies in Spis are dark-skinned and vaguely Indian-looking. I´m not sure which dialect of Romani they speak – perhaps Vlax Romani, since Slovak political parties have published election information in that language (yes, really). The Gypsies in the cities speak relatively good Slovak and use Slovak when communicating with other Gypsies. The Gypsies in the “settlements” (in the countryside) speak Slovak with a heavy “foreign” accent when encountering Slovaks, but Romani within their own group. (In Bratislava, the national capital of Slovakia, I also saw Gypsies speaking Slovak-with-a-strange-accent amongst themselves. I´m not sure if the accent was Romani or Hungarian! Many Gypsies in southern Slovakia would have at least a working knowledge of Hungarian.)

The small Spis town I visited was 100% segregated, with Gypsies living in a separate part of the town. Also, the Gypsy neighborhood was really divided into two. The houses in the “better” part were of worse quality than the Slovak houses, and probably built by the inhabitants themselves, but still tolerable. These were the Gypsies who had seasonal employment at road constructions in Germany or Austria. In other words, they had some money to spend. In the bad part, people lived *literally* on Third World level, in dwellings reminding me of the slums in South America or Africa. These were the unemployed Gypsies. Seeing this level of destitution in a European nation was…weird. Weird and shocking.

Later, I met a Catholic priest (let´s call him Pavel) who told me the following. As an outspoken anti-Communist, the Czechoslovak Communist regime decided to punish him with a kind of de facto internal exile. They made him priest of a parish in a Gypsy settlement somewhere in northern Slovakia! I don´t remember if it was Spis or some other region. Since “Whites” (Slovaks call themselves “Whites” in relation to Gypsies, who are “Blacks”) and Gypsies don´t particularly like each other, this was intended as some kind of cruel and unusual punishment. However, Pavel managed to get by with relative ease. The local Gypsies, while mostly indifferent to the Catholic Church, regard clergymen with superstitious awe. The priest (called “rasha”) is seen as a conduit of supernatural power. This explains why Gypsies insist on baptizing their children. Otherwise, they virtually never show up at the services. However, they believe that rasha has the ability to lift Gypsy curses, and therefore visit the priest whenever some family conflict has been resolved and the (supernaturally binding) curses pronounced during it needs to be dispensed with! Pavel had no idea what to do in situations like these, and simply improvised…

Pavel clearly didn´t like the Gypsies. He believed very strongly that the Roma want to live like they do, and that their situation had nothing to do with poverty, per se. He also claimed that they were thieves by cultural commandment. The Gypsies in the region supposedly had a tradition known as “the first theft” – a boy had to prove himself to his father by stealing something from the gadjos (the Gentiles or non-Gypsies). This explained the incredibly high amount of incarcerated Gypsy teenagers in the region. Somewhat surprisingly for an “anti-ziganist”, Pavel actually believed that the first theft should be de-criminalized! It would substantially lower the number of youth delinquency center inmates… Either Pavel or another Catholic priest also claimed that the Gypsies had a bizarre tradition that Jesus had given them permission to steal, after a Gypsy had stolen one of the nails from the cross of Christ but been pardoned by him! (This legend also exists in a “negative” version – that Gypsies are forever cursed to wander the Earth due to their theft of said nail. In Spis, this idea is said to exist among Gypsies in a positive form.) I have no idea of knowing whether any of this is true, or a gadjo urban legend.

After the fall of Communism, it seems that there are two prominent “Whites” in every Roma “settlement”. One is the priest. The other is the bar-owner. Thus, there is a White-owned bar or saloon in every Gypsy settlement. The barman functions as an informal banker, and presumably also as a kind of middle-man between the Gypsies and the proper authorities. The social problems are even worse than under Communism, when the Gypsies had (usually lowly) jobs in industry. Today, many are unemployed or forced to work abroad. The traditional Gypsy trades, which included master-builders, artisans and entertainers, have either disappeared or been taken over by gadjos. This leaves the Gypsies in a marginalized position, to a large extent due to their fear of “assimilation”. Thus, many Gypsies in Spis refuse to send their kids to Slovak public schools, since they fear that this will turn them into Slovaks (which may indeed be the goal of Slovak schooling).

