Inlägg
av Artur Szulc » 22 augusti 2013, 11:14
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Andrej Hlinka:
Slovak Autonomist or Instigator of Proto-Fascist Incentive?
Andrej Hlinka was known by many as a political freedom fighter of the Slovak nation. The cleric and member of the Slovak National Council also, however, was considered by some to be the father of extreme Slovak nationalism during the interwar period. Consequently, Father Hlinka’s name was associated with the Nazi puppet state that was the first Slovak Republic of 1939-1945. The radicalization of the Slovak People’s Party contributed to the formation of the government of the first Republic. Andrej Hlinka’s name was given to many of the quasi-fascist constructs of the radicalized People’s Party. However, through examining Hlinka’s actual political activity before his death in 1938, it is clear that Slovak autonomy was at the forefront of his personal agenda. Despite Father Hlinka’s political blunders, and radical institutions such as the Hlinka Guard bearing his name, the true legacy of Hlinka’s political career was his push for Slovak autonomy.
On October 29th, 1918 the Slovak National Council, including Andrej Hlinka met in Turčianský Svätý Martin to consider the political direction of the Slovak nation. The first option for the Slovaks was to pursue autonomy within a Hungarian (Magyar majority) state, or a union with the Czechs in a Czecho-Slovak state. This was a pivotal moment that would shadow Andrej Hlinka’s political struggles until his death. On the next day, October 30th, 1918 the Turčianský Svätý Martin Declaration was issued. The declaration not only supported Slovak integration within the proposed Czecho-Slovak state, but recognized that the Slovaks were part of the Czecho-Slovak nation on the basis of linguistic, cultural, and historical commonality.
Such a declaration was shocking for Hlinka to be a part of, due to his reputation as a Slovak nationalist agitator during the period of Hungarian rule in Slovakia. Furthermore, Hlinka’s participation in the Turčianský Svätý Martin declaration was suspicious due to his known critical opinion of the Czechs. Hlinka wrote that “the Czechs are by nature more hot-headed and inclined for freedom.” This was a statement of Hlinka’s opposition to Czech religious radicalism in the name of Jan Hus. Father Hlinka was also a fierce proponent of Slovak Catholicism.
It came as no surprise when Hlinka became unhappy with state affairs in Slovakia at the end of the First World War. On December 19th, 1918, he founded the Slovak People’s Party. This decision outlined Hlinka’s position that the Czechs and Slovaks were two distinct nations. As a result, a political divide opened up amongst the Slovaks. The two sides of the divide were known as the centralists and the autonomists.
Shortly after the formation of the Slovak People’s Party, Andrej Hlinka met with members of the Slovak League of America in March of 1919. This group was dedicated to the advancement of the Slovak nation, and was formed by Slovak immigrants living in the United States. The members of the group informed Hlinka of the Pittsburgh Agreement which was signed in May of 1918. This political arrangement contained articles that represented many of Hlinka’s original ‘motifs,’ dating back to the fight against Magyarization. According to the agreement, Slovakia was to have its own administration, its own diet, and its own courts. However, the largest issue addressed by the agreement for Hlinka was the right to practice the teaching of Slovak in schools, in government offices, and in public life. Hlinka used the agreement as the basis of his petition for Slovak autonomy.
After learning of the various developments involving the reconstruction of Europe, Hlinka wished to become involved in the centre of peace negotiations. Hlinka sought to travel to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, in order to state the legitimacy of the Slovak’s desire for autonomy. However, he arrived ten days after the actual signing of the Treaty of St. Germain which took place on September 10th of 1919. This proved to be a critical blow to Hlinka’s cause as the treaty was drafted to outline the succession states of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Andrej Hlinka needed to be present at the Paris Peace Conference in order to introduce the concept of Slovak autonomy to the diplomatic circles of Europe. According to the Turčianský Svätý Martin Agreement, Hlinka and the Slovak National Councilmen professed that the Slovaks were a part of the Czechoslovak nation. Consequently, it was relatively simple for Czech president Eduard Beneš to extinguish the voices of Slovak autonomy on the diplomatic stage. Adding insult to injury, Hlinka was arrested and jailed for not having proper documentation when he attempted to return to Czechslovakia. 1919 marked a huge spoiled opportunity for Hlinka to advance the initiative of Slovak autonomy.
Even though Andrej Hlinka openly advocated the Czecho-Slovak orientation, it is clear that he did not intend to suppress the autonomy of the Slovaks. Due to his lengthy struggle against the Magyars prior to 1918, the context of Hlinka’s statement favouring a new marriage between the Czechs and Slovaks was clearly a reaction to the unimaginable continuation of Hungarian rule. However, Beneš and Czechoslovakists seized the opportunity to trap Hlinka in his own words. As a result of Hlinka’s endorsement of Czecho-Slovak unity, the proponents of Czechoslovakism possessed an opportunity to silence any anti-centralist sentiment.
