Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism 9780755621873, 9780857711335

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CHOOSING SLOVAKIA Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism Alexander Maxwell

TAURIS ACADEMIC STUDIES an imprint of I.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON • NEW YORK

Alexander Maxwell completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2003. He has won a Merian postdoctoral fellowship at Erfurt University, and a Europa fellowship at the New Europe College in Bucharest. He has taught at City University in Bratislava, the University of Wales at Swansea, and the University of Nevada at Reno. He is presently working at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

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37. Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism Alexander Maxwell 978 1 84885 074 3

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With fond memories, · Β=0 Δ

Published in 2009 by Tauris Academic Studies, an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © 2009 Alexander Maxwell The right of Alexander Maxwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978 1 84885 074 3 International Library of Political Studies 37 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author

Contents

List of Figures and Illustrations

vii

Note on Conventions

ix

Acknowledgements

xiii

1. National Awakening and Contingency

1

2. The Hungarian Context

8

3. Hungaro-Slavism: Imagining a Slavic Hungary

34

4. Slovak Theories of Dual Nationality

56

5. The Slavic Language

79

6. Linguistic Czechoslovakism Before 1843

101

7. Ľudovít Štúr and Slovak Tribalism

117

8. The Dialect Argument and Slovak Literacy

141

9. Czechoslovakia as a Slovakizing State

166

Notes

187

Index

250

LIST OF FIGURES and illustrations

Figure 0.1: Ein Slovak Figure 0.2: Base Map Figure 2.1: Administrative Regions in Bach-Era Hungary (1850) Figure 2.2: The Slovak Okolie in the June Memorandum (1861) Figure 2.3: The Slovak Okolie in the December Memorandum (1861) Figure 3.1: Ethnonyms for Hungarian Figure 3.2: “Life of a Monk outside the Monastery,” verses 3 and 4 (1835) Figure 3.3: Magyarization Sites in Beschwerden und Klagen (1843) Figure 4.1: Hungaro-Slavic Theories of Dual Nationality Figure 5.1: The Bernolákovci (1800) Figure 6.1: Czechoslovak Grammar Book Production (1800) Figure 6.2: Subscribers to Gitřenka (1840) Figure 7.1: Living Hlasowé Contributors (1846) Figure 8.1: Literacy in the Kingdom of Hungary by Nationality Figure 8.2: Slovak Literacy by Age Cohort (1900-1910) Figure 8.3: Letters to the editor in Slovenské noviny (1855)

EIN SLOVAK Frontspiece to Jozef Dobrovsky, Slovanka (Prague: Herrlschen Buchhandlung, 1815), vol. 2

NOTE ON CONVENTIONS

Contemporary works on Central European history routinely begin with a brief discussion of nomenclature. Places in central Europe, as in other parts of the world, have different names in different local languages. Some of the largest cities have English names, notably Vienna, Prague and Warsaw. This posed few problems during the nineteenth century: the various languages of the Habsburg monarchy have their own word for “forest” (Wald, erdő, les etc.), why should they not also have a different word for “Vienna”? Twentiethcentury political propaganda, however, politicized city names: Central European authors writing in English insist on naming contested cities in their own language as a way of staking political claims. Hungarian authors, for example, often use Hungarian names (e.g. “Komarno” and “Kassa”) while Slovaks use Slovak names (“Komáron” and “Košice”). Scholars who wish to discuss national conflict without taking sides thus face a dilemma. While established English names are acceptably neutral, how can one discuss a given town without favoring one or another national claim? Some scholars list all possible variants, speaking e.g. of “Komarno/ Komáron” or “Cluj/Kolozsvár/Klausenburg.” Peter Fassler even exploited this convention to highlight the multiple national heritages of Galicia’s largest city his book: Lemberg-Lwow-Lviv.1 Jeremy King, observing that multiple national sentiments often coexisted in the same person, has extended this convention to personal names.2 Other scholars refer to cities by different names to mark historical turning points: when the Treaty of Trianon partitioned the city of Komarno/Komáron between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, for example, one might begin speaking of Komarno and Komáron as distinct cities. Referring to cities with multiple names, however, creates new difficulties. One must list the names in some order, how can one avoid giving precedence to the first ethnicity listed? More importantly, which languages and cultures deserve recognition? The Habsburg capital, for example, hosted communities

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Choosing Slovakia

from every nationality in the Empire. Without a principle for excluding some heritages, one would have to discuss “Beč/Vídeň/Wien/Bécs/Wiedeń/Беч/ Dunaj/Viedeň/Видень,” to give the Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian, Slovene, Slovak, and Ukrainian names for the city? And where should the list stop? Vienna’s Jewish history would justify both Hebrew “‫ ”װינה‬and Yiddish “‫װין‬.” The importance of Latin as a Habsburg administrative language might justify “Vindobna.” The city furthermore supported Greek language newspapers in the early nineteenth century, why not “Βιέννη”? And indeed, why not also Bulgarian “Виена,” Russian “Вена” or Ottoman Turkish “‫[ وﻳﺎﻧﺎ‬Viyana]”? Modern emigration might even justify Arabic “‫[ ﻓﻴﻨﺎ‬Fīnā],” Chinese “维也纳 [Weiyena],” or Japanese “ウィン [Win].” This book therefore follows an alternate convention: apart from wellestablished English names such as “Vienna” and “Prague,” I refer to cities with the name used by the government that administers the city at the time of writing: towns in Slovakia have Slovak names, towns in Hungary have Hungarian names. This convention has its drawbacks. It foreshadows the ethnic partitions of the twentieth century, obscuring the multi-national character of the Habsburg Empire. It also produces regrettable anachronisms. Budapest did not exist before 1874: one should properly discuss the separate cities of “Buda/Budin/Ofen” and “Pest/Pešt/Pesth,” to give respectively the Hungarian, Slovak and German names. Bratislava, a city that features prominently in this book, poses even bigger difficulties. The Hungarian and German names (“Pozsony” and “Pressburg”) are unproblematic, but Slovaks alternated between Prešpork and Prešporok under Habsburg rule: the name “Bratislava,” although foreshadowed as “Bratislav” in Šafařík’s Slovansé starožitnosti, only became widespread in 1919.3 Discussing “Bratislava” in the Habsburg era, as this book does, is therefore anachronistic. Nevertheless, I have rendered Prešpork as “Bratislava.” The main advantage of consistently using contemporary names is simplicity. This book already burdens the reader by discussing a host of terms in Latin, German, Slavic and Hungarian, including jazyk, řeč, náreč, natio, národ, národnost, nemzet, nemzetiség, Volk and kmen. Struggles for urban hegemony, however significant or interesting, do not play an important role in this particular study, and acknowledging them in their full complexity would distract from the main narrative. Contemporary names, finally, are most useful for readers who wish to consult an atlas. Similar considerations also justify the use of anachronistic maps. I assume that the reader is more familiar with contemporary political frontiers than the political structures of the Habsburg Empire. This book highlights Hungarian

Note On Conventions

xi

and Czechoslovak sentiments, so the base map used in this book depicts both the nineteenth-century Hungarian frontier (as a grey band) and modern political borders (as thin black lines). These maps do not do justice to the complexity of Habsburg political geography, but Habsburg political geography is not the central focus of this book.

The base map used in this book

While I have been tolerant of anachronistic geography, I have been as strict as possible about reproducing primary sources in the original spelling. Modern Slovak scholars routinely transliterate (translate?) primary sources into Hattala’s modern orthography, partly because modern Slovaks find the script easier to read, but also to claim historical texts for the modern Slovak linguistic tradition. This narrative, however, places great importance on orthographic questions, and thus insists on original spellings. I have, admittedly, transliterated Blackletter quotations into the more familiar Latin alphabet, but this is mostly because a Blackletter font with Slavic diacritics proved unobtainable. To discuss orthographic questions, finally, I have adopted a convention from linguistics that may be new to many readers. The symbols of an alphabetic script refer to sounds, technically to phonemes, but this book has occasion to distinguish phonemes from the symbols used to represent them. Phonemes are placed inside /slashes/ and graphic symbols inside {curly brackets}. Thus {t} refers to a letter in the Latin alphabet formed by a long vertical line and a short horizontal line, while /t/ refers to a voiceless dental stop.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the culmination of many years of training and work, and many people have helped me while I was working on this project. I particularly wish to thank Stanley Payne, who generously shared his time and his experience. I also want to thank Rogers Brubaker for telling me that my work “was theoretically interesting,” or words to that effect: words of approval from so brilliant a theoretician sustained my morale at critical moments. David McDonald has also earned my respect and thanks for giving me good advice on both academic and professional questions. I also wish to mention Owen Johnson, Kemal Karpat, Yarslav Hrytsak, Hugo Lane, Tomasz Kamusella, Thomas Purnell, Holt Meyer, Alf Lüdke, Eva Kowalská, Jozef Tanzer, and several anonymous reviewers for sharpening my thinking. I also need to express my appreciation to people who have helped and encouraged me at a personal level. I owe a special debt to Kim Caisse, but also would also like to thank Cormac Harrington for listening, Jill Brady for proofreading, Nona Parry for patient and meticulous typesetting, and Don Becker for his tireless humor. Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank Carol Harrington for everything.

1 NATIONAL AWAKENING AND CONTINGENCY

This book tells a story about the emergence of Slovak particularist nationalism, here understood as the belief in a “Slovak nation” speaking a “Slovak language.” It reinterprets an established narrative known to historians of Central and Eastern Europe as “national awakening [národní obrození]”, which covers a historical period roughly approximating the so-called long nineteenth century. The ubiquitous metaphor of “awakening” has several problems and detractors, and if it were not so firmly established as a historical genre, I would compare this book to Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories: where Kipling explained how the leopard got his spots, I explain how and why the Slovak nation came to be. As a study of nationalism, this study contributes to a gigantic scholarly literature that encompasses both theoretical works and numerous case studies. While seeking to engage with nationalism theory, I do not wish to begin with abstract definitions of key concepts such as “nation” and “language”: such terms will be discussed as they enter the narrative. This introduction will instead discuss “national awakening” as a historical narrative with distinctive conventions, problems and opportunities. Historians of Central and Eastern Europe have written many sophisticated works examining “national awakening,” but the most eloquent expression of the basic idea comes from Eugen Weber’s 1976 study of French national feeling. Weber observed that French nationalism in 1789 was mostly a Parisian phenomenon: French peasants gave their loyalties to king, church, or village; not to “the nation.” The general popular enthusiasm for the First World War, however, suggests that something important changed during the nineteenth century. Weber studied the nationalization of the peasantry in a series of thematic chapters, highlighting schools, military service, railroads, technological progress, changing consumption patterns, and so

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Choosing Slovakia

forth.1 Weber’s descriptive gifts were ultimately undermined by his analytical dependence on an ill-defined “modernity,” but nothing can diminish the brilliance of Weber’s book title: Peasants into Frenchmen. Numerous scholars have adapted and copied this title for their own articles,2 book chapters,3 and full-length scholarly monographs.4 “Peasants into patriots”: this is the essence of national awakening. Most studies of national awakening belong to what might be called the “modernization theory” school of nationalism. Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, the leading scholars in this school, do not share Weber’s fascination with the word “modernity,” but focus on a similar list of causal variables: industrialization, bureaucratization, mass education, improved living standards, and other mutually reinforcing processes.5 Scholars working in this school disagree about the relative importance of different variables, and their disagreement stems not only from differing theoretical approaches, but also from the diversity of research topics: the decisive variable in one case may not be particularly important in another. One scholar working in the modernist tradition, Czech theorist Miroslav Hroch, has developed a schematic and generalizable stage theory of “national awakening.” Hroch schematized the spread of nationalism into three phases imagined as steps in an evolutionary progression: (A) the “period of scholarly interest,” (B) “patriotic agitation,” and finally (C) “the rise of a mass national movement.”6 Hroch then compared various nationalist organizations in “Phase B” to see if they shared a common social basis; he found, mostly, that they did not. Hroch’s stage theory influenced many scholars of Central and Eastern Europe,7 and has also inspired some tinkering. Roman Szporluk reformulated Hroch’s theory into “academic, cultural, and political” phases. Paul Robert Magocsi has “heritage-gathering,” “organizational” and “political” stages, but denied that they represent an evolutionary process.8 Tomasz Kamusella has added a Phase (D) to discuss the moment “when the nation establishes its own nation-state in fulfillment of the equation of ethnic nationalism: language = nation = state.”9 At first glance, the stage theory approach would seem relevant to Slovak national awakening, and Hroch took Slovakia as one of his case studies. The narrative proposed here, however, differs considerably from Hroch’s, because it highlights two themes that have only rarely been discussed in the broader literature on nationalism: contingency and failure. This book takes the process of nationalization (and “modernization”) more or less for granted and focuses instead on the competition between different national concepts. The various academic heritage-gatherers and patriotic agitator-organizers working in

National Awakening And Contingency

3

Central and Eastern Europe promoted several different national concepts. Why did some succeed while others failed? Let us pose this question specifically and concretely for the Slovak case: Slovak nationalists began the nineteenth century as proud citizens of Hungary dreaming about an All-Slavic language and culture, and then spent the short twentieth century in Czechoslovakia. Why did the Hungarian, Slavic and Czechoslovak national projects fail? To explain the Slovak national awakening, this book tells a story about failed Hungarian, Slavic and Czechoslovak national awakenings. Indeed: this narrative consciously emphasizes those historical forces working to turn peasants into Hungarians, Slavs or Czechoslovaks, even at the risk of understating Slovak particularism. The chapter on Hungarian nationalism even invokes the Hroch schema. To explain why peasants became Slovaks, this book asks why peasants did not become Hungarians, All-Slavs, or Czechoslovaks. Contingency and failure imply discontinuity, which in turn leads to the “Warwick debate” about the merits of modernization theory. Anderson and Hobsbawm have their critics; and while “primordialism” sometimes serves as a generic term for alternatives to modernization theory,10 Anthony Smith, the leading critic of the modernist approach, distinguishes his own approach, “ethnosymbolism,” from both primordialism and “perennialism.”11 These other approaches, however, all emphasize what Smith has called “preexisting traditions and heritages which have coalesced over the generations.”12 The debate between modernism and its critics has become extensive, and it may be worth highlighting the common ground: all scholars agree that the last two hundred years have witnessed a dramatic transformation in national sentiment; disagreement concerns only the relative importance of continuity or change. Theorists on both sides of the debate routinely acknowledge each other’s arguments with appropriate caveats, and differ from each other mostly in emphasis, not substance.13 The “peasants into Slovaks” narrative, however, inevitably emphasizes discontinuity and transformation. During the “national awakening” process, historical actors selectively appropriated, reinterpreted, or discarded preexisting heritages in light of political goals. National traditions could acquire an air of timelessness in a short period, as shown in a memorable volume on the “invention of traditions.”14 The study of these processes is compatible with a continuity-emphasizing ethnosymbolism, but owes more to modernization theory. Perhaps, however, the study of failed nationalism can help break the deadlock between the two camps. This book examines several failed attempts to appropriate, reinterpret or discard existing traditions. The future, indeed,

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Choosing Slovakia

depends on the legacy of the past. By emphasizing failed national concepts, this narrative delineates some of the limitations on imagination and invention. This book’s emphasis on failure and contingency has another advantage: it undermines problematic popular narratives of national awakening. All too often, historians describe national awakening as a triumphal morality tale in which heroic national awakeners found or redeem the nation, saving it from destruction. The national awakeners themselves, of course, understood their work in such heroic (and primordialist) terms. Nevertheless, historians who accept heroic narratives uncritically may go badly astray, treating failed national concepts as either pathetic objects of ridicule or existential threats. Theorists of nationalism, speaking in the abstract, realize that the possibility of an alternative national community is morally neutral. Ernst Gellner, for instance, wondered aloud whether minority intelligentsias “might not have done just as well out of assimilation.”15 Such equanimity, however, is rare among scholars examining concrete case studies, where heroic narratives remain perniciously hegemonic. Slovak-American Lev Dobriansky, for example, characterized “the story of Slovakia as a story of a nation’s fight for freedom and survival.”16 Stanislav Kirschbaum took survivalist rhetoric to the point of farce: each chapter of his book finds the Slovaks facing a new “struggle for survival.”17 His narrative has the false drama of a James Bond film: no matter how grim things may look for our heroes, somehow the Slovak nation always triumphantly escapes certain doom. I therefore justify my emphasis on failed national concepts as a corrective. Several authors have already traced the roots of modern Slovak nationalism for the Anglophone audience: the canonical Slovak success story needs critical debunking, not repetition or elaboration. This book therefore concentrates instead on the failure of Czechoslovakism, Slavism, and Hungarianism. Of these three themes, furthermore, only Czechoslovakism has received any serious attention in Anglophone scholarship. Indeed, few scholars of Central or Eastern Europe have examined failed national movements, and fewer still have placed contingency in the forefront of analysis. A brief summary of such works may be instructive. Andrew Wachtel has studied the failure of Yugoslavism, usefully replacing the normal heroic narrative with tragedy.18 Wachtel’s background, however, lies in literary theory: his focus on exceptionally gifted artists restricts his narrative to an unrepresentative cultural elite. Larry Wolff ’s Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment shows how the Morlacchi “vanished from the catalogue of nations”;19 in an intriguing reversal of Hroch’s schema, the Morlacchi made their last appearance on the public stage at a folklore exhibit. Wolff, however, worked almost exclusively from Italian

National Awakening And Contingency

5

sources: the Morlacchi themselves rarely appear in his narrative. Frederick Heymann attempted a joint history of Poland and Czechoslovakia, apparently seeking to explain why no common West-Slavic nation-state emerged, but his research seems to have persuaded him that Poland and Czechoslovakia were in fact quite different entities.20 Mary Fulbrooke examined “the necessary conditions for the construction of nations” taking East Germany “as an example of failure,”21 but her brief essay only discussed what Hobsbawm called “the government perspective”: she did not examine the character or extent of popular East German patriotism.22 Two further studies have highlighted both contingency and choice. In an excellent study of politics and culture in Moldova, Charles King asked the same theoretical questions that inspired this book: [ W]hat are the limits to which ethnic groups, nations and languages can be forged — in both sense of the term — out of heterogeneous cultural practices? In the marketplace of identities, why do only a few visions of the nation attract buyers? Why do some nationalisms fail?23 King, like Fulbrooke, examined these questions mostly from above, discussing successive Russian, Romanian and Soviet policies of state building. This book, by contrast, examines nationalism “from below.” While the final chapter discusses the first Czechoslovak republic, most of this narrative examines popular reactions to state policy during the nineteenth century. Finally, Paul Robert Magocsi’s classic study of Subcarpathia started from the observation that national awakeners “were not only faced with fostering a national consciousness among a particular ethnic group, they were also engaged in a struggle over which national orientation to accept.”24 Magocsi classified the Subcarpathian intelligentsia into Russophile, Ukrainophile and Rusynophile camps, and while he has subsequently worked to promote Rusyn-particularist sentiment, in 1978 he concluded that only the Ukrainian national orientation had proved “enduring.”25 This book differs from Magocsi’s in two important ways. Firstly, I found it impossible to divide the Slovak intelligentsia into camps: the same individuals who outspokenly proclaimed their loyalty to Hungary also proclaimed their passionate Slavdom; and while a party of interwar Slovak nationalists vigorously rejected Czechoslovakia, the majority of Slovaks combined Czechoslovak and Slovak loyalties. I have therefore introduced a theory of multiple and simultaneous national loyalties. Secondly, I have analyzed patriotic discussions of the “nation” separately from patriotic discussions of the “national language.” Magocsi equated linguistic and

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Choosing Slovakia

national loyalties: in his narrative, belief in a Rusyn (or Ukrainian) language implied belief in a Rusyn (or Ukrainian) nation, and vice-versa. In Slovakia, national and linguistic concepts have diverged considerably, and influenced each other in a surprising fashion. This narrative pays particular attention to linguistic debates, which perhaps reflects the peculiarities of the Slovak case. Several scholars have highlighted the importance of linguistic loyalties in Slovak nationalism. Hugh Seton-Watson, for example, wrote that “the creation of a Slovak nation in the nineteenth century is essentially the emergence of a language group into national consciousness.” He saw Slovakia as an ideal type: “there is no more striking example than the Slovak case of the role of language in nation-forming.”26 Tibor Pichler made similar claims to Slovak exceptionalism: “All nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire had a very strong linguistic ingredient, but Slovak nationalism was entirely language based.”27 These remarkable assertions of linguistic monocausality are all the more extraordinary when juxtaposed with the conclusions of linguists working on the history of the Slovak language. Jaromír Bělič dated “the contemporary linguistic border” dividing Slovak from Czech to “the decisive age when modern nations crystallized,”28 and Ľubomír Ďurovič categorically claimed that “the formation of a [Slovak] literary language was the most evident symptom of the formation of their nation [emphasis added].”29 So did Slovak language loyalties generate Slovak nationalism, or did Slovak nationalism generate Slovak language loyalties? Clearly belief in a “national language” reinforces belief in a “nation” and vice-versa, but which came first: the nation or the language? The chicken or the egg? This apparent paradox probably arises from disciplinary divisions: neither linguists nor historians seem to reach each other’s works. Linguists understand that the creation of a Slovak “national language” is a contingent process, but sometimes seem to believe in a primordial Slovak nation. Conversely, serious scholars of nationalism, particularly those working in the modernist tradition, understand that peasants were not always Slovaks; yet they accept a crude popular linguistics that appears to take for granted the primordial existence of the Slovak language. I suggest, however, that interdisciplinary analysis can provide a solution to the chicken-egg paradox. The final chapters of this book, therefore, focus on the development of Slovak linguistic concepts. This narrative, finally, speaks to one of the great questions of history: the role of the individual, often reformulated in nationalism theory as the role of human will. “Human beings make their own history,” as Marx famously remarked, but “they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”30 This book highlights

National Awakening And Contingency

7

not external limits on human choices, but another less-explored difficulty: unforeseen ramifications and unintended consequences. The will to create or renew the “Slavic nation,” the “Hungarian nation,” and the “Czechoslovak nation” played an important role in the emergence of a “Slovak nation.” The title of this book is meant provocatively: my narrative of national awakening is neither heroic nor tragic, but ironic. The following chapter, chapter two, provides a brief survey of nineteenthcentury Hungarian history, the political context in which Slovak nationalism developed. The analysis proper begins in chapter three with a study of Slovak loyalties to Hungary. Confusingly, Slovaks invoked multiple nations simultaneously: they promoted a Hungarian “political nation” in which all “linguistic nations” would be free to speak their own language; chapter four examines the rhetoric of multiple nationality in detail. Chapter five then asks how Slovaks invoked the term “language” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the concept of a “Slavic language” dominated Slovak linguistic thinking. Chapter six documents Slovakia’s Czechoslovakist tradition in light of this hegemonic All-Slavism. Chapter seven examines the central figure of nineteenth-century Slovak history, Ľudovít Štúr, and his decision to codify a Slovak grammar. Chapter eight discusses the history of Slovak literacy to explain the impact of Štúr’s grammar. Chapter nine, finally, suggests that the Czechoslovak republic, while attempting to promote a Czechoslovak nation, created the social conditions that generated Slovak particularist nationalism.

2 THE HUNGARIAN CONTEXT

Before 1918, the territory of the present-day Slovak Republic belonged to the kingdom of Hungary. Slovak national ideologies thus developed within a Hungarian context. This chapter provides a brief overview of the social position of Slovaks within Hungary, and the key events of nineteenth century Hungarian history. The main theme of this narrative is the development of Hungarian nationalist ideas as they concerned Slovak interests. The key idea is a national concept that came to be known as the Magyar politikai nemzet, the “Hungarian political nation.” During the nineteenth century, Hungary was a kingdom ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. The relationship between Hungarian elites and the Habsburg family was often strained, but no foreign pretenders tarnished Habsburg legitimacy. Disputes over Hungary’s relationship to the rest of the Empire were perennial. The population of Hungary contained extraordinary ethnic and religious diversity, which several observers saw as uniquely characteristic. In 1795, Heinrich Grellman wrote that “the people in Hungary are very mixed. I know of no other land in Europe which has so many nations, and speaks so many languages, in so many dialects.”1 Ján Csaplovics, a polyglot Slovak author, wrote that “it seems as if nowhere of an equivalent area, in one country, are so many languages spoken as here or at least different types of languages, but also nowhere such diverse linguistic change, as here.”2 Several foreign travelers and geographers made similar comments.3 Ethnic Hungarians, also known as “Magyars,” were a minority of the kingdom’s population. In 1795, Grellman guesstimated that less than a 25 per cent of Hungary’s population were Magyars: “the non-Hungarian inhabitants of this country exceed the proper Hungarians at least three times.”4 The first statistical survey, from the late 1830s, suggested a figure of 37 per cent. By 1880, by which time census taking

The Hungarian Context

9

had become systematic and sophisticated, Hungarian speakers were 46.7 per cent of the population. The Magyars crossed the 50 per cent mark in 1900. Ethnic groups in the kingdom of Hungary, as in several multi-ethnic societies throughout the world, were often concentrated on specific rungs of the social hierarchy. Rusyns (Ukrainians)5 and Romanians were mostly peasants. Germans lived mostly in towns, dominating artisan trades and the mining industry of northern Hungary. Hungarian Jews, as elsewhere in Central Europe, worked as merchants, tailors, moneylenders and innkeepers. Roma (Gypsies), in addition to their proverbial talents as musicians, worked as blacksmiths or small traders. In the mountainous parts of northern Hungary that are now administered by the Slovak republic, the nobility was almost exclusively Magyar or Magyarized, though a few Slavic-speaking nobles lived in the high Tatras. Slovaks were mostly peasants, laborers, or petty manufacturers. The mountainous soil in Slovakia is comparatively barren, and Slovak men often migrated seasonally to the plains for the harvest. The stereotypical Slovak itinerant laborer and jack-of-all-trades was known as far away as Scotland: the August 1849 edition of the North British Review wrote that S lovacks of the northern districts [of Hungary], a branch of the Tchekhs of Moravia, are industrious cultivators of their Carpathian valleys, besides which … a detachment of them, after the manner of the Italian opera-boys, are perpetually perambulating Germany, with countenances and eyes the most magnificent in the world, selling mouse-traps.6 Though Slovak communities were typically poor, Slovaks enjoyed a good reputation for diligence and hard work. John Paget, an English immigrant to Hungary, described the Slovaks as “after the German, probably the most industrious of the inhabitants of Hungary, and perhaps the only one of whom a manufacturer could be made.”7 Before the abolition of serfdom in 1848, Hungary’s peasants owed labor, tax and social deference to members of the nobility. In 1813, English traveller Richard Bright, describing the services expected by Graf Hunyadi, compared the poverty and social exclusion of Hungarian serfs to that of American slaves. He described Slovak peasants as follows: From the same little hat, covered with oil, falls the same matted long black hair, negligently pleated or tied in knots, and over the same dirty jacket and trowsers, is wrapped on each a cloak of coarse woolen cloth, or sheep-skin still retaining its wool. Whether it be winter or summer,

10

Choosing Slovakia week-day or sabbath, the Sclavonian of this district never lays aside his cloak, or is seen but in heavy boots.

He also observed that Slovaks “never forgot to make submissive bows to the carriage.”8 Bright’s disapproving tone also hints that the legitimacy of serfdom was increasingly being called into question in the early decades of the nineteenth century: several plans for reforming agriculture and abolishing serfdom circulated in both government circles and the popular press. The vicissitudes of such plans are quite beyond the scope of this book; note merely that liberal Magyar noblemen were responsible for ending Hungarian serfdom. Some Slovaks voiced their opposition to serfdom, but none played an important role in its abolition. No large town on the territory of the future Slovak republic had a predominantly Slovak population before the twentieth century. Several towns in the north of Hungary had been founded with medieval royal charters based on German city law; these mostly had German populations. Germans not only dominated urban life near the German-speaking ethnoterritory in the west of Slovakia, but also in the High Tatras around Levoča (German: Leutschau, Hungarian: Lőcse), home of the so-called “Zipser Germans.” Other towns in the far east of Slovakia contained Hungarians instead of Germans, though ethnic mixture was the rule. The largest “Slovak town” for most of the nineteenth century was Budapest (in the nineteenth century two separate cities, Hungarian: Buda and Pest; German: Ofen and Pest; Slavic: Budin and Pešt). Located roughly where the Magyar, German, and Slavic ethno-territories meet, Bratislava (Hungarian: Pozsony, German: Pressburg, Pre-1918 Slavic: Prešpork or Prešporok)9 supplemented its German character with significant Magyar, Slavic and Jewish populations. Czechoslovak urbanization and ethnic cleansing have left the city overwhelmingly Slovak today, but Hungarian and German are still widely spoken. Slovakia’s second city, Košice (Hungarian: Kassa, German: Kaschau) was mostly Hungarian, and still boasts a significant Hungarian minority. Martin, the location of several nineteenth-century Slovak national institutions, had an overwhelmingly Slovak population throughout the nineteenth century, but was then and now a small provincial town. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, northern Hungary was an unusually urban part of Hungary. Štefan Janšák has calculated that 24 of Hungary’s 39 royal free cities (62 per cent) lay on the territory of the future Slovak Republic.10 As the nineteenth century progressed, however, Slavic northern Hungary experienced relative impoverishment. Hungarian industry followed the country’s rivers and railroads, and both were concentrated in the flatlands in the center of Hungary. Economic development had

The Hungarian Context

11

social consequences: modernizing Hungary acquired proletarian workers, professional middle classes and decadent aesthetes, but these new social types were concentrated in Budapest, not the territory of the future Slovak Republic. The large cities of the Habsburg Empire attracted Slovaks from the highlands by the tens of thousands; Slovaks contributed to the urban proletariat in Vienna, Budapest, Debrecen, and so on.11 But with the exception of Bratislava, the cities of the future Slovakia only experienced modest economic growth: proud medieval cities became quaint provincial towns. At the end of the eighteenth century, the only literate social class in Slavic northern Hungary was the clergy. A small secular Slovak intelligentsia, dominated by teachers, journalists, and lawyers, emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. Slovak clerics, unsurprisingly, were divided along confessional lines; though Catholic-Protestant rapprochement for the sake of national solidarity proved a major theme of nineteenth-century Slovak history. Slovaks were mostly Catholic, with a Lutheran minority of around 15 per cent. Slovak patriots took the Christian character of their nation more or less for granted. Before the twentieth century, Jews in northern Hungary were not generally attracted to Slovak culture; Jewish assimilation in Hungary tended to produce Magyars. Hungarian domestic politics was dominated by the Hungarian nobility, which was unusually vigorous by European standards. Robert Kann’s memorable description bears repeating: “This was not a decaying and soonto-be-superseded aristocracy, it was a virile, daring, intelligent and ruthless class with every trump card in its hand except that of justice.”12 Its influence derived in part from its relative size: at roughly 10 per cent of the population, the Hungarian nobility was proportionally larger than most European aristocracies, even though some “sandaled nobles” lived in conditions all but indistinguishable from that of peasants. The eighteenth-century legal term for the Hungarian nobility was the natio Hungarica, Latin for “Hungarian nation.” This medieval and feudal concept of a “nation” differed dramatically from modern usage, not least because it excluded most of Hungary’s population. While the natio Hungarica saw itself as a sovereign political community, it was a social elite that excluded non-nobles.13 The natio Hungarica included representatives from most of Hungary’s ethnic groups; it was not Magyar-exclusive. Latin served as lingua franca for Hungary’s polyglot nobility; and note that in early modern Hungary Latin was not merely a language of scholarly refinement, but a medium of inter-ethnic communication in everyday situations, such as negotiating a fare with a coach-driver.14

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Choosing Slovakia

The event that set the narrative of Slovak nationalism in motion occurred at the Habsburg court in Vienna. In 1780, after a long and often strained apprenticeship under Maria Theresa, Joseph II finally ascended to the Austrian throne. Joseph genuinely desired to improve the lives of his subjects by increasing the efficiency of the imperial administration. Joseph can be counted among the Enlightened despots, but was not particularly successful: pedantic, tactless, and uncharismatic, he could not understand why his well-intentioned reforms provoked so much popular resistance. One of Joseph’s many schemes was a plan to use German instead of Latin in government administration.15 This reform has been described as “Josephinian German centralism,”16 but Joseph was not a German chauvinist. In the words of one contemporary commentator, the reform “had as its intention the simplification of government business. And only he who is inexperienced in matters of Austrian government says that he was mistaken.”17 No native speakers of Latin existed, so in all the provinces of the empire Latin was only accessible to an elite caste of the educated. By replacing Latin with German, Joseph hoped to make the imperial administration more efficient. Joseph chose German on utilitarian grounds. He treated his polyglot domains as a single unit, and on this basis German was the obvious choice for an official language. German was the language of several Habsburg provinces (Lower and Upper Austria, Tyrol) and the Habsburg capital city, and was also spoken by significant minorities in several others (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary, Transylvania). Even in provinces with small German populations (Galicia, Bukovina), what German population existed was urban, and thus better able to provide administrators than the local peasantry. No other language of the monarchy had anything approaching this geographic range, and no other language of the monarchy, except perhaps the demographically insignificant Italian, could boast equivalent literary achievements. The Hungarian nobility, however, restricted its horizons to the kingdom of Hungary. Inside the kingdom, German was the language of the highest aristocracy, which spent much of its time in Vienna, and of sundry merchants, soldiers, and officials. The nobility as a whole, however, mostly spoke Hungarian, and protested so vigorously against the introduction of German, that Joseph eventually backed down. This reform, however, had opened Pandora’s box: from this point on, the language of government administration remained an explosive and divisive political issue in the Habsburg Empire. The French Revolution temporarily put an end to Habsburg reforms, particularly in Hungary, where a Jacobin conspiracy was uncovered in 1795. Reform-minded circles and nervous monarchs cooperated during the Revolutionary wars, but when peace returned, so did the desire for reform.

