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1

BETWEEN BOHEMIA AND RUSSIA: ĽUDOVÍT ŠTÚR, SLOVAK IDENTITY, AND THE CONTROVERSIES OF THE SLAVIC WORLD

100%
Van Duin P. C.
Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy
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2016
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vol. 9
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issue 2
50 – 73
EN
This essay tries to analyse the ‘Slav idea’, the structure of ‘Slavic thought’ of Ľudovít Štúr, and to explain why it was an attractive ideological option for him. Štúr’s Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft is seen as more or less a natural continuation of his life-long ideological tendencies. But it is also argued that Štúr can be seen as a man with ‘two souls’ in his political personality. On the one hand, his activities were part of the Slav and Central European struggle for national emancipation, social reform, and democratic rights. On the other hand, many of his writings were marked by a belief in the special character and historical mission of the Slavs, and of the Slovaks and the Russians in particular. His All-Slav ideas were reinforced by the influence of Russian Slavophiles and Pan-Slavists, furthering the conviction that Slav political unity was to be implemented under Russian leadership. The Slovaks were seen as having remained linguistically closest to the original Slavs living in the Pannonian homeland and, therefore, as a special Slav group. Russia was seen as the political centre that was needed to unite the Slavs and to confer on them the leading historical role that Herder and Kollár had foreseen they would play. Meanwhile the values of democracy, equality, and other European ideals retreated to the margins. Aside from preserving the ‘old Slav village community’ as a model of social justice, the Slav idea was incapable of producing any remarkable social or political ideas. Instead it idealised Tsarist autocracy and the Orthodox Church as a conservative alternative to modern Europe.
2

‘POLITICAL LIFE IS DYING OUT’: ROSA LUXEMBURG’S CRITIQUE OF BOLSHEVISM AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

100%
Van Duin P. C.
Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy
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2018
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vol. 11
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issue 1
19 – 33
EN
This article analyses the critical comments of Rosa Luxemburg on Lenin’s model of the Bolshevik vanguard-party with its elite of professional revolutionaries and on the political events in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution. Rosa Luxemburg had a different concept of socialist revolution than Lenin did, for she regarded the revolutionary process as something that was based on the spontaneous actions of the working class and the mass participation of the people. A socialist party could channel and co-ordinate this revolutionary energy, but Rosa Luxemburg attached great importance to democratic freedoms and procedures and rejected the dictatorial tendencies emerging in Bolshevik Russia. She was hoping that the Bolshevik revolution would be the beginning of a European socialist revolution and never believed that Russia could make a socialist transformation on its own. In fact, she foresaw the bureaucratic dictatorship that Lenin’s Russia would in her view inevitably become, if the deformation of the revolution was not halted by international political developments on a higher democratic and socialist level.
3

INDEPENDENCE LOST AND REGAINED: MONTENEGRO’S CONTESTED IDENTITY AND THE FAILURE OF YUGOSLAVIA (1918-2006)

63%
Poláčková Z., Van Duin P. C.
Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy
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2017
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vol. 10
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issue 1
23 – 47
EN
This article examines the political evolution of Montenegro during the era of Yugoslavia (1918-1992) and the subsequent years of political conflict that eventually led to the regaining of Montenegrin independence in 2006. The First World War and the formation of the Yugoslav state not only meant the end of independent Montenegro but also the emergence of a new political context in which internal Montenegrin antagonisms were played out. While a considerable proportion of Montenegrin Orthodox Slavs supported the multinational but Serb-dominated Yugoslav state, there was also a growing number of Montenegrins who wanted to restore the country’s autonomous or even independent status. This was implemented to some degree in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but then was endangered again during the crisis of Yugoslavia in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition there was growing unrest among the Muslim minorities and civil protests against Montenegro’s participation on the side of the Serbs in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The final result was a stronger anti-Serbian stance not only among a part of the general population but also among a significant section of the old political elite. This eventually led to Montenegro regaining independence through a referendum in 2006. However, achieving independence meant that Montenegro’s other serious problems, including corruption, uneven economic development and deficient democratisation, came even more emphatically to the fore.
4

AUTHORITARIANISM IN CRISIS: PORTUGAL, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, AND ‘1968’

63%
Poláčková Z., Van Duin P. C.
Historický časopis (Historical Journal)
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2019
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vol. 67
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issue 1
127 - 155
EN
This article makes a comparative analysis of political developments in Portugal and Czechoslovakia during the 1960s and early 1970s, focusing on the historic year ‘1968’ and its preconditions. The two countries experienced authoritarian regimes that went through a crisis of both a systemic and a moral kind, reaching a climax in 1968. In Czechoslovakia the liberalization policy of Alexander Dubček and his reform-communist coalition triggered spontaneous political and cultural activities among the population, which became a threat to the system of one-party rule. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 put an end to this experiment and the illusion of reform communism. The analysis of the causes, contradictions, and failure of liberalization remains a challenging subject for contemporary historians. Comparing the Czechoslovak experience with the evolution of the right-wing dictatorship in Portugal during the same period, may help to deepen our understanding of the nature and limits of authoritarianism in Europe. In Portugal the protracted regime of António Salazar came to an end in the same year 1968 after a series of manifestations of political crisis in the 1960s had shown its weaknesses and the inevitability of reform. However, his successor Marcelo Caetano maintained the regime’s authoritarian core and only carried out some cosmetic changes to keep Portugal with its colonies afloat. The Portuguese had to wait until 1974 for the regime to collapse, a short period of time, however, compared with the twenty-one more years that the Czechs and Slovaks had to wait. The extent of political space for opposition activity and the nature of elite disunity are among the critical questions examined in this article, which makes a comparison of Portugal and Czechoslovakia a challenging endeavour.
5

BIG BANG OF COMMUNISM: THE BOLSHEVIKS’ DESTRUCTION OF THE RUSSIAN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND THE MAKING OF THE FIRST COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP (NOVEMBER 1917-JANUARY 1918)

63%
Van Duin P. C., Poláčková Z.
Studia Politica Slovaca: časopis pre politické vedy, najnovšie politické dejiny a medzinárodné vzťahy
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2019
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vol. 12
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issue 2
57 – 75
EN
This essay examines the suppression by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 of Russia’s first democratically elected parliament, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, and the various steps taken and arguments used by them during the preceding weeks to achieve this goal. Although Lenin and his Bolshevik party had never intended to tolerate the emergence of the Constituent Assembly as a competing political institution to their so-called Soviet democracy, they had to take care to present their repressive intervention as a rational and inevitable act from a revolutionary point of view. This crucial historical episode reveals the true character of the communist movement and communist ideology, which developed into one of the most dangerous threats to European democracy. There were several socialist parties in Russia who tried to fight the Bolsheviks and to present a democratic-socialist alternative, in particular the moderate (‘Right’) wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The last section of this essay pays some additional attention to Viktor Chernov, a leader of the democratic group of Socialist-Revolutionaries and the President of the Constituent Assembly. In 1921 he fled to Czechoslovakia, where he lived until 1929.
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