when Czechoslovakia was created, in addition to the national principle, there was also a controversy about the meaning of Czech history. There was something utopian about it, but it gave the state a certain depth. At the time, Slovakia was not ready for something similar, so Peroutko’s discussions about state building did not have a great response here. But since we were part of Czechoslovakia, the civilizational excesses of the Czech state ambitions changed Slovakia as well.
The Second World War tragically ended the building of a free and prosperous Czechoslovakia. During it, the principle of survival once again prevailed in Slovakia. The argument that if we do not submit to Hitler’s Germany, we will lose the state, was widely accepted and distorted Slovak thinking for a long time. The state is still understood here as something that has meaning in itself, regardless of content.
The post-war fall of Czechoslovakia into the Russian sphere of influence and the rise of communists supported by Moscow have corrupted our thinking about the state even more. We were not a free country, but in Slovakia it was decided how to carry out the Czech-Slovak settlement. Even after the occupation in 1968, the Slovak elite enjoyed the formal strengthening of Slovak competences, as if they mattered most in the totalitarian occupied state. The idea that the republic had meaning in itself was being strengthened.
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGESOctober 26, 1918 Philadelphia, USA: TG Masaryk at the time of signing the Declaration of Common Goals of the Independent Central European Nations two days before the creation of Czechoslovakia. The civilizational excesses of Czech state ambitions also changed Slovakia.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Slovakia returned to the
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