The Hungarian Context

13

Hungarian liberals perceived their country as backwards in comparison to Britain, France, and even the more developed provinces of Austria.18 Various proposals to rationalize Hungarian agriculture, improve the Hungarian transport network, reform government administration and generally imitate the British model of “progress” inaugurated a period known as the Hungarian “Reform Era” (roughly 1820-1848). The Reform Era was an age of progress and development for Hungary. The central figure was the indefatigable count István Széchenyi, responsible for Hungary’s first railroad, first steamship line, and first Danube bridge. He matched economic innovation with cultural work: Széchenyi helped found Hungary’s Academy of Sciences by dramatically pledging a year’s income from his estates. Inspired by social organizations he had observed in England, he also founded a racetrack and casino in Budapest; both became important national institutions. Hungarian national concepts evolved considerably during these years. After the French Revolution, Hungarian liberals rejected the social elitism of the natio Hungarica for a class-inclusive national idea known as the “Hungarus” concept. The origin of this new nationalism was the desire to overcome confessional differences. In 1790, a contributor to Magyar Kurir [Hungarian Courier] characteristically called for Hungarians to be “not Calvinists, not Lutherans, not Papists, but to love one-another, … to be Hungarian brothers and patriots [Atyafiak és Hazafiak]!”19 The Hungari, as proponents of the Hungarus concept are known, celebrated Hungary’s ethnic diversity. Karl Georg Rumy’s 1808 Musen-Almanach [Muses’ Almanac] gathered together songs in Latin, Hungarian, Slovak, High German, and Transylvanian Dialect German as a “patriotic endeavor.”20 Rumy’s native language was German, yet he was willing to join the Spolok milovníkov řeči a literatury slovenskej [the Society for Lovers of the Slovak Language and Literature].21 Matthias Rát, founder of the first Hungarian-language newspaper, hoped that “none of the nations living in the two fatherlands [Hungary and Transylvania] will make its idiom common [universal]:”22 he promoted Magyar, but not at the expense of other Hungarian languages. In 1819, Pál Magda defended multilingualism while attacking national chauvinism: “I have the deepest disdain for every stuck-up nationalism, which splits Hungary into pieces … every citizen of Hungary should be [free] to choose, according to preference, whether to speak and write in Latin, Slovak or German.”23 In 1826, an anonymous contributor to Tudományos Gyüjtemény [Scientific Collections] wrote that he considered “as members of the nation not only the leaders and fathers of the people, the nobles, but also the serfs whose education has been very deficient so far in our country.”24 Horst Haselsteiner summarized

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Choosing Slovakia

that the Hungari “wanted neither to defend one-sidedly the old Hungarian class privileges of the ‘natio hungarica’ nor to engage solely in upholding the national language and culture.”25 Historian Samuel Harrison Thomson described the Hungarus concept as a phenomenon of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: [W]ith the spread of ideas of nationalism after the French Revolution the various peoples of Hungary began to feel the racial differences between them. The Magyars, the dominant political group in the kingdom, began to emphasize their racial superiority. Hungarismus began to change into Magyarismus, and the less powerful groups — Slovaks, Rumanians, Croatians and Germans — were made to feel that they were inferior to the Magyar rulers.26 These claims are only valid for the Magyars, and reflect a certain inattention to non-Magyar Hungarians. Slovak thinkers continued to promote variants of the Hungarus concept throughout the nineteenth century, long after Magyars had discarded it. Thompson, however, expressed a consensus view: Haselsteiner also dismissed the Hungarus movement: The Hungarus idea did not, however, stand up to the popular efforts of the language reformers … The Hungari and their few followers were suspected of being ‘apatriotic’ and ‘anational,’ even of being ‘Austrians,’ or at least of working for Vienna. This sounded the death knell for the Hungarus concept as far as public opinion was concerned. It was discarded as a possible variant of Hungarian national concepts. With hindsight, it hardly stood a realistic chance of realization anyway.27 Haselsteiner’s counterfactual pessimism may be exaggerated, but the ultimate failure of the Hungari is beyond dispute. For the Magyar nobility, the Hungarian language became an important symbol of opposition to German-speaking Vienna, and the willingness to extend social rights to lesser nobles who lacked the advantages of a Latin (or German) education. For lesser nobles, patriotism and personal interest coincided: Hungarian language administration promised abundant administrative sinecures for Hungarian-speakers. Yet even aristocrats most comfortable in German, such as Széchenyi, switched to Hungarian out of patriotism. Hungarian reformers were only willing to accept into their ranks commoners who could display visible refinement and education. Miklós Wesselényi, a prominent Hungarian liberal, redefined Hungary’s ruling

The Hungarian Context

15

aristocracy as “the rule of the best,” arguing “it is equally wholesome and useful as it is natural that the best, i.e. those educated in customs and intellect, should attain supremacy.”28 This emphasis on “education” and “customs” as criteria of nationality, however, politicized cultural difference. The resulting pressure for cultural homogeneity came to permeate all facets of Hungarian public life. One Hungarian county considered passing a law requiring public balls to play a Hungarian dance after every Polka.29 The Hungarian nobility believed that its willingness to extend social privileges to educated Magyars demonstrated magnanimity and patriotism. But George Barany noted that while “replacement of Latin by the vernacular was one way of making Hungarian cultural life more democratic, the byproduct of the process was an ethnocentric provincialism.”30 László Kontler described “the tendency to transform the more comprehensive ‘Hungarus’ patriotism into narrower Magyar nationalism.”31 During the Reform Era, the Hungarian language replaced Latin in several official contexts. The Hungarian diet unsuccessfully sought to forbid the use of “foreign languages” as early as 1792.32 In 1830-31, knowledge of Hungarian became obligatory for public officials, lawyers, military officers, and appellate courts.33 No other language of the kingdom gained any equivalent recognition, though Latin maintained its official status in regions of Hungary where Hungarian was not widely spoken. In 1836, the kingdom’s laws began to be published in both Hungarian and Latin, fulfilling Széchenyi’s 1830 demand that only laws published in Hungarian should be valid in the kingdom. In 1840, Hungarian became obligatory for clergy, and the official language for royal petitions and communication between central and county authorities (except in Croatia). Finally, in 1844 Hungarian became the sole language of the Hungarian courts, chancery, and parliament. Deputies unfamiliar with Hungarian received a six-year grace period to learn the new language,34 but even this concession was granted only grudgingly and resentfully.35 Non-Magyars resisted this process and defended Latin as a unifying force: “We are still a Hungarian people [genus Hungaricum] and a single people,” wrote the Croat Juraj Rohoni in 1832, “so long as the communal Latin tongue remains.”36 Joseph II had chosen German for administrative efficiency, not the desire for assimilation. Accusations that centralization would lead to Germanization seem to have genuinely surprised him: “It has never been suggested that millions of people should change their mother tongue and acquire another.”37 The Magyar nobility during the Reform Era, by contrast, consciously promoted the ethnic assimilation. The ultimate goal was a monolingual nation-state on the French model, which implied that over half of Hungary’s population should switch languages.

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Choosing Slovakia

Assimilating the non-Magyars to Magyar culture was an ambitious goal, to say the least. Initial steps were small: a German-language journal from Budapest reported that in Nitra, a city “inhabited by Slovaks and Germans,” Magyarization was being ardently promoted: streets had been given Magyar names, and shopkeepers advertised their wares in Hungarian. The results, however, were limited: “one still speaks, as before, Slovak and German.”38 Frustrated by this lack of progress, the Magyar press printed several proposals for accelerating the pace of linguistic assimilation. In 1840, for example, the following hare-brained scheme appeared in Hírnök [Herald]: The Hungarians must ask his majesty for permission to billet 60,000 Hungarian soldiers in regions where the common people do not speak Hungarian. These would be 60,000 teachers of the Hungarian language, and after three years, 60,000 houses and in them 300,000 souls would be Magyarized. After three years, these 60,000 soldiers would be billeted in another 60,000 houses, and if this process repeats for 12 years, then 1,200,000 souls can be Magyarized.39 Ethnic assimilation came to be known as “Magyarization,” and remained a key element in Hungarian politics until the collapse of the monarchy. The monolingual national concept of ethnic Magyars ultimately came to be known as the Magyar politikai nemzet [Hungarian political nation]. Since all citizens of the country would be members of the Magyar nemzet, all were expected to consider themselves Magyarok and speak magyarul (“in the Magyar fashion”). This reasoning required a somewhat dishonest attitude toward Hungary’s non-Magyar population: the nation was to include all inhabitants regardless of language or culture, but was simultaneously defined in terms of Magyar language and culture. This contradiction dominated the thought of Gustáv Szontágh, whom János Varga considers the key figure in the invention of the Magyar politikai nemzet. Szontágh initially defined a “political nation” in political and civic terms consistent with the Hungarus concept: A nation is the community of people living together in a common sovereign state and homeland; an independent civil society, it has a history of living its own political life as a morally responsible entity. ‘Nation’ is the totality of a country’s citizens; ‘people’ are its component parts, grouped according to their common race and language. Consequently, while a country can have only one nation, it can have a variety of peoples.40

The Hungarian Context

17

This initial formula is both class-inclusive and multi-ethnic: Szontágh apparently drew the distinction between “nation” and “people” specifically to include non-Magyars in the “nation.” But Szontágh then gave the Magyar people a privileged role: The founders of a nation are the people who occupy a nation and found a state. With this act they transform a people to a nation … likewise with this act, a people stamps its name, its character and its language on the land it settles, the society it establishes, and the political life it lives. It follows from this that in Hungary an aspect of political life is national only if it is Hungarian.41 This bait-and-switch characterized most formulae of the Magyar politikai nemzet: authors strategically conflated “citizen of Hungary” and “ethnic Magyar” in order to justify Magyar supremacy. The Magyar politikai nemzet nevertheless proved an effective rhetorical device for those Magyars who sought to justify Magyarization. Ferenc Pulszky expressed representative Maygar attitudes: What do we Hungarians demand of the Slavs … [?] We demand nothing more than what the English ask of the Celtic inhabitants of Wales and high Scotland, nothing more than the French ask of Brittany or Alsace. We want that all public documents in Hungary, including baptismal registries and assembly protocols, will be written in Hungarian, we want that the language of instruction will be Hungarian, which to some degree (in Protestant schools) has already been carried out in the course of this year, with a word, that the Hungarian language in every respect accepts all the rights of Latin; Slavic may be satisfied with those rights that it possessed earlier — Hungarian will however never violently force itself into the domestic circle. It is completely natural that this too, with increasing education, will also become slowly Hungarianized [hungarisiert] … the most enthusiastic Slav becomes a Hungarian when he becomes a lawyer.42 Peasants could remain Slavic, but members of the politically enfranchised middle classes had to speak Hungarian. Hungarian reformers believed, correctly, that a Slavic-speaking middle class would eventually challenge Magyar dominance of Hungary. They also feared, perhaps with justification, that an educated Slavic subculture posed a threat to the political unity of the kingdom. In 1840, Károly Zay, Inspector-General for

18

Choosing Slovakia

Hungary’s Protestant church and an “ardently enthusiastic Magyar patriot,”43 described the threat as follows: That it is suitable to hunt the Slavic language beyond the borders as quickly as possible is an obvious thing, the only question is of the feasible and unfeasible means to Magyarize the Slavs and to remove their nationality from them … We must rip the sapling up by its roots, so long as it is still weak, because we cannot treat the mature tree according to our will.44 Though this rhetoric of hunting beyond borders and ripping up by roots sounds frightening in light of subsequent ethnic cleansing, note that Zay’s hostility was directed against the Slavic educational institutions, not the Slavs themselves. The liberal Hungarian nobility welcomed assimilators into its ranks: several Magyar patriots had Slovak ancestors, including Hungary’s national poet, Sándor Petőfi.45 Jews were the main exception to this rule, and assimilated Jews continued to face Anti-Semitism. Yet even this exception proves the rule: assimilating Jews received a warmer welcome in Hungary than elsewhere in Central Europe.46 Zay set forth a detailed policy of Magyarization in his 1841 Protestantism, Magyarism, Slavism. Zay’s astonishingly long-winded prose is difficult to quote, but the following passage captures his essential argument: Neither the law, nor the representatives of the Magyar nationality, ever had the intention forcefully to rob Hungarian Slavdom of its nationality, to oppress it in religious and moral instruction; they only demand that every citizen, and therefore every Slav, makes his own the national language of the country … namely the Magyar language, because in this a warm feeling for the development of the nationality – in which the greatness and well-being of Hungary lies – is developed in all hearts, and will be inherited by later generations who, inspired by Magyarization’s blessings, will willingly become Magyars.47 The most striking word in this long-winded passage is the word “only,” to which I have added emphasis. Perhaps Zay did not appreciate how much he demanded: he sought the extinction of Hungary’s Slavic culture. Zay’s appointment as Inspector-General for the Hungarian Lutheran church sparked a period of confrontation between Slavs and Magyars, the 1841-1848 “Language War.”48 Zay sought to unify the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, and imposed Hungarian as the sole language of church administration. Slovak

The Hungarian Context

19

pastors responded with several tracts denouncing Magyarization; Ján Ormis described them as “national defenses.”49 These events will be discussed in detail below, for now note merely that the pressure to Magyarize prevented Slovak intellectuals from sharing in the optimism of the Reform Era. Slavs, no less than Magyars, had fought in Hungary’s wars and contributed to its economic development. Slavic intellectuals believed in their right to cultivate their language and literature, and bitterly resented all attempts at Magyarization. As the Hungarian diet Magyarized more and more spheres of public life, Slavic intellectuals reacted with alarm and panic, much as the Hungarian nobility had responded to Joseph II’s reforms a few decades earlier. The Language War soured Slovak-Hungarian relations, and while the conflict ebbed and flowed, zero-sum linguistic conflict has remained a permanent feature of Slovak-Magyar relations ever since. The Language War was overtaken by great events beyond the Hungarian frontiers. On 24 February 1848, the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in Paris, and as the news reached Central Europe, a series of revolutions erupted in Italian, German, and Romanian lands. The Habsburg Empire was shaken to its foundations: the government of Klemens von Metternich fell, Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated, and National Guards took power in the main cities of the Habsburg Empire. A flood of patriotism and optimism inundated the monarchy. Serfdom was abolished, and freedom of the press proclaimed. The leading figure in the Hungarian revolution, Lajos Kossuth, had won his reputation and influence through his outstanding ability as a journalist. Kossuth was a Magyar chauvinist: he denied that Hungary’s minority groups had any claim to nationhood, and indeed claimed that their stubborn attachment to their languages was treasonous. He denied that the Slovaks formed a “nation” in 1842, saying: “verily, verily I say unto you that a Slovak nation has never existed even in a dream.”50 Elsewhere, he even denied nonMagyars the status of “nationality,” though he acknowledged the diversity of Hungary’s “people and races.” I shall never ever recognize any other nation and nationality [nemzetet és nemzetiséget] under the holy Hungarian crown than the Hungarian. I know there are people and races [népfajok] who speak other languages, but there is only one nation here.51 No space remained for Slovaks to claim any collective identity or collective rights within the Hungarian kingdom. Meanwhile Slavs from across the Habsburg Empire made their own revolution by forming a Pan-Slav Congress in Prague. The congress chairman

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Choosing Slovakia

was Pavel Šafařík, known in Slovak historiography as Pavol Šafárik,52 a Slovak-born scholar who had written several important scholarly works on Slavic studies. Meetings were held in regional sections: Pavao Stamatović from Vojvodina chaired 42 south-Slavs, Karol Libelt of Poznań 61 Poles and Ruthenians, and Ľudovít Štúr 237 Czecho-Slovaks.53 Despite the heartfelt desire for unity, the Pan-Slav Congress showcased Slavic particularism and dissension. Polish and Ruthenian representatives from Galicia, with the peasant revolt of 1846 fresh in their minds, exchanged particularly harsh words. But no national group proved willing to sacrifice its particular interests in the name of Slavic solidarity. The longing for Slavic unity never fully recovered from the shock of this discovery. In the end, the congress was dissolved by imperial soldiers. Slovak leaders tried to reconcile Hungarian citizenship with Slavic loyalties. They initially sought accommodation with Kossuth’s government. The initial Slovak response to the 1848 Revolution was a mild document from 10 May known as the Mikuláš “Declaration of the Slovak Nation.” This included typical revolutionary demands: a free press, national schools, a national parliament, various language rights, solidarity with the oppressed Poles, and the release from prison of Slovak poet Janko Kráľ. Hungarian historian István Deák described the Mikuláš Declaration as “conciliatory,” and noted that the Slovaks refused to demand their territorial separation from Hungary at the Slavic Congress in Prague.54 The Hungarian government, however, proved completely intransigent. As Alice Freifeld put it, “Slovak demands were modest, but as the weakest they were also the ones the Magyars were least inclined to appease.”55 Kossuth replied to the Mikuláš declaration by issuing arrest warrants for the Slovak leadership, who then fled the country.56 Indeed, Kossuth’s government antagonized most of Hungary’s nonMagyar nationalities to armed resistance. A Croatian army stationed on the military border, led by Josip Jelačić, even forced the Hungarian government to vacate Buda and withdraw to Debrecen. Peasant uprisings in Transylvania caused great material destruction.57 Nationalist violence in the Banat involved several nationalities.58 The Rusyns did not organize any military forces, but a prominent Rusyn leader, Adolf Dobrians’ky, subsequently elected to parliament, received a decoration from the Russian emperor for welcoming the Russian army into Hungary. In July 1849, facing total military defeat, Kossuth’s government attempted to placate the nationalities by granting other languages of Hungary official status in local administration, but this deathbed conversion to multi-ethnic tolerance had little effect. In August 1849, the Hungarian army surrendered at Világos. Kossuth fled to the Ottoman Empire, thence to Britain and America, and eventually died in Italian exile.

The Hungarian Context

21

Slovak military resistance to the Kossuth government was the work of three men: Ľudovít Štúr, Jozef Hurban, and Michal Hodža. All three had actively participated in the Language War; all three will be discussed in great detail below. Fleeing arrest after the Mikulaš declaration, they attended the Slavic Congress in Prague. They then went to Vienna and formed the “Slovak National Council,” which raised a small army of Czech and Slovak students known as the “Slovak volunteers.” The volunteers proved an insignificant military force. Despite intermittent popular support,59 three attempts to instigate a general rising failed, and the volunteers were always defeated when they fought the Hungarian militia. Viennese-born Hungarian noblewoman Theresa Pulszky described them as “Prague students” leading “lawless bands” that only moved when unopposed; she also claimed that some weapons captured from the volunteers were loaded with the ball behind the gunpowder.60 The Habsburg central government saw them as anarchists, though the volunteers willingly disbanded when the Hungarian Revolution was defeated. This poor showing reflects Slovak military inexperience: the Slovak intelligentsia, recall, mostly consisted of priests and pastors. From a military perspective, the Hungarian Revolution had posed a bigger threat to Habsburg rule than any other national movement in the Empire. Hungarian patriots organized several armies to resist the Habsburg forces, and won their share of victories. Indeed, the Habsburg government felt compelled to ask Imperial Russia for military assistance.61 Modern Hungarians recall 1848 as a heroic national tragedy, and commemorate it with poetry readings and parades.62 Nevertheless, the Habsburg army had pacified Hungary by 1849, and the teenaged Franz Joseph, who would rule until his death during the First World War, sat nervously on the Habsburg throne. The restored Habsburg government centralized the Empire’s administration. The Habsburg Empire, in A.J.P. Taylor’s words, “became, for the first and last time, a fully unitary state.”63 Under the so-called Bach regime, named after interior minister Alexander Bach, the traditional Hungarian counties were abolished and new, larger administrative districts created. A new administration had to be appointed from scratch. Franz Joseph was understandably reluctant to entrust the Hungarian nobility that had led the Hungarian Revolution with much power. Magyars experienced neo-absolutism as German despotism, but Franz Joseph also dispensed with the assistance of Hungary’s minorities, relying mostly on administrative staff imported from other Austrian provinces. Kann concluded that “all nationalities charged to the German account either the indiscriminate, unwise and ruthless enforcement of a German administration

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Choosing Slovakia

… or the betrayal of the national aspirations of the ‘loyal’ non-Magyar national groups.”64 Satisfying few, the Bach regime ultimately failed. Slovak memories of the Bach Regime are not nearly as dark as those of the Hungarians, since the pressure to Magyarize vanished. Nevertheless, Slovak national activity was forbidden, and members of the Slovak National Council were placed under house arrest. The strongly Catholic flavor of NeoAbsolutism also alienated the influential Slovak Lutheran intelligentsia. Nor did the new administration of Hungary create a Slovak autonomous region. The Bach-era frontiers disregarded ethnographic boundaries,65 though two northern provinces of Hungary somewhat correspond to the Slavic zone (see figure 2.1). All in all, Macartney’s summary is appropriate: “the Slovak nationalists found that they had got, after all, very little more out of Vienna than they had got out of Pest.” 66 In this period, Slovak leaders had only a vague sense of where the “Slovak” territory was. Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia and Croatia existed not only as imagined communities, but also as administrative units with distinctive legal traditions, providing Czech, Polish and Croatian politicians with an arena in which to fight the national struggle. Even the Rusyns of Subcarpathia briefly enjoyed an autonomous national district after the Revolution of 1848.67 Slovakia, by contrast, did not exist as an administrative concept until the twentieth century. When Michal Hodža demanded an autonomous Slovak district with its own parliament in 1848, he did not claim any specific territory, he merely suggested that “ethnographic borders should be determined.”68 Foreign policy failure caused the Bach regime to collapse. The 11 July 1859 treaty of Villafranca forced the Habsburg monarchy to cede Lombardy to France and Piedmont, destroying its hegemony in northern Italy. This defeat in Italy, combined with Prussian success in the perpetual scrimmage for influence in the German Confederation, led Franz Joseph to seek greater domestic support. He dismissed Bach, lifted restrictions on press freedom and, with the February Patent of 1861, created a parliament for the Empire. Hungary received 85 seats in this reformed Reichsrat, far more than any other province.69 The Hungarian liberal leadership, led by Ferenc Deák, nevertheless rejected the February Patent because it gave the federal Reichsrat final authority over Hungarian affairs. When Czech deputies began their own boycott in 1863, Franz Joseph was forced to acknowledge that he had not reconciled his reform-minded subjects. When war broke out with Prussia in 1865, the Reichsrat was suspended.

The Hungarian Context Figure 2.1: Administrative Regions in Bach-Era Hungary (1850)

Figure 2.2: The Slovak Okolie in the June Memorandum (1861)

Figure 2.3: The Slovak Okolie in the December Memorandum (1861)

23

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Choosing Slovakia

During this period of uncertainty and constitutional experimentation, the Hungarian liberal nobility took a soft line toward Hungary’s non-Magyars. “If we wish to win over the nationalities,” Deák wrote, “we must not seek at all costs to Magyarize them; this can only happen if we create in them love and attachment for Hungarian conditions.”70 József Eötvös, a Hungarian nobleman who took a special interest in nationality affairs, opposed the establishment of specifically national administrative subdivisions, but acknowledged the legitimacy of minority cultures inside Hungary and accepted the use of minority languages in local administration.71 Where Kossuth had named Slavs death-deserving traitors for having lived so long in Hungary without learning Hungarian, Deák and Eötvös expressed their willingness to accommodate the “justified demands” of Hungary’s nationalities. Slovak intellectuals shared in the hopeful atmosphere of the Bach regime’s collapse and responded to the moderation of Deák and Eötvös. Partly inspired by Hungary’s Serbs, who had gathered to formulate demands for political autonomy in April 1861, some five thousand figures from Slovak public life met in Martin in June 1861 to discuss national aims. The resulting document is known as the “Slovak Memorandum.”72 It demanded an autonomous Slovak territory in the north of Hungary, in which the Slovak language would used in local administration, schools, and court proceedings (see Figure 2.2). In December, Štefan Moyses presented a modified Memorandum to Franz Joseph. The December or Viennese Memorandum abandoned the claim to Zemplén county (Figure 2.3).73 The Memorandum was also the first serious attempt to delineate a Slovak territory in legal terms: it defined a Slovak okolie [region] in terms of Hungarian counties, some of which were proclaimed Slovak, others “partly Slovak.” The Memorandum also became a cultural event: Slovak patriots wore Memorandum-themed jewelry and drank from Memorandumthemed glasses.74 Slovak politicians also ran for parliament. Parliamentary politics, however, proved an ineffective means for promoting Slovak aims: the electoral law specified a property threshold so high that most Slovaks were disenfranchised. Slovaks attempted to compensate by seeking alliance with Rusyns in Subcarpathia, with whom they shared a Slavic language and social exclusion. Two Slovaks won seats in the 1861 elections, but in 1865, all Slovak candidates were defeated. The injustice of this complete disenfranchisement from Hungarian political life led Hurban to exclaim that Slovaks would defend their interests outside of parliament if denied representation inside it; this outburst cost him a fine and six months imprisonment.

The Hungarian Context

25

Political winds, however, blew against the Slovak movement. Defeated by the Prussian army in 1866, Franz Joseph, decided to make a deal with Hungarian liberals. He dismissed his centralizing secretary of state Anton Schmerling and on 15 March 1867 signed the famous “Ausgleich” [compromise], which ended the period of constitutional experimentation and transformed the “Austrian Empire” into the “Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.” The Ausgleich granted the noble-dominated Hungarian parliament untrammeled authority over Hungary’s domestic policies, including educational policy, courts, county administration and church affairs. Matters that affected both halves of the empire, such as monetary policy, were dealt with by a complicated and constantly contested system of dual ministries. The emperor retained personal control over the army and foreign policy. Hungary’s historic counties were revived, and local administration placed in the hands of municipal assemblies under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior.75 The Ausgleich is one of the great controversies of Hungarian history.76 In the short term, it brought political stability to the Empire: reconciliation between the Habsburg monarch and Hungarian nobility removed the greatest domestic threat to Empire’s stability. Economically, the Ausgleich was also a success. Agricultural exports, in the words of Berend and Ranki, “grew by leaps and bounds.”77 Industrialization also accelerated, though Hungary lagged behind Bohemia and German Austria. During the Bach regime, an average of 250 kilometers of railroad were built each year, after the Ausgleich, the figure jumped to 600. The total assets in Hungarian banks more than tripled between 1866 and 1873. Nevertheless, many scholars hold the Ausgleich responsible for ultimate the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy by stifling Slavic aspirations. 1867 certainly marks an important watershed in the history of intra-Hungarian ethnic relations. During the 1860s, Magyar politicians had scrupulously acknowledged the multi-ethnic nature of Hungarian society. In 1866, the Journal Kisfaludy társaság “encouraged friends of literature not only to gather Magyar folk songs, but also those of other Hungarian peoples.”78 Gyula Andrássy, who helped negotiate the Ausgleich, had attended the Pest celebrations of St. Slava’s day, a Serbian holiday, during the 1860s. After the Ausgleich, Magyars lost the desire to make these symbolic gestures. Andrássy, for instance, stopped attending St. Slava celebrations in 1867.79 Slavs throughout the Empire interpreted the Ausgleich as a HungarianGerman alliance against the Slavs. This interpretation was not entirely unfounded: Friedrich Beust, whom Franz Joseph entrusted with much of the negotiations, justified the Ausgleich as follows: “We must stand, first of all, on solid ground … This solid ground, as things stand at present, is the

26

Choosing Slovakia

co-operation of the German and Hungarian elements in opposition to Pan-Slavism.”80 Liberal Austrians also conflated Slavic nationalism inside the monarchy with Russophile Pan-Slavism.81 The revolutionary loyalty of kaisertreu Slovaks and Croats had been forgotten: in another instance of the notorious Habsburg ingratitude, they were placed at the mercy of the Empire’s most successful rebels. The Ausgleich gave the noble-dominated Hungarian parliament a free hand over nationality questions in the kingdom. They responded with the infamous Nationalities Law of 1868, law XLIV, which gave legal expression to the concept of the Magyar politikai nemzet. As Barany noted, “the demands of non-Magyar deputies were almost completely ignored in the final formulation of the Nationalities Law of 1868.”82 The Croats received the status of “a separate nation from a political point of view,”83 but the Slovaks were not even mentioned by name: they were simply one of many “nationalities” subsumed in “the indivisible Hungarian nation.” The key passage reads: According to the fundamental principles of the constitution all the inhabitants of the kingdom form one nation in the political sense, the indivisible Hungarian nation, of which each citizen, regardless of nationality, is an equal member, and enjoys the same rights as every other citizen. This equality of rights, insofar as it applies to the several languages in use in this country, may be modified by special dispositions only so far as these comport with the unity of the state, the practical necessities of government, and the administration of justice.84 Despite this theoretical equality, the law also granted a special place to the Hungarian language. It required all municipal governments to keep records in Hungarian, though such records could also be kept in minority languages if a fifth of the municipality’s members desired it (paragraph two).85 Minority languages could also be used in courts (paragraph seven) and church administration (paragraph 24). Though universities would be Hungarian, departments in minority literatures were permitted (paragraph 19). Yet paragraph 23 assured that “every state citizen may use his own language in petitions to the municipal government, church administration, county administration, or organs of the central government.”86 Eötvös had himself wanted to grant further concessions to Hungary’s non-Magyars: his draft law of 26 June 1867, for example, had allowed county assemblies to select their language of administration by simple majority vote.87 Historiography is as divided on the merits of the Nationalities Law of 1868 as it is on the Ausgleich itself. Arthur May described it as “one of the most

The Hungarian Context

27

enlightened measures of its kind ever adapted”;88 Kontler also emphasized its liberal features: It gave extensive opportunities for the use of the native tongue in the administration, at courts, in education and in religious life; the right of association made it possible to establish cultural, learned, artistic or economic societies and schools using any language; and the law even required the state to promote primary and secondary schooling in the mother tongue and the participation of the ethnic minorities in public service.89 The language of schooling, church and local administration had dominated national conflict since the Language War; the Nationalities Law made concessions in these crucial areas. Oscar Jászi, by contrast, described it as “a constitutional show-window for international use, whereas, at home, a policy was launched which was in flagrant antagonism both with the spirit and the positive statement of the nationality law.”90 Jászi was right to stress the discrepancy between theory and practice, since as Hugh Seton-Watson observed, “Eötvös’s Nationalities Law was honestly applied only for a few years.”91 The interpretation and implementation of the law was left entirely in the hands of Magyar politicians. After Deák retired from politics in 1872, Magyar ethnic chauvinism sharply increased. Kálmán Tisza, the main figure of this period, had originally rejected the Ausgleich. In the so-called Bihar points, he had insisted that Hungary retain an independent military and rejected any common ministries for the monarchy as a whole. In March 1875, however, Tisza abandoned the Bihar points and reconciled himself and the Balközép párt [Left Center Party] to the Ausgleich, and merged with Deák’s party, then in terminal decline after its leader’s retirement. Tisza became Prime Minister in 1875. One of Tisza’s first acts in power was to destroy the most important Slovak national institution. As with other Slavic groups of the Habsburg monarchy, in 1863 Slovaks had founded The Matica slovenská on the model of the Matica srpska. A “Matica” is a Slavic cultural organization that acts as a combined publishing house, cultural center, and scholarship-dispensing organization;92 Toma and Kováč described the Matica slovenská as the “Slovak Heritage Foundation.”93 In April 1875, declaring “there can be only one visible nation in the frontiers of Hungary,”94 Tisza confiscated the Matica slovenská’s funds and sold the library piecemeal. When a Serbian parliamentary deputy urged compensation for the Slovak nation, whose contributions had funded the Matica, Tisza responded simply “there is no Slovak nation,” a response which,

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Choosing Slovakia

in R.W. Seton-Watson’s words, “rendered all further discussion impossible.”95 Despite warnings from moderate deputies in parliament, Tisza passed laws to Magyarize Hungarian schools in 1879.96 Peter Sugar described Tisza’s fifteenyear administration as “crucial years, during which the relationship of the Magyars with the other nations living in Hungary deteriorated gradually and became antagonistic.”97 Tisza also dismantled the Slovak school system. The three Slovak lyceums in Revúca, Kláštor and Martin were closed in 1874 on charges of “PanSlavism.” Tisza made Hungarian the obligatory language of instruction in people’s schools, middle schools, and kindergartens (in 1879, 1883, and 1891, respectively).98 The 1868 Nationalities Law had explicitly endorsed education in languages other than Hungarian, but by the 1880s, state schools were exclusively Magyar. As Alan Palmer noted, Tisza “flagrantly ignored the principles of the Nationalities Law.”99 The educational struggle then turned to church schools. Károly Khuen-Héderváry, the Hungarian representative in Croatia, provides a representative statement of Magyar opinion: From the national point of view it is undesirable under all circumstances to permit the establishment of schools that are purely ethnic in character. This is especially the case in the northwestern Slovak counties, which are in any case the hotbed of Pan-Slavism.100 Though religious schools managed to stay open throughout the Ausgleich period; Slovak was almost entirely chased out of Hungarian classrooms in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy.101 In short, the Ausgleich was a catastrophe for the Slovak national movement. Slovak historian Ľudovít Holotík called it a “fatal turning point”102 in Slovak history, the moment when “the fortunes of the Slovak people were at their lowest ebb.”103 Joseph Zacek described Slovak options as follows: Dispossessed of their schools and institutions, their Catholic hierarchy infiltrated with Magyarones, granted almost no parliamentary representation, and suffering crushing poverty, they had only two feasible alternatives: to accept Magyarization or to emigrate.104 This formula is exaggerated: Slovak patriots continued to operate during the Ausgleich period. But given the implacability of Magyar chauvinism, what was the best course of action for Slovak patriots? Answering this difficult question split the Slovak intelligentsia into two schools. One circle, daunted by the magnitude of defeat, argued that the

The Hungarian Context

29

Memorandum had made unproductively radical demands and that modest objectives stood a better chance of being achieved. This circle described itself as the nová škola [new school], accepted the Ausgleich, and sought to placate the Magyar leadership by abandoning the demand for an autonomous Slovak district. Slovaks who stood by the Memorandum thus became known as the stará škola [old school]. Many stará škola figures had been prominent in the Memorandist movement, including Štefan Daxner, Ján Francisci (both of whom had also been sentenced to death by the Hungarian revolutionary government for their role leading the Slovak volunteers),105 lawyer Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, and Hurban, the last surviving member of the Slovak National Council. However, the representatives of the nová škola, including Ján Bobula and Ján Palárik, also boasted impressive patriotic credentials. Both the nová škola and the stará škola formed political parties, and it is noteworthy that Slovak parties continued to participate in Hungarian elections after the Ausgleich. In the elections of 1872, the division of the Slovak vote meant that no Slovaks were elected to parliament at all, after which setback the nová škola, in Macartney’s words, “disintegrated altogether.”106 Continued Slovak participation in Hungarian political life contrasts strikingly with Czech boycott: František Palacký, declaring Dualism “geographical and political insanity,” threatened that Czechs would withdraw from the Austrian Diet “for all eternity” if the Ausgleich went through.107 Slovak politicians did not resort to parliamentary boycott until the Tisza years. Slovak historians have not been kind to the nová škola. Ľudovít Holotík uncharitably describes it as having attempted to take control of Slovak politics into their hands, and to accommodate the Hungarian state idea in such a way that the way to agreement with the ruling Magyars would be open. Step by step they accepted the Ausgleich and reduced Slovak demands up to the borders of collaboration.108 Milan Podrimavský wrote that the nová škola “could not bring productive and perspective values to the efforts for a national emancipation in Slovakia,” and denied that their program was “a real, possible alternative for solving the Slovak problem.”109 The failure of the nová škola is beyond question, but the stará škola proved equally ineffective. In light of Magyar hegemony, the conflict between the stará and nová škola became increasingly irrelevant. The political party based on the stará škola tradition, the Slovenská národná strana [Slovak National Party], even adopted the tactics of the nová škola: Podrimavský noted that its 1901 electoral platform: “did not embrace the principal claims of the Memorandum

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Choosing Slovakia

for tactical reasons.”110 Slovak disenfranchisement made political platforms irrelevant: Hungarian state institutions routinely refused to acknowledge legitimately elected representatives from ethnic minorities. One Ondrej Halas had his mandate rejected seven times.111 After Tisza’s fifteen-year rule ended, Hungary had a series of weak ministers who varied in their degree of hostility to non-Magyar nationalities. Dezső Bánffy openly propounded Magyar chauvinism: “without chauvinism it is impossible to found the unitary Magyar state.”112 His successor, Kálmán Széll, Deák’s son-in-law, curbed some of Bánffy’s excesses; R.W. Seton-Watson, a Slovakophile British historian, described Széll as “the only Hungarian Premier of recent times who tried to apply tact and humanity to the nationalities question.”113 But even Széll described the Hungarians as conquering lords: “The Magyars have conquered this country for the Magyars and not for others. The supremacy and hegemony of the Magyars is fully justified.” In the final years of the Habsburg monarchy, the Hungarian government remained extremely hostile to minority national aspirations. Jászi spoke of “an atmosphere of chauvinistic megalomania.”114 With the spread of education and the increasing reach of Magyarizing pressures, the Slovak national intelligentsia struggled to mobilize ordinary Slovaks. A significant and widely-publicized turning point was the so-called “Černová massacre.” Černová is a Slovak village in Ružemberok county. Andrej Hlinka, Černová’s parish priest, had long been active in local politics, so when Slovaks in his parish built him a church in 1906, the government declared Hlinka unsuitable for the post and attempted to install a Magyar priest. Černová’s Slovaks protested, and during a confrontation with police, twelve people were killed. The government then prosecuted Hlinka and his colleagues for provocation, which brought the matter to international attention. The Černová incident transformed Hlinka, in William Wallace’s words, “from a reasonable critic into a really bitter opponent, as well as making him a martyr.”115 Hlinka’s imprisonment made him a highly visible symbol of Slovak national oppression, and launched him on a dramatic political career. Slovaks also sought allies among Hungary’s Romanian and Serbian politicians, who faced a similar struggle against Magyarization. In the 1890s, Slovak politicians cooperated with South-Slav and Romanian parties attempting to widen the voting franchise, and in 1895 representatives of Romanian, Serbian and Slovak parties formed a “Congress of Nationalities” which demanded autonomous administration for Hungary’s nationalities. The following year, they issued a joint protest against the Millennium celebrations in Budapest.116 Magyars responded by intensifying their efforts at

The Hungarian Context

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Magyarization: over 400 Magyar schools were founded in minority districts the following year.117 The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 transformed Slovak politics. The political events that led to the creation of a Czechoslovak state have been well-documented elsewhere,118 and will be briefly discussed in the final chapter. The essential point is that the 1920 Treaty of Trianon detached Slavic northern Hungary from the kingdom of Hungary. Most Slovak leaders welcomed this as liberation from tyranny. Fear of Slavic disloyalty to the kingdom of Hungary had inspired the policy of Magyarization, but Magyarization had caused so much discontent that Slovak leaders, when presented with the choice of continued loyalty to Hungary or an untried Czecho-Slovak Republic, chose the devil they did not know: Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak declaration of independence denounced the Magyars’ “unspeakable violence and ruthless oppression of their subject races.”119 Subsequent Slovak historians, commenting on the history of Magyarization, have generally adopted the same approach. In 1958, Socialist historian Ľudovít Holotík wrote that Hungary was “an agrarian, half-feudal land, in which the landowners and haute bourgeoisie ruled with violence.”120 In the post-socialist period, Vladimir Matula described nineteenth-century Slovaks as a “nationally and socially oppressed ethnic community, subject to systematic and forceful assimilation on the part of the ruling Hungarian nation.”121 Several western historians of Slovakia accept the rhetoric of victimization: Jozef Lettrich, for instance, concluded that “the balance-sheet of the thousand years of Magyar rule of the Slovaks is unbelievably in the red. The Slovaks suffered irreplaceable losses in their national potential.”122 Most historians who oppose this picture are either Hungarian patriots or foreign historians who openly sympathize with Hungary.123 Given this historiographic consensus, it is worth emphasizing that nineteenth-century Slovak-Hungarian history relations cannot be reduced to a morality tale in which wicked Hungarians oppressed poor Slovaks. History, despite a popular proverb to the contrary, is not always written by the victors; but can only be written by the literate. The policy of Magyarization antagonized precisely that section of Slovak society capable of recording its discontent for future generations. The Slovak intelligentsia unwaveringly opposed Magyarization and suffered persecution in consequence, but Slovak peasants, laborers, and craftsmen rarely felt persecuted by Magyarization because they were not seriously affected. Intellectuals frequently style themselves as the voice of “the nation,” but historians must treat this conceit skeptically. Even after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Slovaks composed and sang songs

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Choosing Slovakia

proclaiming their loyalty to the monarchy,124 and military historian Gunther Rothenberg also concluded that “soldiers of all nationalities, including even Czechs and Slovaks, displayed considerable enthusiasm for this war up to the late summer of 1918.”125 Slovaks only abandoned their Hungarian loyalties at the very end of the First World War. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Slovak peasantry showed a surprising quiescence, even by the lethargic standards of peasant populations. Consider the Slovak volunteers, the only Slovak organization to resist the Hungarian state with force of arms. When the Slovak National Council organized the volunteers in Vienna, it could only find 50 Slovak recruits, though many more Slovaks rallied to it after it crossed into Hungary. By contrast, the Slovak National Council found 250 Czech volunteers to fight for fellow “Slavo-Czechs” in Hungary.126 In other words, for every Slovak willing to defend their nation, however imagined, from Kossuth-style Magyarization, five Czechs were prepared to fight for Czechoslovak co-nationals: patriotic Czechs were more dedicated to liberating the Slovaks from “Magyar oppression” than the Slovaks themselves. Perhaps the most revealing statistic about the volunteers is the fact that more Slovaks joined the Hungarian Honvéd militia.127 And did not the leaders of Slovak National Council, even after having been sentenced to death in absentia, pointedly refrain from demanding separation from Hungary at the Prague Slavic Congress? The Slovak volunteers have entered into Slovak historical myth, thanks in part to Daniel Rapant’s meticulous five-volume history.128 Historians of Hungary, by contrast, usually ignore the Slovak volunteers as a negligible force during the Hungarian Revolution. Kann’s description of the Slovaks as “inconspicuous”129 captures their relative lack of impact, at least when compared to Jelačić’s Croatian army, or even Romanian peasant jaqueries. Most Hungarian and Anglophone histories of 1848 Hungary do not mention the Slovak volunteers at all, though Hugh Seton-Watson made a passing reference to “Slovak armed bands.”130 Perhaps the most important fact about Rapant’s history, however, is that it was published in the 1950s, immediately after the Hungarian occupation of southern Slovakia during the Second World War. Viewing the Slovak volunteers as independence fighters enabled Slovaks to refute an important claim of Hungarian revisionists, namely that “the Slovaks never wished to be detached from Hungary,”131 as Győrgy Lukács put it. A Slovak independence movement from the 1840s provided precedent and thus implicit justification for the ethnic partition of Hungary. Before the Treaty of Trianon, however, even Slovaks who had been radicalized in America expressed Hungarian loyalties. Slovenský Sokol boasted that Slovaks “had never rebelled, never revolted”132 against Hungarian

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rule; a New York Memorandum proclaimed “Away from Magyar domination, — but not from the Hungarian homeland!133 This striking convergence of views between post-war Hungarian revisionism and pre-war Slovak nationalism merely underscores the dramatic transformation Slovak thought underwent during the First World War. The following chapter will argue that Slovaks felt a genuine sense of loyalty and affection for the Hungarian homeland throughout the long nineteenth century. The ultimate goal of Slovak political agitation in the nineteenth century was not a Slavic nation-state, but rather what Will Kymlicka has called “poly-ethnic rights,” which are “usually intended to promote integration into the larger society, not self-government.”134 This idea had roots in Hungarian history: the Slovak struggle against Magyarization was predicated on the Hungarus concept: Slovaks saw themselves as Slavophone Hungarians.