Many mysteries of Romanihood can be explained if this conscious and systematic separatism is kept in mind. I naively asked my informants why the Gypsies, who form a substantial portion of the Spis electorate, don´t form their own political party, since this would almost guarantee them the balance of power in the Spis regional parliament. My question was met with incredulous smiles… (For the record, two Roma political parties *did* exist in Slovakia at the time, but they were both very small. Their story is a strange one, too, but that´s for another time.) Another obvious question is why the bar-owner or banker is White. Why can´t the Gypsies simply take over the rum trade – and the banking – themselves? *Some* of them do have money, and it only takes a few rich guys to control the entire operation, especially if most others are underprivileged. My guess is that the Gypsies are split into different clans and sub-clans, making it downright impossible to unite them. Also, they have to both keep majority society at arm´s length *and* reach some kind of pragmatic accommodation with it. Both goals are kept by *not* voting in elections, except maybe sometimes for Slovak parties, and the second goal is kept by having two White brokers in the village (the priest and the bar-owner).

End of story.

Young people, study Old Church Slavonic

This is something as peculiar as an encyclopedic article on the Church Slavonic Bible, written by Robert Mathiesen – the article, that is, not the Bible! Mathiesen is a scholar of Slavic church history, who has also made some forays into the study of magic and modern occultism. The author ably summarizes the translation history of the Bible into Old Church Slavonic – not an easy topic!

Unfortunately, the article contains a serious misprint: at one point, it states that II Maccabees isn´t considered canonic by the Roman Catholic Church. It´s III Maccabees, of course. The article is taken from “The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature” (Vol 3), published in 1979 by Academic International Press.

Good if the history and contents of Moravian, Bulgarian and Russian Bibles is something that you brood over on a weekly basis or so…

The Bable Bible

This is an extremely weird Bible edition, one of many similar available on Kindle. It's a translation of the Gospels into three different languages, placed side by side on a verse-by-verse basis. The Gospel texts in this edition are supposedly excerpted from the Bible in Basic English (BBE), Le Sainte Bible from 1887 and the Slovak Rohacek edition from 1936.

However, the introductory presentations mention entirely different Bible editions in English and French, respectively. This is not a trivial error, since Basic English is really a conlang, and hence not “standard” English. As for the French edition, the introduction mentions a 18th century Protestant translation based on Calvin's Geneva Bible, while Le Sainte is the name of a 19th century Catholic ditto based on the Vulgate. However, it wasn't published in 1887.

As far as I can tell, the English translation really is the BBE, though. I haven't checked the French version. The Slovak material is from Jozef Rohacek's famous translation, but here the problem is that this particular Bible version probably isn't widely used in Slovakia, being an unofficial Lutheran version in a heavily Catholic nation. Also, Rohacek's language is teeming with archaisms and neologisms (although the Gospels are relatively easy to read). I also wonder who on earth would want to buy a parallel Basic English-French-Archaic Slovak version of the Gospel stories?

All in all, this peculiar project strikes me as near-Babylonian confusion of tongues!

Grand theft á la flag

It's a good thing that Sarawak has changed its flag, I mean the former design looked as if it had been ripped from the Czechoslovak ditto. But then, Sarawak need not have bothered. When Czechoslovakia was divided, the Czechs simply appropriated the Czechoslovak flag as their own, so having a Malaysian state spouting a similar banner would simply have been fitting punishment for their chutzpah!

Truth will prevail

I always said Czechoslovakia had the best national flag in terms of design. It's a work of complete genius. Simple, yet impossible to forget. It's a good thing that two Malaysian states, Sarawak and Sabah, recognized Czechoslovak greatness by ripping the design for their own banners. It takes a giant to pay homage to utter brilliance!

Among Greenpeace extremists and anti-German Nazis

This is a book published in the Czech Republic by the Masaryk University in 1998. It's only available in Czech. In translation, the title reads “Political extremism and radicalism in the Czech Republic”. I admit that I skipped the boring, scholarly articles in the first half of the book, and went straight for the red meat in the second part, essentially a mini-encyclopedic survey of particular organizations.

The editors regard the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) as extremist. The KSCM is relatively strong, and represented in the Czech Parliament. This is unusual for a direct successor party to an “East” European Communist regime. The section on Communist front groups is interesting. Many of them claim to be Christian! The book also contains information on “Stalinist” groups within or outside the KSCM. They believe that the KSCM has conceded too much to post-Communist conditions.

