At a time when we are suddenly forced to stay at home involuntarily for the sake of protecting our health, we probably often reach for a good book. And it was during this period that I got my hands on a small book by a Czech journalist, among other things the former editor-in-chief of the Slovak daily SME, but also of the Czech magazine Respekt, Martin M. Šimečka Among the Slovaks with the subtitle A Brief History of Indifference from Dubček to Fic or How I Became a Patriot .
Until 1989, the author moved in the circle of Slovak and Czech dissent, but it was not easy even during the times of Mečiar's government. At the time of the division of Czechoslovakia into two separate countries, he was one of the few Czechs who decided to voluntarily choose Slovak citizenship despite the fact that both of his parents were Czech. Even this step testifies to his close relationship with Slovakia. The book Medzi Slovákmi is an intelligent look at the modern history of Slovakia, especially in the period of Czechoslovak dissent and after the "gentle" revolution, which marked a historical landmark in the history of both our nations, Czechs and Slovaks. In the introduction to the book, Martin M. Šimečka succinctly describes the differences in the development and attitudes of intellectual circles in both countries, represented in Slovakia by a tacit agreement with the regime and the partial indifference of writers, with the exception of Dominik Tatarka and some other courageous people with a similar fate as an exile in their own country. Already in this period, he finds among the Slovaks the roots of the civic indifference of the Slovak society, which in the following years enabled the unlimited power of autocracy, national extremism, and recurring tendencies towards fascism. In the next part, the author tells an interesting story about the formation of a revolutionary group around Ján Budaj in parallel with the silent Christian defiance in the form of candlelight demonstrations in Bratislava. It captures the period of the creation of the Public against Violence movement up to the taking of the initiative by former communists from the circle of Vladimír Mečiar, Milan Čič or Alexander Dubček. He describes the causes of Vladimír Mečiar's takeover of the country in the 1990s as frustration with democracy, which brought people uncertainty and a sense of decline. In doing so, Slovakia was twenty years ahead of the process that is currently taking place in some other European countries and the USA, where the liberal elites are considered the number one enemy. According to the author, Mečiar's biggest mistake was that, under the leadership of his Minister of Culture, he made enemies of artists whom he tried to silence by letting them starve and humiliate them. They then became, with the help of independent media such as Markíza television and Twist radio, the driving force of resistance against his government. On the contrary, the author sees the problem of the era of Mikuláš Dzurinda in that, although it respected the principles of democracy and the involvement of Slovakia in international structures, the top politicians were too self-absorbed. Society, in the spirit of the ideology of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was built mainly on the idea that everyone should take care of themselves and not others. And even at the cost of corruption. However, it expanded even more in the next decade of Róbert Fico's government. His style of state leadership is more reminiscent of democratic centralism from the time of communist leader Gustáv Husák, built on the principles of stability, the guarantee of which is the stability of his own power. In reality, however, despite Slovakia's economic growth, its system is a period of steady decline and erosion of autonomous institutions, such as the courts and the police, without which democracy cannot function. This ultimately led to the free fall of his power and an open society, the period of which is still too early to assess. The book Medzi Slovákmi is therefore not only a wise guide to the modern history of the state, but also a living testimony of the lives of contemporaries who experienced most of the mentioned events firsthand.
Text: Vladimír Dubeň