3 HUNGARO-SLAVISM: IMAGINING A SLAVIC HUNGARY

This chapter examines Slovak visions of a multi-ethnic Hungary. Slovak nationalists vigorously resisted Magyarization and displayed tenacious loyalty to their own language, however imagined. Nevertheless, they sought to fulfill their national aspirations within the context of the Hungarian state. The most common tactic was to proclaim both autochthony and loyalty to the Hungarian kingdom. Since Slovak aims could only be achieved if Magyar policy makers were converted to a multi-ethnic vision of Hungary, Slovak patriots also sought reconciliation with ethnic Magyars. Slovak loyalties to Hungary drew on the Hungarus tradition, but I will describe Slovak Hungarianism as “Hungaro-Slavism.”1 Historians understand Hungarus patriotism as a trend in Magyar intellectual history; the term “Hungaro-Slavism” is intended to denote a peculiarly Slavic phenomenon. Hungaro-Slavism combined political loyalty to the kingdom of Hungary with cultural loyalty to a Slavic linguistic collective. These linguistic loyalties were very complex; subsequent chapters will discuss the interplay of All-Slavic, Czechoslovak, and Slovak particularist concepts. This chapter examines political arguments, cultural phenomena, and patriotic organizations inspired by Hungaro-Slavism. Several histories of Slovakia mistakenly equate opposition to Magyarization and opposition to the Hungarian state. To demonstrate the ubiquity of Hungaro-Slavic loyalties, this chapter errs on the side of excessive documentation, discussing the canonical figures of nineteenth century Slovak history perhaps at the cost of excessive repetition. The following chapter will examine Hungaro-Slavic national concepts as a form of nationalism. Hungaro-Slavism was an ideology of being Hungarian. For the sake of clarity, one might differentiate two meanings of the word “Hungarian”: [Hethnic]

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“ethnic Hungarians, Magyars” and [Hterritorial] “inhabitants of the kingdom of Hungary.” English, like most European languages, rarely distinguishes between the two concepts.2 The Magyar politikai nemzet deliberately conflated them. Hungaro-Slavism, by contrast, proclaimed that one could be the latter without being the former. Let us begin by examining the Hungarian terminology in some detail. Magyars use the word Magyar, plural Magyarok, for both [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial], and also as the root of Magyarország [Hungary]. The Hungarian language, of course, potentially has linguistic resources to differentiate these two meanings: István Szamota’s 1902-06 multi-volume dictionary, the Magyar oklevél szótár, listed “magyër, magyor: ungarus, hungarus, panno, pannonius” 3 as synonyms for Magyar. Szamota treated all these terms as stylistic alternatives, though the word Pannonian, popular with Hungarian political writers, sometimes implied [Hterritorial].4 Hardly any European languages borrowed the word “Magyar.” The word “Onogur,” a medieval alliance of nomadic tribes, is the origin of the English word “Hungarian,” German Ungar (sometimes spelled Unger) and French hongrois.5 The Slovak word from this root is uhor, though in the nineteenth century, Slovaks frequently used the spelling uher ; the situation is comparable to grey and gray in English.6 The primary sources adduced below refer to Hungary as both Uhorsko and Uhersko,7 and describe a Hungarian as both uhor and uher (respective plurals uhri and uhři).8 Slavs living in Hungary, of course, also knew the Hungarian word magyar, and used it as the basis for loan-words spelled with Slavic orthography: maďar, Maďarorság, etc.9 Modern Slovak makes a lexical distinction between maďari and uhri, using the first word to mean “Magyars,” [Hethnic]. For example, the Hungarian language is maďarčina. However, this distinction between uher and maďar came into being through explicitly politicized language planning. Before the mid-nineteenth century, Slovaks used the term uhor/uher for both [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial]. In 1685, Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius) described the Hungarian language as uhersky.10 Anton Bernolák’s 1825 dictionary translated uher into German as ein Ungar and into Hungarian as Magyar; he also described the Hungarian language as uherčina. Bernolák gave no definition for the word maďar.11 Karl Bobok’s 1835 Hungarian grammar for Slovak speakers described itself as a Prakycká uherská gramatyka.12 Josef Jungmann’s 1835 Czech dictionary also treated uher and maďar as synonyms.13 The word uher also appeared in political writing. Michael Mossotcy’s 1793 tract against the French Revolution called for all nationalities of Hungary to rally around the king as loyal Christians:14 “Why would we want to be French apes when we can be brave Hungarians, Germans or Slavs!” [Uhře, Nemcy aneb

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Slowácy!]15 Finally, an 1804 school textbook Známost Wlasti [Knowledge of the Homeland], written by Juraj Palkovič, professor of Slavic literature at the Bratislava Lutheran lyceum, used the word uher for both meanings: Sedem milionů Uhry lidu magi Sto pak jest měst welkych w njchžto přebýwagj; … Uher, Slowan, Němec má zwlássť bydlo zdegssi Slowané wssak gsau snad w počtu neysylněssi. Hungary has seven million people A hundred great cities are enclosed with it, … The Hungarian, Slav, and German have a homeland here, but the Slavs are possibly the most powerful in number. 16 The first couplet uses the word Uhry to discuss Hungary’s total population, including all nationalities: Slavs, Germans, Magyars, Romanians, etc. The second couplet, claiming that Slavs have numerical superiority over other ethnic groups in Hungary, juxtaposes the Hungarian Slav with an ethnically Magyar Uher [Hethnic]. Slovaks only began to draw a lexical distinction between [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial] during the Reform Era. The earliest texts to make this distinction were written in German. Consider Ján Csaplovics’s 1820 “The Kingdom of Hungary is a Miniature Europe”: The word Ungarn implies all the peoples [Völker] living in Hungary; Slovaks as well as Wallachians, Germans as well as Vandals, etc., all are Ungarn, because they live in Hungary. Magyaren, on the other hand, are only those who form the main nation, those who call themselves the Magyarok.17 A footnote in Samuel Hojč’s influential 1833 pamphlet, “Should we become Magyars?” similarly explains that the author was obliged by the interests of precision to distinguish between ‘Magyaren’ and ‘Ungarn’, between ‘magyarisch’ and ‘ungrisch’: when he speaks of ‘die Ungarn,’ he understands with this term all the peoples living in the country and kingdom of Hungary; ‘Magyaren’, by contrast, are to him the Arpadier [i.e. descendents of Árpád, a medieval Magyar leader].18

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Hojč’s work provoked discussion among Slavs and Magyars; it was even debated in the Hungarian parliament.19 Hojč also found readers in the Slavic south of Hungary. Consider how Zagreb journalist Bogoslav Šulek20 distinguished ugar and magjar in his 1844 booklet: Dear reader, please remember the difference between ugarskom and magjari. By ugarskom we understand the whole kingdom, including all peoples [narode], who live there; namely slavjane, magjare, Germans, Vlachs, etc. – Magjari are only one part of the ugarskih population, that is, they are the descendants of the Arpadovieh, Asiatic people…21 To the best of my knowledge, Hojč and Šulek are the only authors to speak of “Arpadians”; Šulek probably borrowed the term from Hojč.22 Every Slavic language in Hungary adopted this lexical distinction between [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial], though Romanian did so only intermittently.23 Figure 3.1: Ethnonyms for “Hungarian” Slovak Ukrainian Croatian Slovene Romanian

Hethnic Maďar Maďyar (Мадьяр) Mađar Madžar Maghiar

Hterritorial Uhor Uhorec (Угорец) Ugar Oger Ungur

All these words could be rendered in English as “Hungarian.” This lexical differentiation struck such deep roots that modern Slovaks have forgotten its nineteenth-century origins. Confusion can result when modern Slovaks read historical sources: a footnote in Ján Beňko’s collection of historical documents explained that when Ján Hrdlička used the word Uher in 1785, he really meant Maďar.24 Hojč also tried to introduce this lexical distinction into the Hungarian language. His 1843 Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus [Apology of Hungarian Slavism], a public appeal to Lajos Kossuth, suggested that conflict between Slavs and Magyars derived from the latter’s inability to distinguish [Hethnic] from [Hterritorial]: The whole dispute stems from a tautology in the Hungarian naming system, so, that one understands by the word “Magyar” those who speak this language, but also every inhabitant of Hungary; by the word

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Choosing Slovakia “Magyarország” the part of the country inhabited by Magyars, but also the whole country, and so one confuses these concepts.25

Observing that Hungarian poetry used Hunnia as a stylistic alternative for Magyarország, Hojč remarked hopefully that the Slavs “would have nothing against it if the term were used in Hungarian prose … one could call the totality of Hungary’s inhabitants “Hunnia népei or Hunniái.” 26 This distinction, of course, would have undermined the rhetorical bait-and-switch upon which the Magyar politikai nemzet rested. Kossuth unsurprisingly ignored Hojč’s proposal: on 8 April 1848, for example, he proclaimed, “it is impossible to speak a hundred different languages … There must be one language, and in Hungary this must be Hungarian.”27 Hungarian nationalists ignored the lexical differentiation cultivated in Slavic languages, but vigorously contested any attempts to make a similar distinction in German, the language in which it had first been drawn: German was the lingua franca of Habsburg interethnic communication and an important vehicle for political discussion. A notable instance of this contestation occurred in a famous correspondence, published in 1843, between Czech nobleman Leo Thun and Hungarian Count Ferenc Pulszky. Pulszky, noting that “for a while now it has become fashionable among the Slavs [Slavomanen] to make a distinction between the two concepts Ungar and Magyar,” described the difference as “petty.”28 Thun responded to this comment at length, citing a German newspaper to show that the terminological dispute was more than a “Slavic fashion.” Thun’s argument is too long-winded to reproduce here, but the German article Thun cited is worth repeating: I use the name Magyaren, even though they themselves reject it and wish to be called Ungarn. It may be that they originally had an equal right to both names, but the way things have developed, one understands with the word Ungarn all citizens without considering language or nationality; if we were therefore to fulfill the demands of the Magyaren, we would decide the question in advance to their advantage.29 Thun then urged Pulszky, as a representative of the Hungarian liberal nobility, to reconsider his attitude. Pulszky, however, refused to acknowledge that the topic was worth discussing. The philological dispute whether to say magyarisch or ungrisch always seems very peculiar, because I, accustomed to thinking in Hungarian, find no relevant expression for these divided concepts — seriously

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pursuing a dispute on this topic would be more appropriate, in my opinion, for the age of the Byzantine Greeks than for our own.30 This unwillingness to distinguish [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial] proved an enduring phenomenon of Hungarian thought. Franz Löher, who pointedly called his 1874 travelogue “The Magyars and other Hungarians,” reported that Hungarians found it a half-insult when a German calls them Magyaren. “What? It’s supposed to be your greatest pride that you can call yourselves Magyaren?” “Well, yes, for ourselves we are Magyaren, but for all others we are Ungarn.” 31 Hungarians achieved a certain notoriety for this stubbornness. In 1907, the British newspaper Spectator derived national conflict in Hungary in part from “the distinction between Magyars and Hungarians, or the refusal of Hungarian statesmen to admit that it exists.”32 In 1910, American author Emily Balch wrote that “the Magyar language only has one word for the two ideas, Magyar and Hungarian. Hungary is Magyarország (that is Magyar land), and one might almost say that the this whole wretched business reduces itself to a poor pun.”33 As late as 1946, a Hungarian émigré proclaimed it difficult “to decide whether we are Hungarians who speak Magyar or Magyars who speak Hungarian.”34 Just as conflating the inhabitants of Hungary and ethnic Magyars helped promote the Magyar politikai nemzet, distinguishing them facilitated HungaroSlavic political claims. The distinction between uhor/uher and maďar entered the Slovak language during the political conflicts of the Reform Era, and was developed in order to resist Magyarization. Indeed, Hojč’s Apologie not only felt the need to explain the difference between Ungaren and Magyaren, but provided a definition of Magyarisiren.35 This distinction allowed Slovaks to take pride in being uhri and praise their uhorský homeland, while rejecting maďarksý culture and Magyarization. Hungaro-Slavism was Uhorsko‑Slavism. Hojč even claimed that Hungary was a predominantly Slavic country, and tried to derive the word Uhor from the Slavic phrase u hory [in the mountains].36 Perhaps Michal Hodža provided clearest articulation of the Hungaro-Slavic idea in 1847: “The Slovak is just as good a Uhor as the Maďar. [Uhor je tak dobre Slovák jako aj Maďar].”37 Note that unless the Hungarian ethnonym is differentiated, this claim becomes nonsensical: “The Slovak is just as good a Hungarian as the Hungarian.” The Hungaro-Slavic idea inspired patriotic poetry, songs, fiction, political pamphlets, and ultimately political organizations. Miroslav Hroch, recall, schematized a national movement as passing through a “period of scholarly

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interest” (Phase A) before turning to “patriotic agitation” (Phase B).38 Hungaro-Slavism fits the Hroch schema. One patriotic act characteristic of the “scholarly interest” phase is folk songs collecting. Ján Kollár’s two-volume Národinié zpiewanky čili pjsně swětské Slowákůw w Uhrách [National Songbook, or Secular Songs of the Slovaks in Hungary], written in collaboration with Pavel Šafařík, reflects a HungaroSlavic spirit. Kollár and Šafařík, both essential figures in Slovak life, will be discussed in detail below; for now observe that the Národinié zpiewanky combined Slavic and Hungarian affiliations in its title.39 Books, proverbially, cannot be judged by their covers, yet several songs in this work show an unmistakably Hungarian flavor. “Pest and Timişoara,” for example, expressed an unambiguously Hungarian geography: Moga milá w Pešti slúžj moga srdce za ňou túžj A ga gu tam nenechám čo ga puogdem newjm kam. [...] Temešwár je pekné mesto tam se pregde negedno sto Ach, nešťastný Temešwár, ked sem ga tam neostal. My sweetheart works in Pest my heart longs for her and I left her there I do not know where I am going. [...] Timişoara is a nice town hundreds stroll there all about Ach, unhappy Timişoara, When I do not remain there.40 The city of Timişoara is presently in Romania, two international borders removed from the present Slovak Republic. Both Timişoara and Pest are awkward locations for a “Slovak” ballad. The Národinié zpiewanky also contains a 1740 song about Arad, also in Romania, though admittedly near the Slovak colony in Békés.41 In Kollár’s day, however, both Timişoara and Arad were part of the Hungarian kingdom.

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Other songs in Kollár’s Národinié zpiewanky show their Hungarian character by including Hungarian words. The catchiest example is: Ei istenem, istenem Čo že si ga wystenem Ei či wdowa či diwoča čo mi bude fragerča? Ay, my God, my God What do I achieve by sighing? Ay, whether a widow or young girl, Who will be my sweetheart?42 Such a stanza would jar in a Slovak “national songbook” today, or even from the 1860s. As final example of “Hungaro-Slavic” folklore, consider “The Life of a Monk outside the Monastery.” In this fascinating relic from multinational Hungary, Slavic, Latin, Hungarian and German words coexist, though all non-Slavic words appear in italics (see Figure 3.2). My translation indicates the original languages: Slavic, Latin, Hungarian. Figure 3.2: “Life of a Monk outside the Monastery,” verse 4 (1835)

I am that sort of preacher, Who is Nejeldý, who is Ďatel? … What nonsense! Knowing a sermon is useful, The immature do not think about it … youth: All sermons have been published, if one would gain praise with them, The desire for praise makes the fruit go rotten and leads to lost merit … not intelligence.43



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It is difficult to imagine patriots in any successor state to the nineteenthcentury Hungarian kingdom viewing such songs as “national.”44 That said, Kollár’s Hungaro-Slavism lacked the truly multi-ethnic character of the Hungari.45 He concentrated on Slavic; indeed on specifically Slovak songs; he ignored, for instance, Croatian and Slovene. Rumy’s Musen-Almanach von und für Ungarn [Muses’ Almanac by and for Hungarians], by contrast, had included songs in Latin, Hungarian, Slovak, High German and Transylvanian German.46 Slovak literati used Hungarian imagery throughout the nineteenth century.47 Samo Chalupka, a national poet, clearly proclaimed his Hungarian loyalties. Admittedly, the opening stanzas of Chalupka’s 1875 “Revolt of the Merchants” bristle with Slovak particularism: the “Slovak people,” also explicitly described as a “Slovak nation,” stand on “Slovak hills” to fight an unspecified enemy, presumably the Ottomans: V tej slovenskej vlasti strašná surma stoji Verný slovenský ľud na voznu sa zbrojí Po slovenksých horách čierne mraky dymu Lunia sa deň po dni k nebo vysoknýmu Po slovenských horách, od Matry na Tatry Jasné noc po noci plápolaju vatry A s hory na horu znat’ dáva kraj kraju že slovenský národ na vojnu volajú On the Slovak homeland terrible forces stand, The faithful Slovak people defends itself. Above the Slovak hills, dark clouds are gathering; The moon, on this day after days, in the tall sky, Above the Slovak hills, from mother in the Tatras, On this clear night of nights, is flickering; And from hill to hill, the land knows to array the land, As the Slovak nation sends out the call to arms.48 Of all possible adjectives, however, Chalupka chose to describe the Slovaks as “faithful.” To whom do the Slovaks owe fidelity, if not the King of Hungary? Prijde to, bude to, že večnej pamäte meno štefan-kráľa ľud verný posväti … A ta verná Slovač ­— radšej ona padne, lež by svojho kráľa odpustíla zradne.

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It will come, it shall be, that the faithful people Will bless the eternal memory of king Stephen’s name. … And that faithful Slovak — would rather fall in battle Than ever turn traitor against his king.49 Chalupka’s Hungarian patriotism was consistent with his love for — and contribution to — Slovak literature. Indeed, if an 1861 report in the newspaper Slovenské noviny can be believed, his personal slogan was: “long live Hungarian Slovaks, and Slovak Hungary!”50 Hungaro-Slavism also inspired Slovak political leaders: all three members of the Slovak National Council explicitly proclaimed their Hungarian loyalties on several occasions. Consider Miroslav Hurban, whom contemporaries saw as the main leader of the Slovak volunteers. Hurban, as Hroch might have predicted, had started his patriotic work editing volumes of poetry. He later participated in the Prague Slavic Congress. Of the Slovak leaders of his generation, Hurban paid the most attention to land reform, arguing that peasants should receive land with the abolition of serfdom. Gogolák described him as a “prophet of Slovak ethnopathos, and … dilettantish philosopher of history.”51 Hurban cannot possibly be considered a Magyarophile or Magyarone, but in 1840 he described himself as a “Hungarian” in the most explicit terms possible. Spending the night at a Moravian inn, the innkeeper asked him where he was from. He replied: “I am a Hungarian [som Uhor].”52 Hurban himself used this incident to discuss his national concept in some detail. When the innkeeper complimented him on his linguistic skills, Hurban “explained to him the distinction between Uhor and Maďar, which he quickly understood, and he rejoiced that the greater part of the Hungarian population is comprised of his brothers and sisters by nationality.”53 Hurban elsewhere described the Slovaks as “a tribe of the Hungarian state.”54 A second member of the Slovak National Council, Ľudovít Štúr, enjoys an even greater reputation as a Slovak patriot. Nevertheless, Štúr’s 1843 pamphlet, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren [Grievances and Accusations of the Slavs in Hungary about the Illegal Attacks of the Magyars] proclaimed Slovak loyalty to Hungary as follows: We Slavs form a special nationality [Völkerschaften] in Hungary, we are devoted to our country, and have made service to our fatherland from the earliest times up until today … We always fulfilled our obligations to the fatherland as Slavs, even because of this, we must possess full and equal rights with others, for obligations without rights is bondage.55

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Štúr wrote this passage in German for an inter-ethnic audience, but he expressed similar sentiments in his Slavic journalism. In an 1846 contribution to his Slovenskje národňje novini [Slovak National News], Štúr praised the ethnic diversity of Hungary, and described the Slovaks as an integral part of the kingdom: “Our homeland has many nations, one of the most important are we, who have lived in this land from time immemorial and are widely distributed over it.”56 Elsewhere, Štúr echoed Hojč and Palkovič by claiming Slovak primacy inside Hungary: “there is no elder nation on the uhorskej land than our Slovak nation.”57 Similar expressions of Hungarian loyalty pervade Orol Tatránsky [Eagle of the Tatras], the weekly literary supplement to Štúr’s newspaper. Bohuš Nosák wrote that “in these times our Hungarian homeland requires nothing more urgently than reciprocal confidence between all the classes and nations in Hungary.”58 Janko Kalinčjak has the hero of the short story Milkov hrob [Milko’s Grave] exclaim “My dear Mária! My love for you is great, but even greater is my love for the Hungarian homeland!”59 Another author expressed his willingness to die for multi-ethnic Hungary: Hungarian land! Sweetly pleasing is this name! How much blood has flown to the glory of this name! But that blood belonged not to one nation alone: for the holy Hungarian land streams of youthful blood have gushed … from the Tatras and the Carpathians, from … the shores of the Sava, from the Danube and Tisza and from the broad fields of the lowlands. Maďar and Slav, German and Vlach have as one sacrificed their lives for her. Oh my dear homeland, Hungarian land, my heart beats for you with an ardent love.60 In all of the passages cited above, the word “Hungarian” always glosses some variant of the root uhorský. Other examples would be easy to cite; such rhetoric was ubiquitous. Beschwerden und Klagen, furthermore, listed 22 incidents of “illegal Magyarization” by name, only a third of which occurred on the territory of modern Slovakia, suggesting that Štúr saw the question of Slovak linguistic rights as a question for the Hungarian state as a whole, not just for a specifically Slovak ethnoterritory, however imagined (see Figure 3.3). Michal Hodža, the last main figure in the Slovak National Council, also expressed Hungarus-style loyalties to Hungary. In 1848, Hodža wrote a German-language pamphlet called Der Slowak [The Slovak]. This described Hungary as a “holy land and mother country, the cradle of national traditions … where ancient ancestors and heroes bled for the crown of Hungary.”

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Figure 3.3: Magyarization Sites in Beschwerden und Klagen (1843)

Hodža complained that Hungary had “recently only been a stepmother, treating [the Slovak nation] without compassion, and enslaving its language and nationality with the chains of shame and abuse.” Hodža complained that Magyarization “silences two thirds of Hungary’s original inhabitants, two thirds of the fatherland’s children.” Like Palkovič, Hojč, and Štúr, Hodža accepted that Slavs were Hungarians, and like Hurban, he equated Magyarism with the class-exclusiveness of the natio hungarica: he attacked the “exclusively privileged nationalism” of the “Magyar Aristocratic Party of Linguistic Compulsion [Magyarische Sprachzwangsherrnpartei].”61 To defend Slavic linguistic rights, Hodža suggested an alliance between Hungary’s non-Magyars, specifically between Slavs and Germans. In 1847, he wrote that non-Magyar Hungarians should tell the upstart Magyars that “we do not wish to Magyarize, but we want to feel at home in our common homeland [našej vlasťi] in our own language, and remain by our own nationality [svojej národnosťi].”62 In Der Slowak, he even expressed solidarity with his “German brothers” while confronting the Magyars: Listen up, Magyar, you’re a guest here in our Europe, so don’t act like wild Tatars. Speak, sing, shout however you like your language, but don’t

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Choosing Slovakia hassle anybody who doesn’t speak the way you do. You can’t expect the rest of us to remain silent if we don't shout like you do.63

This sort of alliance between “non-Magyar” Hungarians eventually became an important theme in Slovak politics. As Hroch might have predicted, Hodža’s Hungaro-Slavism eventually led him to articulate political demands. During the Revolution of 1848, he came to believe that the protection of Slovak linguistic rights required Slovak administrative units, and proposed that each nationality in Hungary be governed by “special national parliaments [national-Landtage].” These national parliaments, however, would coexist with a “general parliament [allgemeiner Reichstag] of all the brother nations living under the Hungarian crown.” Curiously, Hodža showed little interest in demarcating the Slovak territory; he merely suggested that “ethnographic borders should be determined.” This disinterest is all the more striking given the loving detail with which Hodža describes his demands for Slovak educational facilities: “elementary schools, basic schools, citizen schools, daughters’ schools, teacher and priestly seminars, institutes of higher learning, gymnasia, lyceums, academies and a university.”64 Hurban took a similar approach at the Prague Slavic Congress. His 7 June manifesto issued in the name of the “Slovak and Rusyn nation in Hungary [národ slovenský a rusínský v Uhřích],” demanded: 1. That the Hungarian Rusyns and Slovaks should be recognized by the Magyars in parliament as a nation having equal rights as themselves. … 2. That they will have national parliaments with their own permanent Slovak-Rusyn committee, having the right and obligation to guard the national rights of Slovaks and Rusyns … 3. That there will be founded national schools, initially grade schools, urban institutes in the diocese, and foundations for educating teachers, further advanced literary institutes, namely gymnasia, lyceums, academies, polytechnical foundations, and a university. Let language learning be Slovak and Rusyn, and free learning the basis of national education … 5. That no nation in Hungary will be declared a ruling nation, and all will have equal rights.65 This position resembled Hodža’s: Slovaks would have an autonomous parliament under Hungarian sovereignty, which would defend Slavic linguistic rights against Magyarization.

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Even after the optimistic atmosphere of the March days gave way to paranoia and conflict, the Slovak leadership retained its Hungarian loyalties. In November 1848, the Slovak National Council’s “Challenge to the Slovak Nation” proclaimed that the Slovak volunteers were fighting for “the unity of the Hungarian monarchy,” though this Hungarian monarchy was to exist in a Habsburg context: the Magyars were accused of trying “to detach our land from Austria, so they can rule over us by themselves … let the king rule over us with law and justice.”66 Only on 19 March 1849 did Slovak patriots finally demand separation from Hungary: 28 Slovak leaders went to Olomouc and presented the Habsburg emperor with a petition demanding 1. That the Slovak nation, around 3 million strong, be recognized as a nation within well-defined state borders. We demand that country, which we have inhabited since the most ancient times, where our own language is normally used domestically and in public life, … be united from many countries into a united political whole which has never ceased to be called a Slovak country, Slovakia.67 The petition then proclaimed equality between the various nations in the Austrian Empire, and demanded the end of Hungarian-language administration and a Slovak constitution. Yet even this petition stressed the “most ardent wish to see the Austrian monarchy unified and powerful.”68 When Kossuth’s extremism forced Slovaks to choose between linguistic loyalties and Hungarian political loyalties, several Slovak patriots chose to break with Hungary. Nevertheless, they were only willing to make this choice when forced by extreme circumstances. Most Slovaks, through most of the Revolution, sought to secure linguistic rights within Hungary. Even the March 1849 petition shows no desire for Slovak statehood: the idea of an independent Slovak political unit apparently had not occurred to anyone. Instead, Hungaro-Slavism was briefly transformed into Austro-Slavism. After the revolutionary confrontation abated, however, Slovak nationalists returned to their traditional Hungaro-Slavism. One key figure in the postRevolutionary period was Daniel Lichard, a prolific journalist with Vienna’s Slovenské noviny [Slovak Newspaper], and author of literally hundreds of titles. In an 1865 pamphlet, Lichard has a fictional parson explain the necessity of supporting the Matica slovenská to various skeptics and doubters. Lichard makes clear that Slovaks were also Hungarians [uhri]. [A]ll the inhabitants of this country: we who are called Slovaks, additionally our brothers the Serbs, Croats, Russians; Magyars, Germans,

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Choosing Slovakia Romanians, who are commonly called Olasi if they live in Hungary — we are all Hungarians, because we live in the Hungarian country and live under the same laws.69

The fictional parson then contrasts “the political word Uhor and the national or linguistic concept of maďar. In this political sense, we Slovaks too are Uhri; but from the national point of view we cannot be and are nothing else but Slovaks.”70 Lichard was not the only intellectual attempting to teach Hungaro-Slavic concepts to Hungary’s Slovak peasantry. Ondrej Radlinský’s school primer, the 1871 Školník, described the Slovak homeland as follows: We Slovaks have in which state and country our homeland? In the state of Hungary-Austria, and particularly in the country of Hungary.71 Notice that while neither half of this two-tiered formula bears a Slavic ethnonym, both halves mention Hungary. Slovaks patriots saw no distinction between Slovak and Hungarian loyalties: the one implied the other. This is most clearly shown in the “Newest Slovak Song,” published in an 1871 Slovak Almanac: Uhorsko jest krajna krásna Hrom w ňej ljeta z čísta, jasna Bo w ňej jesú dwe ďeťičky, Krásne, čo hore hwieyďičky … W tam Uhorsku jest Slovensko Slowákow wlastnje wlasťensko: Tam Maďar ňech ňepanuje. Nech sa swojim ukojuje Hungary is a beautiful land with thunder clean and clear There are two children in her beautiful, like stars above … In this Hungary lies Slovakia The Slovaks’ own homeland: There let the Magyar not rule Let him take care of his own affairs 72

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The desire for Slovak self-government, expressed in the final stanza, appears only after six stanzas in praise of Hungary. In the early twentieth century, František Sasinek’s 1904 Dejepis Slovákov [History of the Slovaks], a school textbook, conflated Hungaria, Pannonia, Uhor, and the Slovak ethnonym. Sasinek described the deeds of king Boleslav, who crossed over the Danube to Pannonia (in Hungariam) and victoriously entered into Belgrade, where he was crowned as king of Hungary [kráľa uhorského]. Then the crown of the Slovak king [koruna slovenského kráľa] was brought to Pannonia and became the crown of the king of Hungary.73 In effect, this series of equations (Slovak = Pannonian = Uhorský = Hungarian) made a familiar claim for Slovak primacy in Hungary: the Hungarian crown is “really” the crown of a Slovak king. If songbooks and textbooks are instances of Hrochian “scholarly interest,” almanacs and Lichard’s pamphlet might better be described as “patriotic agitation,” since they were attempts to mobilize public opinion for political ends. The Slovaks of Pest, however, provide an unambiguous instance of Hungaro-Slavic “patriotic agitation.”74 During the 1850s, Ján Palárik attempted to found a Matica slovanských národov v Uhorsku [Matica of the Slavic Nations in Hungary”].75 The Matica srpska, the first Matica, was then still located in Pest. Palárik’s concrete aims for the Hungaro-Slavic Matica were cultural: to edit books and journals, to support promising authors, and to provide educational assistance for poor youths, imagined both as Christian charity and national duty. The proposed statutes acknowledged the internal diversity of Hungary’s Slavs, but emphasized inter-Slavic cooperation inside the Hungarian kingdom: In order for the literature of the Slavic nations living under the rule of the Hungarian land of the Austrian crown, and the Slovaks, Rusyns, and Croato-Serbs [sic] can obtain a remarkable awakening, the amateurs in the literatures of these nations must … come to each other’s assistance with all their forces in common. For this reason, they have decided to found a Matica, all the Slavic nations of Hungary together. 76 Palárik proved unable to raise money and the organization failed. The urge to found it, however, suggests that Palárik and his backers saw themselves primarily as Hungarian Slavs, rather than Slovaks, and saw Budapest as “their”

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capital city. Certainly they extended their patriotic activity beyond the Slovak ethnoterritory, and sought to collaborate with Slavs other than Slovaks. The 1861 Slovak Memorandum, which demanded a Slovak administrative district, also proclaimed Hungarian loyalties. It insisted that creating a Slovak district would not harm “the unity and integrity of Hungary” and calling for “one, free, constitutional homeland, and inside it freedom, equality, and national brotherhood.”77 It also cited St. Stephen’s famous dictum that “the country with one language is weak and frail.”78 Štefan Daxner, a lawyer who had fought with the Slovak volunteers and drafted the Memorandum, campaigned for parliament on the promise to “work so that the integrity of St. Stephen’s crown, and the lands which belong to it, will be preserved.”79 Such declarations might be discounted as concessions to Magyar opinion, rather than evidence of genuine Hungarian loyalty. The leading figures of the Memorandum movement, however, expressed similar Hungarian loyalties when speaking to a Slovak audience. Daxner wrote in the Slovak press that “we honor and love our brother Magyars.”80 Even in private correspondence, Slovak patriots showed no hint of wanting to break with Hungary. With a certain resignation, Ján Mallý wrote to Ján Francisci that “we cannot be against the unity of the country, even if we wanted to.”81 These formulae, furthermore, do not come from the nová škola, whose acceptance of the Ausgleich has attracted such criticism in Slovak historiography. Both Daxner and Mallý belonged to the stará škola, which supposedly remained steadfast in defence of Slovak rights. Hungaro-Slavism survived in the early decades of the twentieth century. Milan Hodža (not to be confused with his uncle Michal Hodža) also expressed Hungarian loyalties in his political writings. Hodža began his career as a journalist and then served in the Hungarian parliament, proving one of the most vocal proponents of Czech-Slovak cooperation at the turn of the century. An outspoken proponent of Czechoslovak unity, he had a prominent political career in the first Czechoslovak republic. Since Czechoslovak statehood required the partition of Hungary, Hodža would seem an unlikely exponent of Hungaro-Slavic sentiment. Nevertheless, at a 1905 meeting between Slovak and Czech intellectuals, Hodža lectured the assembled Czechs about Slovak loyalty to Hungary: “we seek our freedom strictly in the framework of loyalty to the Hungarian state. We are in Hungary and we want to preserve our rights [there].”82 This meeting was an inter-Slavic affair: no Magyars were present. As late as 1905, Slovak politicians saw themselves as political Hungarians. I see little reason to doubt Hodža’s sincerity, and while this comment contradicted his postwar politics, it was well within the mainstream of pre-1918 Slovak thought.