The so-called Republicans (SPR-RSC) are an obvious candidate to the right-wing extremist mantle, with their bizarre hatred of Jews, Masons, Rotary, the Roma (Gypsies) and (surprise) Communists. The latter phobia has not stopped the Republicans from hobnobbing with unregenerate Reds in various front groups. The authors argue that there are clear parallels between “Mein Kampf” and the writings of Miroslav Sladek, the Republican leader. Sladek even wants Lebensraum, demanding the return of Ruthenia to Czechoslovakia. Ironically, Sladek is anti-German! This might be the height of Czech Dadaist humor: the Untermenschen create their own anti-Übermensch Nazi Party. The blond beast, it seems, is really from Golden Prague.

Various foreign groups have established a (usually small) presence in the Czech Republic. The editors have tracked down local chapters of both White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and the opposing Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), both groups originally from California. There are also local Czech branches of the Hammerskins, the KKK, the Animal Liberation Front and various Trotskyist internationals. A few peculiar outfits have been included, too, including “Hussite” skinheads, the Humanist Alliance (Silo's supporters) and the “Purists”, a Neo-Pagan/Nazi/anti-German re-enactment group sometimes deemed to be a joke.

The editors' definition of “extremism” is sometimes too broad, since both the soft left Left Alternative, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (!) are included on their political hit list, with apologies that perhaps the two latter aren't really extremists at all. It's interesting to note that the editor of this volume, Petr Fiala, is currently the head of the ODS, Vaclav Klaus' conservative Euro-skeptic party, so perhaps he, too, should be considered an extremist under this broad definition?

The Czech Republic often prides itself on being more modern, Western and enlightened than other post-Communist states, say, Poland, Serbia or Slovakia. The Czech political landscape does indeed have a remarkable resemblance to that of the Western nations. Even their extremists are the same! I suppose you could argue that the Czech Republic has successfully completed the “transition”…

Great Slovakia

A review of "Velkoslovenska Risa" by Tomas Veteska

This pamphlet, equally interesting and infuriating, was published in Canada in 1987 by Tomas Veteska, a Slovak nationalist and Greek Catholic. It was published under the auspices of a Greek Catholic monsignore, Frantisek Fuga, who was also the chair of the Matica Slovenska in exile. Matica is a Slovak cultural association with a nationalist orientation. The pamphlet argues that the early medieval realm of Great Moravia (Velka Morava) should really be called Great Slovakia, and that it was a specifically Slovak kingdom. Veteska is sympathetic to the pro-Nazi Slovak Republic during World War II and condemns “Czech paganism, heresy and imperialism”. I think it's safe to say that he is essentially a fascist. Despite that, I admit that I found his pamphlet relatively interesting and well written. Unsurprisingly, it's only available in Slovak.

The Greek Catholics (sometimes called Uniates) are a branch of the Catholic Church using the Byzantine rite. Slovak Greek Catholics use Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language. During the Middle Ages, the territory today known as Slovakia was visited by Cyril and Methodius, two Byzantine missionaries (known as “The Apostles to the Slavs”), who introduced Old Church Slavonic in Church services and developed an alphabet for the language, making it the first Slav written language. Eventually, the Byzantines were driven out of Slovakia, which then became an integrated part of the Latin Catholic orbit. This has always been something of a problem for Slovak nationalists, who are usually Catholic while nevertheless considering Cyril and Methodius to be the near-founding fathers of Slovak nationhood. Adopting Greek Catholicism could be a solution to the dilemma, since it means combining loyalty to the Pope with Byzantine rites in a Slav language. (It should be noted that Rome and Constantinople were nominally still on good terms during the 9th century, when Cyril and Methodius visited the Slavs. The Byzantine apostles accepted papal authority in church matters. This presumably explains why Veteska and Fuga see them as precursors to the Greek Catholics.)

The contentious issue under debate in Veteska's booklet is the exact ethnic character of Great Moravia, the 9th century Slav kingdom visited by Cyril and Methodius. Since its core territory spanned Moravia (the eastern part of the modern Czech Republic), western Slovakia and western Hungary, both Czechs and Slovaks have been eager to claim it as a glorious part of their respective histories. It could also be claimed by Czechoslovakists, adherents of a united Czecho-Slovak state. Hungarians, while never claiming Great Moravia for themselves, have been equally eager denying that the state had anything to do with their Czech and Slovak adversaries (who might otherwise make territorial claims on Hungary). Other possible claimants include Slovenians, Serbs and Croats, while Cyril and Methodius could be claimed by Greeks, Bulgarians and Slav Macedonians! The liturgical language of Old Church Slavonic is generally regarded as based on the Slav dialect spoken around Thessalonica in Byzantine days, and is presumably therefore “Old Bulgarian” or “Old Slav Macedonian”.