For the Czechs, years of Habsburg administration and the unsettling treaty of Versailles meant that Czechoslovakia was in desperate need of political stabilization. Since there was a huge divide between the preexisting conditions in the Czech lands and the Slovak lands, a strategy had to be devised in order to bring Slovakia toward the same political structure as the Czech lands. Dr. Vavro Šrobar, who had been appointed head of the Slovak government, believed that political stability could only be achieved through iron “centralism.”
Since there were no qualified Slovaks to fulfill government positions, Šrobar justified bringing Czechs in to Slovakia to fill positions that were previously dominated by Magyars before the outbreak of the Great War. Hlinka saw this as a ploy to hand all control of Slovak territory to Prague. Šrobar justified the move in favour of necessary rapid integration of the Czechoslovak republic.
According to Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, Hlinka’s appeal to the Paris Peace Conference was a political blunder. Knowing the nominated head of Slovak government, Dr. Vavro Šrobar had already initiated a heavily centralized structure in Slovakia; Hlinka immediately went to Paris to appeal to the Peace Conference. At that point the cost of failure for Hlinka was enormous. Not knowing that Beneš had already declared the Slovak national question a settled matter proved to be a larger downfall for Hlinka, rather than a simple political miscalculation. As a result of being arrested upon his return from a fruitless trip, Hlinka was absent from his party and stripped of his parliamentary mandate. The lack of a leader simply strengthened Šrobar’s centralist appeal for stability in Slovakia.
However, Andrej Hlinka mounted a strategic recovery in Slovak political circles. In preparation for the 1925 elections, Hlinka constantly refered to the principles of the Pittsburgh Agreement, and cited the need for autonomy. Leading up to the 1925 elections, Hlinka made the decision to move the Slovak People’s Party into governmental opposition. This reduced the power of the party in the Prague parliament severely. Hlinka’s strategy was to demonstratively denounce the Prague parliament, and subsequently lobby for the creation of a Slovak parliament. His rhetoric was structured around the words, “the Prague government doesn’t understand Slovakia.” The strategy seemed to work as the Slovak People’s Party emerged from the elections in 1925 as the strongest party in Slovakia with twenty three seats. In terms of nominal power, even a one hundred percent victory would not have given the Slovaks any real parliamentary control due to the larger number of seats in the Czech lands. Autonomy was the only way that Hlinka, and the Slovak People’s Party would ever see actual administrative power. However, Hlinka and his party won a decisive victory of popular support within the Slovak lands. The mistake which weakened the autonomy principle amongst the Slovaks was then reversed as a result of Hlinka’s anti-Prague rallying.
Despite Andrej Hlinka`s relentless struggle in the interest of Slovak autonomy, by 1945 his reputation had met great slander in Central Europe. Most negative incentive surrounding Hlinka’s name revolved around the legacy of the radicalized Hlinka Slovak People`s Party from 1925 to the end of the Second World War. The radicalization of the party featured the creation of the infamous Hlinka Guard which fostered accusations of Hlinka being associated with the advocacy of fascism.
The political manipulation of the Slovaks by Adolf Hitler resulted in the declaration of the independence of the Slovak Republic. Unfortunately for Hlinka’s namesake, the realization of this disastrous Nazi puppet State was attributed to his life’s work. Hlinka’s death in 1938 proved to be well timed in the interest of the radicals. In order to cast away accusations of being an accessory to Hitler`s Reich, the radicalized Hlinka People’s Party used the legacy of Andrej Hlinka’s fight for Slovak autonomy to bolster support for the new Republic.
The communists saw this as an opportunity to label Hlinka, and all his nationalist ideas proto-fascist. They did all this by associating all Catholic nationalist sentiment in Slovakia with support for the Nazi regime. Andrej Hlinka himself was associated with giving birth to all Catholic nationalism. No attention was paid to the fact that extreme nationalist sentiment, similar to that of Nazi Germany was initiated by the radicals of Hlinka’s party after his death in 1938. One of the most influential constructs of the radicalization of the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party was the Hlinka Guard. This paramilitary organization was designed to maintain internal order in Slovakia. However, the guard was known to operate by subduing the political voices of Jews, Magyars, Czechs, and leftists. The guard was structured under the same principles as the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and the Romanian Iron Guard. Shortly after being formed, membership in the Hlinka Guard began to reach unprecedented levels. The guard was mandated to defend the interests of the Slovak Republic by new president Jozef Tiso. Tiso was a moderate by nature who, in the footsteps of Father Hlinka, rose to the leadership of the Slovak People`s Party. However, Tiso did not have total control of the Hlinka Guard. Most recruiting initiatives were spearheaded by Karol Sidor, the commander of the guard. Sidor was a radical who was hardened by fighting years of Magyar oppression. As a result, Sidor commanded a tremendous amount of respect from the Hlinka Guard membership. This influence allowed the Hlinka Guard to fall under the complete control of the radical wing of the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party, and not the control of President Tiso.