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Hungarian loyalties also permeated the journal Hlas, Mesačník pre literatúru, politiku, a otázku sociálnu [Voice: Monthly for Literature, Politics, and the Social Question], which most historians treat as the primary organ of Czechoslovak feeling in the final years of the Habsburg monarchy.83 Hlas owes its Czechoslovak reputation partly from the fact that many of its contributors became prominent politicians in the first Czechoslovak republic. Vavro Šrobár, Slovakia’s minister for education in the first Czechoslovak republic, unsurprisingly rejected Magyarization, insisting that “the cultural and moral transformation of the Slovak nation into the Magyar … is an absolute impossibility, through any means.”84 Hlas, however, wanted to reform Hungarian administration, not escape it. As one anonymous article argued, the “chronic crisis of the Hungarian state” had its roots in the fact “that Uhorsko is not Maďarsko.”85 The crisis would only end, Hlas argued, when the Hungarian government abandoned Magyarization and acknowledged the national rights of non-Magyars. The consensus between all these sources suggests that Slovak politicians accepted the legitimacy of the Hungarian kingdom: as Robert Kann put it, “the majority of Slovak nationalists favored autonomy within Hungary rather than union with the Czechs.”86 Seen as a national movement, Hungaro-Slavism has a rather interesting history. It came into being in the early nineteenth century, in response to Magyarization, and disappeared in the early twentieth. The Hungaro-Slavic national ethnonym uhorský followed a similar trajectory. This picture contradicts Hroch’s narrative of nineteenth-century Slovak history, which interprets Slovak politics as a movement that ultimately sought a Slovak state, albeit stuck in Phases A or B. Applying Hroch’s schema to Hungaro-Slavism may be provocative. Other nationalism theorists, however, anticipate the phenomenon of Hungaro-Slavism. Will Kymlicka, for example, defines movements “intended to promote integration into the larger society, not self-government” as struggles for “poly-ethnic rights.”87 Demands for poly-ethnic rights are not an exotic phenomenon: nationalists in Quebec, Scotland, Wales, and Switzerland have sought to fulfill national goals within a multi-ethnic state. The attractions of Hungaro-Slavism are obvious: it offered Slovaks linguistic and cultural fulfillment without the threat of political or military conflict. Given Slovak weakness vis-à-vis the Magyars, a conciliatory approach might have seemed more promising than confrontation. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, of course, Slovak thought underwent a revolutionary transformation. Slovak politicians demanded Slovakia’s physical separation from Hungary, but accepted the right of Magyars to hegemony in rump Hungary, even though a considerable Slovak minority lived there. To symbolize this change, Slovaks abandoned the word

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Uhorsko and began referring to rump Hungary as Maďarsko, even proposing an equivalent neologism in English: documents submitted to the Paris Peace Conference refer to “Magyaria.”88 Other Slavic languages, incidentally, made similar transitions: in Serbo-Croatian (Serbian and Croatian), Mađarska replaced Ugarska; in Slovene, Madžarska replaced Ugerska. Contemporary Slovak political vocabulary thus resembles eighteenthcentury terminology in that it no longer draws a lexical distinction between [Hethnic] “Magyar” and [Hterritorial] “inhabitant of Hungary.” This terminological change reflects changing political aspirations: modern Slovaks no longer seek to integrate their culture into the Hungarian state. The main difference is that maďarský has replaced uhorský as the adjective of choice. Hungaro-Slavism transforms the story of Hungarian ethnic relations during the nineteenth century. Historians tend to let the Magyars monopolize “Hungarian” history. Since the Magyars developed the Magyar politikai nemzet early in the nineteenth century, Anglophone historians, who rarely read both Hungarian and Slovak, have dismissed multi-ethnic Hungarian loyalism as transient and insignificant. Slovak historians also date the decline of multi-ethnic Hungarian national concepts to the early nineteenth century. Ludwig Gogolák spoke of the “universal Hungarian Hungarus-Patriotismus, still clinging to life”89 in the eighteenth century, but replaced by ethnic nationalism in the early nineteenth. Daniel Rapant described “Hungarian patriotic [uhorsko-patriotická]” feeling as a relic of the eighteenth century while discussing a passage from Bernolák: Only somebody anchored in the [eighteenth] century by many ties, who had lived only a decade in the new century, who was more or less pulling against the new currents, could have written this. It could not in any way have been written in the years 1825-27.90 These chronologies match the decline of the class-exclusive, multi-ethnic natio Hungarica, and of the class-inclusive, multi-ethnic Hungarus concept among Magyar thinkers. The Magyars, however, were not the only Hungarians, and Slovak thinkers perpetuated multi-ethnic Hungarian national concepts for much longer. They replaced the natio Hungarica with what might be called the uhorský politický národ: a class-inclusive and multi-ethnic idea of Hungarian nationalism. Hungaro-Slavism was not a holdover from the eighteenth century, but a response to the Magyarization and the Magyar politikai nemzet. As evidence of this chronology, recall that Hojč still needed to explain the lexical distinction between uhor and maďar, both the defining idea and central political argument of Hungaro-Slavism, as late as 1833.

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The Slovak emphasis on Hungarian citizenship, invoked to win linguistic rights within a Hungarian context, explains why Slovaks expressed so little interest in Russia as a protector or political ally. Despite Hungarian and German fears, hardly any Slovaks showed an interest in becoming part of a Russian state. Hojč described Russia as “a colossus, powerful,” which would “be dangerous to small, weak, freedom-loving states.”91 This attitude should be considered typical. The most prominent exception, Štúr’s Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft [Slavdom and the World of the Future], which will be discussed in detail below, not only broke sharply with the otherwise consistent Hungaro-Slavism of Štúr’s career, but had little impact on Slovak thinking. Slavic loyalties were very important in Slovak thought, but Slovak All-Slavism, and thus Slovak interest in Russia, was restricted to a “linguistic” sphere. Even if one ignores political loyalties to focus exclusively on linguistic nationalism, Russians occupied a less important place in the Slovak imagination than Czechs, Rusyns and Croats. Given repeated Slovak declarations of loyalty to Hungary, the hysterical tone of Magyar rhetoric seems, at the very least, counterproductive. Magyar leaders chose to remain willfully unaware of Slovak loyalism, apparently because of their tremendous fear of Russia. In 1844, Miklós Wesselényi wrote that the Hungarians are ringed round, in the north-east from Pressburg along the whole north-eastern border up to the Radnauer pass in Transylvania, by mountains and the foreign peoples [fremde Völker] living there, who can easily become our enemies … they appear to be natural allies of any Russian-Slavic enemy that arrived from abroad, who would according to circumstances be greeted with open arms.92 Ferenc Pulszky similarly feared that the non-Magyars would bind their destiny with that of their tribe, that they would in a word consider themselves as Germans, Slavs, and Wallachians on foreign soil, that they would look not to Pest and Pozsony to decide their affairs, but to Vienna and Berlin, to Prague and Petersburg, to Iaşi and Bucharest …93 Nothing in Slovak thought justifies these fears. Neither author appears to have read any Slovak political thinkers, although Pulszky was familiar with Kollár’s poetry. Perhaps Magyar anxieties would be assuaged if Slovaks could simply explain their position more clearly? Slovak leaders thus tried to solve the problem of Magyarization through gentle persuasion until the First World

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War, by which time members of the Hungarian parliament had spent eight decades ignoring Slovak grievances. The Magyar leadership proved unwilling to grant even token or symbolic recognition that Slovaks were part of the Hungarian kingdom: in Macartney’s words, “the smear of treason attached even more to any attempt to give political expression to … the possibility of a Hungarian patriotism not identified with Magyarism.”94 Consider, as a straw in the wind, the banknotes of the “AustroHungarian” monarchy. One side was the Cisleithanian or “Austrian” side, representing the lands represented in the Austrian parliament; the converse was the Hungarian side. The Austrian side listed the denomination of the banknote in all the languages of the Austrian half of the monarchy: Czech, Polish, Romanian, Italian, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian (in Cyrillic, otherwise identical with the Croatian), and Ruthenian. The “Hungarian” reverse side, however, only showed Hungarian.95 Hungary’s Croats, Romanians and Germans, furthermore, were represented on the Austrian half of the banknote, making the Slovaks the largest ethnic group in the Habsburg Empire whose language was not represented on the currency. The interwar Hungarian government, by contrast, symbolically claimed the non-Magyar nationalities of former Hungary by printing German, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian and Romanian on its banknotes. As a gesture of respect for Hungary’s non-Magyars, however, this was too little, too late. Hungaro-Slavism was a form of nationalism, and even followed the Hroch schema. It informed cultural artifacts, such as the poetry of Kollár and Chalupka, and political agitation, such as the demands of the Slovak National Council, the campaign platforms of Slovak politicians, and the Slovak Memorandum. It affected members of the stará škola, the nová škola and the Hlasist movement. It appeared in German-language texts directed at an interethnic (read: Magyar) audience, but also in Slovak journalism and private correspondence. It endured to the end of the Habsburg monarchy. Nevertheless, Hungaro-Slavism has not received its due attention in Slovak historiography: to the best of my knowledge, only Theodore Locher has even attempted an analysis.96 The Hungaro-Slavic tradition might provide modern central Europeans with a useable past. Some distinguish the putatively liberal and tolerant “Western” nationalism from the illiberal and intolerant “Eastern” nationalism.97 This dichotomy perpetuates a double standard stigmatizing some expressions of national feeling as pernicious while permitting others as liberal and democratic. Yet it depends on a selective reading of the historical record. Solidarity and mutual respect were dominant themes in Slovak nationalism throughout the nineteenth century.

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Hungaro-Slavism might not qualify as a national movement according to what might be called the “high-political” school of nationalism. Several scholars have defined nationalism in terms of political sovereignty or the desire to achieve it. John Breuilly, for example, defines national movements through the claim that “the nation must be as independent as possible,”98 and while he cheerfully concedes that scholars “have achieved a great deal in the way of identifying and describing certain sorts of national consciousness,” he insisted that “this should not be confused with nationalism.”99 Dominique Schnapper similarly sees the nation as “a particular form of political unit” defined in part “by its sovereignty.”100 Hans Kohn wrote that “nationalism is inconceivable without the ideas of popular sovereignty,”101 and Benedict Anderson wrote that if “nations dream of being free,” then “the badge and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.”102 Since Hungaro-Slavism was the struggle for multi-ethnic Hungary, how does it qualify as nationalism? One answer to this question lies in the rhetoric of historical actors. Understanding nineteenth-century nationalism requires a study of nineteenth-century national concepts, and nineteenth-century Slovaks used the word “nation” to describe both their Slavic and their Hungarian loyalties. The next chapter examines theoretical formulations of HungaroSlavic nationalism, shifting the analysis from ethnonyms to the word “nation.” What did Slovaks mean when they used this key word?

4 SLOVAK THEORIES OF DUAL NATIONALITY

The previous chapter showed that nineteenth-century Slovak patriots repeatedly proclaimed their loyalty to Hungary. This chapter examines what might be called Hungaro-Slavic “dual nationalism,” a national concept in which different national loyalties operated within separate spheres. Specifically, Slovaks posited a Hungarian “political nation,” associated with the Hungarian state; and a Slavic linguistic nation, variously imagined. Slovak authors never developed a consistent terminology, so formulations of dual nationality varied. Nevertheless, Hungaro-Slovak dual nationality forms a coherent tradition, since similar national concepts justified similar political goals. The first important theorist of dual nationality was Samuel Hojč, who had played such an important role in distinguishing uhor and maďar. Hojč’s tremendous influence on subsequent Slovak thinkers justifies an extended summary of his thought. He discussed dual nationality at length in his 1843 Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus. This posited four different political collectives with a claim to the citizen’s loyalty; three of four were described in “national” terms. Hojč wrote this book in German, but translated his terminological distinctions into Latin, Hungarian and Slavic; the following discussion devotes special attention to Hojč’s Slavic terminology. Hojč began by defining the obsolete “diplomatic nation,” corresponding to the natio hungarica, as “the nation in Hungary, in the diplomatic sense … composed of four estates: the clergy, the magnates, the nobility and royal free cities.”1 Hojč invoked this “diplomatic nation” solely to emphasize its multiethnic character, since it contained all of the peoples which live in Hungary. If one asks which language they speak at home, what their mother language is, among which people they

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grew up and were educated? … say, all of them! One would find, next to the Magyars, also heaps of Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and Germans.2 Hojč, however, treated this “diplomatic nation” as a legal archaism; his understanding of an unmodified “nation” was class inclusive. Hojč then defined “a people [národ]”3 as “a quantity of human beings who are bound to each other by the bonds of language, style of thought, customs and habits.”4 A people may be defined through its “people-ness [nàrodnost].”5 Hojč juxtaposed a people and its people-ness with the “nation [Národ]”6 and its accompanying “nationality.”7 While nation refers to the totality of citizens, to the totality of a country’s inhabitants who are bound by common laws, government and common well-being, so nationality is nothing more than observing the law, respecting the government, and eagerly striving to promote the well-being of the fatherland.8 Hojč finished his gaggle of definitions with a non-national political collective, the “Fatherland [wlast]:” the place which served our fathers as a place to live, where we and our ancestors were born, nourished, raised, and educated; where we find the love of our parents, friendship, the protection of laws, an inherited or self-made fame and privilege, a welcome profession, perhaps also a peaceful house and home, also the resting place of the grave. How many sweet and dear things this word contains!9 For Hojč, “the Sons of the Fatherland [kragané, obcané (sic)]”10 included “everyone who resides in the fatherland, considers it to be his own, lives as well under the same laws, is subordinated to the same ruler, has a common goal to strive for.”11 When examined closely, this complex taxonomy of civic loyalties contradicts itself. Both the “nation” and “fatherland,” for example, were defined by “respect for the law,” and Hojč confusingly described both with the Hungarian word nemzet and the German words Staatsbürger and Nation. Why did Hojč subdivide his political loyalties in such a complex manner? Political goals provide an answer: Hojč opposed the policy of Magyarization and defended Slovak linguistic rights. Since the “sons of the fatherland” are subordinated to the same ruler, the “fatherland” presumably refers to the Habsburg monarchy as a whole; the “nation” to the kingdom of Hungary. The monarchy and the kingdom made rather similar claims to Hojč’s loyalty: a

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good Slovak would obey both Hungarian law and the Habsburg monarch.12 Neither loyalty, however, prevented Slovaks from defending the language and customs of their “people.” Significantly, Hojč showed no interest in distinguishing Slovaks from Croats, Serbs or Rusyns: his “people” included the entire Slavic world: “not only the … Magyars are a people, in the sense I have described, but also … the Slavs and Wallachians in Hungary. … The Slav greets the land of the Slavs in all four regions of the world, from the White Sea to the Mediterranean he finds brothers.”13 Hojč carefully restricted his Slavism to a cultural sphere, and denied the very existence of political Pan-Slavism. “Unquestionably there are friends of the literary Panslavism in Hungary, but this is a world apart from the political sort,”14 he argued; “the political Pan-Slavism has no friends among us, but the literary has many, and wins ever more.”15 Hojč assured the Magyars that literary Pan-Slavs were loyal to Hungary: without damaging our Hungarian-national sympathies, we wish to hold tight to the unity which binds us with [other Slavs], so that in the wide north, as in the far south, we have brothers, in whose veins related blood flows. We would call this a Panslavism of love.16 Though Hojč failed to persuade the Magyars, these sentiments are entirely consistent with the Hungaro-Slavic tradition. Hojč’s complex theory of multiple national loyalty was less successful than his distinction between uhor and maďar, perhaps because his terminology was both confusing and confused. Only a capital letter distinguished the Slavic národ from the Hungarian Národ! Such fine distinctions stood little chance of winning a mass audience. Hojč’s terminological difficulties, however, seem mild in comparison to those of Michal Hodža, whose 1847 Dobruo slovo Slovákom [A Good Word as a Slovak] posed the following rhetorical question: Is it true that in our homeland, that is to say, Hungary, we cannot be any other nationality [národnosťi] than Hungarian [uhorská], that is to say, Magyar [maďarská]?17

Naturally, Hodža answered this question in the negative: “We do not want to Magyarize, we want to stand by our own language, by our own nationality, in our own homeland.”18 To justify his attachment to his language, Hodža invoked a linguistic nation [národ], claiming that since “every nation has the right to nationality [národnosti], and the Slovak has it too.”19

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And what is this nationality? This is the about the same as if we would say of a good man that he was a man of the people [ľudskí človek]. Though every man is indeed a man, not every man is a man of the people, and so not every nation is a national nation [je ňje každí národ národní národ].20 Hodža then distinguished a “national nation” from a mere “nation:” If a nation does not have nationality, we call it nation-ness [naroďenstvom] (with a short a); if it has nationality, we call it nátion-ness [nároďnenstvom] (with a long á). This is an important difference. Perhaps only for nátionness have the people and I struggled; it elevates no nation when, as frequently happens, nation-ness stupidly hates itself. Then the nation is merely an ape for other national nations. It would rather know every foreign language before its own, it works well, but it works on the publications of other nations, but not for its own movement.21 I assure the reader that this passage is as bizarre and incomprehensible in the original as in my translation; even a transliteration into modern orthography baffled my Slovak informants. The proposed distinction between naroďenstvom and nároďnenstvom also failed to strike root. The main point, however, was that Hodža’s Slavness coexisted with Hungarian citizenship: “every Slavic tribe in Hungary lives with the conviction that every human being, every Slavic tribe … can be as exemplary a Hungarian citizen [vlasťeňec Uhorskí] as the Magyar, if not better.”22 Like Hojč, Hodža also accepted a multi-ethnic state led by an “All-national ruler [Allvölker-Regierer],23 thus simultaneously proclaimed his loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty, cultural Slavness and Hungary. Hodža, like Hojč, also declared Hungary a “primeval Slavic country [Urslawenland],”24 implying that the Magyars, not the Slavs, should have their status as good Hungarians called into question. Hodža also followed Hojč in imagining not a Slovak nation, but an AllSlavic nation, “the Slavic [Slavjanskí] nation (by which we understand the Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Rusyns).”25 We Slovaks, in our Slovak nationality [slovenskej národnosť], also have a Slavic nationality [slavjanskú národnosť], which is a world nationality, i.e. a great and special factor in European humanity; against which Magyar nationality [maďarská národnosť] has remained through the ages only a domestic, secondary, petty nationality.26

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Hodža invoked this Slavic nationality not to justify any claim for statehood, or even for administrative autonomy, but to express Slavic pride, and scorn for Magyar pretensions to cultural superiority. During the 1840s, then, Hojč and Hodža used variants of the word “nation” [národ] to describe both the Hungarian state and a Slavic linguistic community, resulting in a series of ineffectual and short-lived neologisms. Hojč contrasted a Slavic národ with the Hungarian Národ; Hodža distinguished lickspittle Magyarone narodnosti from proud Slavic národnosti. Hojč also posited a diplomatic nation and a multi-national fatherland. Hodža claimed that Slovak národnosť implied membership in a Slavic národnosť, praising nároďnenstvom over mere naroďenstvom. This bewildering terminology, however, obscured a straightforward political stance: both wanted the Hungarian government to stop the policy of Magyarization and accept Slavic cultural ambitions. To the best of my knowledge, theories of Hungaro-Slavic dual nationalism were not published in the 1850s, since discussions of nationality were interrupted throughout the Habsburg lands under the Bach regime. Slovak leaders, in Susan Mikula’s words, “spent most of the 1850s … in internecine battle over the language issue.”27 The 1850s were important years in the history of Slovak linguistic concepts, and will be discussed in detail below. Theories of Hungaro-Slavic nationality, however, lay fallow until the collapse of neoabsolutism. During the 1860s, however, thinkers in the HungaroSlavic tradition began to devise an effective terminology for articulating dual national loyalties. In Daniel Lichard’s 1861 pamphlet defending the Slovak Memorandum, “Conversation about the Memorandum of the Slovak Nation,” several different characters express different understandings of the “nation.” As with Lichard’s 1865 “Conversation about the Matica slovenská,” discussed above, the protagonist is a parson. The antagonist is a straw man named “Newolny [Unfree]”; other characters have the names of trees. When Newolny hears that the Memorandum has been issued in the name of the Slovak nation, he objects, giving a legalistic “Magyar” definition of the “Hungarian nation [národ uhorský].” A nation is a group of people who lives in one country, is a society of all inhabitants who may speak any language whatsoever, when a single law unites their country. So by us in Hungary [w Uhorskej], there can be no demands of a Slovak nation, even if these Slovaks were a hundred times as numerous, but there can only be a Hungarian nation.28

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The parson then defines the nation as “a society of people which speak one language, has its own habits and customs, and inhabit one unbroken region, etc.”29 Both definitions drew on existing precedent. Newolny is a caricature Magyarone: he counts non-Magyars as part of the národ uhorský, but accepts Magyars supremacy, granting the Hungarian language a hegemonic status in the Hungarian legal system. “Who wishes to use the courts,” Newolny argues, “let him learn Hungarian.”30 The parson’s definition, by contrast, followed Hojč’s Slavic “národ” not only by highlighting language, but also by including “habits and customs” as criteria. The parson does not juxtapose his Slovak “nation” with a Hungarian “nation”: here, only Slavic loyalties were “national.” The parson does, however, count the Slovaks as one of the “Hungarian nations [národy uhorské],” listed as “Slovaks, Magyars, Serbs, Rusyns, Romanians, Germans, etc.”31 Lichard thus remained part of the Hungaro-Slavic tradition: “We live in the Hungarian land and vote as Hungarians, but according to language, we are Slovaks, Magyars, Serbs, Rusyns, Rumanians, etc.”32 Lichard, like Hojč and Hodža, situated Slovaks in an All-Slavic context, but he granted more prominence to Slovak particularism and avoided the contentious word “Pan-Slavism.” Lichard’s parson defined the word “Slav” as follows: Slav [Slowan alebo slawian] refers to all members of the great Slavic nation … The greatness of this nation is divided according to dialect into greater or lesser tribes, or nations, such as the Russians, who are the biggest, then the Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, we Slovaks, and so forth … all speak one and the same language, though with some variations, just the way it is among us. We Slovaks speak differently in Trnava or Skalica, differently in Liptov, and different again in Šariš or Spiš — but everybody understands each other fine. This is how it is among Slavs, which word designates the Russian, the Pole, the Czech, the Croat, the Serb, the Slovak; but if you say Slovak, then I know already, that this is a son of our Slovak nation which lives in Hungary between Bratislava and Košice.33 Two members of the parson’s audience respond to this speech with the following exchange: Hazel: So we are not only Slovaks, but also Slavs? Linden: I understand this to mean that all Slavs are our brothers. 34

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To be a Slovak was to be a Slav, and the linguistic diversity of the Slavic world is set as equal with the linguistic diversity within the Slovak zone. Indeed, Hazel’s question suggests that Slovak linguistic particularism, was gradually becoming distinct from All-Slavism in the 1860s. Lichard’s formula of “Hungarian nations” proved popular in the period of experimentation between the Bach regime and the Ausgleich. An essay about “the Austrian Lands and Nations,” written by “M.M.”, sought to claim Hungarian political institutions for non-Magyars: “the Hungarian constitution is not only Magyar, but just as much Slovak, Serbian and Romanian; the political nation in Hungary is not only Magyar, but all Hungarian nations [ungarische Nationen] have equal rights.35 To ensure these rights, M. M. argued for a federal Hungary with several national curia, granting administrative recognition to both the Hungarian “fatherland” and its constituent “nationalities.” The kingdom of Hungary is the fatherland and kingdom of Slovaks, Serbs, Rusyns [ungarische Kleinrussen], Magyars and Romanians; all of them together have the same Hungarian constitution, the same political rights, they must all settle their purely political affairs at the Hungarian parliament together. Yet their nationalities are different, and when one should deal with national-political affairs, with nationally organized communities, districts, local communities, with communal, district and local meetings, from national officials and professors, with schools in the mother tongue, then the Hungarian parliament must separate into national curia. This means that the following curia must be established: Serbian, Slovak, Magyar, and Romanian, and each of these curia should deal only with the national-political affairs of its own nation.36 Perhaps the most striking thing about this text is M. M.’s confidence that issues could be separated into the “purely political” and the “national-political.” After the Ausgleich, Hungarian law transformed the Magyar politikai nemzet from a national ideology into a legal concept. Slovak leaders then attempted to appropriate the phrase for their own ends. On 23 October 1870, for example, Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, a Slovak lawyer and member of the stará škola, proposed a new Nationalities Law that recognized simultaneous multiple nations: 1. In Hungary there is only one political nation, the uhorský nation, composed of the following genetic nations: Maďarov, Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Rusyns, and Germans. 2. All of these genetic nations, forming the political nation, are completely equal.

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3. In Hungary, there are two administrative languages: The state and the municipal. 4. The state language is exclusively Magyar. The municipal languages are: Magyar, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Rusyn and German. 5. The state language is used exclusively for every act of state, in other words in the parliament, in the ministries, and in the highest court. 6. Municipal languages are used in cities and counties. 7. In cities and counties the municipal language is the language in daily use by the absolute majority of the inhabitants. Pauliny-Tóth wanted municipal languages used in elementary and secondary schools, but conceded that gymnasia and universities would function in the state language; i.e. Hungarian.37 Note how the catastrophe of the Ausgleich had curtailed Slovak ambitions even among members of the stará škola: the Memorandum had demanded that Hungary’s highest court should hear cases in Slovak.38 Pauliny-Tóth ceded the courts, the parliament, government ministries, and universities to the Magyars, presumably in the hope that in return for these concessions Slovak would be introduced in the schools and local administration of a Slovak district. Although Pauliny-Tóth was willing to cede several spheres of public life to the Magyars and accepted the “political nation,” he broke with the Eötvös Nationalities Law by describing the Slovaks as a “genetic nation,” not a “nationality.” Jozef Hurban similarly rejected the status of “nationality”: We are to say nationality [národnosť] and not nation [národ] … The nation has nationality, but nationality is not there, where there is no nation. Slovaks are a nation by reason of their thoughts, language, life, poetry, literature, common life, virtues, piety, wisdom, glory; nationality, that is shame.39 Hurban’s passion hints at the tremendous political potency of the term “nation” in Habsburg Hungary. The status of nationhood apparently implied legitimate political sovereignty; to cede it would have meant abandoning the right to claim collective political rights. Slovak theories of multiple nationality culminated in 1870 with Karl Zmertych’s pamphlet Rhapsodien über die Nationalität [Rhapsodies on Nationality]. Zmertych formulated Hungaro-Slavic dual nationality so clearly that I have adopted his vocabulary.

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Choosing Slovakia Before we however begin a rational critique … of the nationality question, we must give a popular definition of the concepts of a country, fatherland and nation as science has taught us … Before we can step to the construction of the concept of a nation, we absolutely must draw the extremely important — yea, essential, if we wish to solve the nationality question with justice — distinction between a political and linguistic nation.40

While Zmertych achieved unprecedented analytical clarity, his ideas were wholly derivative: he juxtaposed the political with the linguistic and described both as “national.” He may have borrowed the idea of a “linguistic nation” from Lichard; the “political nation” had by then become ubiquitous. Zmertych also demarcated a clear border between the two different nations. A political nation, according to Zmertych, has five characteristics: A lawful leader, a well-defined fatherland, its own constitution and laws, its own customs and habits, and its own history. Zmertych insisted that all five characteristics were necessary: Members of a nomadic tribe, for example, “even though they possess a lawful leader, their own customs and habits, their own history and their own language, still do not make a political nation, because they have no well-defined fatherland.”41 A linguistic nation, by contrast, is “a totality of people who have a common origin, speak the same language, and consider themselves a family — in this sense, the Slovaks, the Serbs, the Romanians and so on are each a nation.”42 These definitions, of course, were tailor-made for promoting Slovak linguistic rights within the multi-ethnic Hungarian setting. Zmertych saw no need for linguistic nations to have political or administrative expression. He rejected an autonomous Slovak district in surprisingly forceful terms: “Confederation in Hungary would be an absurd monstrosity [ein Unding], reasonable Slovaks understand this very well … A confederation of thirteen linguistic nationalities [would be] an absolute impossibility, a voluntary collapse of Hungary and Austria.”43 Slovak autonomy may seem attractive, he conceded, but the consequences of a confederation adopted out of politically shortsighted philanthropy would be the same as the recognition of the Slovaks as an independent political nation, namely the political death of the Hungarian nation.44 Zmertych sought linguistic concessions in the name of the Slovak linguistic nation, but not at the expense of the Hungarian political nation.

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These formulae of Hungaro-Slovak dual nationalism may strike modern readers as exotic, but they represented the main stream of Slovak thinking in the nineteenth century. The continuity of Hungaro-Slavic theories throughout the nineteenth century is striking. Figure 4.1 summarizes those theories of dual nationality sufficiently detailed to be reproduced in chart form. None of the formulae match perfectly, but all defined one half, the “Hungarian” half, at least partially in legal terms. All make language a defining criterion of the other half, though this “language” was variously imagined as All-Slavic or Slovak-particularist. Further research would presumably uncover other similar formulae: theories of dual national loyalty accurately express the HungaroSlavism that dominated nineteenth century Slovak nationalism. The importance of “customs and habits” as criteria of nationalism deserves a brief comment: while Zmertych saw them as uniting the Hungarian political nation, Lichard and Hojč used them to distinguished Slavs from other linguistic nations. Zmertych’s belief that the Slovaks and Magyars shared the same customs and habits suggests that the primary function of this criterion was to exclude Jews or Roma (Gypsies) from the nation. Figure 4.1: Hungaro-Slavic Theories of Dual Nationality Hojč (1843)

Political Nation (Hungarian) Laws Government Common well being

Lichard Laws (1861) Politics

Linguistic Nation (Slavic) Language Customs and Habits Style of thought Language Customs and Habits Inhabit a common region

“M.M.” Constitution and Laws Education in mother language (1865) Political rights Communal and local affairs Pauliny-Tóth Parliament and Ministries Municipal administration (1870) Universities Elementary schools Highest courts Zmertych (1870)

Constitution and Laws Well-defined Fatherland Language Customs and Habits Common origin Common history “Consider themselves a family” Common leader

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The Slovak concept of a “political nation” developed in conjunction with Magyar political thinking; specifically the concept of the Magyar politikai nemzet with its constituent “nationalities” or “peoples.” Slovak thinkers partially appropriated Magyar terminology from the desire to persuade: they hoped to develop a pan-ethnic vocabulary for discussing Hungary’s national questions with the Magyars. While Slovaks expressed Hungaro-Slavic ideas in both the Slovak language press and private correspondence, their national discussions were most sophisticated and theoretical when written in German for a Magyar audience. But while the Magyar politikai nemzet was invoked to justify Magyar supremacy within Hungary, Slovaks hoped the uhorský politický národ would enable them to claim collective rights for Hungary’s non-Magyar nationalities. In light of this nationalized terminology, historians of the nineteenth century are correct to interpret the Slovak struggle against Magyarization as a “national” struggle. However, Slovak theories of dual nationality call for a substantial re-evaluation both of the traditional narrative of Slovak nationalism, and of the high-political school of nationalism discussed in the last chapter. The high-political school of nationalism, recall, equates “nationalism” with the desire for statehood. This definition, however, leads inevitably to the conclusion that the nineteenth century Slovak intelligentsia, which fought so tirelessly if ineffectively for Slovak rights, contained no Slovak nationalists! After all, the most radical Slovak demands from the Revolution of 1848 sought “only” the creation of an independent Crownland under the Habsburg monarch, not independence. Slovak patriots reaffirmed their loyalty to the Hungarian kingdom repeatedly and, I believe, sincerely. While they vigorously defended their language and consistently demanded an autonomous region, they explicitly disassociated the struggle for linguistic rights and autonomy from political independence. If nationalism implies loyalty to a state, then the nineteenth century Slovak intelligentsia, including Kollár, Hojč, Štúr, Hurban, Daxner, Pauliny-Tóth, Hodža and Hlinka, consisted of Hungarian nationalists. This conclusion is less absurd than it first appears and yields interesting new interpretations. The Slovak volunteers, for example, become a faction on the winning side of a Hungarian civil war. Many Slovaks interpret Štúr as the leader of an independence movement, as a would-be Slovak Garibaldi. Could he not also be a civil rights activist, a would-be Hungaro-Slavic Martin Luther King? Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century Slovak intelligentsia cannot be understood solely in Hungarian terms, and the desire for statehood thus does not explain the emergence of Slovak nationalism. Nineteenth-century Slovak nationalists were Hungaro-Slavs: they sought to combine political loyalty

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to Hungary with cultural loyalty to a Slavic culture, variously imagined. Furthermore, Slovak thinkers insisted on describing both Slavic and Hungarian loyalties as “national.” Why did Slovaks insist on using the word “nation [národ]” to describe both cultural and political loyalties? In the Habsburg political context, political action undertaken in the name of a “nation,” however imagined, was legitimate. Comparing the differing Slovak and Croatian experiences under the Ausgleich illustrates the irresistible potency of “nation” status; a brief comparison repays the effort. Before the Revolution of 1848, the Croatian national movement resembled its Slovak counterpart: both opposed Magyarization in the name of a linguistic collective, and both Croatian and Slovak nationalists participated in the same All-Slavic politics. Indeed, Ljudevit Gaj, the central figure in Croatian life during the 1830s and 40s, was a close friend of Kollár, corresponded with several Slovak literati, including Štúr, and published letters from Slovak readers in his newspaper.45 Gaj also promoted a Hungaro-Slavic ideology. In an 1845 tract addressed to Kossuth, Gaj expressed his desire to live “in complete harmony with all good-thinking Magyars.”46 Gaj’s collaborator Dragutin Rakovac, in his 1842 Mali katekizam za velike ljude [Small Catechism for a Great People] put itself even more firmly in a Hungaro-Slavic tradition: consider Rakovac’s first and last demands: What do we want? 1. We want to have our national language, given to us by nature itself. We know that when the language of a nation dies, the nation dies with it. 2. To have our national literature, because without national literature, the language must go down to ruin … 5. To remain, as we have been until now, brethren of the Magyars, under the Hungarian constitution.47 Hungaro-Slavism was not the only theme in Croatian thought, and Croatian nationalists adopted a more aggressively political stance than their Slovak counterparts. Nevertheless, Gaj’s motto, articulated in 1841, recalls HungaroSlavism: “May God preserve the Hungarian constitution, the Croatian kingdom, and Illyrian nationality.” 48 The Croatian and Slovak experiences, however, diverged sharply after the Ausgleich. In 1868, the Hungarian parliament negotiated its own miniature Ausgleich with Croatia, known as the Nagdoba [Croatian for “Compromise”]. The medieval Croatian kingdom had long enjoyed legal distinctiveness within the kingdom of Hungary, and Magyar liberal reformers were willing

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to grant Croatia a special status, not least because respect for Croatian legal rights legitimated their own demands against Vienna.49 The provisions of the Nagdoba declared the Croats “a separate nation from a political point of view,”50 and then established an autonomous Croatian-dominated province within Hungary, whose borders resembled those of the modern Croatian republic, minus Dalmatia.51 The Triune Kingdom was administered by a Croatiandominated parliament, the Sabor, which introduced the Croatian language into local administration, local courts and an educational system extending up to the university level. Nagdoba Croatia was not an independent state; it did not even have the authority of an Austrian Crownland. It did, however, possess all the powers demanded in the Slovak Memorandum. Compared to the Croats, Slovaks were disenfranchised. Slovaks lacked a political district, any school system beyond the elementary level, and the right to use their language in regional administration or local courts. This disenfranchisement was symbolized and justified by the claim that the Slovaks were not a “nation,” a claim that both the Hungarian government and Magyar public opinion vigorously expressed. This denial of nation status accompanied specific acts of oppression. In 1875, when Kálmán Tisza shut down the Matica slovenská and confiscated its funds, he justified his actions by declaring that “there can be only one visible nation in the frontiers of Hungary.”52 Indeed, in 1878 one Hungarian nationalist went so far as to deny Slovaks the status of “nationality”: Béla Grünwald’s A Felvidék [the Highlands,” i.e. the mountainous north of Hungary that is now the Slovak republic], claimed that “in Hungary there are households speaking the Slovak language, but there is no Slovak nationality [tót nemzetiség].’53 And when Ferdiš Juriga addressed the Hungarian parliament in Slovak on 19 October 1918, incidentally the only time Slovak was ever spoken in the Hungarian parliament, his reference to the Slovak nation was immediately interrupted by shouts of “where is this Slovak nation? In which province?”54 The contrast between Slovak and Croatian experiences suggests that in the last century of the Habsburg Empire, a “nation” received tangible political benefits that a mere “nationality” did not. It is therefore unsurprising that Slovaks consistently demanded the status of a “nation,” and equally unsurprising that the Magyars consistently refused to grant it. The extraordinary political importance of the word “nation” has consequences for its use as a term of political analysis. Clear terms for articulating one’s research interests are desirable, and the use of the word “nation” seems unavoidable in any discussion of nationalism. Many scholars have proposed many definitions, but any definition of nationalism, however elegant or concise, must be rejected if it hinders our ability to understand historical actors: as John

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Deutsch so memorably put it in another context, “no terminology should try to be more accurate than life.”55 Since Slovak political leaders invoked a Slovak “nation” while accepting the Hungarian state, a “high-political” definition of “nationalism” would be misleading. Striving for political independence must not be treated as a defining characteristic of nationalism. Rogers Brubaker provides a more profitable approach: he dispenses with the “nation” as an analytical term. “One does not have to take a category inherent in the practice of nationalism — the realist, reifying conception of nations as real communities — and make this category central to the theory of nationalism.”56 For Brubaker, the study of nationalism is the analysis of “appeals and claims made in the name of putative ‘nations’,” guided by research questions such as: “How does the nation work as a practical category, as classificatory scheme, as cognitive frame?”57 This approach can explain dual nationality. In the last century of the Habsburg Empire, the “nation” was a central category of political rhetoric; its function was to justify political claims to collective rights, such as linguistic rights. Living in Hungary and attempting to secure collective rights within the framework of the Hungarian constitution, Slovaks claimed membership in a Hungarian “political nation.” Hoping to defend their language and culture from Magyarization, they also proclaimed a Slavic “linguistic nation.” Analyzing the nation as a rhetorical device justifying political alliances raises interesting questions about Slovak political tactics. The Magyar political elite consistently opposed the development of Slavic culture in Hungary, hoping instead to assimilate the Slavs to Magyar culture. The Slovak political movement came into existence precisely to resist Magyarization. So why did Slovaks so consistently invoke a nation that united them with their primary enemies? What political alliance were Slovak thinkers hoping to promote with the concept of a Hungarian nation [uhorský národ]? Owen Johnson hinted at the answer to this question by referring to the “idealistic faith on the part of the Slovaks that the Hungarian rulers would see the error of their ways and come to a fair and rational resolution of the nationality question.”58 The ultimate goal of Slovak nationalist agitation, for most of the nineteenth century, was reconciliation between the “linguistic nations” of Hungary. As Štúr wrote in 1845, We still live in the hope that the Magyars will recognize our national right and understand the rule of the spirit or humanity of the nineteenth century, and recompense us for everything that has been done to our disadvantage.59

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Štúr’s dedication to Slovak national goals is beyond question, but he hoped to achieve them through Slovak-Magyar cooperation. This hope persisted during the early months of the 1848 Revolution. In April, Štúr wrote hopefully that “we do not believe that our fellow citizens, the Hungarians, would wish to destroy us. We believe that they want to direct every effort to solve the struggles between nationalities.”60 The desire for reconciliation is an unusual plank in a nationalist platform, and some scholars deny that it is compatible with “nationalism.” For example, Robert Pynsent remarked in his excellent study of Czech and Slovak national ideas that “Xenophobia may exist without nationalism, but hardly nationalism without xenophobia. A nationalist cannot have a lickspittle approach to his model.”61 Hojč’s Apologie, however, provides a counterexample: in 1843, he appealed to Kossuth in the following obsequious terms. Or are you, my Lord, for your own person, against the idea of Magyarization? Ei, if this were the case, so we beg you, that you make your thoughts clear as soon as possible, because your word is a talisman, and in its possession we would become more peaceful.62 A few years later, Štúr continued the tradition of “lickspittle” nationalism, which might better be described as “supplicant” nationalism, by praising Széchenyi as one of “those patriots, who, elevated above national vanity and not blinded by national prejudice, raise their voices for holy justice and fight injustice, on whoever’s side it may lie.”63 Zmertych also insisted that Hungarians felt no real ill will toward their Slovak co-nationalists. Slovak linguistic nationality, he wrote, has never been disputed by the Hungarians, even though it cannot be denied that in the previous thirty years — as the giant ghost of Panslavism appeared in the literature and the Hungarians, in the first stages of building their own nationality, afraid and the first to be threatened by this same ghost, were stunned; — and even later as well — and some things happened in which the linguistic national demands of the Slovaks were cut short; but today, by contrast, there are no longer any rational Hungarians who would not acknowledge the previous concepts with regret.64 Daniel Lichard’s pamphlet in support of the Slovak Memorandum ended with a Hungaro-Slavic fantasy of converting “our brother Magyars”65 to the cause: Newolny accepts the Slovak position completely.

