Czechoslovakism
[1] Today Czechoslovakism as political concept or ideology is almost defunct; its remnant is a general sentiment of cultural affinity, present among many Czechs and Slovaks.
Except some 70 years of Great Moravia in the early Medieval era, until the 20th century the peoples in the basins of Upper Elbe, Morava, Váh, Nitra and Hornád have never lived in a common state.
[2] Throughout ages they were gradually developing various and not necessarily conflicting identities, like Czechs, Bohemians, Moravians, Slavs, Slovaks, Slovjaks, Czechoslavs, Hungaroslavs[3] and other, also hybrid concepts.
[4] These identities might have been constructed along dynastic, ethnic, cultural, religious or territorial lines and might have been embraced by various groupings, from few intellectuals to large rural masses.
The current which emphasised some sort of general commonality between Slavic people living West and East of the White Carpathians was based on language.
In the early 17th century Bible kralická and its linguistic standard, later known as bibličtina, was accepted for religious use in Protestant Slavic communities both West and East of the White Carpathians.
In the late 18th century the Slavic Protestant circles centered in Preßburg went beyond the purely religious usage of bibličtina and elaborated on a broader concept of common culture, shared by all Czech-related people.
In 1793 Juraj Ribay worked out Projekt ústavu alebo spoločnosti slovensko-českej medzi Slovákmi v Uhorsku,[5] a draft of educational institution to be based on Czech language; thanks to efforts of Bohuslav Tablic and Martin Hamaliar in 1803 the Preßburg Lyceum opened the chair “řeči a literatury československej”;[6] in the 1810s Juraj Palkovič started to publish Týdenník aneb Císařské královské Národní noviny, a weekly which advanced a common Czech-related cause;[7] in 1829 a number of scholars founded Společnost česko-slovanská, a cultural and education association which set branches also further East, e.g. in Késmárk and Lőcse;[8] some activists established a network of bookstores and tried to propagate Czech literature.
The current of building a common Slavic community centered upon Czech culture climaxed in mid-19th century thanks to activity of Jozef Šafárik and especially Jan Kollár, the latter graduate of the Preßburg Lyceum himself.
The trend towards buildup of Slovak literary language, commenced by Bernolák mostly to counter Protestantism already in the late 18th century, diverted from religious issues and assumed a decisively national flavor; championed by Štúr, Hurban and Hodža it opposed a Czech-focused perspective.
[15] Some one-off events, e.g. a 1895 Czech-Slavic ethnographic exhibition in Prague generated much interest, though they were not exactly focused on a joint Czech and Slovak cause.
Their demands were based on historical arguments related to the so-called lands of the Czech crown; as Slovak-speaking territories had never been part of the concept, pointing to a common Czech-Slovak cause would have had ruined this logic.
[19] The Slovaks struggled to cope with state-sponsored Magyarization and merely aimed to build an institutional network of cultural and education outposts within Hungary; with just 1 deputy in the Budapest parliament their chances to influence the official Hungarian politics were extremely slim.
[30] Back home politicians grouped in Czech Union declared their loyalty to the Habsburgs; in 1917 they advocated an entity within the empire which would unite “all branches of Czechoslovak people”.
[40] The Paris Council in liaison with the Prague Committee promulgated a provisional constitution and agreed on composition of the constituent National Assembly; 254 Czech seats were filled according to recent elections to the Austrian Reichsrat, while 55 Slovaks mostly hand-picked by Šrobár were co-opted later.
Another theory claims that the concept of common state was mostly anti-German and anti-Hungarian; the Czechs and the Slovaks realised that in their own nation-states they might not control sizeable and economically privileged minorities.
However, in the late 1930s ľudáci already demanded political autonomy, even though they declared full loyalty to Czechoslovak state as the only defence line against German and Hungarian revisionism.
Some ľudák leaders were under police surveillance, some of their rallies were banned, their press tribunes were suspended for brief periods and few politicians were at times detained, though all measures were firmly based in constitutional order and they have never turned into state-sponsored systematic persecution.
Slovakia became a fully autonomous unit with own government, administration and special budgetary provisions; some overall Czechoslovak issues, e.g. presidential elections, were subjected to consent of qualified majority of the Slovak assembly.
This setup lasted only few months; in March 1939 the prime minister of autonomous Slovakia and the ľudák leader Jozef Tiso declared total independence.
[71] Most key cultural institutions like central art gallery, theatre, museum or philharmonic orchestra were duplicated, with the Czech ones located in Prague and the Slovak ones in Bratislava.
[77] However, in course of 1990-1992 the initial consensus was getting increasingly fragile; its first sign was a so-called “hyphen war”, when parliamentarians debated whether the country should be named “Czechoslovak”, “Czecho-Slovak” or “Czech and Slovak” Republic.
Though eventually the last of these solutions was adopted as official name in both languages,[78] the episode demonstrated substantial differences between Czechs and Slovaks about the identity of their shared country.
Except the Communists there was no party with comparable support in Czech and Slovak lands, and except Havel and Dubček there were no Czech/Slovak politicians which enjoyed prestige in their non-native republics.
[80] In Slovakia the 1992 elections produced clear but not overwhelming victory of Slovakia-specific parties which advocated a confederative Czechoslovak solution, though they included also a visible independentist current.
Following a few weeks of unsuccessful negotiations, in July the HZDS-dominated Slovak diet unilaterally declared independence, sealed shortly afterwards by decision to dissolve Czechoslovakia, adopted jointly by Klaus and Mečiar.
[81] However, there was no vigorous movement in defence of the common state either; its key advocate was president Havel, at the time a moral authority rather than a political leader.
[93] The initiative produced no result so far; signatures needed are being collected, but it is not clear whether there is any chance to meet the threshold required by law, especially high in case of Slovakia.
The former definition clearly prevails yet its exact content might vary, as relations between the Czechs and the Slovaks in the common nation could have been defined differently.
When assessing the balance between centrifugal and centripetal factors most scholars are very cautious when offering a verdict whether Czechoslovakism was doomed to fail or whether it stood a chance of success.