Veteska argues that Great Moravia was really Great Slovakia, and that its inhabitants should rightfully be seen as Slovaks. Modern Moravia is part of the Czech Republic. However, the author regards the Moravians as “Moravian Slovaks” who were later de-nationalized by the vile Czechs from Bohemia. He points out that Bohemia was part of Great Moravia only during a shorter period. The author also argues at length that the center of Great Moravia wasn't situated in Moravia anyway, but on the territory today known as Slovakia. There is some truth in this. Cyril and Methodius arrived at Nitra, while several important battles between Great Moravia and the Franks seem to have been fought at Devín, both places being on modern Slovak territory. Veteska believes that Bratislava (the current national capital of Slovakia) was the capital of Great Moravia. Veteska further points out that many important meetings of Great Moravian kings and nobles took place at Blatnohrad, deep inside modern Hungarian territory and hence far away from anything “Czech”. As for Old Church Slavonic, the author argues that it's really Old Slovak, not Old Macedonian.

On one level, I can understand why this old fascist is upset about Hungarian oppression and Czech discrimination of Slovaks. For almost 1000 years, Slovakia was controlled by Hungary and was simply known as Upper Hungary. It was natural for 19th century Slovak patriots, protesting forced Hungarian assimilation attempts, to look back to Great Moravia, the only historical realm which in some sense could be considered ancestral to an independent modern Slovakia. Czechs from Bohemia can claim Great Moravia only with great difficulty, while Hungarian attempts to deny that Hungary was once controlled by the ancestors of modern Slovaks and Moravians are downright crackpot.

On the other hand, however, the author is obviously essentialist and anachronistic and in this resembles all other nationalists. The Slav tribes in 9th century Moravia, western Slovakia and western Hungary simply *must* have been Slovaks in the modern sense of that term. Their typically medieval/feudal conflicts with Bohemians, Franks and Magyars are reinterpreted to resemble later nationalist conflicts between Slovaks and Czechs, Germans or Hungarians. We are dramatically told how these three modern adversaries of the Slovak nation jointly besieged Bratislava (the modern name is used) and smashed Great Slovakia in AD 907. Cyril and Methodius are clearly seen as forebears of the Greek Catholics (and perhaps of Matica Slovenska). The Czechs of Bohemia are said to have been pagans much longer than the Slovaks, and this is a premonition of their later Hussite heresy and Bolshevism. Everyone born on Slovak territory is said to be a Slovak, including people like 18th century adventurer Maurice Benyovszky (a Hungarian nobleman and world citizen who fought in both the Polish and American revolutions and later became King of Madagascar). Naturally, everyone else Veteska wants to be a Slovak is also a Slovak, if only a “de-nationalized” one, making it possible to claim many Czechs, Hungarians and Ukrainians as Slovaks. This is all very familiar to students of nationalist discourse…

As for Old Church Slavonic, the differences between different Slav dialects during the 9th century must have been minor, so the idea of Cyril and Methodius basing “their” Slav language on Macedonian dialects and then introducing it in Nitra much further north, isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Old Church Slavonic might indeed be Old Macedonian, or even Old Slav.

Despite its problematic political antecedents, I nevertheless regard “Velkoslovenská Rísa” as something of a guilty pleasure. If you believe that Great Moravia was the first united state of Czechs and Slovaks á la Masaryk and Benes, specifically Czech á la Havel, or really a Balkan kingdom (the Hungarian-nationalist position), this might straighten you out a bit. However, Veteska ultimately goes too far in the other direction, projecting 19th and 20th century conflicts and culture wars on a 9th century reality which, I think, is better understood on its own terms…

A Slovak tragedy

This is a short but informative work about Jozef Tiso, the leader of the pro-Nazi Slovak state during World War II. The author, Ivan Kamenec, is a Slovak historian specializing in the Holocaust. His book on Tiso was published in 1998 with the support of George Soros' Open Society Fund. As far as I know, no English translation exists. The Slovak title is “Tragédia Politika, Knaza a Cloveka: Dr Jozef Tiso 1887-1947".