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Mr. Pastor, your grace, I thank you from the heart … that you have brought me onto the path of righteousness, you may be certain that I see that the Slovak demands are just, and I am convinced that liberty, equality and fraternity will only reign in our country when they are fulfilled.66 Slovak leaders hoped not to vanquish the Magyars, but to persuade them through moral authority. If the Magyars would only recognize the injustice of Magyarization, they would appreciate the Slavic contribution to the Hungarian kingdom and willingly help Slovaks promote their culture. Thus Hungary’s nationalities would become reconciled and peace would be restored in the kingdom. Given the magnitude of Slovak disempowerment under Hungarian rule, this “supplicant” nationalism was probably a rational strategy for winning concessions from the Hungarian government. While the Polish, Czech and Croatian intelligentsias fought to control provincial governments that roughly corresponded to ethnic territories, the Slovak national territory was subsumed within Hungary. A Slovak administrative district featured prominently in Slovak political demands, including the Mikuláš Declaration of 1848 and the various Memoranda of 1861. Such a district never came into being, however, so Slovak leaders hoped to achieve their national goals through moral persuasion. Nevertheless, this strategy of nationalist supplication proved unsuccessful. Slovak demands mostly concerned language rights, which unfortunately are a zero-sum game: Slovak gains would necessarily come at Hungarian expense. Magyar pundits, journalists and policy makers ignored Slovak political appeals in the name of a multi-ethnic Hungary, and proved consistently unwilling to grant Slovaks any collective rights. No matter how the concept of dual national loyalty was presented, Magyar thinkers, even relatively accommodating figures like Deák and Eötvös, insisted that a “Hungarian” could not be a member of any other nation, or speak any language but Hungarian. Magyar stubbornness and chauvinism may have ultimately proved selfdefeating. It created bitterness and desperation among the Slovak intelligentsia. Slovak politicians had accepted the legitimacy of the Hungarian kingdom before the war, but their increasing disillusionment with the Magyars meant that when the emerging Czechoslovak republic promised to recognize them as a constitutive part of a state-forming Czechoslovak “political nation,” they leapt at the chance. That said, Slovaks might never have broken with Hungary had traumatic defeat in the First World War not shattered the legitimacy of the Habsburg imperial system. Special emphasis, however, must also be placed on the diversity of linguistic national concepts in nineteenth-century Slovakia. Theories of dual nationality

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consistently described the “political nation” in Hungarian terms: Slovaks were Hungaro-Slavs, not Austro-Slavs. Indeed, Slovak Austro-Slavism is conspicuous by its absence. The “non-political” half of dual nationality, however, was less stable. The demands justified with reference to these nations overwhelmingly concerned language rights, so the various formulae of “spiritual,” “genetic” or “cultural” nationality can be safely considered as terminological variants of “linguistic” nationality. The diversity of linguistic concepts, however, cannot be explained away. Hojč described his language in All-Slavic terms, while Pauliny-Tóth suggested a Slovak language. Michal Hodža, intriguingly, fudged the issue by claiming membership in both Slovak and All-Slavic nations: “we Slovaks, in our Slovak nationality [slovenskej národnosťi], also have a Slavonic nationality [slavjanskú národnosť], which is a world nationality.”67 Nor does a spectrum between Slovak particularism and All-Slavism exhaust the diversity of Slovak linguistic-national ideas: Slovak thinkers proved willing to entertain diverse new national concepts if the evolving political environment provided appropriate incentives. In 1861, for example, Slovak leaders briefly proclaimed themselves part of a “North Hungarian Slavic” linguistic nation. North Hungarian Slavism, in effect, combined Slovaks and Rusyns into a single collective. Štefan Daxner, a lawyer who had fought in the Slovak volunteers and played an important role in composing the Slovak Memorandum, appealed for the votes of “North Hungarian Slavs [severo-uhorských Slovanov]”68 while running for parliament. Daxner’s North Hungarian Slavism articulated recognizable Hungaro-Slavic themes, such as boasting of autochthony within Hungary: The truth is that we North-Hungarian Slavs in Hungary consider ourselves to be the oldest inhabitants of this country. We gave it Christianity — and the European name “Uhorska,” from which the names “Ungar, Hungarus” derive.69 Jan Francisci, a government official in Liptov county, used an almost identical ethnonym in an 1861 newspaper article about “Northslavs in Hungary, that is, Slovaks and Rusyns, and the Hungarian Parliament.”70 The North Hungarian Slavism of 1861, furthermore, drew on a precedent set during the revolutionary year of 1848: Jozef Hurban had issued a manifesto on 7 June, 1848 in the name of the singular “Slovak and Rusyn nation in Hungary [národ slovenský a rusínský v Uhřích].” The content of this manifesto called on the Magyars to recognize “Hungarian Rusyns and Slovaks” as a singular “nation having equal rights as themselves.”71

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Hungarian electoral politics provided Slovaks with the incentive to imagine this “North-Hungarian Slavic” nation. Several northern Hungarian counties contained both Slovak and Rusyn populations; by proclaiming the unity of North Hungarian Slavs, Slovaks hoped that Slovaks and Rusyns together could form a broader political base. Slovaks also hoped to cooperate with Rusyn politician Adolf Dobrians’kyi. A brief description of Dobrians’kyi’s career explains why he made an attractive ally for Slovak leaders. Dobrians’kyi, the son of a Greek Catholic priest, studied philosophy in Košice, law in Eger, and mining in Banská Bystrica. After becoming a mining engineer in Bohemia, he discovered the work of František Palacký and became interested in politics. A Slovak mining district elected him to the Hungarian parliament in 1848; he won electoral support from Slovaks on the basis of his education, Czech contacts, and possibly his Slovak spouse.72 He worked as a liaison and translator for the Russian army that intervened in Hungary, actions which won him a series of medals from the Russian Emperor Nicholas I and the undying enmity of Magyar politicians. In October 1849, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph appointed Dobrians’kyi to run a Rusyn administrative unit centered on the city of Uzhhorod.73 For five months, he was able to promote Slavic education, appoint Rusyns to government posts and support Rusyn publishing. Dobrians’ky governed, in the words of Ivan Žeguc, while “in direct contact with the political and spiritual leaders of the Slovak people,” specifically Kollár, Štúr, and publicist Ondrej Radlinský,74 and Slovak newspapers followed Dobrians’kyi’s efforts with admiration.75 Admittedly, the short-lived Uzhhorod district was abolished in March 1850, but no Slovak leaders could boast any equivalent achievement: while Dobrians’kyi experienced his brief stint in power, Štúr was under house arrest. In 1861, when Dobrians’kyi returned to politics and was elected to the Hungarian parliament, he made a natural Slovak ally. The North-Hungarian Slavic nation proved an ineffective political tool, Dobrians’kyi a disappointing ally. The Magyar elite had not forgotten his collaboration with the Russian army, proclaimed him a traitor and refused to recognize his mandate for parliament.76 Dobrians’kyi eventually despaired of Hungary and spent the rest of his career attempting to stimulate Russian nationalism in Subcarpathia.77 Additionally, Magyar domination of the electoral system was so overwhelming that Slovak leaders began to think of the Hungarian parliament not as a political arena where Slovak political goals could be achieved, but a hostile power center opposed to Slovak interests. North Hungarian Slavism was a fashion of 1861, vanishing when it ceased to yield political dividends. But so long as Slovaks sought to work

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with Rusyn leaders, they justified the alliance with an appropriately imagined national community. Assuming that Slovak leaders invoked whatever national concept promoted their political aims best explains nineteenth century Czechoslovakism. After a lengthy discussion on Hungaro-Slavic lines, Vavro Šrobár’s 1898 manifesto, published in the first issue of the journal Hlas, proclaimed Czechoslovak “cultural” nationality: In the Czechoslovak Question, finally, we stand by the position of our awakeners and contemporaries, who in every serious moment emphatically stressed the cultural unity of the Czechoslovak nation. On the ruins of all cultural centers in Slovakia we must doubly proclaim the inevitability of this unity, we must cultivate it with all our strength, sustain ourselves with the fruits of this our common culture.78 Since the Hlasist attempt to imagine a Slovak-Czech nation had more important consequences than the abortive Slovak-Rusyn nation, a full discussion will be deferred until later. Yet note that the Czechoslovak “cultural nation” fits neatly into Hungaro-Slavic dual nationality: Czechoslovakism existed within a cultural and thus non-political sphere. To understand the development of Slovak nationalism after 1919, therefore, requires a closer examination of Slovak linguistic nationalism. Slovak linguistic thought turns out to be even more complex than Slovak national thought. Many scholars have remarked upon the importance of language in Slovak nationalism,79 but mistakenly assume that Slovak nationalists promoted and defended “the Slovak language” as the national language. This is a mistake: as observed above, Slovak thinkers promoted diverse linguistic concepts. The intellectual history of Slovak linguistic loyalties has a complex trajectory with several phases, and its turning points differ from the milestones of Hungarian political history. A discussion of Slovak linguistic thought requires an appropriate analytical vocabulary. The main problem is the word “language.” This word enjoys widespread use as an analytical term, often modified with various adjectives: “written language,” “literary language,” “spoken language,” etc. However, this word is also polemical: political actors fight bitterly about whether a given group speaks a “language,” or merely a “dialect.” Inattention to the polemical nature of the word “language” causes endless trouble, and I have found it necessary to devise a new analytical vocabulary. This breaks with existing precedent, so this chapter ends with a critique of existing terminology and a plea for new analytical terms.

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Scholars use the term “language” to describe at least three separate things. It refers to (1) a series of standardized conventions for spelling and grammar, as codified in dictionaries and school primers. To specify this first meaning, scholars frequently use a modifying adjective, e.g. “literary language,” “standardized language” or “written language.” The word “language” may also denote (2) the speech varieties used by the people living a certain territory, in this case the territory of the future Slovak republic. Speech varieties exist, so this second meaning thus appears to have an objective referent, but a “spoken language” presupposes a classification system. Since every town or village has its distinctive speech peculiarities, the speech of any arbitrarily defined territory always differs from neighboring territories. Referring to the speech of a large territory with the term “language” implicitly defines a geographic zone in which speech varieties are supposedly homogenous, or at least relatively homogenous in comparison to the varieties of neighboring territories. Such claims become problematic if the speech of those neighboring territories is similar: in such cases, the second meaning depends on (3) the idea of the national language, juxtaposed implicitly with a mere “dialect,” understood as a linguistic collective that boasts a certain internal cohesion while yet being subsumed under some over overarching “language.” This third meaning of the word “language,” existing in binary opposition to the “dialect,” is most closely linked to national concepts, and most clearly claims a specific territory. Political actors typically conflate all three meanings of the word “language”: writing = speech = the national language (and thus national ethnoterritory). The analytical slippage between the scholarly study of speech varieties (2) and the polemical claims to national territories (3) causes particular confusion, since referring to speech or writing as “language” implicitly suggests that political claims to a linguistic territory have an objective factual basis. Analyzing political claims legitimated with linguistic arguments requires that all three concepts be distinguished with a neutral analytical terminology. The study of “national languages” should not be treated as a branch of linguistics, but as sub-field of intellectual history, comparable to the history of science.80 Regrettably, many scholars interested in the politics of “language” have chosen to participate in the debate rather than analyze it. Ján Kačala described the idea of a Czechoslovak language as a “fiction,” proclaiming: “the Slovak language is our national language.”81 Josef Kirschbaum wrote that “the claim that the Slovak language was never a part of the Czech or the so-called ‘Czechoslovak’ language was proven correct by scholarly research beyond any doubt.”82 Kačala and Kirschbaum both fall within the present scholarly consensus, but their claim to discern “fiction” from truth remains a polemical stance that impedes the historical analysis of causal relationships. If Slovak

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presently enjoys the status of “language” distinct from Czech, this status is something which scholarly research can not “prove,” but rather manufactures. Proper linguists, for their part, frequently declare the entire discussion pointless: as R.A. Hudson shouted in italic type, “There is no real distinction to be drawn between ‘language’ and ‘dialect’.” 83 Since the status of “language” is the object of political contestation, historians studying such political contests would do well to avoid using political slogans as analytical terms. Rogers Brubaker’s objections to the term “nation” apply with equal force to “language”: though appeals and claims made in the name of putative “languages” have been central to politics in the late Habsburg Empire and elsewhere, one does not have to use the “language” as an analytical category to analyze such appeals and claims. We should instead ask how language-hood, as a political and cultural form, has been institutionalized. How has it worked as a practical category, classificatory scheme and cognitive frame? Wishing to avoid the term “language,” I refer to standardized conventions for writing and spelling as a “script” or “orthography.” These terms advantageously emphasize writing. Several scholars have noticed that linguistic nationalism interacts with writing more than speech: Anderson speaks of “print language,”84 Hobsbawm of “elite administrative of literary language,”85 and Slovak scholars typically refer to spisovný jazyk [literary language]. I believe that the need to distinguish the object of linguistic standardization from the status of “language” disqualifies these terms, however, and thus prefer “script.” I will use the word “language” only to discuss a status claimed by historical actors, or in quotations from primary sources. A script, in this sense, is more than an alphabet: it also implies grammatical rules and a standardized vocabulary. This book, however, is not a linguistic study and does not pretend to provide a comprehensive treatment of Slovak linguistics. The narrative concentrates instead on the national meanings of script codifications. Standardized spelling and orthography depend on schooling, and thus on the idiosyncratic choices of individual grammarians and pedagogues. As the Prague Linguistic Circle noted in the 1930s, “the most powerful interventions by linguistic theory are in the area of orthography, less in the area of the grammatical structure of the language … and least in its lexical structure and content.”86 Gedrius Subačius has also pointed out that of all linguistic phenomena affected by codification, “spelling is the most obvious.”87 The need for anational descriptive terms has also led me to avoid describing any codified script as “Slovak.” Instead, I refer to these scripts with Slovak terms derived from the name of their codifier. This is less awkward than it sounds: Bernolák’s codification is “Bernolákovčina,” Štúr’s codification is

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“Štúrovčina.” Martin Hattala’s codification, which now enjoys widespread legitimacy as the “correct” way to write, and which is routinely referred to as “Slovak” or “modern Slovak,” becomes “Hattalovčina.” Understanding how and when Hattalovčina won the status of “the Slovak national language” requires an analytical distinction between Hattalovčina and its national associations, at least during the period when its status as a national script was still in question. Classifying the idiosyncratic texts from the “precodification eras”88 is the most difficult problem. Since most authors drew on the example of the Kralice Bible, one may describe their texts with the catch-all term “Bibličtina,” [Biblical script]. The Kralice Bible had a Moravian origin: it had been written in the Moravian town of Kralice and was most frequently published in Halle or Prague.89 Nevertheless, both Slovaks and Czechs published texts using Bibličtina’s conventions. Despite common usage, I argue that neither texts nor conventions should be described as “Biblical Czech.” An orthographic definition of Bibličtina might focus on Blackletter type and the use of six characteristic letters: {ě g j ř ů w}. Three of these letters, {ě ř ů}, remain in use in modern Czech; {ř} in particular has become a shibboleth distinguishing Czech from Slovak. The other three, {g j w}, are “old fashioned” letters that have fallen into disuse in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic; their decline thus lacks national significance. The letters {g j}, or rather {g j}, go together: Bibličtina {g} has been replaced with Latin {j}, Blackletter {j} with {í}. Bibličtina gelenj [deer] would now be written “jelení” throughout the former Czechoslovak republic. Both Slovaks and Czechs have replaced {w} with {v}, so this transition also lacks national significance. Bibličtina frequently used the digraph {\\} for modern {š}, but two additional Blackletter characters for {š} complicate matters.90 The hypothetical Bibličtina phrase Wjno a \\perk ge\t [there are jewels and wine] would be “Víno a šperk jest” throughout former Czechoslovakia. During the nineteenth century, many Slovaks with Bibličtina educations switched to Latin type and to the “modern” letters {j í} or {v}. Many scholars describe these texts as written in “Czech,” particularly if the letter {ř} is used. Others describe such texts as “Old Slovak.” To avoid using a national ethnonym, I classify such texts as part of a “Bibličtina tradition.” To see why, consider a prominent defence of Bibličtina, Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky, a multi-authored anthology of essays opposing Štúrovčina. Orthographically, Hlasowé used Latin type, the old-fashioned {w}, the modern letters {j í}, and the “Czech” letters {ě ř ů}. Its orthography, therefore, closely resembled modern Czech, and several scholars treat it as a defence of “Czech.” Some contributors to Hlasowé indeed

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described themselves as defending as “Czech.” Others, however, defended “the Biblical language,” “Slavo-Bohemian,” “the Czechoslovak dialect,” “the Biblical or Czechoslovak language,” “our beautiful pure Biblical Slovak,” and “the Czechoslovak Biblical language … the true language of our forefathers.”91 This diversity of national associations shows the necessity of distinguishing the script from the Czech, Czecho-Slav, Slovak, and Czechoslovak national concepts invoked in its defence. Scripts have been distinguished from speech, and both script and speech have been distinguished from claims to language-hood and the rhetorical concept of the “national language.” I have described new conventions for naming scripts and justified my focus on orthographic questions. The narrative can now turn to the history of Slovak linguistic nationalism, and its complex interaction with the history of Slovak script codification. The next chapter examines Slovak All-Slavism, the dominant theme in Slovak linguistic nationalism for the first half of the nineteenth century.

5 THE SLAVIC LANGUAGE

This chapter examines Slovak linguistic ideologies in the first half of the nineteenth century. It emphasizes All-Slavism, the idea that all Slavs speak the same language, since this was the dominant theme in Slovak thought. All-Slavism led Slovaks to believe that a “language” could have different “literary dialects,” an idea which has subsequently been thoroughly rejected, but which would have profound consequences for Slovak history. Balancing the perceptions of nineteenth-century Slovaks with the linguistic reality of nineteenth-century Slovakia can be a delicate business. What can be said about the linguistic situation in 1800 on the lands which now constitutes the Slovak Republic? Apart from a Magyar-speaking fringe on the southern frontier with Hungary, German-speaking urban communities in the high Tatras, and assorted tiny linguistic minorities, the speech used on this territory belonged to the Slavic linguistic family. Slavic speech throughout this region showed continuous internal variation, as one would expect from “any region that has a long settlement history.”1 These speech varieties, furthermore, blended continuously with those to the immediate West, North and East, i.e. with Czech, Polish, and Rusyn (Ukrainian), all of which themselves contain continuous internal diversity. In short, the “Slovak” territory was part of a Slavic dialect continuum. Slovak linguistic ideology therefore addressed not only the Slovak-Hungarian relationship, but also the relationship between Slovak varieties and the rest of the Slavic world. The Slavic-speaking world contains considerable diversity in both speech (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary) and script (alphabet, spelling). To acknowledge this diversity, most observers divide the Slavic dialect continuum into subcategories: usually into distinct “languages,” frequently into both “languages” and “dialects,” but sometimes only into “dialects.” At any given moment, a consensus may exist concerning the Slavic linguistic taxonomy, but this consensus changes over time. Reference works usually present their

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taxonomy as timeless and unchanging, though they sometimes acknowledge the presence of dissenting opinions. Nevertheless, one generation’s dissenting minority may later become an accepted orthodoxy. As the Slavic linguistic taxonomy evolves, the number of “languages” and “dialects” changes. Paul Selver’s 1919 summary of nineteenth-century Slavic experts illustrates the magnitude of the problem: in 1822 Dobrovský, the practical father of Slav philology, divided [the Slavic zone] into nine tongues, Šafařík in 1842 proposed six languages with thirteen dialects, Schleicher in 1865 proposed eight, Miklosich, a prominent Slovene scholar, decided on nine, Jagić, a Croat authority of European reputation, is in favor of eight.2 This passage is interesting not least because Selver described Josef Dobrovský’s taxonomy (“nine tongues”) differently from Endre Arató in a similar passage: F. Pelcl, professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Prague, spoke of five main dialects (Russian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian and Czech), while J. Dobrovský, the most outstanding scholar of Slavic linguistics of his age, spoke only of four (Czech, Polish, Russian and Illyrian.)3 My own count, from Dobrovský’s Lehrgebaeude der boehmischen Sprache, yields neither four nor nine but ten languages: Bohemian, Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, “Serbian (Illyrian),” Russian, Polish, Upper and Lower Sorbian, Slovene (with three subcategories), and Old Church Slavonic.4 Arguments about the status of Slovak within the Slavic world must be situated in the context of this general uncertainty about the subdivisions and classifications of the Slavic language family. Northern Hungary was relatively slow to develop important centers of Slavic literary life. Slavic documents from northern Hungary date back to 1422,5 but other parts of the Slavic world had already developed important traditions of scholarship and learning by this date. Relative provinciality persisted into the nineteenth century. Before 1800, most books published on the territory of the future Slovak republic were written in Latin. Taking the 753 “slovacikal” books in the Brno university library catalogue as a sample, we find that 80 per cent of books published before 1800 appeared in Latin. Another 9 per cent were published in Slavic, 9 per cent in German, 1 per cent in Hungarian, and 0.5 per cent in French.6 Indeed, the Jesuit press in Trnava printed seven Latin books for every Slavic book produced in all of Slovakia.

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The publishers of Levoča, according to Ján Mišianik, similarly preferred Latin, Hungarian and German to Slavic (respectively 39 per cent, 23 per cent, 22 per cent and 16 per cent of books published).7 Slovak men of letters received their educations abroad; Lutherans in particular studied in Saxony. Kollár and Šafařík, the greatest Slovak minds from the early nineteenth century, settled respectively in Pest and Prague: no town in the Slovak ethnoterritory possessed the necessary infrastructure to support their literary activities. Since print-culture came relatively late to Slavic north Hungary, it developed under the influence of external models. The Kralice Bible, whose orthography inspired the first attempts to render Slovak speech in print, had originally been imported from the Czech lands. This explains why a great deal of Slovak printing before 1800 used the letter {ř}: this letter represents a sound which does not occur in most Slovak speech, but which is common in Moravia and Bohemia. Slovak publishers also produced Slavic books in the Cyrillic alphabet, following both East Slavic and South Slavic conventions.8 Slovak Calvinists, furthermore, borrowed Hungarian orthography. Consider the Malý katechizmus of 1750, printed in Debrecen, the “Calvinist Rome”: Chto jest Jesus Kristus? SZIN BOSI … Tsi tu sszpravodlyivi BUOH zato ON jeszt? Tak jeszt. Who is Jesus Christ? GOD’S SON … Is HE then a just GOD? That’s right.9 The digraphs {sz} and {ssz} follow Hungarian orthographic conventions. Hungarian influence is even more dramatic on the length of time God required to create the universe: sésztzt dnyi (Hattalovčina: šesť dní).10 This catechism also illustrates the unstandardized character of Slovak printing: in this very brief excerpt, the word for “is” has been spelled in two different ways, jest and jeszt; the sound /s/ (the “s” in “snake”) in three ways: {s}, {sz}, and {ssz}. Experts have held many opinions about how to classify the speech varieties of the territory now administered by the Slovak Republic. The only point beyond controversy is that they belong to the Slavic language family. Several early modern observers were content to describe the speech of northern Hungary simply as “Slavic.” For example, Edward Brown’s 1673 account of his travels in Hungary reported that “in some parts of Hungary, many speak

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Schlavonian,”11 which he defines as any speech containing the words “Dobre and Nich Dobre, that is Good and not Good, which are expressive of approving or disapproving, in the Schlavonian language.”12 If the word “dobre” sufficed to define a single language, then all Slavs would indeed speak it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most Slovak literati agreed with Brown: Slovaks routinely described their language as “Slavic” and themselves as “Slavs.”13 The ethnonym Slovák, and its associated adjective slovenský had not yet distinguished from the name Slovan [Slav] and its adjective slovanský.14 All these words derive from the same root, as do the terms slovinský [Slovenian] and slavonský [Slavonian].15 This ambiguity between All-Slavism and Slovak particularism complicates the study of linguistic nationalism in the early nineteenth century.16 As Jozef Ambruš warned, scholars “have not paid enough attention to the coherent expressions Slávsky [Slavic], slovenský [Slovak], Slovensko [Slovakia], and Slovenčina [the Slovak language].17 In several otherwise nonsensical texts, geographic clues clearly fail to distinguish between slovenský [Slovak] and slovanský [Slavic]. Bohuslav Nosák’s poem “Slowenka [Slovak Girl],” published in Hurban’s 1842 anthology, uses the word slowenská to mean “Slavic”: i skály kavkasa slawii se kořj šjře slowenská řeč gak dennice zořj

And the rocky Caucasus Burn with glory; The broad Slavic tongue Shines like the day.18

The glory of the particularist Slovak tongue does not shine in the Caucasus: Nosák obviously referred to Slavic Russians. Yet another poem from the same anthology, August Škultéty’s “Kde wlast ge má? [Where is my homeland?],” used the word slovenský with its modern Slovak-particularist meaning: Kde zpustila hradba Děwjna na slawné wěky zpomjná Kde Nitra, Trenčjn, Hradowá slowenských reků hrob chowá: Tam wlast ge má, tam wlast ge má! Kde Hron i Wah i Rymawa čistau si wlnkau pohráwá, kde po šumjcj bystřině rychle slowenská plť plyne: Tam wlast ge má, tam wlast ge má!

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Where the ruins of Devín recall glorious ages, where Nitra, Trenčín, Hradová Slovak rivers tend the grave: That homeland is mine, is mine! Where Hron and Váh and Rymava sparkle in playful waves, where along the murmuring stream a Slovak raft rapidly flows: That homeland is mine, is mine!19 Since Nitra, Trenčín, the ruins of Devín, and the rivers Hron and Váh all lie in modern Slovakia, these geographic clues strongly suggest that Škultéty used the adjective slovenský (declined to slowenských and slowenská) to mean “Slovak.” An All-Slavic meaning, however, cannot be entirely excluded: Škultéty might theoretically have praised Devín as a “Slavic” castle, and the Hron as a “Slavic” river. The ethnonym Slowák (actually, the plural Slowáci) refers to both “Slav” and “Slovak” in Ján Kollár’s 1835 poem, “Chwála slowenského národu [Song of the Slovak/Slavic nation].” In verse five, the All-Slavic meaning of Slowáci could hardly be clearer, since Kollár describes the Poles and Russians as Slowáci: W Uhřjch gsau mnozj Slowáci Slowáci gsau i Poláci: Gsau w Morawě gsau i w Rusku i w Pomeranii I w Moldawě, i w Oláchoch, w Slezkn [sic] w Slawonii In Hungary there are many Slovaks/Slavs The Poles are also Slovaks/Slavs They are in Moravia, are also in Russia and Pomerania Also in Moravia, in Wallachia, in Silesia and in Slavonia In verse ten, however, the same word apparently refers only to the Slovaks of Hungary: Slowáci gsau Slawnj dosti Pro swých synů způsobnosti Progdi se, medle, po našj kragině uherské A plině phledni wšecky uřady kraginské.

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Kollár’s poem, furthermore, illustrates the free variation of vowel between slovenský and slovanský: the “Song of the slovenského Nation” proclaims, in verse six, the fame of the slovanský nation [slavný gest národ slovanský], presumably for the assonance with the word slavný [glorious]. Kollár apparently used the adjectives slovenský and slovanský interchangeably, much as with the English words grey and gray. The ambiguity of between these two meanings, finally, finds reflection in contemporary dictionary definitions. Anton Bernolák’s 1825 dictionary, which defined words with Latin, German, and Hungarian translations,21 gave two definitions for the word Slowák. Ignoring the Latin to focus on German and Hungarian, they are (1) “ein Slave, Slavack, tóth,” and (2) “ein Slavonier (schlavonier), Tóth, Horvath.”22 These in turn are, respectively, the German word for “Slav,” a German word closely resembling the modern word for “Slovak,” and an archaic Hungarian word for “Slovak” that can also refer to Slavonia, the German word for “Slavonian” with an alternate spelling in parentheses, the previously-mentioned Hungarian word for “Slovak/Slavonian,” only capitalized (!?), and finally the Hungarian word for “Croat.” In contemporary terms, Bernolák’s first meaning conflates “Slovak” and “Slav,” while the second meaning appears to be “Slavonian.” Josef Jungmann’s 1835 Czech-German dictionary, the Slownjk Česko‑Německý, also gave two definitions for the word Slowák. The first gives the modern particularist meaning “Slovak,” complete with unambiguous geographical bounds: “Hungarian Slav above the Danube, around Bratislava, Nitra, etc., ein Sowak, Slawak (im nördlichen Ungarn).” The second definition is “anything that is Slavic, ein Slawe.”23 As if to stress that the concepts Slav and Slovak were interchangeable, Jungmann defined Slovan as “the name of a nation which today encompasses the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Illyrians etc, der Slawe,” yet also used it as a stylistic alternative for Slowák: “The names Slovan (Slowák), Croat, Lech, Czech, Bres, etc., are ancient names of Slavic tribes.”24 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, then, the adjective slovenský/ slovanský possessed at least two conflated meanings and two spelling variants. The ethnonym Slovák similarly possessed what Charles Frake called “different levels of contrast”:25 it could mean both “Slovak” and “Slav,” depending on context. Attention to context, furthermore, explains how such dual meanings might persist: during intra-Hungarian ethnic encounters, Slovaks most

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frequently contrasted themselves with neighboring Germans, Magyars or Jews, a situation in which the distinction between “Slovak” and “Slav” was irrelevant. Slovaks traveling to other Slavic countries, however, described themselves as “Hungarians.” This ambiguity impedes the analysis of nineteenth century texts, but the difficulties could be overstated. After all, scholars easily cope with the ambiguity of the adjective “American,” which contrasts both United States against Mexico and Canada (e.g. “Mexican-American trade relations”), and both American continents against Europe (“Spanish explorers sought American gold”). The two separate meanings of slovenský/slovanský have subsequently been assigned to the two possible spellings, but applying this distinction retroactively leads to errors of anachronism. That said, my translations of primary sources obey modern conventions: slovenský will be rendered as “Slovak,” slovanský as “Slavic.” Readers must often supply the ambiguity themselves. When Slovak literati discussed the slovenský language at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they were usually thinking in All-Slavic terms. This point requires emphasis, because Slovak historiography often claims exclamations of slovenský patriotism or loyalty as examples of Slovak particularist nationalism in its modern form. The first Slovak grammarians and script codifiers, however, wholly lacked a sense of Slovak particularist nationalism: their linguistic loyalties were “Slavic,” though their organizational activities obviously concentrated on Slavs living in the Hungarian kingdom. Consider the linguistic work of Anton Bernolák, a Catholic priest who studied in Bratislava and spent most of his life in a village parish nearby. He wrote his first philological work in 1787 while a seminary student in Bratislava; this was subsequently published as a grammar textbook in 1790. In 1789, Bernolák also founded an organization to promote this script, the Slovenské Učené Tovarišstvo [Slovak Educational Society] which eventually opened branches in Vienna, Nitra, Banská Bystryca, Spiš, Rožnava, Košice, Eger, and Esztergom. Bernolák’s script, Bernolákovčina, is most remarkable for the absence of {j}. Where modern Slovak and modern Czech have jelení and Bibličtina gelenj, Bernolák suggested gelení. Bernolák dispensed with Bibličtina {ě ř ů}, but stuck with old-fashioned {w}. An author writing according to these conventions is known as a “Bernolákovec” (plural “Bernolákovci”). A united front of Slovak historians and linguists have described Bernolák as “the first codifier of the Slovak language,”26 and most interpret the Bernolákovci as a Slovak nationalist movement. Dušan Kováč, discussing Bernolák and his followers, claimed that “Slovak Catholics, from the very beginning, had the concept of an independent Slovak people.”27 Bernolák himself, however, described the Dissertatio as a grammar for “Pannonian Slavs [pannonii

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Slavi],”28 alternatively for the “Slavs of Hungary [Hungaria Slavorum].”29 Bernolák described the script he codified using several formulae, but none correspond to “Slovak”: he spoke of “Pannonian Slavic [Pannonia Slavorum],”30 “the Slavic language in Hungary [linguae slavonicae in Hungaria],”31 or simply “the Slavic language [slavicae linguae, linguam slavonicam].”32 In a German translation of his Grammar textbook, Bernolák specified an All-Slavic language with explicit geographic clues: “the ancient Slavic language … is one of the main languages of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Poland, Slavonia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Wallachia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and the great Russian empire.”33 In short, Bernolák described his language as the intersection between Slavdom and Hungary. Insofar as Bernolák's motives were national, they were, as Eugen Pauliny concluded, “Hungaro-Slavic [uhorskoslovansky].”34 Bernolák’s inspiration, however, came not from nationalism but from the desire for Catholic Enlightenment. He hoped to reduce illiteracy and raise educational standards among the Slavs in the Hungarian kingdom. Literacy enabled Hungarian Slavs to acquire Hungarian educations: in what Elisabeth Bakke calls “the infamous preface in Bernolák’s Slowár,” Bernolák claimed his linguistic work would help Slovaks learn to speak Hungarian.35 The Bernolákovci, furthermore, were mostly priests, and wrote mostly on Catholic topics. Although Slovak scholar Milan Pišút has claimed that the literature written in Bernolákovčina “would have also honored the great literatures [of the world],”36 very little has attracted the interest of translators. Of 326 non-anonymous books listed in Imrich Kotvan’s exhaustive bibliography, 257 (78 per cent) were liturgical works or prayer guides; this figure includes thirteen separate catechisms and at least twenty hymnals, and excludes eight works whose contents were not clear from the title. The works of Ondrej Mesaroš typify Bernolákovčina literature: Reč na deň svatého Matúša apoštola [Speech for the day of the apostle St. Matthew], Svatí Jan Nepomucký [St. Jan Nepomouk] and Modlitbi a pobožene cvičení [Prayer and Religious Education]. Indeed, the figure of 78 per cent understates the confessional character of Bernolákovčina literature: a marriage guide written by a priest, for example, will presumably have a religious dimension. The Bernolákovčina corpus is not entirely religious: Ján Hollý wrote poetry, and both Martin Matejovič and Jozef Šestalky wrote autobiographies. Nevertheless, the literary corpus written in Bernolákovčina was overwhelmingly Catholic and confessional. 37 This religious content of Bernolákovčina literature reflects the social composition of the Bernolákovci: of 105 Bernolákovci authors Kotvan mentions, a full 100 (95 per cent) had studied Catholic theology.38 Most were parish priests, though Juraj Sklendár was a Jesuit, Aleksandar Alagović died a