The radical Hlinka Guard provided ample ammunition for the defamation of Andrej Hlinka by his political opponents. Both the Czechs and the Hungarian communists associated extreme right wing Catholic nationalism with Andrej Hlinka. Revisionists such a Yeshayahu Jelinek used the Hlinka Guard`s violence against Jews and political opponents in order to argue that Hlinka`s autonomy agenda from 1919 to 1923 was the birthplace of extreme right wing Catholic nationalism. Clearly, the difference between Hlinka as a moderate and the radical members of his party was overlooked by the opponents of Slovak autonomy. Such incentive had been demonstrated by the Prague government throughout the interwar period, as examined earlier in this paper.
The origin of Andrej Hlinka’s infamy in the inner circles of Czechoslovak politics came to fruition upon his decision to attempt to appeal to the Paris Peace Conference. Eduard Beneš was a firm believer in the necessity of complete central control over the Slovak lands due to the democratic deficit that existed during the period of Hungarian rule. There are several other factors to consider that may have been relevant to Beneš. The presence of numerous minority groups within in Slovakia was believed to be the reason that T.G. Masaryk did not believe that the Slovaks could democratically administer the Slovak side of the Czechoslovak Republic. The foundation of this argument was based upon the potential nationalist upheaval from such groups as the Ruthenes as a reaction to Slovak rule. Ironically, the Czechoslovak state was creating potential nationalist upheaval amongst the Slovaks within the framework of the post World War One peace arrangements in Central Europe.
Andrej Hlinka’s reaction to this incentive by Masaryk was to openly denounce the Czech handling of the issue of Slovak autonomy. For Hlinka, Masaryk’s policy of centralism was an attempt to tighten Czech influence in the new republic as quick as possible. The most notorious example of Hlinka’s reaction to Masaryk’s centralist doctrine, later assumed by Beneš, was his speech in 1932 when he said that the Slovak People’s Party would not renounce its right to autonomy, even at the price of the Czechoslovak Republic. For opponents of Hlinka’s push for Slovak autonomy, Hlinka’s words were perfect material to construct an image of Father Hlinka as anti-Czech and anti-democratic. The events after his death such as the Munich crisis further distorted this image. As a result of this distorted image, associations of extreme nationalism and even fascism have been synonymous with Andrej Hlinka’s namesake amongst his political opponents.
Fascism is one of the keywords pertaining to the criticism of Hlinka and his involvement in Slovak politics. The fascist movements in Europe began to manifest in 1919. Coincidentally, Andrej Hlinka’s attempted appeal to the Paris Peace Conference was at the same time. Hlinka’s reactionary incentive against Czech centralism has been compared to fascist movements in Italy, Germany, and France by Stanley Payne. Payne, a historian of European fascism movements, states that Hlinka’s Slovak autonomy platform in 1919 possessed two of the great negations of fascism. These were namely, anti-communism and anti-conservatism. However, Hlinka’s political platform of Slovak autonomy did not possess the third negation, anti-liberalism. Hlinka’s platform was based on the same principle of his anti-Magyarization initiatives during Hungarian rule. This base factor was the right of parliamentary diet and suffrage for the Slovak nation. Payne denotes this as indicative of liberalism.
Many of Hlinka’s opponents have associated the extreme right wing characteristics of the Slovak Republic of 1939-1945 and the Hlinka Guard with his appeal for Slovak autonomy in 1919 to 1923. These opponents range from the Hungarian communists, to the Czech government in Prague, and even to the centralists who emerged from within the ranks of the Slovak People`s Party (as a result of Father Hlinka’s political failure in 1919). Even the radical wing that developed out of the dissatisfaction of Hlinka’s progress as chairman of the Slovak People`s Party can be defended against accusations of proto-fascism. However, that is a matter that cannot be addressed within the framework of this paper. What can be defended here is the purpose of Hlinka’s political career. After examining examples of events both directly and indirectly involving Andrej Hlinka, it is clear that he did not act based on a doctrine of proto-fascism.
In 1938 Hlinka’s last great day featured him holding up a signed copy of the Pittsburgh Agreement from a balcony. The existence of this Agreement displayed the hypocrisy of T.G Masaryk. Masaryk signed the document, but had denied being a part of the Pittsburgh negotiations that recognized the need for Slovak autonomy. This last act of political defiance symbolized the true purpose of Hlinka’s involvement in politics. The proverbial blood, sweat, and tears of Father Hlinka were shed in the name of Slovak autonomy, and not for any other agenda.
Bibliography
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Kirschbaum, Stanislav J. “The Slovak People`s Party: The Politics of Opposition, 1918-1938.” In Slovak Politics: Essays on Slovak History. Cleveland: Slovak Institute, 1983.
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Artur Szulc
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