The Second World War brought historic changes to the political order of Europe. Much of Central Europe fell within the geopolitical sphere of the Soviet Union, including what was then Czechoslovakia. This resulted from the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany and the sacrifice of 27 million Soviet citizens. These major geopolitical changes were followed by smaller political shifts in Slovakia. During the war, everyone knew who the Communists were, who the members of the Slovak People's Party were, who the Agrarians were, and so on. Each group frequented “its own” café and drank in “its own” wine tavern.
After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Minister of the Interior Alexander (Šaňo) Mach wanted to demonstrate determination and ordered the arrest of several well-known Communists, including Gustáv Husák. Husák’s wife Magda (born Lokvencová), knew Pavol Čarnogurský, a member of the Slovak Diet (and the father of the author of this article), through work. She approached him and asked him to intervene on behalf of her husband. Pavol Čarnogurský visited Šaňo Mach and argued that he was turning harmless Communists into martyrs and increasing their importance. Mach accepted the argument and ordered Husák’s release. During the war, the same situation occurred once again.
The struggle for the Catholics
After the war, the situation was reversed. A presidential decree ordering the detention of members of the wartime Slovak Diet as those responsible for the war was in force. My father was imprisoned in Spišská Stará Ves. This time, my mother turned to Husák, who had by then become Commissioner of the Interior and, in terms of authority, the successor to Šaňo Mach, requesting my father’s release. Gustáv Husák agreed, and my father was released from prison. This time, however, it was not simply a matter of repaying a favour. Even then, Husák was thinking one political step ahead. The Hlinka Slovak People’s Party, the ruling party during the Slovak State, had been dissolved and banned. Elections were expected to take place within about a year. In reality, only two parties remained on the political scene – the Communist Party and the Democratic Party, supported primarily by Protestants. Husák knew that if only those two parties contested the election, Catholics, who formed the majority of Slovakia’s population, would not vote for the Communists. He therefore wanted a third party to be established that would attract former Hlinka Slovak People’s Party voters. Only then would the Communists stand a chance of winning. However, he needed contact with an authentic former member of the Slovak People’s Party. Pavol Čarnogurský was ideally suited to that role. Following mobilisation, my father joined the Czechoslovak Army in Košice after his release from prison, where Husák was also staying after returning from Moscow. They established contact and began discussing the creation of a new “Catholic” party. Catholics were also interested in having “their” party authorised because it would be able to represent the interests of – simply put – the Catholic section of the population more effectively. Among the key demands of the Catholic founders of the new party was that President Jozef Tiso should not be sentenced to death by the National Court or, if he were sentenced, that he should receive a pardon, which was a matter for the government to decide.
The lost election
The establishment of the new party progressed promisingly. Katolícke noviny (Catholic News) was authorised and quickly gained a wide readership. The party’s statutes were approved. Emanuel Böhm, who had represented Slovaks in Hungary during the war and had spent the entire period opposing the Horthy regime, was to become party chairman. That was where the process collapsed. Authorisation of the party depended on the National Front leadership in Prague. It imposed the condition that the party should instead be led by the interwar politician Vavro Šrobár, who was completely unacceptable to conservative circles in Slovakia. The founders abandoned the creation of the new party and concluded the April Agreement with the Democratic Party. In the May 1946 elections, the Democratic Party won decisively, securing two-thirds of the vote, while the Communist Party received just under one-third.
Trial and imprisonment
The political paths of Gustáv Husák and Pavol Čarnogurský then diverged for several years. They were brought closer together again by developments originating in Moscow. In June 1948, the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), under Stalin’s leadership, adopted a resolution against bourgeois nationalism. Although it was directed primarily against Tito’s policy in Yugoslavia, it also applied to other countries in the Eastern Bloc that might seek to pursue policies independent of Moscow. When the resolution referred to bourgeois nationalism, the first thing Communist officials in Czechoslovakia thought of was Slovak nationalism. The highest-ranking Slovak Communists were Vladimír Clementis and Gustáv Husák. In January 1951, the State Security (ŠtB) arrested both of them, along with several others. They were accused of attempting to break up Czechoslovakia. The investigators wanted to connect the case with a former member of the Slovak People’s Party who had once participated in the break-up of the republic – Pavol Čarnogurský. Many people knew that he had secured Husák’s release from prison during the war and that he had later negotiated with Husák after the war, so why not claim that those discussions had also concerned breaking up the republic? Pavol Čarnogurský was likewise arrested by the State Security in January 1951. Neither he nor Husák gave in under torture in prison, and neither confessed according to the investigators’ instructions. My father was released without trial in November 1951. Husák was removed from the main group and tried separately only after Stalin’s death. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was gradually reduced until he was released under an amnesty in May 1960. In the original group, Rudolf Slánský replaced Vladimír Clementis as its leading figure. Both of them, along with another nine defendants, were executed.
The days after November
After their release, both Gustáv Husák and Pavol Čarnogurský worked in construction companies in Bratislava in manual positions. They met once while carrying out their duties and exchanged experiences. Later, Gustáv Husák became President of Czechoslovakia, while I, the author of this article, after being released from prison in December 1989 under Husák’s individual amnesty – which I had never requested – took the constitutional oath as First Deputy Prime Minister of the Federal Government of National Understanding before him. During the oath, Gustáv Husák said to me: “I wasn’t the one who had you imprisoned.” Gustáv Husák died in November 1991. At that time, I was Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic (within the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic) and attended his funeral in Bratislava. Husák’s ashes are buried in the cemetery in his birthplace of Dúbravka, now a district of Bratislava. My father, Pavol Čarnogurský, died in December 1992. He is buried in his native region of Zamagurie.
With Erich Honecker and Walter Ulbricht in 1971.
The author
Ján Čarnogurský (born 1 January, 1944, in Bratislava) is a former Czechoslovak and Slovak politician.
He graduated in law from Charles University Prague and got his PhD in 1971 from Comenius University Bratislava.
He worked as an attorney, representing a number of religious activists and political dissidents, which got him disbarred in 1981. In August 1989, he was arrested and charged with sedition.
After the Velvet Revolution, he was the first deputy prime minister of the federal government. Čarnogurský then went on to become the first deputy prime minister of the CSFR and first deputy prime minister of the SR, he founded the Christian-Democratic Movement (KDH) and became its chairman.
Between 1998 and 2002, he was the Slovak minister of justice, and briefly also the prime minister.
In the year 2000, he left his position as chairman of the KDH and started his own law firm. Three years later, he helped found the Paneuropean University (formerly the University of Law Bratislava).
He is very open about his Russophilia and is the chairman of the Slovak-Russian Society, established in 2006. He ran for president in 2014 but did not advance to the second round.
He has four children with his wife Marta.
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