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bishop, and Alexander Rudnaj, whom Kotvan credits with two publications in Bernolákovčina, became the archbishop of Esztergom and died a cardinal. The lay Bernolákovci consisted of two Pest lawyers, two bureaucrats and a winegrower.39 Bernolák’s learned society, the Slovenské Učené Tovarišstvo, also had a strong Catholic character. Of its 350 of its 442 members were Catholic clergymen, 79 per cent.40 Bernolák’s publisher, Landerer, also lacked nationalist motives. In 1790, Landerer published two other books besides Bernolák’s Grammatica Slavica: a Hungarian edition of the Psalms and a Hungarian religious book. Neither are likely titles for a Slovak national press.41 Bernolák’s credentials as a Slovak nationalist rest mostly on a comment in the introduction to his grammar: he wrote that he “leaves fully to his own will he who wishes to write in the Czech fashion.”42 This remark has endeared Bernolák to subsequent Slovak nationalists, since it appears to foreshadow the Slovak-Czech linguistic conflict in the first Czechoslovak republic. Bernolák’s comments, however, were not directed against Czechs, but against Slovak Lutherans. As will be discussed below, several Slovak grammarians in Bernolák’s day saw the Bibličtina tradition as “Czech.” Pavel Doležal, for example, had published a Grammatica Slavico-Bohemica in Bratislava in 1746, and an Elementa Linguae Slavo-Bohemicae [Elements of the Slavo-Czech Language] in Levoča in 1752.43 Slovak scholar Juraj Ribay published a Bibličtina textbook “for learning the French and Bohemian language” in Prague in 1775.44 Juraj [ Jíří] Palkovič, a professor at the Lutheran lyceum in Bratislava who wrote several books in Bibličtina, described himself as a “Czecho-Slavic Language and Literature” on the title page of a polemic on script reform.45 By inventing a new script, Bernolák broke with a long tradition of Slovak publishing. This break reflected not Slovak nationalism, but Bernolák’s Catholic unwillingness to use a script strongly associated with a heretical Lutheran Bible. Bernolák then left fully to his own will any heretic who wished to write in Lutheran Bibličtina, but the Slavic Catholics of Hungary needed their own script. The schism between Bibličtina and Bernolákovčina was not national, but confessional. Bernolák’s national concept differed little from that of Slovaks writing “in the Czech fashion”: both Catholics and Protestants were Hungarian loyalists who believed in an All-Slavic language. Ribay, like Bernolák, believed in a “Slavic nation [slowanského národu],”46 and wanted to increase literacy among the common people “not only in Bohemia and Moravia, but also in Hungary and other regions where the Slavic language [slowanský gazyk] blooms.”47 Palkovič, an important defender of Czech-Slovak unity, claimed that “the Slavs” were the most important ethnic group in Hungary.48 Bernolák, Ribay

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and Palkovič, in short, were all Hungaro-Slavs promoting literacy in the “Slavic language” among the common people in Hungary. The most one can say is that the Bernolákovci formed a Slovak particularist script community in practice, since Bernolákovčina had no impact in Bohemia or Moravia. Insofar as its users formed, in Hobsbawm’s phrase, a “vested interest,”49 they were distinctively and exclusively Slovak. Figure 5.1 shows the residences of Bernolákovci in the arbitrarily-selected year 1800; their locations map out western Slovakia. The disproportionately represented city of Trnava was a major center for church education. Figure 5.1: The Bernolákovci (1800)50

Since the Bernolákovci formed an indigenous literary life in Slavic northern Hungary, they make good ascriptive forebears for subsequent generations of Slovak nationalists. Nevertheless, the Bernolákovci can hardly pose as a national movement. The desire to spread the Catholic faith is not a national desire, nor even, necessarily, is the desire to spread Catholic Enlightenment. Furthermore, Slovak society shows confessional diversity: how could a literary movement consisting mostly of Catholic catechisms hope to inspire Slovak Lutherans or Slovak Calvinists? Slavic grammarians and intellectuals in the Habsburg Empire began to write from consciously national motives in the early nineteenth century, setting themselves national goals. The most important was the reduction of orthographic diversity. Standardization was a pressing need: in the early nineteenth century, Slovaks lacked a clear picture of their alphabet. Consider a selection of “Alphabet songs” in Kollár’s Národnié zpiewanky, the verses of

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which take the form “A is for Apple, B is for Bear,” etc. Such songs implicitly define an alphabet, but the various songs in Kollár’s songbook do not agree on which letters to include. One might define a “Basic Latin” alphabet as the 26 letters for which Mozart wrote his famous melody.51 Three of Kollár’s songs subtract the letter {j} from this “Basic Latin,”52 while the “Abeceda mládenska [Alphabet Song of Youth]” subtracts {v} while adding the letters {č š ž}.53 The “Abeceda ženských gmen [Alphabet Song of Women’s Names]”, each verse of which describes a woman whose name begins with the relevant letter, includes {j} and {ž}, but omits {g u w x y}.54 The letters of a final song are anybody’s guess: the text gives verses for A, B, and C and then instructs the reader to continue “and so on until Ž.”55 A single alphabet became a national goal for both practical and symbolic reasons. Standardized orthographic and spelling conventions would facilitate publishing and education, and would also form a symbol of national unity. Given the common perception that all Slavic speech belonged to a single language, Slovakia’s first nationalist language planners sought to devise a script for all Slavs to use, or at least for as many Slavs as possible. Czech awakener Jozef Dobrovský and the Slovene linguist Jernej Kopitar “exchanged several possible alphabets throughout their correspondence,” and in 1789, Dobrovský lamented to Ribay that Slavic literary progress would be easier “if only all the Slavs had our own, truly good orthography!”56 This shows that several Slovak, Czech, Slovene and Croat literati, at the turn of the nineteenth century, essentially agreed with Edward Brown: they believed that all Slavs spoke a single language. This movement for All-Slavic orthographic unity inspired literati throughout the Slavic world, but given Slovakia’s relatively sparse and poorly educated population, Slovaks play surprising numerous roles. The term “PanSlavism” itself was coined by the curiously under-studied Ján Herkel, who defined it as “the unity in literature among all Slavs [italics in original].”57 In his 1826 Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, Herkel sought to overcome “diversity of letters for spelling”58 with a single alphabet that could be used by all the “Slavic nations.”59 Though Herkel’s quirky script found no adherents, it nevertheless cast a long shadow and deserves a detailed technical description. Herkel’s alphabet was based on the Latin alphabet, and strictly avoided digraphs.60 Like most Slavic orthographers, Herkel saw no need for {q} or {w} and omitted them, but used the letter {x} as if it were Cyrillic, i.e. for the guttural fricative that contemporary Czech and Slovak represent as {ch}.61This substitution affected the order of the letters: in Czech and Slovak, the digraph {ch} is considered a single letter and follows {h}; Herkel also placed {x} directly after {h}. As a further concession to Orthodox script sensibilities, Herkel

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replaced the letters {č} and {š}, which follow immediately after {c} and {s}, with their Cyrillic equivalents {ч} and {ш}.62 Since Herkel saw {y} as a variant of {i}, he placed it directly after {j}. Finally, he invented the entirely new letter, {z}, for Latin/Cyrillic {ž/ж}. It is difficult to understand why Edward Stankiewicz wrote that Herkel’s plan “ignores the question of a common Slavic alphabet,”63 since it clearly proposed a common Slavic alphabet with 27 letters: {a b c ч d e f g h x i j y k l m n o p r s ш t u v z z}.64 The Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae included sample texts in Russian, Ukrainian (“Little Russian”), Polish, Serbian, Bohemian, Pannonian, Wendish and Croat (“Illyrian”), printed in the new alphabet. Herkel followed Ribay, Bernolák, and Palkovič in imagining a single “Slavic language,” and his script, had it been adopted, would have considerably simplified the orthographic complexity of the Slavic world. The {s}, {sz}, and {ssz} in the 1750 Malý katechizmus, mentioned above, would have been replaced with {s}. Herkel’s system would also have facilitated comprehension between Slavs in different countries. Comparing the 21 Slavic scripts listed in Michal Hodža’s 1847 Epigenes Slovenicus with the different 21 scripts listed in Ignac Brlić’s 1833 Grammar of the Illyrian Language reveals that the sound / tſ/ (the “ch” in English “cheese”) was written in at least eight different ways in various parts of the Slavic world: Croatian (before Ljudevit Gaj’s reforms) used {ch}, Polish {cz}, Czech {č}, Dalmatian, Bosnian and Slavonian {cs}, Russian and Serbian {ч}, Lusatian-Sorbian {cž}, Slovene/Wendish {zh} and SotacSlovene {tz}.65 The Malý katechizmus, furthermore, used {ts}.66 One might also expand this list by distinguishing the Blackletter {cˇ} from the normal Latin {č}. Herkel would have replaced all with a single letter: {ч}. Herkel, however, made allowances for sounds peculiar to specific regions of the Slavic world. For example, he permitted the letter {ć} in Illyrian and Sorbian, and replaced Polish {dz} and {szcz} with {∂} and {sć}. The Polish nasal vowels {ą} and {ę} and the digraph {rz} were to “be left to the Poles,” though Herkel, with his distaste for digraphs, advised that {rz} should be eliminated: “the Bohemians have already eliminated z with r, … we would not be discouraged if the same would happen with the Poles.”67 The Czechs had replaced {rz} with the letter {ř}, and while this letter did not occur in Herkel’s sample Czech text, its absence was probably an oversight. Herkel never wrote out his full Slavic alphabet, but it apparently contained 32 letters: {a ą b c ч ć d ∂ e ę f g h x i j y k l m n o p r ř s ш t u v z z}. Not all Slavs would use all these letters: Czechs and Russians, for example, would never use {ą ∂ ę}, since their speech does not contain the sounds these letters represent. This surprising tolerance for orthographic diversity within a single “language” means that Herkel’s alphabet would not have provided a standard

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spelling or vocabulary for the entire Slavic zone. Different “dialects,” such as Russian and Polish, would retain their own scripts, thus forming what might be called “literary dialects.”68 Instead of “Slovak,” Herkel imagined a “Pannonian” dialect.69 Herkel accepted grammatical and lexical differences in different literary dialects, which implies the eventual need for dialect-dialect dictionaries. Even if both Czechs and Croats had adopted Herkel’s script, for example, a Czech would need a dictionary to translate zohar into шvab (both meaning “cockroach”). The idea of a single Slavic language with multiple literary dialects also informed the work of Ján Kollár, the most important All-Slavic author in Slovak history. Kollár originally came to public attention as a poet, specifically as the author of the epic poem Sláwy dcera [The Daughter of Sláva], first published in 1824.70 Inspired by Kollár’s long courtship of his eventual wife, Mina Schmidt, this work sings the praises of the goddess Sláva, “glory,” thus conflating romantic love and patriotism. (Cyril Kraus has reworked the following excerpt into modern Czech orthography.) Ural, Tatra, Volga, řeka Savská a všech hor i krajin okolek, kde se koli mluva slyší Slavská: Zaplesejte, bratři, i vy, i já líbeme se při tom vespolek, to, hle, vlast je naše: Všeslávia! Urals, Tatras, Volga, the Sava river, And all mountains and lands around them, Wherever Slavic is spoken and heard, Shout, brothers, both you and me, Let us love each other, for it, Behold, this homeland is ours: All-Slavia!71 This poem immediately created an unprecedented literary sensation in Czech and Slovak literary circles; even Magyar chauvinists wrote that they “knew to prize the talent of a Kollár.”72 Kollár then wrote a series of pamphlets promoting All-Slavic unity under the slogan “Slavic reciprocity.”73 Like Herkel’s “Pan-Slavism,” which aspired to bring about “unity in literature,” Kollár’s reciprocity operated within a linguistic sphere: Slavic reciprocity was “not a political, but a literary joining

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of all four chief Slav tribes; each Slav tribe would retain its dialect, but it would know of, buy and read the books and literature of other Slav tribes.”74 In a longer German-language essay, seven years later, Kollár’s formula had become more mystical, but remained apolitical: reciprocity was “the common participation of all national branches in the spiritual achievements of their common nation.”75 The “nation” was the key historic agent in Kollár’s view of history: “The Slavic nation exerts itself to regain its original unity”76 since Slavs “awaken to national feeling and long for a closer unity.”77 The “national” unity Kollár proposed concerned the linguistic half of Hungaro-Slavic dual nationality: “the dispersed Slavic tribes look at themselves as one great people and at their various dialects as one language, awaken to national feeling, and long to bind themselves closer to each other.”78 Non-linguistic aspects of “national” life did not interest Kollár: he ignored politics, economics, and positively denigrated military affairs as “the spilling of blood, conquests and enslavement.”79 Kollár made his disinterest in politics absolutely explicit: Literary reciprocity can still exist there where a nation stands under many scepters, divided among many states, kingdoms, principalities, governments or republics. Reciprocity is also possible where many religions churches and confessions exist, where diversity of script and letters, climate and geography, and diversity of customs exist.80 Kollár saw the nation primarily as a vehicle for creating a literary canon: for him, “poets are the flowers of the nation, they are most deeply inspired by its spirit: they have the greatest audience of readers, which they can influence for the good.”81 Kollár’s essay on Reciprocity proposed a nine-point plan to promote cultural unity within the Slavic world. Kollár’s agenda was more comprehensive than Herkel’s. Like Herkel, Kollár wanted to decrease orthographic diversity, but he placed greater emphasis on literature: Slavs must read the novels and poetry written in other parts of the Slavic world, and to that end must study other Slavic dialects. To help educated Slavs learn other dialects, the 1836 version of Kollár’s essay advised travelling to “regions where other Slavic dialects are spoken.”82 The suggestions Kollár made in the final version of the essay, however, could all be accomplished with local action. Point one called for Slavic bookstores in “all capitals of our tribes, namely Petersburg, Warsaw, Kraków, Lviv, Prague, Vienna, Pest, Brno, Belgrade, Zagreb, etc.”83 Since this might prove expensive, Point two suggested that Slavic literati should “exchange their works with

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each other.” Point three suggested university departments with chairs devoted to the study of Slavic dialects; point four called for a Pan-Slavic literary newspaper “in which every new Slavic work should be shown and discussed in its original dialect, namely a Serbian book in Serbian, a Polish book in Polish, Russian in Russian, Czech in Czech.” Point five called for the creation of Slavic libraries organized “according to the four or five main dialects.” Kollár wanted these libraries to contain pedagogical works, and listed several grammars and dictionaries by name. Point six called for comparative textbooks “that show the formal and material difference between the dialects, and so facilitate the learning of the same. Specifically, we recommend good etymological works, which so terribly ease the study of dialects.”84 Point seven called for Slavs to publish folklore translations from other dialects, though Kollár showed less interest in translating novels or other belles lettres.85 While Kollár yearned to deepen Slavic literature, he did not concern himself with the details of script reform. He supported lexical purism; or as Point eight put it, “the general overcoming of words from foreign languages.” Point nine, an addition from the 1836 version, called for a “uniform, philosophic orthography, based on the spirit of the Slavic language, which all Slavs can use.”86 Kollár approvingly quoted Herkel on the advantage of a common script, but did not use or mention Herkel’s system. Nor did Kollár propose any specific orthography, though he condemned the imitation of foreign spelling. Sticking with the example of the sound /tſ/, mentioned above, Kollár would have refused to take sides between {ч} and {č}, but rejected {cs} because of its foreign origin.87 Kollár was most interested in issues that would today be interpreted as questions of “identity”: The Pole should not just be a Pole but a Slavo-Pole, and should study not just his own books, but also the Russian, Bohemian and Serbian dialects; the Russian should not just be a Russian, but a Slavo-Russian, he does not just know and read his own script, but also the Polish, Bohemian, Serbian dialect; the Bohemian is not just a Bohemian but a Slavo-Čech, he does not just learn Bohemian, but also Polish, Russian, Serbian; the Serbian or Illyrian should not just be a Serb, but a Slavo-Serb, buys and reads not just Serbian, but also Polish, Russian and Bohemian works. Only he who knows these main dialects should take pen in hand and be a Slavic author.88 This grandiose project to rename the Slavs had both predecessors and consequences. According to Albert Pražák, Martin Bél used the term “Slavi-

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Bohemi” in 1742, as did an 1780 geography.89 The “Slavo-” prefix also endured: Rudolf Bačkovský wrote a popular history of the “Slavo-Czechoslovaks” in 1919.90 The main point, however, is that Kollár saw all Slavs as a single nation, classified Slovaks as Czechs, and downplayed the “dialectical” loyalties of Poles, Russians, Czechs, etc. Kollár’s essay proved influential. A Russian teacher in Warsaw even published a multi-dialectical newspaper from 1841 to 1844, though the venture proved a financial failure.91 The various incarnations of the Slawisches Centralblatt,92 published from 1862 to 1868, created a similar forum for All-Slavic literary life, albeit through the medium of German. The Croatian journalist Ljudevit Gaj, who saw Kollár as a mentor and friend, translated Kollár’s essay on reciprocity in his newspaper, and followed Kollár’s precepts in his celebrated reform of Croatian orthography: The educated Bohemian and Pole feels Pan-Slavism (i.e. the inner desire to bring all Slavic brothers to linguistic-literary unity) too deeply for us to abandon hope that a Croatian book, written with this rational orthography, can be read in Bohemia and Poland as well.93 Gaj introduced several letters “used by our brothers the Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, and Moravians”94 into Croatian orthography, including {ď} {ľ} {ň} {ť}, since replaced by {đ}, {lj}, {nj} and {ć}, as well as {č}, {š} and {ž}, still in use.95 Kollár sharply distinguished Slavic literary nationality from politics. John Bradley wrote that “nationalism in central Europe, especially among the Slavonic nations, began by being purely cultural, though its ultimate aim was political, and in the absence of national states, assumed a linguistic form.”96 Kollár shows no trace of any “ultimate aims,” and also matched words with deeds during the Revolution of 1848: he publicly defended the legitimacy of the Habsburg monarch and refused to participate in any political meetings. In this, however, Kollár was exceptional: All-Slavic thought generally acquired a political dimension during the 1848 Revolution, which Václav Žáček described as the “high-water mark in the history of Austro-Slavism.”97 The key event was the Slavic Congress in Prague. On 20 April 1848, Croatian patriot Ivan Kukuljević suggested that the Slavs of the Habsburg monarchy should meet to discuss affairs of common interest; the idea found immediate approval in the heady Revolutionary atmosphere. Invitations were printed and distributed in eight different scripts, both Slavic and non-Slavic,98 but not in Russian: the organizers wished to demonstrate their loyalty to the Habsburg Empire.

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The congress assembled on 21 May and met for about three months. Officially, 340 delegates attended, but Stanley Pech estimates the true figure at 385: 317 official delegates and 68 guests and observers.99 Kollár excused his absence by claiming to have received death threats from “a Magyar soldier.”100 All-Slavic rhetoric dominated the congress: a typical pamphlet proclaimed, “we are one … we are brothers.”101 Slavic unity, however, proved elusive in practice. The deputies had hoped to conduct deliberations in Slavic, but quickly discovered that they did not really understand each other: everything important had to be translated into German. Slovak delegates at the Prague Congress remained faithful to the HungaroSlavic tradition, which put them at odds with other delegates. The Poles rejected Slovak demands for linguistic rights: they wanted to avoid setting a precedent for the Galician Ukrainians. The aristocratic Poles also sympathized with Kossuth’s efforts to protect Hungary’s autonomy within the Habsburg system. The Czechs similarly sought to defend Bohemian state right, and thus also sympathized with the Hungarian parliament. Some Czechs suggested that an autonomous Slovak territory should be detached from Hungary, but Slovak deputies were not yet ready for a complete break from Hungary, and instead proposed an autonomous parliament under Hungarian jurisdiction. Despite these internal divisions, the Prague Congress managed to terrify both Hungarians and Germans before its dissolution by Habsburg Imperial authorities. Non-Slavs usually equated “Pan-Slavism” with Russian expansion. Der Freimütige, a Viennese paper, accused the congress of hoping “for an outbreak of a revolutionary movement in Russia, … and then for the foundation of an almost unlimited Slavic republic which would dominate the shores of the Arctic and the banks of the Bosphorus.”102 The contents of another pamphlet, Franz Schuselka’s 1849 German or Russian? A Question of Life or Death for Austria, were accurately summarized in the title.103 Indeed, hysterical fear had characterized German and Hungarian attitudes toward Pan-Slavism from the very beginning. During the Language War, Magyar chauvinists accused Slovak literati of treason for any effort to cultivate Slavic culture. Šafařík scorned Magyar “storming and raging” in an 1841 letter: “Through such slanders they make themselves and their cause despicable.”104 Other Slovaks complied lists of the unpleasant names they had been called. Stěpan Launer complained in 1847 that he had been called a “Slavoman, Rusoman, Pan-Slav, God knows what sort of propagandist, traitor to the homeland, enemy of education, light and humanity, etc.”105 Michal Hodža’s 1848 list included “Rebel, incendiary, Pan-Slavist, Russianist, paid Muscovite agitator, etc.”106 Jonáš Zaborský wrote in 1851 that “the words ‘Pan-Slav’ and ‘Rusophile’ are now what the word ‘heretic’ once was, words of black magic.”107

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Hurban’s 1861 list, charmingly attributed to the “Satan of name-calling,” placed “Pan-Slavist” alongside “Absolutist,” “Mystic,” “Bigot [Finsterling],” “Papist,” “Crypto-Catholic,” “Traitor to the Fatherland [Vaterlandsverräter]” and “Rebel.”108 Slovak literati took these attacks not only as personal insults, but as affronts to their Hungarian patriotism. Slovaks initially sought to assure the Magyars that their “Pan-Slavism” only concerned linguistic questions, and did not damage their Hungarian political loyalties. Hojč, for example, wrote that Under the term Pan-Slavism one understands the striving of the Slavs toward a nearer unification among each other, the binding of the various tribes into one large whole … We Hungaro-Slavs stand accused that we strive for unification with Russia. … But a political Pan-Slavistic striving, where have we ever brought this to the light of day?109 Hojč elaborated that “unquestionably there are friends of the literary PanSlavism in Hungary, but this is a world apart from the political sort,”110 concluding that “the political Pan-Slavism has no friends among us, but the literary has many, and wins ever more.”111 Záborský similarly wrote in 1851 that he “did not seek any sort of Pan-Slavism,” nor “any civic union of All-Slavia [Všeslávie],” he only wanted “literary reciprocity to take root between Slavs.”112 In 1865, Daniel Lichard attempted to distinguish Pan-Slavism from “political Pan-Slavism,”113 and as late as 1875, Ján Palárik tried to convince the readers of his newspaper Cyril a Method that “Pan-Slavism is not the enemy of other nations or their liberty … The intention of authentic Pan-Slavism is decidedly liberal.”114 Such clarifications had little effect on Germans and Magyars: fear of Russia prevented any meaningful discussion. The bogey of Pan-Slavism115 owed its potency both to anti-Slavic chauvinism and fear of the Russian military; S. Harrison Thompson memorably suggested that Magyars even “enjoyed the thrill of frightening themselves by it.”116 The resulting inability to have a rational discussion about Slavic linguistic rights was apparent even in the Reform Era: Széchenyi famously lamented that he did not know a Hungarian patriot who “is not transformed into a madman and even more or less deaf to the laws of fairness and justice whenever the question of our language and nationality is raised.”117 Even ethnic Hungarians faced accusations of Pan-Slavism if they spoke in Slavic. In 1861, Slovenské noviny reported that after Mr. Kertész, a “born Hungarian,” addressed a crowd at Prešov town hall in “the language of the Šariš people,” a “Professor V” reproached him with the words: “hát, ön is panszlav? [So, you are a Pan-Slav too?].”118

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By the turn of the century, the idea of “Pan-Slavism” had become so stigmatized that even members of the Slovak Lutheran clergy rejected it. Karel Kálal, a Moravian-Czech journalist with a strong interest in Slovakia, encountered a Protestant pastor in Šariš who “had national feelings, had read the Hussites and the Czech Brethren, sympathized with the Czechs, and was happy to see me [i.e., a Czech].” Yet this pastor told Kálal that “in our county, there was a Pan-Slav, and we called him the swine of swine.”119 This hostility toward Pan-Slavism suggests a change in attitude since Palkovič, Herkel, Kollár, and Hurban had all belonged to the Lutheran clergy. By the end of the nineteenth century, it seems, even Lutheran pastors saw Pan-Slavism as a synonym for Russian expansionism, not as a literary movement. Anglophone authors, for their part, seem to have been influenced by the Magyar redefinition of “Pan-Slavism,” perhaps because they, like the Magyars and Germans, also enjoyed frightening themselves.120 In 1887, for example, the British journal Public Opinion wrote that “the advance of Russia is as hateful to the hopes of Hellenic Christians as it can be welcome to the zealots of PanSlavism.” The Oxford English Dictionary, whence the above quotation was drawn, defines Pan-Slavism as “the movement of aspiration for the union of all Slavs or Slavonic peoples in one political organization.”121 This definition captures Anglophone usage during the nineteenth century: a 1908 British study of Hungarian politics defined “the idea of Pan-Slavism as the union of all Slav races under Russian protection with a view to the formation of the largest political organization the world has ever seen” and spoke unselfconsciously of “the hatred of the Pan-Slavs for Hungary.”122 Even experts in the history of Habsburg Slavs have trouble remembering how Herkel and Kollár originally intended the term. One article by Hugo Hantsch began with the observation that Pan-Slavism originally “had no political, but only a literary, meaning,”123 yet fifteen pages later claimed that since “Pan-Slavism could reach its goal only if the Austro-Hungarian monarchy fell to pieces … the actions of Pan-Slavs, therefore, had to be hostile to the monarchy.”124 Since popular opinion equates “Pan-Slavism” with Russian expansionism, I describe the literary movement led by Herkel and Kollár as “All-Slavism”: I have, in essence, abandoned the term “Pan-Slavism” to its fate as a Russian bogey. This is consistent with emerging scholarly usage: Ludwig Gogolák, one of the best historians of Slovakia, once referred to the “Slovak, great-Slavic and Czechoslovak situation in North Hungary [slowakische, großslawische, und tschechoslowakische Situation in Nordungarn].”125 Hantsch wrote that “every kind of All-Slav demonstration was distrusted in the monarchy, since people, either rightly or wrongly, suspected that the Pan-Slav movement lay behind it.”126 Hungarian historian László Szarka, in his well-received A szlovákok

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története [The History of the Slovaks], also discussed the “össz-szláv (pánszláv) nemzeti koncepció [the all-Slav (Pan-Slav) national concept].”127 The dream of All-Slavic unity never quite recovered from the disillusionments of 1848. Push had come to shove, and the various political leaders found their “tribal” ambitions more compelling than the common Slavic interest. After 1848, All-Slavism slowly began to lose its potency. Formulaic references to great Slavia ultimately became little more than a rhetorical flourish on particularist demands. Despite this slow decline, Slovak intellectuals never consciously rejected All-Slavic feeling. While Karel Havlíček-Borovský, the most important Czech journalist of his age, confrontationally declared himself “A Czech, not a Slav”128 in 1846, fifteen years later his counterpart in Slovakia, Daniel Lichard, was still dreaming of Slavia. In the 1861 pamphlet “Conversation about the Memorandum of the Slovak Nation,” Lichard’s spokesman, a clergyman, expresses the following loyalties: Slowan or Slawian signifies all who belong to the great Slavonic nation, which nation, all counted together, counts more than 80 million souls, almost a tenth of all humanity … when we say Slowan today, we understand with this term Russians, Poles, Czechs, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks; but when we say Slovak, we understand that is a son of our Slovak nation which lives in Hungary from Bratislava to Košice.129 One character in Lichard’s hypothetical conversation responds by asking: “So we are not only Slovaks but we are also Slavs?” Another answers: “Obviously, and all Slavs are our brothers.”130 Strikingly, Lichard simultaneously articulated both All-Slavism and Slovak particularism: his passage refers to both a “Slovak nation [slowenský národ] stretching from Bratislava to Košice and a “Slavic nation [národ slawianský]” embracing Russians, Poles, Czechs, Croats, etc. Apparently, the Slovak intelligentsia invoked multiple nationality not only to differentiate political Hungarian nationality from Slavic linguistic nationality, but to claim multiple and coexisting Slavic nationalities! The most common formula, however, was to posit a Slovak “tribe” within a Slavic “nation,” as in Lichard’s 1865 “Conversation about the Matica slovenská”: Our great Slavic nation [slovanský národ] has many tribes, large and small, which are known by their own names. In our Hungarian land, the following Slavic tribes could be named: Slovaks, Serbs, Russians (or, in their language, Rusniaks) and Croats, but among these tribes of

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Hungarian Slavs our Slovak [slovenský] tribe is the largest in terms of the number of heads, because we Slovaks are around three million, the Serbs, Russians and Croats together are a little more than a million.131 Lichard thus described his Slovak loyalties as merely “tribal,” restoring AllSlavism to its traditional place of primacy within the sphere of linguistic loyalties. Lichard’s pride in his “tribe” was not exceptional. An 1866 editorial in the Slawisches Centralblatt also acknowledged the potency of “tribal” feeling: Austrian Pan-Slavism is for us not at all the melting down of all Slavic tribes in Austria into one people, which speak one and the same dialect. No, Pan-Slavism should consist of this: that all Slavic tribes, unaffected by possible special interests, should aim in important political struggles according to one and the same point of view.132 Even Kollár, who lamented that some Slavs “often become partial to their own tribe and develop a haughty desire for isolation,”133 acknowledged the importance of “tribal” loyalty: it cannot be expected from human frailty, vanity and self-love that any tribe will sacrifice its own independence, however achieved, or that it will abstain from the treasures it has won, or should forget about them and wish to abandon them. Most Slavs have over the centuries grown attached to their dialect with sacred love, and have gone too far in their particular education and literature to wish to return.134 Linguistic nationalists throughout the world use the concept of a “dialect” to downplay the importance of speech diversity. All-Slavic rhetoric, however, also used the word “dialect” to downplay the importance of script diversity: the Slavic “language” encompassed multiple alphabets, spelling conventions, and literary traditions. This link between tribe, script and “dialect” returns our attention to the shape-shifting taxonomy of the Slavic language family. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Slovak literati, including Bernolák, Palkovič, Ribay, Herkel, and Kollár, agreed that they spoke the “Slavic language,” albeit a language divided into discrete “dialects.” They had diverging views, however, about which “dialect” they spoke, or more importantly, which literary dialect they wrote. Bernolák saw himself as codifier of “Pannonian Slavic [Pannonia Slavorum],”135 and Herkel devised a “Pannonian” literary dialect of Slavic.

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Palkovič, Ribay and Kollár, by contrast, understood their “dialect” in “SlavoBohemian” terms. Lichard further complicated the situation by positing a “Slovak” dialect. This disagreement about “dialects” was less arcane than it might seem, because these “dialects” were associated with scripts, and thus with education policy. Popular belief in a Slavic language, combined with complex hierarchies of dialect and sub-dialect, meant that the status of “dialect” enjoyed considerable prestige. The early Czechoslovak movement in northern Hungary did not consist of Slavic intellectuals who refused to acknowledge Slovak as an independent “language” and saw it as a mere “dialect”: they saw Slovak as a sub-dialect of the Czech dialect of the Slavic language. In Reciprocity, Kollár had posited a Slavic Sprache [language] with four Dialekte: Russian, Polish, Illyrian, and Czecho-Slavic. Kollár did not clearly specify the status of Slovak in this particular text, but he described Bulgarian, Sloven and Croatian as kleine Mundarten and Untermundarten (small dialects or under-dialects) of the Illyrian “dialect,”136 and presumably ascribed a similar status to Slovak. Šafařík similarly described the Slovak nářeč [dialect] as part of the Czech řeč [a term lacking any English equivalent], which was in turn subsumed inside the Slavic jazyk [language].137 To understand key decisions taken by Slovak political leaders, one must engage with the history of linguistic thought in surprising detail: linguistic arguments about dialects and sub-dialects may seem esoteric, but proved decisive for Slovak history. The next two chapters discuss events that, once set in motion, ultimately generated Slovak nationalism in the first Czechoslovak Republic. The key issue was the relationship of Slovak to Czech. The next chapter examines the linguistic Czechoslovakism of the early nineteenth century. The chapter after that examines Ľudovít Štúr’s rejection of Czechoslovakism and his attempt to develop a distinctly Slovak script.