Dr Jozef Tiso (1887-1947) was a Catholic priest, politician and activist. When Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, the new state turned out to be centralized and dominated by the Czechs. While secular and Lutheran Slovaks nevertheless supported the Czechoslovak state, Catholic Slovaks as a general rule didn't, instead demanding autonomy for Slovakia. The autonomist movement was channeled through “Hlinka's Slovak People's Party” (HSLS), led by Andrej Hlinka, which soon became the largest party in Slovakia, controlling about one third of the votes. Tiso was Hlinka's confidante and rose quickly in the party hierarchy. During the 1930's, the HSLS moved increasingly towards authoritarian positions. While the party was never explicitly fascist, the family likeness with Mussolini or Dolfuss is obvious. At the death of Hlinka in 1938, Tiso succeed him as HSLS chair. The new leader quickly experienced his baptism of fire, being one of the men responsible for smashing Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Munich agreement. In October 1938, the HSLS staged what was in effect a coup, prohibited most other political parties, and declared Slovakia autonomous. In March 1939, on the eve of the Nazi German invasion of the Czech lands, Tiso turned Slovakia into an independent republic after a personal meeting with Hitler himself in Berlin. The HSLS leader served as president of this artificial state until the bitter end in 1945, but lost most power in 1944, when Nazi German troops occupied Slovakia in response to a pro-Allied revolt which Tiso's regime had failed to suppress. Tiso left Slovakia during the last months of the war and went into hiding in a German monastery. There, he was found and arrested (ironically by the Americans), extradited to Czechoslovakia (which slowly but steadfastly slipped into the Soviet orbit) and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in 1947. At the time, Czechoslovakia was still governed by a coalition government of Communists and democrats.

Needless to say, Tiso is an intensely controversial figure still today. He played the same role in his homeland as Quisling in Norway, Pétain in France or Pavelic in Croatia, i.e. the role of Nazi German collaborator. On the other hand, many Slovaks feel that they weren't given a fair shake in a Czech-dominated Czechoslovakia. Technically speaking, Tiso's authoritarian Catholic republic was the first independent Slovak state in history. When Slovakia became independent again in 1993 (now as a secular democratic republic), the question on how to look at Tiso's first attempt at Slovak statehood became a burning issue. Naturally, nationalists (usually Catholics) have a positive view of him, often trying to downplay or even deny Tiso's collaboration, his responsibility for the Holocaust in particular. Secularists, leftists, Lutherans and perhaps pro-Western Catholics reject his legacy, often vehemently. With the exception (I think) of the pro-Western Catholics, Tito's critics instead pay tribute to the SNP, the Communist-democratic revolt against Tiso's collaborationist regime.

Kamenec, while trying to sound neutral (to the point of viewing Tiso's life as a tragic drama rather than the gradual unfolding of evil) is nevertheless hotly critical of the man and his legacy. Tiso was a virulent anti-Semite from the start, a trait that suited him well during his days as a Nazi stooge, even earning the admiration of Hitler (who usually didn't think very highly of Untermensch hiwis). The Vatican protested the HSLS regime's deportations of Jews to the death camps, but to no avail. Tiso didn't even save Jews who had converted to the Catholic faith! Kamenec also points out that Nazi Germany had no particular plans to replace the Catholic nationalist Tiso with his adversaries within the HSLS, Vojtech Tuka and Alexander Mach, despite the fact that the latter were ideologically closer to German National Socialism. Rather, Berlin preferred a balance of power between the different factions of the HSLS, but never to the point of decisively challenging Tiso's authority – the priest was simply too useful. The Nazi German authorities assumed that Tiso, due to his nationalism and his peculiar dual role as president and clergyman, had widespread support among the common man in Slovakia, and was thus the best option available for keeping order. (A few German diplomats and secret service agents didn't trust Tiso, but Kamenec believes that Berlin didn't take their gossipy cables seriously.) When Tiso failed to suppress the pro-Allied resistance movement, Nazi Germany lost its patience, occupied Slovakia and suppressed the revolt themselves with typical Nazi brutality and bestiality. Tiso failed to protest, instead vehemently supporting the Nazis, once again making himself useful to the Führer. While some high-ranking HSLS cadre defected, Tiso never became a Slovak Horthy or Badoglio, preferring loyalty to the Reich to the end.

