The creation of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I was a brilliant project. After centuries of living in states dominated by foreign powers, two Slavic nations liberated themselves, founded a common state, and naturally set idealistic goals. However, the absence of shared historical experience and the theoretical foundation for coexistence - the Czechoslovak nation - soon revealed their limitations.
The first sign was the demand for Slovak autonomy, based on the Pittsburgh Agreement of 1918. This was a minimalist demand but one that was ultimately fulfilled in November 1938, after its main proponent, Andrej Hlinka, had passed away. After the Munich Agreement, the central government in Prague was no longer able to defend the republic as a whole in March 1939, and Slovakia had to find its own path. The result was the establishment of a Slovak state dependent on Germany.
The first trials
After the war, in 1945, the Czechoslovak Republic was restored as a state of two nations (and national minorities), initially with an uncertain legal status for Slovakia. In addition to the national differences and later discord, political tensions arose between domestic communists and the communist factions loyal to Moscow. Slovak aspirations were now supported by the Slovak National Uprising. Although the uprising was militarily defeated, it still held significance. The concept of a centrally managed republic seemingly received support from Moscow. After Tito's Yugoslavia broke away from Moscow, the Communist Information Bureau in Moscow adopted a resolution in June 1948 against bourgeois nationalism. This Bureau resolution concerned “bourgeois nationalism” in the states that had fallen under Moscow's influence following the Yalta Conference of 1945 and were attempting to loosen their ties to Moscow, or even the communist parties themselves, rather than internal nationalism within individual states. Trials against advocates of “bourgeois nationalism” took place in all Eastern Bloc countries, mostly resulting in death sentences.
Death sentences
At the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Slovakia in May 1950, its leader, Viliam Široký, accused Clementis, Husák, and Novomeský of being proponents of bourgeois nationalism. In January 1951, Vladimír Clementis, a leftist intellectual and then Minister of Foreign Affairs, was arrested. Clementis had a black mark on his record - he publicly criticized the Soviet-German treaty (the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact) in August 1939. In February, Gustáv Husák, a Slovak communist politician and intellectual, was also arrested. Husák was a friend of Clementis and had briefly worked as a lawyer in Clementis‘ law firm in Bratislava. In January 1951, the author of this text’s father, Pavol Čarnogurský, was also arrested. He was supposed to testify as a member of the Slovak parliament that he and Husák had discussed how to split Slovakia from the republic. Other individuals in significant positions in Bratislava and Prague were also arrested. Until November 1951, Vladimír Clementis, a leading figure among Slovak leftist intellectuals around the DAV magazine, was the head of the group. However, Clementis was not in a position to lead the entire republic against the Soviet Union. In November 1951, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slánský, was arrested and placed at the head of the group. Clementis was subsequently investigated, accused, and executed for Slovak nationalism and collaborating with Western spies against the Eastern Bloc. Slánský’s group was sentenced, and 11 people were executed for attempting to sever the republic’s ties with Moscow.
Further convictions
Gustáv Husák was the only one who endured the inhumane interrogations without confessing, and he succeeded in being excluded from Slánský’s main group. There was no time to wait for Husák's confession, so he was placed at the head of those accused of “bourgeois nationalism” against Prague rather than Moscow. Other accused individuals included Ivan Horváth, a writer, diplomat, and politician; Daniel Okáli, a lawyer, politician, and writer who held the post of Interior Commissioner; Ladislav Holdoš, a communist official; and Ladislav Novomeský, a writer and politician. The arrests took place in December 1950 (Ivan Horváth) and later in February 1951. Husák still did not confess, further delaying the trial, which eventually took place in April 1954, after Stalin’s death, when death sentences were no longer handed out as nonchalantly. The trial was held behind closed doors, and Husák’s refusal to confess could not be turned into a public spectacle. Through his courage and endurance, Husák saved his own life and probably that of some other defendants. During the trial, Slovak writers Vladimír Mináč, Dominik Tatarka, Alexander Matuška, Michal Chorváth, and Juraj Špitzer who, from the 19????0s onward, were regarded as moral authorities by other writers publicly spoke out against the defendants. The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic sentenced the defendants for conspiring with Clementis and others to attempt to destroy the republic’s sovereignty and constitutional unity, for obstructing the implementation of the unified economic plan, and for causing disruptions in the state and economic apparatus. The court imposed the following sentences: Husák was sentenced to life imprisonment, Horváth to 22 years, Okáli to 18 years, Holdoš to 13 years, and Novomeský to 10 years. Novomeský was released from prison in December 1958, Holdoš in 1959, Horváth in 1959, and Husák and Okáli in 1960.
Second chapter
The trial against Slovak bourgeois nationalists was a blow against potential voices calling for increased Slovak authority, but it also “cleaned up” the literary scene. Writers who had actively published during the period of the Slovak State either emigrated, were imprisoned, or were silenced, while the trial against bourgeois nationalists intimidated leftist writers. A new start came only in the 1960s. This era was dominated by Gustáv Husák, who drew from his rich experiences, and symbolized by Alexander Dubček. But that is the second chapter of this story.
THE AUTHOR
Ján Čarnogurský (born January 1, 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 didn‘t make it into the 2nd round.
He has four children with his wife Marta.
Ivan Horváth, Vladimír Clementis, and Mária Horváthová in 1947 at the signing of the Czechoslovak- Hungarian treaty at the Budapest embassy.