6. LINGUISTIC CZECHOSLOVAKISM BEFORE 1843

This chapter traces Czechoslovak feeling in Hungary in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this period, belief in a special relationship between Slovaks and Czechs operated only within the apolitical, non-Hungarian half of Hungaro-Slavic dual nationality: i.e. it was purely linguistic. This strong All-Slavic tradition in Slovakia meant that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, all Slovaks believed that they spoke the same language as the Czechs: Slavic. This in turn meant that Slovaks and Czechs belonged to the same linguistic nation: Slavia. This chapter, however, examines those Slovak intellectuals who believed that Slovak and Czech shared a special bond within the Slavic world. It describes national or linguistic concepts that united Slovaks with Czechs, but not with Poles, Russians, or South-Slavs. Belief in a special Slovak-Czech tie derives mostly from a common literary tradition, not from belief in common speech: the perception of a common speech led most Slovak observers to All-Slavism. Ján Kollár, for example, believed that all Slavs “spoke” the same language, although they wrote in different dialects. However, he specified a Czechoslovak literary dialect, defined and characterized by the presence of a common literary tradition in Bibličtina. Script loyalties were central to nineteenth-century Czechoslovakism. Of course, some Slovaks, like Bernolák, consciously rejected the Bibličtina tradition. Many others, furthermore, simply belonged to other traditions: some wrote idiosyncratically, and there was also a unique script tradition in north-East Hungary, today known as “Eastern Slovak,” which will be discussed in chapter eight. The desire to standardize and homogenize script preferences, however, transcended these divisions. Any analysis of Czechoslovak national concepts requires a discussion of attitudes toward the Bibličtina tradition. This can become complicated. While

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proponents of a Czechoslovak concept almost always invoked the Bibličtina tradition, proponents of Bibličtina often had motives and loyalties other than Czechoslovakism. Czechoslovak national loyalties, furthermore, emerged in a historical context where historical actors routinely invoked multiple nations simultaneously. Given the perceived link between linguistic nation and “language,” multiple nations sometimes meant that Slovaks invoked multiple “languages.” Historical actors did not use a coherent and internally consistent terminology, and historians must not expect them to. Czechoslovak concepts have a long history. Nineteenth-century Bohemian intellectuals frequently described themselves as “Czechoslavs.” Jeremy King suggests that the term distinguished ethnic Czechs from Bohemian Germans,1 and while the term excluded Bohemia’s German population, it also claimed kinship with Slavs living beyond the Bohemian frontier. When Josef Jungmann alluded to the “dear Czechoslav nation [milém národu českoslowanském]”2 in the introduction to his 1835 dictionary, he thanked several Slovaks for assistance, including Ribay (described as “a pastor in Hungary”), Palkovič (author of a “Czechoslav dictionary”), Kollár (“a friend”) and Šafařík (“redactor of the Czech museum and professor”).3 Bohemian aristocrat Leo Thun, in his celebrated correspondence about Slovak rights with Hungarian nobleman Ferenc Pulszky, used the name “Czechoslav” to express solidarity with Slovaks: “The Czechoslavs,” he proclaimed, “are, despite everything that has happened in the past, awake again.”4 Throughout the nineteenth century, various Czech intellectuals wrote essays and verse about the Czechoslavs.5 The “Czechoslav” idea even survived the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy: in 1919, Raymond Fišer suggested Čechoslovan replace Čechoslovák as the founding ethnonym for the Czechoslovak republic.6 Albert Pražák, a Czech-born historian teaching at Bratislava’s Comenius University, referred to the “Czechoslav” language and people as late as the 1920s.7 The term čechoslovenský [Czechoslovak] was originally a synonym of čechoslovanský [Czechoslav], reflecting the aforementioned ambiguity of slovanský and slovenský. Czechoslavs are thus the “Čech” type of Slav. What, then, is a Čech? Oral tradition claims that Čech was originally a person, praotec Čech [forefather Czech], whose name, in turn, may derive from the word ctin, “honor.”8 Forefather Čech was the mythical leader who first led Slavs into Bohemia.9 The plural of Čech is Češi, and the country the Češi settled is called Čechy, incidentally a grammatically plural word with no singular, like “the Balkans” or “the Bahamas.” The language the Češi speak is čeština, and the corresponding adjective is český. Prague, the largest town in Bohemia, had a particularly glorious medieval history; no other town in the Czechoslovak territory rivals it as a political,

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intellectual or cultural center. During the nineteenth century “national revival,” political ideas, cultural norms, nationalist literature, script conventions, and so forth congealed into a national consciousness that radiated out from its stronghold in Prague to provincial Czech towns, thence into the countryside, turning peasants into Czechs.10 This process did not stop at the Bohemian frontier: as Czech national culture developed, Slavs in Moravia also came to describe their culture with the adjective český, themselves as Češi, and their speech čeština.11 The place-name Čechy, however, did not expand in the same way: it refers only to Bohemia, a province that also has a long and proud German history, not least because its capital city once served as the capital of the predominantly German Holy Roman Empire. No historically sanctioned term describes the Czech ethnoterritory (i.e. Czech Bohemia + Czech Moravia + Czech Silesia), though many scholars refer to “the Czech lands.” When the Czech republic became an independent state, the Czech government introduced the terms “Czechia” and Česko, but the eventual success of these neologisms remains uncertain.12 The adjective český therefore has both a political-territorial meaning and a linguistic-cultural meaning. These two meanings are easily documented in bilingual dictionaries, and exist in other Slavic languages.13 Much as the noun “Hungarian” could be divided into [Hterritorial] citizens of Hungary, and [Hethnic] Magyars, so too might one distinguish the adjective český into [Čterritorial] referring to the kingdom centered around Prague whose population and culture was both German and Slavic during the nineteenth century, and [Čethnic] referring to a Slavic language and culture existing both inside and beyond the Bohemian frontier: Franz Kafka may not have been a [Čethnic] “ethnic Czech,” but he was a [Čterritorial] “Bohemian.”14 Only the [Čethnic] concept, however, could include Slovaks. This analytical distinction [Čethnic] and [Čterritorial] raises the temptation of drawing a clean analytical distinction between “Bohemian” and “Czech.” This would, however, cause more problems than it solved, because historical actors conflate the two terms, particularly when writing in non-Slavic languages. Several Czech-English dictionaries, for example, describe themselves as “Bohemian-English” dictionaries.15 When Ján Tomka Szászký included “Bohoemi Slavi” in a 1759 list of Hungary’s inhabitants, he obviously classified Slovaks as ethnic Czechs [Čethnic]: the context precludes [Čterritorial].16 Grellman’s 1795 statistical guide also listed “Bohemian” as one of the Slavic languages of Hungary, though apparently only spoken in western Slovakia: Grellman, like several other observers, described the speech of northern and eastern Slovakia as “Polish.”17

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The notion of Hungarians speaking Czech (or Polish) was, of course, perfectly compatible with dual nationality: the population of the Hungarian kingdom included Germans and Romanians, why not Czechs (or Poles) as well? Bohuslav Tablic’s Paměti česko-slowenských básnjřůw aneb werssowcůw, kteřjž se buďto w Uherské zemi zrodili, aneb aspoň žiwi byli [Memories of Czecho-Slovak poets born or having lived in Hungary], which went through four editions in 1806, 1807, 1809 and 1812, thus combined pride in the Hungarian homeland with belief in “Czechoslovak” poetry.18 Kollár also combined Czech feeling and Hungarian loyalties in his 1845 poem “to the Czechs”: Já mám dwé wlasti: Čechy a Uhry Zde bydli tělo mé, tam duch. I have two homelands: Bohemia and Hungary My body lives here, there my spirit.19 Kollár had been living in Pest for over twenty years when this poem was published. He never lived in Bohemia. The idea of grouping Slovaks and Czechs into a single linguistic unit derived from a shared script tradition in Bibličtina. Some Slovak scholars describe texts written in Bibličtina as “Czech” texts, frequently from the desire to stigmatize a given text, or its orthography, as unpatriotic. This is over simplistic, not least because the Bibličtina script community also had a confessional dimension. Bibličtina attracted the greatest support from Slovak Lutherans, for whom it was a sacred text. Before Bernolák, Catholic Slovaks often used orthographic conventions similar to their Lutheran contemporaries, but never invested them with a sacred quality: Catholics read the Bible and conducted mass in Latin. By 1800, Slovak Lutherans developed a significant literary tradition in Bibličtina that spread from Košice to Saxony. Franz Pelzl’s list of “Bohemian” grammar books, as listed in his 1795 grammar, suggests that Prague was the main center of the this emerging Czechoslovak cultural zone, but also hints at the importance of Vienna as a center of Slavic culture. Hungary boasted two important centers for Czechoslovak culture: Bratislava and Levoča, both of which contained Lutheran gymnasia (see Figure 6.1).20 Figure 6.1 suggests that Levoča and Bratislava had equal weight, but in fact Bratislava was the most important Hungarian center for this nascent Czechoslovak culture. Bratislava’s Danube location connected it to important transport links; Levoča was relatively isolated in the high Tatras. Bratislava

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also supported a Czechoslovak-minded newspaper, the Prešpurské noviny čilj noviny československé [Bratislava News, or Czechoslovak News].21 Finally, Bratislava was the home of Juraj Palkovič, an influential author and teacher with Czechoslovakist views. Figure 6.1: Czechoslovak Grammar Book Production (1800)

Palkovič taught at the Lutheran lyceum in Bratislava. Noble-born and somewhat reserved, he was not a particularly successful lecturer.22 What he lacked in charisma, however, he made up in diligence. His numerous published works include several textbooks, a dictionary, a well-received collection of poems, various polemical works, and Slovakia’s first secular play.23 Palkovič’s work frequently touched on national issues; Gogolák concluded that “[a]lmost all ideas of Czechoslovak and Slovak-particularist romanticism can with close observation be seen in Palkovič’s works.”24 One could add Hungarian state loyalism to Gogolák’s list: as noted above, Palkovič wrote poetry proclaiming Slavic primacy in the Hungarian kingdom. Palkovič had a nuanced relationship to the Czechs: he was most interested in Slovak affairs and drew attention to things that distinguished Slovaks from Czechs, yet he also situated Slovak culture inside a larger Czechoslovak collective. A previous chapter noted his willingness to describe himself as a “professor of the Czecho-Slavic Language and Literature,”25 but Palkovič also proved willing to describe himself a “professor of Slovak language and literature.”26 These claims may seem contradictory, but are in fact perfectly compatible. One might draw an analogy to a professor of “Australian” or “American” literature, who feels loyalty to “English”; similarly, a “professor of Austrian literature” in Vienna would not be required to disavow all loyalties to

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German culture. In the introduction to an 1801 collection of poetry, Palkovič described his Czechoslovak loyalties in the following nuanced terms: the Czechs as well as the Slovaks will look kindly on the fact that I have lived with the Slovaks themselves … I have tried to go a certain middle way, both to the Czechs, and to the Slovaks. If my fellow scholars and countrymen, both Czechs and Slovaks, … take a fancy to my song, then its voice will burst forth again in the future.27 Palkovič probably appealed to both Czechs and Slovaks as “countrymen,” hoping that both would read his poetry: strategic Czechoslovakism could boost book sales. Clearly, however, Palkovič saw no contradiction between Czech linguistic loyalty and Slovak pride, and indeed as a nobleman combined both with membership in the Hungarian political nation. On orthographic questions, however, Palkovič adopted a more confrontational position: he was a conservative, and rejected any tinkering with established Bibličtina conventions. This was controversial: Czech spelling underwent a great deal of reform during Palkovič’s lifetime. Consider a series of spelling guides published between 1789 and 1812 by František Ján Tomsa, editor of a monthly almanac. Tomsa abandoned Blackletter type (“that monks’ script”) for the Latin alphabet, wrote infinitive verbs with final {-t} instead of {-ti}, ended the capitalization of nouns, and replaced the letters {g j} with {j í} respectively.28 These reforms were ultimately adopted throughout Bohemia and Moravia. Bernolák also adopted several of Tomsa’s ideas, notably the transition from {j} to {í}.29 According to Hugh LeCaine Agnew, however, when Tomsa book first appeared it “met with criticism from almost every quarter.”30 Palkovič’s 1830 essay defended both {g} and {j} as follows: Given the ramshackle state of our language, how shall we know better than Adam Daniel [of Veleslavín], the Kralice Bible, Komenský and so forth, whether the i should sound fuller or tighter? The Bohemians don’t even distinguish ľ and l anymore. The long j (in the place of which í is suggested) should remain, because our script is already overburdened with accents (Kopytář calls them ‘clubs’), and because the letter g (which one wishes to replace with j) must remain, e.g. in ğroš, ğummi and so forth.31 Palkovič's defense of Bibličtina suggests not servile Czechophilia, but loyalty to established traditions: he invoked past literary figures and rejected newfangled Bohemianisms.

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Palkovič’s orthographic preferences also had a confessional dimension. The literary tradition he defended was common to Bohemia, Moravia and northern Hungary, but the literary works Palkovič invoked as examples of correct style had all been written by outspoken Protestants. Adam Daniel of Veleslavín was a Reformation-era author who married the daughter of a prominent Lutheran publisher. Komenský (Comenius), an important educational reformer whose Orbis Sensualium Pictus was translated into several European languages,32 took his Lutheranism so seriously that he fled Habsburg rule during the Thirty Years’ War and lived briefly in Sweden and England before dying a refugee in Amsterdam.33 Most obviously, the Kralice Bible was itself a product of the Reformation. Palkovič, in short, did not justify his pro-Bibličtina stance in national terms, though the geographic extent of the Bibličtina tradition he invoked suggests proto-Czechoslovakism. Palkovič sometimes described his linguistic loyalties as “Czech,” but he refused to grant Bohemians any special status in the Bibličtina zone. Indeed, the argument cited above was directed primarily against spelling reformers in Prague, and he specifically criticized the Bohemian failure to distinguish /l/ from /lj/ (the sound written as {ľ}). Prague-based linguists, for their part, were typically preoccupied with Bohemian affairs and dismissed non-Bohemian usage as irrelevant to their concerns. In a 1794 letter to Ribay, for example, Dobrovský wrote that the speech of Čechy required a distinctively český orthography: “From the Moravian and Slovak I believe that only so much as may serve to explain a Czech word should be admitted.”34 Palkovič would have none of this: in 1820–21, he wrote a “Czech-German-Latin Dictionary, Including Expressions and Phrases of Moravians and Slovaks.”35 Some scholars, unwilling to accept that Bibličtina was a genuine Czechoslovak heritage, have tried to describe Palkovič in terms of a SlovakCzech binary. Peter Petro, for instance, described Palkovič’s script as “a very strongly Slovakized Czech,”36 thus accepting Palkovič as part of the Slovak tradition while denationalizing his orthographic practices. Other scholars have treated Palkovič’s loyalty to Bibličtina as straightforward Czechophilia, with confusing results. Aleksandr Pypin, for example, described him as “the most eager transmitter of the Czech inheritance, up to the point that he bitterly fought the Czechs.”37 I prefer to describe him as the most eager transmitter of the proto-Czechoslovak Bibličtina tradition, up to the point that he bitterly fought Tomsa and other Prague language reformers. Palkovič, certainly, would have denied that Bibličtina was a purely Czech inheritance. David Short more usefully described Palkovič as “a conservative who ultimately irked as many Czechs as Slovaks by his fuddy-duddiness, especially over orthographic

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reform.”38 But if one must describe Palkovič’s fuddy-duddiness in national terms, then literary Czechoslovakism is the best fit. The first society promoting Czechoslovakism appeared in 1801, when Palkovič and Tablic founded the Ústav řeči a literatúry česko-slovenské [Institute of Czecho-Slovak Language and Literature] in Bratislava. This was the first in a long line of Lutheran Czechoslovak institutes. In 1823, a Spolek česko-slovanský [Czecho-Slav Club] was founded at the Lutheran theological academy in Vienna. In 1827, Palkovič’s students in Bratislava founded the Česko-Slovanská Spoločnosť [Czecho-Slav Society],39 and eventually published a collection of poetry called Plody zboru učenů řeči Českoskowanské presporského [Fruits of the Bratislava Czechoslav Learned Society] in 1836.40 These societies used “national” rhetoric in conjunction with their Czechoslovak work, but this did not infringe on the Hungarian political nation. Michal Hodža, who served as chairman of the Czecho-Slav Society in 1833, made this Hungaro-Slavism explicit in a speech to the society that same year: “we are not civilly, but linguistically closest to the Czechs, whose lot was so often the same as ours, whose literary language has been ours as well for three centuries … we are one nation, Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks, not civilly, but linguistically.”41 The illustrious career of Pavel Jozef Šafařík shows how this sense of a common literary community functioned in practice. Šafařík was an academic prodigy from a young age, showing a particular interest in languages. He attended lyceum in Kežmarok from 1810 to 1814, where he published a book of national poems.42 He studied in Jena for two years, where he met Goethe, and then became acquainted with Dobrovský and Jungmann in Prague on his return to Hungary. In 1819, after receiving a doctoral degree, he landed a position in the Vojvodina at a Serbian lyceum. He found life among the Serbs difficult, but managed to write an important work of Slavic linguistics: the 1826 Geschichte der slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten. This made him famous, and he eventually moved to Prague, where Czech patriots promised him an annual subsidy in exchange for the promise that he would write all his future scholarly works in Czech. Šafařík did not find this a hardship: in a letter to Mikhail Pogodin, he had once proclaimed “my mother language is Bohemian.”43 Šafařík’s scholarship proved significant in the European context: he was the greatest Slavist of his age. His 1837 Slowanské starožitnosti [Slavic Antiquities] was, in Janko Larvin’s words, “a standard work on the subject until the beginning of [the twentieth] century,”44 and gave Šafařík such a scholarly reputation that his 1842 Slowanský národopis [Slavic Ethnography] was translated into Russian and Polish within a year of publication.45 He also played an important

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role in the development of Czech orthography: according to de Bray, Šafařík’s authority played a decisive role in the transition from {g i} to {j í}.46 Šafařík also contributed to an important tradition of Czechoslovak journalism. In 1834, shortly after his arrival in Prague, he started publishing a popular newspaper in Bibličtina, Swětozor, neglaciněgssi spis obrázkowy k  rozssjřenj užitečných známostj pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky [Observer, Inexpensive Illustrated Magazine for Promoting Useful Knowledge for Bohemians, Moravians and Slovaks]. This was not a success and ceased publication in 1835,47 but the subsequent journal Kwěty: Národnj zábawnjk pro Čechy, Morawany, Slowáky a Slezany [Flowers: National Entertainment for Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks and Silesians] posited a similar Czechoslovak community in its title.48 Kwěty, furthermore, achieved a Czechoslovak community in its pages, publishing letters from Moravia, Lusatia, Slovakia, and the Czechoslovak diaspora in Vienna. Indeed, it even managed to find a Czech correspondent in Louisiana.49 Kwěty remained faithful to Bibličtina: it used the classic {g j w} and in 1841 published an ode to Bibličtina’s defender Palkovič on his name day.50 Contributors to Kwěty formulated the SlovakCzech relationship in many different ways, but the Czech traveler in Slovakia who proclaimed that “the Slovak řeč, a dialect of Czech, is softer than ours”51 was fairly representative. Lutheran clergyman and journalist Karl Kuzmány also promoted the Czechoslovak dialect as part of both Hungary and Slavdom. In 1836, he began publishing the journal Hronika in Banská Bystrica. Ideologically, Kuzmány combined Czechoslovakism with Kollárian All-Slavism: The Czechoslav dialect is divided into Czech, Moravian and Slovak subdialects. Each subdialect is in turn divided into different forms, for example into Trnava, Nitra, Orava-Turčian-Liptov-Zvolen, Gemer and Sariš.52 Kuzmány attacked Bernolákovčina, insisting that the common people of the Tatras understood Bibličtina literature better than Bernolákovčina “with its newly created Czechoslovak words.”53 As Kuzmány’s strong Czechoslovakism might suggest, Hronika appeared in Latin type and followed the Bibličtina orthography closely: Kuzmány used both {g j w} and {ě ř ů}, though he also promoted Slavic Reciprocity by publishing poems in Polish, complete with {ą ę ł}.54 The footnotes, however, were in classical blackletter Bibličtina. Kuzmány advocated distinctively Slovak grammatical constructions: “we Slovaks do not have ř, but we endure it in the name of reciprocity, why can the Czechs not endure our tá, tú, tý, tj...”55

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However, he strongly defended the most orthodox Bibličtina orthography, notably defending {g j} in part by attacking the “Magyar-Croatian í.”56 In 1842, František Kampelík, a self-described “teacher of the Czechoslavic language in Vienna,” published a pamphlet explicitly defending the Czechoslovak idea: Čechoslowan, čili narodnj gazyk w Čechách, na Morawě we Slezku, a Slowensku [The Czechoslav, or the National Language in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia].57 This title obviously owed much to Kollár, though Kampelík replaced Kollárian concept of a Czechoslav “dialect” with a “national language.” Nevertheless, Kampelík situated his Czechoslovakism within an All-Slavic context: the orthography and grammatical knowledge of the Czechoslavic language is not only necessary and useful in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, but of general importance for Austrian Slavs and for Europe as a whole. Czechoslavs, or Czechs, Moravians, Silesians and Slovaks, brothers together, are an important tribe of the gigantic Slavic nation whose presence and language has spread to dominance in Europe, Asia and America.58 While Bernolák had promoted his script from the desire to spread education and Enlightenment, Kampelík had additional motives reflecting the increasing nationalization of educational questions: “For us Czechs, Moravians, Silesians and Slovaks, a single literary language is necessary today, not only from the perspective of enlightenment, but for life itself.”59 Hodža and Kampelík presumably specified the “literary” language as the source of Czechoslovak unity because he and his contemporaries would have understood their spoken language in All-Slavic terms. Ján Kollár, the most prominent Czechoslovakist, described his “dialect” in extraordinary geographic detail, ascribing to it a territory similar to, but not perfectly congruent with, the future Czechoslovak republic: Let us imagine that we are one nation with all Slavobrothers, with the Czechs one national tribe. We Slovaks, Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians and in part Lusatians too have been united together, as long as we can remember, by multiple corporeal and spiritual, national and dialectical ties.60 Kollár’s vision of the Czechoslovak “national tribe” did not claim Subcarpathia, but unexpectedly counts Lusatia alongside the more familiar Slovakia,

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Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.61 Lusatia is now in eastern Germany. This territory had been part of the medieval Crownlands of the Bohemian king, but by Kollár’s day had been sundered from Bohemia for several centuries. Nor was it incorporated into the Czechoslovak Republic, though diplomats at the 1919 Paris peace conference considered the possibility.62 Kollár intriguingly only claimed the Sorbs (Lusatians) “in part.” These Czechoslovak Lusatians were almost certainly the upper Sorbs in Saxony; as opposed to the lower Sorbs in Prussia, slightly to the north. Janko Drašković’s 1838 Ein Wort an Iliriens hochherzige Töchter [A Word to Illyria’s HighHearted Daughters] explicitly located the Czechoslovak “collective or main tribe” in “Bohemia, Moravia, then in more than twelve Slovak counties in Hungary, and in upper Lusatia,”63 and attached the lower Sorbs to the Poles. Kollár’s ideal of Slavic reciprocity informed Drašković’s thought; Drašković probably formulated this taxonomy in conversation with Kollár. Kollár attempted to cultivate direct ties with upper Sorbs.64 He exchanged letters Jan Smoler, a folklore collector and script reformer who had been educated by a Czech professor at the University in Wrocław, urging him to send his students to study in Prague and to visit the Slovaks in Hungary.65 He also urged the Sorbs to “nurture reciprocity, only it can save us and you … unite with us so that you become powerful through this bond.”66 Several Slovaks followed Kollár’s lead and corresponded with Sorbian thinkers. Ján Kadavý published a book of “Reciprocity in Translations between Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Silesians and Lusatians,”67 including songs from each of the territories listed. Ľudovít Štúr, who had been vice-chairman of the Czecho-Slav society from 1836–37 before leaving Bratislava to study in Halle, even participated in Lusatian script reform, if only in a small way.68 Smoler wanted to Slavicize the appearance of written Lusatian by substituting Latin type and Czech orthography for what Peter Brock called “the cramping Gothic black letter type” and German orthography. Štúr approved of both ideas, writing that all Slavs here [at Halle University] have rejoiced with all their heart seeing that you have decided to adopt Latin letters, as well as Czech orthography … Your proposal for this orthography I thoroughly approve; I only add some observations designed to keep you from straying greatly from the Czech.69 While studying in Saxony, Štúr made a personal visit to Lusatia. He was unable to meet Smoler, who was unfortunately out of town, but stayed with Smoler’s parents.70 Korla Awgust Mosak-Kłospólski described the visit as follows:

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In the spring of 1839, Ludwig Stuhr [sic], a Slovak student in Halle of Magyar descent, appeared and brought news of a ‘literary Slavic reciprocity’ preached by the Protestant minister Johann Koller [sic] in Pest, reported on the progress of reciprocity, and stimulated contact by promising to send us Slavic — specifically Czech books … consignments of books soon reached us from Hungary and Bohemia, which formed the foundation of the Wendish grammar school organization library.71 Štúr remained engaged with Lusatian affairs after his return to Bratislava. In his 1842 poem Žrec, a lament about the German conquest of Lusatia, the “sword of the Teutons” conquers a peaceful Lusatian village, which is then burned.72 Štúr’s interest in Lusatian affairs typifies the Slovak Lutheran Czechoslovakism of the 1830s. First, Štúr’s Czechoslovakism was linguistic and literary: it concerned script reform, the exchange of books and Romantic poetry. While Kollárian All-Slavism would be enough justify Štúr’s poetry about Lusatian history, Štúr’s correspondence with Smoler suggests a special Czechoslovak relationship based on the desire for a common orthography and a distinctively Czechoslovak script: Štúr did not want Smoler to deviate too far from Czech orthography, and sent specifically “Czech” books, not merely Slavic books. In the late 1830s, therefore, Štúr accepted not only Kollár’s idea of a Slavic nation, but also his concept of a Czechoslovak tribe extending westwards from Slovakia through Moravian and Bohemia to upper Lusatia. Slovak Lutherans spread the Czechoslovak idea across the entire Slovak territory. In the 1832, Michal Hlaváček, yet another of Palkovič’s former students, took up a teaching post at the Lutheran Lyceum at Levoča, and used his position to promote Slavic feeling with a Czechoslovak flavor. Firstly, he founded a student club, the Societas Slavica, which met every Wednesday from three until four in the afternoon.73 While only 12 people participated in the mid 1830s, the society boasted 70 members by the end of the decade. Hlaváček and his students, perhaps inspired by the Bratislava Czecho-Slav Society’s 1836 Plody zboru, mentioned above, published a collection of poetry in 1840. This volume, Gitřenka čili wýbornegšj práce učenců Česko-Slowenských A.V. Lewočských [Morning Star, or the excellent work of the Czecho-Slovak students of the Levoča Lutheran Lyceum], appeared in an old-fashioned Bibličtina: note the use of {g j w} in the title. It contained mediocre poetry extolling great Slavia,74 the Tatras, and the Danube.75 The introduction proclaimed the slogan: “Love your mother language, love the nation and humanity!”

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While Gitřenka’s contributors described themselves as “Czecho-Slovak students,” they also expressed an explicit All-Slavism, invoking “the Slavic nation and language.”76 The Levoča students, however, also placed great emphasis on their particular dialect, which they imagined in Kollárian fashion as “the Czecho-Slavic řeč.”77 Peter Brock was right to describe Gitřenka as “an entirely Kollárian production both in content and language.”78 Gogolák dismissed it as the work of “Romantics lost in a fantasy world.”79 Gitřenka’s publication depended on a significant infrastructure of Slavic patriots. Hlaváček funded the volume by soliciting donations from a network of subscribers whose geographical distribution suggests a literary community stretching from Levoča, in Eastern Slovakia, all the way to Prague (see Figure 6.2). The large numbers of Prague subscribers, despite the great distance from Levoča, reflects Prague’s centrality as a cultural center, and suggests that Bohemian intellectual circles took an interest in Hlaváček’s efforts. Figure 6.2: Subscribers to Gitřenka (1840)

The small towns in Hlaváček’s network lie in Slovakia. Physical distance could explain the dearth of small-town supporters in Bohemia and Moravia, but if Hlaváček based his social network on his schoolmates or former students, then his Moravian and Bohemian contacts would have been limited: Hungary’s Lutheran gymnasia catered primarily to students from Hungary. Hlaváček lacked Kollár’s contacts in the south-Slav zone, but note that eight of the Bratislava subscribers were Serbian students supporting the efforts of fellow Slavs. Gitřenka also attracted several female subscribers.80 In short, Hlaváček had successfully propagated a Czechoslovak linguistic concept

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using Bibličtina to represent the local “řeč.” Furthermore, this occurred not in western Slovakia, but in the high Tatras, far from the Moravian frontier. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Hlaváček’s collection of poetry is that several of the contributors came from Hungarian families, mostly petty nobility near Levoča.81 These “Czecho-Slovak” students of Magyar descent mostly returned to the Magyar fold in their later lives. Gogolák, describing their careers under the Ausgleich, notes that several achieved posts in the Hungarian administration; one even joined Tisza’s Magyarizing party.82 The presence of these Magyar names, however, helped transform the publication of Gitřenka into a public scandal known as the “Gitřenka affair.” The scandal started when Karl Kramárcsik, another teacher at the Levoča lyceum, denounced Hlaváček’s “Pan-Slavism” in the Hungarian newspaper Társalkodó [Conversationalist]: “Nobody who is bound to his fatherland by true feeling can allow that there should be a teacher in Hungary, in a German city, in a Protestant school, in the year 1840, who is a preacher of Pan-Slavism.”83 Kramárcsik, in Gogolák’s words, was “the first bourgeoisprovincial professional Magyar nationalist,”84 and a true Magyarone: his native tongue was Slavic, but he preferred Hungarian, and incidentally received a warm welcome in liberal Magyar circles.85 His attack on Hlaváček, however, might have been inspired partly by personal envy of Hlaváček’s success with students. Whatever Kramárcsik’s motives, his article in Társalkodó attracted considerable attention, and the issue of “Pan-Slavism” in Slovak schools attracted the attention of liberal Magyar journalists. Kramárcsik was soon invited to discuss the Slavic menace with baron Károly Zay, Inspector-General for the Hungarian Lutheran church, and a close friend of Kossuth. The following excerpt from Zay’s infamous article in Társalkodó, cited in chapter one as an example of Magyarizing rhetoric, bears repeating in the specific context of the Gitřenka affair: That it is suitable to hunt the Slavic language beyond the borders as quickly as possible is an obvious thing, the only question is of the feasible and unfeasible means to Magyarize the Slavs and to remove their nationality from them … We must rip the sapling up by its roots while it is still weak, because we will not be able to treat the mature tree according to our will.86 Outraged by what he heard from Kramárcsik, Zay formed a committee to investigate and root out “Pan-Slavism” in Lutheran schools. Slovak Lutherans had long admired the Zay family for its piety,87 but now their fellow Lutheran, and fellow Hungarian, had become an advocate of Magyarization.

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This threatened their sense of national justice as well as their careers in the Lutheran church. During the Language War, they responded, as discussed above, with the ideal of a multi-ethnic Hungary. The Language War was the immediate context behind the key event of nineteenth-century Slovak history: Ľudovít Štúr’s break with Czechoslovakism and his codification of a distinctively Slovak script. Štúr is a central figure in Slovak history, and easily the most important Slovak of the nineteenth century. Before turning to Štúr’s life and work, however, a few final observations about the Slovak Lutheran intelligentsia and its Czechoslovakist traditions are in order. Firstly, the tradition of linguistic Czechoslovakism among Slovak Lutherans provided historical legitimacy to supporters of the first Czechoslovak republic, but this required a selective reading of the historical record. Consider the work of Albert Pražák, a Czech historian who taught in Bratislava during the early 1920s.88 Pražák wrote a series of books on Czechoslovak unity; one of them, the 1925 Československý národ [The Czechoslovak Nation] contains 64 “proofs of Slovak all-national consciousness” from the period 1806 to 1892, designed to prove that Slovaks had a Czechoslovak national consciousness. Problematically, several of these quotations come from non-Slovaks.89 Of the genuinely Slovak quotations, nine come from Hurban, whose Hungarian loyalties were discussed at length in a previous chapter, and two come from Kollár, who is best understood in All-Slavic terms. Pražák took his quotations from those Slovak intellectuals who left behind sophisticated and multi-faceted musings on national questions, and while they did articulate Czechoslovak sentiments, they only did so within the context of multiple and coexisting national loyalties. Nineteenth-century Czechoslovakism coexisted with All-Slavism, which in turn only existed in the linguistic half of HungaroSlavism. Locher described Pražák as “inclined to discover everywhere traces of a Czechoslovak feeling of togetherness, which do not always stand on solid ground.”90 This summary was correct: linguistic Czechoslovakism was only one of many national ideas floating around nineteenth-century Slovakia. On the other hand, linguistic Czechoslovakism was indeed one of the many national ideas floating around nineteenth century Slovakia. Several modern scholars have tried to delegitimate Czechoslovak linguistic loyalties by describing them in excessively pejorative terms. When Peter Petro remarked that Bernolák “did not suffer from the ‘Czech complex’,”91 he implied that the grammatical works of Doležal, Ribay, Palkovič, Kollár, and the young Štúr embodied some sort of national pathology. Slovak historian Jozef Butvin wrote that “Czechoslovak (Slovakized, antiquated Biblical Czech), as an artistic language, was unpleasant for both Czechs and Slovaks.”92 The tremendous

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success of Kollár’s Sláwy dcera, published in 1824, suggests otherwise. Philip Hrobak of the Slovak League of America wrote that “Kollár and Safařík [sic!] cultivated a ‘dead’ language, a language that was used by a small part of the Slovak nation, the Lutherans.”93 This can be dismissed as both nationalism and Catholic chauvinism, since Slovak Lutherans must be counted among the living. Stanislav Kirschbaum claimed that “regardless of how close Lutheran Pastors were to their flocks and how comfortable they were with Biblical Czech, they surely realized that this language had little if no currency beyond the sanctuaries of their temples.”94 Gitřenka’s readership, however, shows that even mediocre literary works written in Bibličtina commanded considerable currency in both senses of the term. So let us take stock of the situation in Slavic northern Hungary at the beginning of the 1840s. Loyalty to the Hungarian state was universal, and the rejection of Magyarization nearly so: educated Slavs in northern Hungary defended their right to study, learn, and teach their language, which they imagined in All-Slavic terms. To reconcile this linguistic concept with the considerable linguistic diversity within the Slavic world, Slavs in northern Hungary developed fairly sophisticated theories about “literary dialects.” As for the “dialect” spoken in Slovakia, many schools of thought existed: some Slovaks described their dialect as “Pannonian,” others in Czechoslovak terms. These different national ideas, furthermore, routinely coexisted: the same person could be loyal to Hungary, defend the Slavic language against Magyarization, and advocate the Czechoslovak dialect. All these loyalties, finally, were expressed in “national” terms: authors variously proclaimed a Hungarian nation, a Slavic nation, a Czechoslovak nation, or even a north Hungarian Slavic nation. Where in this picture, then, is Slovak particularist nationalism? When and how did Hungarian loyalists with All-Slavic linguistic concepts turn into Slovaks? Why did Slovak particularism supplant the other national and linguistic concepts that Slovaks espoused during the nineteenth century? The answer to these questions lies in the history of Slovak script reform. The key figure was Ľudovít Štúr, a man who articulated all the various loyalties discussed above: he outspokenly declared his loyalty to Hungary, passionately defended the All-Slavic language, and worked to promote Czechoslovak literary unity. The interaction between these different loyalties, however, set Slovaks on the path toward Slovak particularist nationalism.