Apart from describing his “tragic” political career, Kamenec speculates about the man behind the headlines. What kind of person was Msgr Dr Jozef Tiso? On the one hand, he seems to have been well educated and well heeled, as behooves a Catholic clergyman. He was very much part of the elite, intensely ambitious and “political”. As a politician, he was mercurial, negotiating with Benes or Hodza one day, conspiring with German and Hungarian irredentists the next day, diplomatic and pragmatic in some contexts, demagogic and rabble-rousing in others. Above all, it's obvious that he craved power and had a strong authoritarian streak, viewing the Party and the nation as identical, constantly centralizing all effective decision-making to himself. More surprisingly, he was also strongly parochial, despite his high learning. The first time Tiso traveled by airplane was in 1939 during the fateful trip to Berlin. Hitler was the only foreign head of state he ever met, and he seemed to have difficulty telling apart Nazi propaganda about the splendid course of the war from actual realities on the ground. Kamenec also believes that Tiso became increasingly isolated in power, to the point of being personally shocked by the 1944 pro-Allied revolt, which he apparently didn't see coming at all. As Tiso's position became increasingly more difficult, rather than showing his diplomatic pragmatism and shrewdness, he retreated into a kind of thick-headed stubbornness, to the point of repeating even the most absurd propaganda lies with a straight face, as when he claimed that the Nazis could still win the war, or that the pro-Allied revolt (organized by native Slovaks) must have been orchestrated by well-monied Jews who had somehow escaped into the Tatra hills, arms in hand, presumably straight from the concentration camps…

I find it hard to agree with the author's “tragic” take on Tiso. The Slovak Duce rather comes across as an intolerant, power-obsessed, semi-parochial and frankly malign man, i.e. exactly the kind of person who tends to become an authoritarian leader. That being said, it's really a pity that this short, concise and highly informative book haven't been translated to English. It could be of considerable interest for, say, students of World War II.

Final point. Since “Tragédia Politika, Knaza a Cloveka” is published with the support of George Soros, the author at several points includes veiled polemics against Vladimir Meciar, the controversial prime minister of Slovakia 1994-98, who was a nationalist and populist. Soros at one point singled him out as one of his main targets. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of modern Slovak politics, but the fact that Kamenec can't help drawing certain parallels between the HSLS and Meciar's HZDS clearly shows that the “tragedy of Tiso” is still being played in Slovakia…

The Hungarian peril

A review of "Narodnostne mensini v Slovenskej republike: Z hladiska demografickeho vyvoja" 

This is a relatively short book in the Slovak language about national minorities in the Slovak republic. Most of it consists of statistical tables. The booklet is published by Matica Slovenska, a Slovak cultural association with a nationalist political orientation, so don't expect any political correctness.

The author's comments about the Roma (Gypsies) are particularly scathing: they refuse to work, were petted by the Communists, etc. I think it's obvious that the real point of the book is to analyze if the national minorities are growing or shrinking. The author eventually reaches the conclusion that the large Hungarian minority (traditional adversaries of the Slovak majority) will become somewhat smaller in the future, while the Roma will continue growing.

Despite this political orientation, I found the statistical tables and maps interesting and useful. As for politics, it turns out that censuses in Czechoslovakia were always politically laden, one way or another. But then, that's hardly unique for this particular state!

During the First Czechoslovak Republic, Czechs and Slovaks were considered to be one united Czechoslovak nationality, so no reliable figures on Czechs in Slovakia (or Slovaks in the Czech lands) exist. During most of the Second Czechoslovak Republic, the “petted” Roma (absurdly) weren't considered a separate nationality, while the Catholic Ruthenians were forced to become Orthodox Ukrainians, leading many of them to declare themselves Slovaks instead (most Slovaks are Catholic). Jews often refused to declare themselves such, for perhaps obvious reasons. Ironically, this was also true of Germans in post-war Czechoslovakia.

I bought this book “back in the days” (it was published in 1998) since it was the easiest available work on Slovakian nationality-related statistics at the time. It's probably not of much interest to the general American reader, even apart from the fact that it's written in Slovak.

Miroslav Sládek was here

A review of a bizarre parking sign saying "Reserved, For Czechs Only, All Others Will be Towed"

In 1992, Czech right-wing extremist politician extraordinaire Miroslav Sládek of the grossly misnamed Republican Party voluntarily committed himself to a mental institution. The doctors, puzzled, pointed out that his mental health was in perfect mint condition. Sládek said he wanted their evaluation in writing. The Republican Führer then made a point of showing his “certificate of sanity” during election rallies, arguing that he was the only politician in Czechoslovakia who could prove that he wasn't insane! Since Sládek was a Czech chauvinist who craved Lebensraum at the expense of Slovaks, Ruthenians, Roma, Jews and (ironically) Sudeten Germans, I'm sure he would have loved this parking sign...