7 ĽUDOVÍT ŠTÚR AND SLOVAK TRIBALISM

In the 1840s, a group of mostly Lutheran patriots led by Ľudovít Štúr, often known as the “Štúr generation” or Štúrovci (singular: Štúrovec)1 consciously rejected the Czechoslovak tradition described in the previous chapter. They also rejected the Bibličtina tradition and invented a new script to supplant it. Although historians of Slovakia almost unanimously describe Štúr and the Štúrovci as “Slovak nationalists,” this chapter argues that they were instead Slovak tribalists. Štúr and the Štúrovci indeed promoted Slovak distinctiveness from national motives, but not from Slovak nationalism. Instead, Štúr and the Štúrovci were Hungaro-Slavs: they believed in an All-Slavic linguistic nation and a Hungarian political nation. This chapter describes Štúr’s life and linguistic work in its political context, and also examines the reaction of Štúr’s contemporaries, particularly the resistance from Slovaks loyal to the Bibličtina tradition. Štúr was born in 1815 to a Lutheran family. His father Samuel was a pastor in Trenčin. Samuel owed this post to the patronage of Hungarian aristocrat Emmerich Zay, father of the infamous Károly Zay. The Zay family was active in Lutheran church affairs and supported the Lutheran Gymnasium in Bratislava. When Palkovič recommended Samuel Štúr for the teaching post in Trenčin, the elder Zay became the elder Štúr’s patron and friend.2 Ľudovít was one of four children born on the Zay estate, and inherited the patronage of the Zay family. He once worked as a scribe for Károly in 1834. According to Gogolák, Štúr saw the younger Zay as “the son of his father’s patron, and of a promoter of Czechoslovak liturgical music.” He even wrote an ode praising him, which Gogolák saw as “a noteworthy sign of Štúr’s youthful immaturity, his unbelievable political naiveté, and his lack of orientation.”3

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When Zay became an outspoken proponent of Magyarization, few Slovak Lutherans can have felt so keenly the sense of betrayal. Štúr met several important Slavic intellectuals in his youth. Palkovič maintained friendly relations with Štúr’s father. The noted Czech historian František Palacký was briefly a boarder and student in the Štúr household during Ľudovít’s childhood. Štúr attended secondary school in Győr, where his German teacher introduced him the works of Dobrovský, Kollár, and Šafařík.4 In Győr, Gogolák suggested, the twelve-year-old Štúr first developed his “stubborn hatred against Magyarhood” when a servant girl laughed at him for speaking Hungarian poorly.5 Štúr later finished his secondary education with Palkovič at the Lutheran gymnasium in Bratislava. In 1836, when Štúr was 21, he ceremoniously demonstrated his anti-Magyar feeling with some friends from the Lutheran gymnasium. The assembled students hiked to the ruins of Devín castle, just up the river from Bratislava’s old town, sang Slavic songs, and adopted Slavic names such as “Pravoslav,” “Dobroslav” or “Miloslav.” (Štúr became “Velislav.”) They then burnt the portraits of prominent Hungarian aristocrats, including Miklós Wesselény and István Szécheny. Gogolák commented that it is typical of the deficient political instinct and lack of orientation of the young Slovaks that they vented their hatred exactly on the Hungarian statesmen and leaders who had intervened for peace between the nationalities, for the equality of all people, and the constitutional equality of millions of non-Magyars.6 Many of Štúr’s contemporaries, including Kollár and Hojč, reacted to this incident with embarrassment. During the 1830s, as discussed in the previous chapter, the young Štúr’s patriotic work was firmly within the Czechoslovak Bibličtina tradition. In 1836, he started the literary journal Plody [Fruits]. The same year, he became Palkovič’s deputy at the Bratislava gymnasium, where he had his students read Kollár’s Sláwy dcera.7 A year later he published a poem about Devín in Karol Kuzmány’s Hronika, became chair of the Czecho-Slav Society, where he showed considerable capacity for organizational work, and helped Serbian students in Bratislava set up a reading room.8 In 1838 he left Bratislava for university study in Halle; along the way he stopped in Prague, where Šafařík introduced him to several leading Czechs. As mentioned above, he also acquired some Lusatian contacts, to whom he preached a Czechoslovakist and Kollárian gospel. In 1840, while returning to Hungary, he visited Ján Pospíšil’s publishing house in Hradec Králové. He then resumed his position as Palkovič’s assistant, and

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used his new contacts to participate in Czechoslovak cultural life beyond the Hungarian frontier. In 1841, for instance, his poetry appeared in the Czech literary magazine Kwěty.9 Štúr’s closest colleagues, Jozef Hurban and Michal Hodža, shared similar backgrounds. Both were Lutherans, both studied under Palkovič, and both were active in the Czecho-Slav Society: Hodža served as chair in 1833, the year before Štúr. Hurban and Hodža were also both able to polish their educations at German universities. Hurban participated in the Devín castle demonstration. Hodža was then studying in Vienna, but both Hurban and Hodža adopted the Slavic name “Miroslav.” All three participated in Czechoslovak journalism. For example, Hurban serialized his 1841 journey to Prague for Kwěty, declaring at one point that “the Slovak is no foreigner to the Moravian, they are brothers together.”10 Historians of Slovakia tend to downplay the significance of Hurban and Hodža, dismissing them as “Štúr’s collaborators.”11 Aleksandr Pypin, for example, condescendingly described Hurban as “a worthy collaborator of Štúr’s.”12 During the 1840s, however, Hurban struck most observers as the most important figure. Hurban was, for instance, listed first in the Hungarian government’s “wanted” poster from 1848,13 and in 1850, an anonymous German rant denounced “The Intrigues of Hurban and Company.”14 Hurban’s high profile among non-Slavs may reflect his social radicalism: of the three, he was most interested in improving the condition of Slovak peasants.15 In any event, the three leading figures of “the Štúr generation” were colleagues: Hurban and Hodža respected Štúr, but were neither disciples nor subordinates. In 1843, as Zay sought to purge Pan-Slavism from the Lutheran school system in the wake of the Gitřenka affair, Štúr became a target of Magyarization. His youthful indiscretions at Devín must have counted against him, but the investigating committee seems to have been even more concerned with Štúr’s foreign contacts: Štúr exchanged letters with Czechs beyond the Hungarian frontier, and with assorted Slavic literati outside the Habsburg monarchy. Štúr responded to the investigation with defiance; his indignant contribution to the Language War, the 1843 Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren [Grievances and Accusations of the Slavs in Hungary about the Illegal Attacks of the Magyars], was discussed above in the chapter on Hungaro-Slavism. Zay’s committee eventually decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge Štúr with treason, but in October 1843 Štúr was ordered to stop lecturing, and in December that same year he was actually removed from his post. In a testament to Štúr’s personal charisma, twenty-two students quit their studies at the Bratislava gymnasium in protest.16 Štúr then turned to

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journalism, founding the Slovenskje národňje novini, 400-800 copies of which appeared twice weekly. Hurban edited a literary supplement, Orol Tatránsky.17 From the Magyar perspective, ending Štúr’s career in education may have been counter-productive: Štúr proved more influential as a journalist than as a deputy teacher. Zay’s hostility, however, troubled Štúr deeply: what had transformed his former patron into a persecutor? Liberal Magyars justified Magyarization with reference to patriotism, but Štúr and the other members of his circle saw themselves as good patriots. Štúr’s Beschwerden und Klagen, written under the pen-name ein ungarischer Slawe [a Hungarian Slav], proclaimed a passionate love of Hungary: We Slavs … are devoted to our country, and have served our fatherland from the earliest times up until today. … We always fulfilled our obligations to the fatherland as Slavs, even because of this, we must possess full and equal rights with others, for obligations without rights is bondage.18 Why did such declarations of Hungarian loyalty have so little effect on Magyar patriots? Why did they continue to find Slavic literary activity so threatening? Most importantly, how could Magyar fears be calmed? Štúr decided that the Bibličtina tradition frightened the Magyars, because Prague, the center of the Bibličtina cultural zone, lay beyond the Hungarian frontier. Proper Hungarian patriots, Slavic or Magyar, did not look abroad for inspiration; as the popular proverb put it, extra Hungaricum non est vita.19 Štúr himself described the situation as follows: we, desiring to force our way into [Hungary’s] political life, hear … reproaches that we, living here, do not act like we live here, in that we deliver our literature to the Czechs, unify with them politically, and even that we may have no rights to liberation for our nationality in Hungary, because it is foreign.20

Štúr’s longing for acceptance within Hungary makes it difficult to agree with Barbara Törnquist-Plewa’s claim that “by developing their own literary language, the Slovaks … refuted the idea that they were part of the Hungarian state-nation.”21 On the contrary: they codified a Slovak precisely to demonstrate their loyalty to the Hungarian state, and thus the Hungarian political nation. Theodore Locher more accurately described Štúr’s break with the Czechs as both “a concession to the spirit of Magyarism” and “a means to unify and

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strengthen his people and to strike a weapon (accusations of disloyalty) from the hands of its enemies.”22 Štúr concluded that Slovaks could demonstrate their Hungarian loyalties by cultivating an exclusively Hungarian Slavic literature. This literature would still be part of the Slavic language, and thus contribute to the glory of the Slavic nation. It would, however, no longer be part of the Czech tribe: the Slovaks would have their own “tribal” culture. Štúr’s conversion to Slovak tribalism broke with a long career of promoting Bibličtina and Czechoslovakism. Peter Brock explained Štúr’s change of direction through fear of Magyarization: “To sever this connection would certainly be painful. It was contemplated only because the alternative seemed worse: the ultimate dissolution of the Slav culture of north Hungary in the rising tide of Magyardom.”23 Brock may, however, overstate the pain Štúr felt: Štúr may have first questioned the continued vitality of the Czechoslovak tie in the 1830s, when the Czechs reformed their spelling without regard for Slovak sensibilities. In 1836, after witnessing Palkovič’s ineffectual protests against the reformed Czech orthography, Štúr, complained to Palacký that modern Czech literature had become incomprehensible to Slovaks. The same year, Czech literati had attacked the orthography used in Štúr’s journal Plody since, as Peter Petro put it, “nobody in Prague wrote that kind of Czech any more.”24 After a further rebuff from Jungmann, Štúr concluded that the Czechs were unwilling to make concessions to Slovak speech. Slovak Lutherans, however, could not carry the Bibličtina tradition on their own, particularly when Slovak Catholics wrote in Bernolákovčina. On 11 July 1843, therefore, Štúr and Hodža went to Hurban’s parish house in Hlboké, and the three of them spent five days devising a new script, Štúrovčina. Visually, Štúrovčina is quite distinctive: it uses the digraph {uo} where Bibličtina uses {ů}, and palatalizes several consonants other Slovak scripts leave unpalatalized, most notably in the prefix {ňe-}, used to negate verbs.25 On the sixth day, 17 July, the trio went to consult with Catholic priest and Bernolákovčina poet Ján Hollý, and obtained his approval. While Bernolák had left “fully to his own will” any Lutherans who wished “to write in the Czech fashion,”26 the Štúrovci imagined and promoted Štúrovčina as a pan-confessional script from the very beginning. Before the year was out, Štúr had published a grammar book, Nauka reči slovenskej [Handbook of Slovak Speech], and even more importantly a seminal essay justifying the new script, Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňje v tomto nárečje [The Slovak Dialect, or the Necessity of Writing in this Dialect]. Nárečja slovenskuo borrowed heavily from Ján Kollár’s vision of the great Slavic nation, and Štúr structured much of his argument after Kollár’s essay on Slavic Reciprocity. Both Štúr and Kollár, for example, discussed Slovak

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linguistic politics through elaborate metaphors about ancient Greece. Štúr accepted Kollár’s idea of a Slavic linguistic nation speaking a Slavic language, and also associated the “tribes” of this nation with characteristic literary “dialects.” Štúr’s Nárečja slovenskuo, however, rejected Kollár’s taxonomy of Slavic tribes/dialects. Kollár had imagined four: Russian, Polish, Illyrian and Czechoslovak. Štúr, ridiculing the idea that Slavs “have only four literatures,” posited eleven: those of the Poles, Czechs, “Little Russians,” Great Russians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Upper Sorbs, Lower Sorbs, and finally “Slovaks with our own Slovak dialect.” Štúr devoted considerable energy to attacking the idea of a “Czechoslovak” dialect. He proposed instead that Czech and Slovak formed a binary dichotomy of mutually exclusive categories. The essence of Štúr’s argument appears in an oft-misquoted passage: “We Slovaks are a tribe and as a tribe, we have our own dialect, which is different and distinct from Czech [Mi slováci sme kmen a jako kmen máme vlastnuo nárečja, ktoruo je od českjeho odchodnuo a rozďjelno].”27 Contemporary scholars of Slovak history, expecting Štúr to proclaim the Slovaks a “nation” speaking a “language,” have been extraordinarily unwilling to confront the fact that Štúr described the Slovaks as “a tribe [kmen]” speaking “a dialect [nárečja],” and even rendered nárečja with Latin dialectus and German Mundart to ensure that he would not be misunderstood. Yet Samuel Cambel’s Dejiny Slovenska [History of Slovakia] dared to cite Štúr as proclaiming “that Slovaks are an independent nation and as a nation have their own language,” noting only parenthetically that Štúr used the terms “tribe” and “dialect” since that was “the terminology of the age.”28 Hugh Agnew wrote that Štúr “insisted that Czech and Slovak were two separate distinct languages (though he still used the word ‘nárečie’ [sic]).”29 Emil Horák wrote that Štúr’s essay had “scientifically proven the independence of Slovak as a Slavic language and justified the need to codify a Slovak literary language as an integral attribute of the Slovak nation.”30 Peter Brock translated Štúr’s passage as “We Slovaks are a tribe and as a tribe we have our own language [emphasis added],” despite admitting in a footnote that “dialect” would be a “more exact” translation of nárečja.31 Scholars have taken similar liberties translating the title of Štúr’s essay: Mikus rendered it “The Slovak Language and the Necessity of Writing in this Language,”32 Kirschbaum gave “The Slovak language or the need to write in this language,”33 and Stanley Pech abbreviated to “Slovak idiom.”34 Toma and Kováč turned the first nárečja into a plural, yielding the internally inconsistent “Slovak dialects, or the need to write in this dialect.”35 Brock admitted that “dialect” would be a “more exact” translation, but still opted for “The Slovak Tongue, or the necessity of Writing in this Tongue.”36 Slovak linguist

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Ĺubomír Ďurovič translated correctly, giving “The Slovak Dialect or Why it is Necessary to Write in this Dialect,” but even he describes Štúr’s book as having codified “a new Slovak literary language.”37 Peter Petro explained that since Slovak Lutherans “still considered Slavdom a nation and the Slavic languages dialects,” in Štúr’s work “the word ‘dialect’ as he used it, meant ‘language’.” 38 Terminological confusion provides a charitable explanation for this extraordinary unwillingness to translate Štúr’s nárečja – dialectus – Mundart as “dialect.” Both historical actors and scholars describe the object of linguistic standardization, which this book calls a “script,” as a “literary language” [spisovný jazyk]. Since Štúr’s use of the term “dialect” contradicts widespread usage, perhaps scholars edit Štúr’s prose to make it “clearer”? Alternatively, scholars might assume that any grammarian codifying a “literary language” would associate their script with the linguistic status “language.” This assumption, however, would not be valid for Štúr, nor indeed for many Slovak grammarians inspired by the All-Slav ideal, both before and after. Both explanations, furthermore, highlight the analytical advantages of the using the term “script,” as outlined in chapter four, above. Štúr, in any event, meant what he said: he intended his script to represent not the “Slovak language,” but the “Slovak dialect” of the Slavic language. Nationalism certainly inspired Štúr’s linguistic work, but tribalism was integral to Štúr’s All-Slavic national idea: as he wrote in Nárečja slovenskuo, “the nation is one, but one with varieties.”39 It is probably no coincidence that Tilman Berger, who highlighted Štúr’s tribalism in his analysis of Nárečja slovenskuo, is one of the few scholars to translate nárečja correctly.40 Štúr, like Kollár, believed in a Slavic linguistic nation composed of various tribes; and though they disagreed about the extent of this variety — four tribes or eleven? — the common ground between the two thinkers remains considerable. Štúr nevertheless broke with Kollár on orthographic questions. So why did he feel it necessary for Slovaks to write in their own dialect? Like Kollár, Štúr rejected the idea that “every tribe, even the small and flimsy, should write in its own dialect,” since a distinctive literary tradition could only be sustained by a tribe “which has something personal and spiritual, which has a dialect that is clean, unconfused, unspoiled … which can preserve its literature spiritually and materially.”41 Kollár did not think that Slovaks qualified: “The Slovak on his own does not have anything in literature, or rather what he has, it is more Czechoslovak than Slovak proper [wíce českosowenské než wlastně slowácké].”42 Štúr, however, believed that Slovaks had the vitality for independent tribe-hood: Slovaks had a unique destiny, and the Czechs were “a tribe which has parted from us, their history no longer falls with ours.”43

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Štúr’s appeal to “history” presumably refers to the Hungarian Reform Era and the Language War. Twentieth century observers frequently compared Slovak resistance to Magyarization with the Czech struggle against Austrian Germans, but the political arguments used in the two cases differed considerably. Czech patriots fought for the autonomy of Bohemia and Moravia as Habsburg Crownlands: while a small minority in the Empire as a whole, Czechs were stronger than Germans inside Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovaks, by contrast, were not a majority in any existing administrative unit larger than a Hungarian county. Slovaks could thus best achieve their aims if they could, in Joseph Zacek’s phrase, “placate the Magyars’ suspicions of Slovak separatist intentions.”44 This in turn required, or so the Štúrovci believed, a Slovak literature that could claim autochthony in the kingdom of Hungary. Štúr made the point clearly for an 1847 editorial in Slovenské narodnje noviny: “From the point of view of our written language we are domesticated in our homeland … We are already, and wish to remain, at home; but we will see that our neighbors, and particularly our Magyars, will welcome us home.”45 The now-defunct Czechoslovak tradition of Slovak historiography highlighted Štúr’s desire for friendship and reconciliation with the Magyars, apparently hoping that the stigma of having sought Magyar friendship would delegitimate Štúr and strengthen Czechoslovakism. In 1936, Karel Chotek deliberately conflated the concepts maďar and uhor by condemning Štúr’s “loyalty to the Magyar [k maďarom].”46 Modern Slovak historians, by contrast, mostly ignore Štúr’s desire for reconciliation with the Magyars, preferring instead to depict him defiantly battling Magyar oppression. Jozef Ambruš, for example, wrote that Štúr’s codification did not come from any hatred of the Czechs, nor from willingness to serve the Magyars or to hope to profit from them, but only from love of his own Slovak nation, its life and further independent development, and that in the spirit of the very newest ideas which were then circulating Europe. 47 Ambruš was not the only scholar to transform Štúr’s Slovak “tribalism” into Slovak “nationalism.” Milan Podrimavský similarly asserted that “Ľudovít Štúr arrived at the conclusion that the Slovaks were a distinct nation, a specific national entity with constant attributes, to which also belonged the corresponding national and political rights of a state.”48 Ambruš and Podrimavsky’s picture of Štúr as a Slovak nationalist obviously contradicts Chotek’s image of a lickspittle Magyarophile. Yet neither the Czechoslovakist

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nor the Slovak particularist story captures Štúr’s blend of Hungarian loyalism and linguistic All-Slavism. Štúr’s colleagues and followers shared Štúr’s loyalty to Hungary. Both Slovenskje národňje novini and Orol Tatránsky bristled with professions of devotion to the kingdom. Since Štúr, Hurban and Hodža were all discussed at length in the previous chapters on Hungaro-Slavism, consider how Johana Vyšná-Lehocká, the wife of a Protestant pastor, highlighted the Hungarian context while justifying Štúrovčina to a Czech correspondent: “One reason for our action is that the other Slavic nations don’t yet recognize us as independent with our own political rights in Hungary.” Vyšná-Lehocká also remained part of the All-Slavic tradition, denying that Štúr’s reforms would create divisions among the Slavs: “this act, instead of splitting us off, actually integrates Slavic relations, since our language is most easily understood by all the Slavs.”49 In the 1840s, then, Štúr rejected Czechoslovakism from Hungaro-Slavic tribalism and promoted a script consciously distinguished from Czech. Ironically, Štúr’s anti-Czech linguistic work drew on his Czechoslovak education. Ľubomír Ďurovič found that Štúr accepted “almost completely” Dobrovský’s conventions for word formation and syntax,50 and Katarína Sedláková concluded that Štúr’s grammar borrowed its linguistic terminology from Václav Hanka’s Czech grammar, specifically the 1831 edition,51 in which, incidentally, Hanka was still using {g j w}.52 Štúr also promoted several Czech lexical items: according to Slavist George Thomas, “the neologisms created by Josef Jungmann (1733-1847) for Czech passed en masse into Slovak during the era of Štúr.”53 Indeed, Thomas analyzed Štúr’s newspaper and found “140 Bohemianisms not found in Jungmann,” concluding that “Štúr just wanted to adopt Czech words to Slovak pronunciation.”54 Since pronunciation is difficult to ascertain from the printed page, however, I suggest that Štúr also wanted these “Czech” words to have a Slovak appearance, hence Štúrovčina’s distinctive spelling. Above all, Štúr desired visible symbols of Slovak linguistic distinctiveness, which he believed would best calm Magyar fears. Štúr also took practical steps to promote his script: he used it in his influential newspaper, the above-mentioned Slovenskje národňje novini. In this publishing venture, Štúr continued to follow the advice of his mentor Kollár, who described the importance of newspapers as eloquently as Benedict Anderson: A good, well-read newspaper, even if next year it is nothing more than garbage or a wrapping for cheese, is more useful to the world, and has more long-lasting consequences, than thick, infrequently-read books — even more than entire libraries.55

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Štúr proved an effective journalist, and his paper became an important forum for Slovaks to air political grievances.56 Nevertheless, the Slovenskje národňje novini showed considerable orthographic diversity: Štúr advocated his script, but his top priority was not script purism but Catholic-Lutheran solidarity in the struggle against Magyarization. Slovenskje národňje novini thus published several contributions in Bernolákovčina. Štúr’s desire for rapprochement between Catholics and Lutherans raises an important question: given that Slovak Catholics had been writing in Bernolákovčina for three generations, why did Štúr bother to invent a new script from scratch? Why not just adopt Bernolákovčina? Lutheran pride precluded this option: the Lutheran clergy saw Bernolákovčina, as Peter Brock memorably put it, “as a peasant jargon unbecoming persons with any pretensions to refinement.”57 As suggested above, the Catholic confessional literature written in Bernolákovčina contained little to interest the Lutheran intelligentsia. Yes, Hollý’s poetry had earned pan-confessional respect, but Hollý was willing to listen to new ideas about Slovak orthography. Štúr believed, probably correctly, that Protestants would never accept Bernolákovčina. But how then could he, a Lutheran, convince Catholics to abandon the Bernolákovčina? Štúr solved this problem with arguments grounded in the technical details of script codification. Because Bernolák had written his grammar and dictionary while attending seminary in Bratislava, Štúr dismissed them as representing the “western Slovak dialect,” purportedly inaccessible to Slovaks in the east of the country. Štúr then presented his own script as the “central Slovak dialect,” whose alleged centrality made it more widely accessible, particularly in eastern Slovakia. Štúr was, in fact, the first observer to divide Slovak into western, central, and eastern subdivisions.58 As a linguistic analysis, this diagnosis of Bernolákovčina’s failure is unconvincing: the Levoča students who organized Gitřenka wrote in the Czechoslovak Bibličtina tradition and sought contacts in Prague, despite living in the east of Slovakia. If the Czech spoken in Prague proved accessible in Eastern Slovakia, Bernolák’s “Western Slovak” could hardly have been unacceptable merely because of linguistic distance. But what Štúr’s argument lacked in accuracy, it made up in persuasiveness. Štúr’s claim to geographic centrality enabled him to marginalize Bernolák’s script without arousing Catholic confessional pride. It similarly delegitimated the weak script traditions of East of Slovakia without provoking a possible Calvinist reaction. If Štúr’s tripartite division of Slovak has since come to enjoy universal acceptance,59 this reflects Štúr’s greatest achievement: his tireless efforts to seek Catholic input and support ultimately de-confessionalized Slovakia’s orthographic questions, enabling a pan-confessional Slovak literature.60

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Štúr won some support among Catholic clergy, but also attracted significant resistance from the Lutheran intelligentsia, many of whose members remained loyal to the Bibličtina tradition. Šafařík, for example, wrote to Vladimir Francev that “Kollár and the Protestant clergy are very unhappy,” and feared that “Štúr himself would do great damage.”61 Štúr’s opponents had diverse motives. Several Czechoslovakists rejected Štúr’s Slovak tribalism, but others rejected Štúrovčina on non-national grounds, such as loyalty to the Lutheran religious tradition. Still others, surprisingly, accepted Štúr’s national concept, complete with the Czech-Slovak dichotomy, but denied that Štúrovčina had “Slovak” credentials: they saw Bibličtina as the truly “Slovak” script. The linguistic debate was inextricably linked to national debate about the Slovak-Czech relationship, but one cannot predict national loyalties from orthographic preferences. Opposition to Štúrovčina, therefore, must be examined carefully. The most important critique of Štúr’s script was Ján Kollár’s 1846 Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky, which contained 33 entries from several different authors.62 Kollár wrote at least two entries himself, including a long essay and a forty-page open letter to Štúr. He probably also wrote the anonymous “Conversation between a Czech and a Slovak about Slovak Literature” and the “Lament of an Unschooled Slovak about Slovakia Today [Plač neučeného Slowáka nad nynějším Slowenskem].”63 Most of the twenty64 other authors contributed in the form of a letter: Kollár apparently compiled his “voices” by soliciting contributions from his extensive network of correspondents. Pynsent questions whether these other texts were genuine, suspecting that Kollár either wrote them himself, or “told the writer what to write.”65 Pynsent provides no evidence for this accusation, however, and since these other contributors defended Bibličtina with arguments that differed substantially from Kollár’s, I see no reason to doubt their authenticity. Kollár attacked Štúrovčina on all possible grounds, including the aesthetic: he described it as stinking “of the stable and the tavern,”66 suitable only for “tinkers, hill-farmers, gelders, pig-dealers, coachmen, shepherds.”67 He also disagreed with Štúr about the relative importance of Slavic and Hungarian loyalties. Kollár’s Czechoslovak tribalism, like Štúr’s Slovak tribalism, was compatible with Hungarian loyalty, yet Kollár gave cultural nationality precedence over mere political citizenship: for Kollár, Czechs were brothers, but Magyars mere neighbors. We will … always remain both good countrymen of our dear Hungarian homeland [naši milé vlasti ukerské], but also faithful brothers of our dear Czech brothers. Which sensible and gallant person renounces himself, at the will of his neighbors, from his own mother, blood and family?68

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Kollár had always restricted his interest to the linguistic half of HungaroSlavic dual nationality: he was, after all, a poet, not a politician. Štúr, by contrast, was engaged in political life, eventually becoming a member of the Hungarian parliament. This difference in personal temperament may explain their differing ideological emphasis. Kollár’s main disagreement with Štúr, however, concerned the linguistic half of dual nationality. Kollár, who wanted to bring the entire Slavic world closer together, thought that Slovaks and Czechs should merge: “Oh, if all Slovaks really would wisely Bohemianize, and all Czechs wisely Slovakize, and show with this deed that they understand and feel their divine gifts of nationality and blood ties, and also of purpose!” His “Lament” makes the same point in verse: Proto chceme byti, aspon my sprostáci Slowáci Čechowé, Čechowé Slowáci Pošli muže, w jehož rukách wěk rozkoše Sworny žíti budau s Tatrau Krkonoše. For even we simple people wish Slovaks to be Czechs, and Czechs Slovaks, For an age of delight must come When we live in harmony, Ore Mountains with the Tatras.69 Pynsent admirably summarized Kollár’s motives: If Czechoslovakism could work there was no reason why the vaster Slav Reciprocity could not work. If linguistic Czechoslovakism failed, there was not much hope for Reciprocity. Hence the ire with which Kollár conducted his campaign in Hlasowé against the linguistic separatism of Štúr and his fellows.70 Indeed, the polemic became so bitter that the common ground between Štúr and Kollár deserves repetition: both believed in a Slavic language with different literary dialects, they only disagreed about which dialects deserved their own literature. Ján Pavel Tomášek, a teacher at the Levoča gymnasium, followed Kollár in defending a “written Czechoslovak dialect.” He argued that adopting Štúr’s new script would cut Slovaks off from a rich literary tradition:

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Mother tongue [mateřská řeč] does not need to be understood as the language common people use in everyday transactions. Because if I now hope that Hungarian Slovaks will be refined and noble in the Slovak language, I would not expect common Slovak to be correct, but rather the written Czechoslovak dialect [písemné nářečí československé.] This dialect may be used mainly as an excellent treasure of scholarly and belletristic writings, which Slovaks too may use and employ for their happiness if they hold to this dialect.71 Where Štúr had emphasized the differences between spoken Slovak and Bibličtina, Tomášek advocated diglossia, with the Bibličtina tradition (“Czechoslovak”) serving as the “high” form.72 This reflected Tomášek’s Czechoslovakism: he feared that Slovaks would become “further estranged from neighbor Czechs and Moravians”73 if they used a separate script. If this Czechoslovakism meant that Slovaks had to describe their literature as “Czech,” then Tomášek found the price worth paying: “we however remain by the Czech language, and if we write anything, we will use it.”74 Not all of Štúrovčina’s opponents, however, were interested in Czechoslovakism. Ján Seberini, for example, opposed Štúrovčina in the name of “our Slovak people”: Because the sanctity and importance of religion and the well being of our Slovak people lies on my heart and conscience, and because I believe that this most generally incoherent language would damage that people: these are the reasons why I must raise my voice against this language.75 Seberini also proved a powerful opponent of Štúrovčina: in 1846, the clergy of his district announced a boycott on Štúrovčina texts.76 He praised the Štúrovci as “young, undeniably educated, passionate and serious Slovaks,” presumably because he respected their struggle against Magyarization, but mocked Štúrovčina as having “no grammar,” even while conceding that it better represented everyday speech than Bibličtina. Religious tradition, however, trumped any linguistic advantages: Seberini saw Bibličtina as “our Church language, which is in truth holy, in which things of the greatest significance for Protestant Christians have been consecrated.”77 Seberini’s opposition to Štúrovčina essentially derived from non-national motives, but insofar as a national concept can be discerned from Seberini’s text, his reference to “our Slovak people” suggests that he felt Slovak particularism more acutely than any Czechoslovak tie.

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Samuel Ferjenčík, another Hlasowé contributor, also rejected Štúrovčina from conscious Slovak particularism. He followed Štúr in describing “our Slovaks” as “a tribe and people with a healthy core,” but rejected Štúrovčina on aesthetic grounds: No Slovak identifies with the Štúr movement, because this language is improper and without rules, crippled and limping, and for this reason something secretly repulsive and unpleasant to have in the room, something which of course cannot be expressed in words, but which every truly genuine or educated Slovak feels very animatedly. Ferjenčík saw Bibličtina as the proper Slovak script, rejecting Štúrovčina as “over-Germanized Czech [!]” which was “incomprehensible to the simple Slovak.”78 Ferjenčík, incidentally, dramatically illustrates the analytical benefits of distinguishing Štúrovčina from “the Slovak language,” and Bibličtina from “Czech”: unless one distinguishes scripts from their national associations, Ferjenčík nonsensically appears to favor “Czech” over “Slovak” because of Slovak patriotism. Jiří Sekčik, a pastor in Košice who described himself as a “native Šaryšan,” rejected Štúrovčina while accepting Slovak linguistic distinctiveness: Certainly we are not Bohemians [Čechowé], but neither are we Slovaks of one and the same speech. We need a center, if we are to come together and give each other a brotherly hand. However, this center of Hungarian Slavdom is and can only be the Biblical language or Czechoslovak.79 Sekčik and Štúr agreed that Slovaks should avoid Bohemianization, and that Slovaks should select the script which could best unite all Slovaks. Sekčik, however, denied that Štúrovčina was accessible to Eastern Slovaks: the Czechoslovak Biblical language is easier and more precious for Šaryšans and their neighboring Slovaks, whether from the perspective of reading and pronunciation, or from the perspective of understanding and communicating, than Štúr’s dau, mau, dou, sťa …80 Sekčik thus contradicts and challenges the ubiquitous belief that Štúr succeeded where Bernolákovčina failed because “Central Slovak” was more acceptable than “Western Slovak” in the East of Slovakia. Indeed, the geographic distribution of Hlasowé contributors, figure 7.1, suggests that

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Slovaks from Eastern Slovakia were more likely to stick with the Bibličtina tradition than Slovaks near the Moravian border.81 Figure 7.1: Living Hlasowé Contributors (1846)

Since the western half of modern Slovakia is not only the most densely populated, but best served by transport links, it seems noticeably underrepresented among Hlasowé supporters. Štúr’s residence in Bratislava provides an explanation: the impact of Štúr’s charisma and journalism decreased with distance.82 Meanwhile, Kollár’s location in Pest not only enabled him to make contacts in the south of Hungary, but also helped him inculcate loyalty to the Bibličtina tradition among Slovaks living there. A frontal attack on Štúrovčina from the most respected Slovak poet of the age, Hlasowé could not be ignored, and Josef Hurban responded with his 1846 Českje hlasi proti Slovenčiňe [Czech Voices against the Slovak Language]. This vituperative book attempted to delegitimate Kollár’s volume as the work of non-Slovaks, a charge easily refuted by figure 7.1. Hurban contemptuously dismissed “this theory of a Czechoslavic nation [českoslovanskom naroďe]”83 as a fiction, and made several personal attacks against Kollár. Nevertheless, Hurban also accepted Kollár’s vision of a Slavic nation with different tribes. Indeed, Českje hlasi contains perhaps the single most eloquent statement

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of Hungaro-Slavic tribalism from any Slovak author during the entire nineteenth century: “We are a tribe in Slavdom, but we are also a tribe of the Hungarian state.”84 Hurban’s anti-Czech feeling, however, proved transient. Hurban’s Šturovčina phase only lasted a few years. In 1860, he wrote a political pamphlet using both Blackletter { j g w } and the stereotypical Czech letter {ř};85 a year later Hurban claimed this pamphlet had been written in “Slavic — in the Biblical Czech dialect.”86 By the 1870s, according to Samuel Osuský, 87 Hurban had returned to a Czechoslovak national conception: “The nation is one from the Tatras to the Elbe. The philological quarrels are melting away.”88 Modern Slovak scholarship judges Kollár’s defence of Bibličtina harshly. Criticism takes two rather contradictory approaches. Jozef Butvin saw Štúr’s goal as Slovak national “unity,” and denounced Kollár’s Czechoslovak conception as “separatist.”89 Eugen Pauliny, by contrast, attacked Kollár for wanting literary unity between Czechs and Slovaks: “Kollár did not understand that such an artificial unification of literary languages is not possible.”90 Kollár’s defence of the Bibličtina tradition, attacked as both “artificial unification” and “separatism,” is in fact condemned for standing on the wrong side of history. Kollár’s Czechoslovak ideas have indeed been utterly discredited, but modern Slovaks also reject the idea of an All-Slavic language, which puts them equally at odds with Štúr and Hurban. Bibličtina continued to enjoy support during the 1840s. In 1847, a year after Hurban’s Českje hlasi, Stěpán Launer, a teacher at the Protestant girls’ school in Banská Štiavnica who had subscribed to Gitřenka as a student,91 published another defence of the Bibličtina tradition: Povaha Slovanstva se zvláštním ohledem na spisovní řeč Čechů, Moravanů, Slezáků a Slováků [The Nature of Slavdom, especially from the perspective of the Literary Language of the Czechs, Moravians, Silesians and Slovaks]. Kollár had suggested Launer as a suitable representative for the Prague Pan-Slav Congress, but Launer declined, concentrating instead on editing the Uhersko-slovenské noviny [Hungarian-Slavic Newspaper].92 Launer’s contribution to the BibličtinaŠtúrovčina debate was dominated by religious ideas. Bernolák was a priest and Kollár a pastor, but neither possessed Launer’s mysticism, nor his zeal for religious conversion. Launer referred to the Bibličtina tradition as the “Biblical Czecho-Slovak řeč,” and while he always listed “Czechs, Moravians, Silesians, and Slovaks” as distinct peoples, he thought they would act as one when fulfilling their historic destiny as Lutheran missionaries: “Czechs, Moravians, Silesians and Slovaks have been designated by history to cultivate German-Protestant principles and present them to Slavdom.”93 Launer assigned the various scripts used in

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Slavic north Hungary a unique spirit [duch]: “Bernolákovčina is the organ of the Catholic spirit, and Czech is the organ the Protestant spirit in Slovakia.” Perhaps because Lutheranism is a minority faith for both Czechs and Slovaks, Launer believed that the spread of Lutheranism required “one single organ, in which its spirit is expressed, and this organ of Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks and Silesians, bearing one spirit in a single body, is — The Czechoslovak Language.”94 Launer was an All-Slav insofar as he confined his Lutheran missionary zeal to the Slavic world, and he saw both his language and his tribe in strongly Czechoslovak terms. Nevertheless, his motives were primarily evangelical. Štúr’s desire for a pan-confessional Slovak script, perfectly understandable in national terms, proved incomprehensible to Launer: “Štúrovčina is the organ of no spirit, or only that belonging to the void of Tatran paganism.”95 Launer failed to engage with Štúr’s nationalist and thus essentially secular arguments, which probably explains his subsequent obscurity.96 Launer did not discuss any technical linguistic matters, but it is worth noting that his orthographic practices resembled contemporary Czech, not classic Bibličtina: he used Latin type, the modern letters {v í j} and the Czech letters {ě ř ů}. Orthographically, Launer’s “Czechoslovak” would be hard to distinguish from Czech. Slovak orthographic disputes were briefly interrupted by the Revolution of 1848, which intensified nationalist feeling throughout the Habsburg monarchy. Štúrovčina continued to enjoy support: Hurban published a scholarly journal, Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umeňja a literatúru [Slovak Perspectives on Science, Art and Literature], and one Mikuláš Dohnány wrote a history of the Slovak Uprising against the Kossuth government. Dohnány dated “the thought about the need for Slovak” to 1843, and described Štúrovčina as “our new — and most ancient — Slovak,” necessary because anybody who wrote “in Czech would have to be Bohemian, precluding good Hungarian citizenship.”97 He also described the Slovak intelligentsia as divided into “an old and a new school; the first confessing in Bibličtina, the second in Slovak. But divided they were weak.”98 Dohnány explained that he wrote his history for Slovaks “in their own Slovak,” which in practice meant Štúrovčina, complete with {uo} and {ňe-}. However, he also used the letter {ä}, which Michal Hodža had suggested in 1848.99 He characterized Bibličtina’s adherents as “Don Quixotic knights who call their language ‘lingua sacra’.”100 Defenders of Bibličtina, however quixotic, remained numerous and influential after the Revolution. In 1850 “Ondřej” Radlinský published a Bibličtina grammar, Prawopis slowenský s krátkou mluwnicí [Slovak Spelling with a Brief Grammar]. Radlinský’s orthography would be difficult to distinguish from that of his contemporaries in Prague: he used modern {í j} and the “Czech” letters {ě ř ů}. Radlinský’s position on the question of {v} and

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{w} is difficult to ascertain: the text of the introduction, like the title of his book, used old-fashioned {w}, but the sample alphabet suggested {v}, without offering any explanation for this inconsistency.101 This particular defence of Bibličtina was striking because Radlinský was not a Lutheran, but a Catholic priest who had received a Bernolákovčina education, studied theology in Vienna, and published the Bernolákovčina journal, Cyril a Method, as recently as November 1849.102 He explained his conversion to the Bibličtina with reference to the same political forces that had led Štúr to abandon it: The unhappy schism in our literature, lasting from the year 1787 up to 1849, was an abundant spring, from which the enemies of nationality [národnosti] have pumped shame and slander against us Slovaks … above all, we needed strength and splendor against the infectious elements of Magyar dictatorship.103 Radlinský and Štúr both sought to unify Slovaks behind a common script in order to resist Magyarization. Both promoted a Slovak-particularist linguistic concept. Nevertheless, they did not agree on the same script: Radlinský, like Ferjenčík, rejected Štúrovčina because he judged Bibličtina a likelier vehicle for Slovak literary unity. A final supporter of the Bibličtina tradition, Jonáš Zaborský, had been educated with Štúr as a Lutheran, but had converted to Catholicism, and described himself as Catholic in his contribution to Hlasowé.104 In 1851, Zaborský contributed to the orthographic debate with a collection of poems written in “the old spelling.”105 Some of these poems were apolitical morality tales; others specifically targeted Štúrovčina. The poem “Štúrites” described Štúrovčina literature as a withered branch that had “fallen into the abyss”; “Against Linguistic Neologisms” proclaimed that “we are one blood with the Czechs, one language, only folly wishes to divide us,” and most dramatically, the poem “To the Slovaks” complained that Slovaks were “always creating a new literary language” and rejoiced that “Štúr, Hodža, Hurban, you evil geniuses” lay “spurned among the timbers of a half-constructed building.”106 Taken together, Hlasowé, Launer, Radlinský and Záborský show that Štúrovčina had antagonized a considerable section of the Slovak intelligentsia: Samuel Krištóf of Békés, writing in Hlasowé, had been right to argue that “Štúr and the Štúrites are not all of Slovakia.”107 Some Slovak scholars have been curiously unwilling to acknowledge that Štúr’s reforms failed to win instant and universal acceptance. Anneliese Gladrow claimed that Štúr’s Nauka codified “a language that imposed itself as a literary language and in its foundations

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remains valid until today.”108 In fact, Štúrovčina failed to impose itself on Štúr’s immediate family: in 1847, a year after Štúr’s grammar, Ľudovít Štúr’s older brother Karel published a religious work using both the “Czech” letters {ě ř ů} and the “modern” letters {j í v}.109 Joseph Mikus claimed that “through Štúr’s work … Slovak adopted its definitive form in which it continues today.110 Actually, Štúrovčina was abandoned in 1851. As a linguistic system, Štúrovčina’s flowering was brief, and its impact on contemporaries modest.111 Bernolákovčina literature spanned fifty years, a period long enough for specialists to periodize three distinct generations, but the “generation” using Štúr’s codification did not even last a decade. Štúr disavowed his own script shortly after the terrors and disappointments of the 1848 Revolution. Štúr, recall, had participated in the Prague PanSlav Congress; Geoffrey Drage described him as “the heart and soul of the conference.”112 Štúr had found the experience disillusioning. The united Slavs of the Habsburg lands proved incapable of defending their own interests, and indeed, several Polish and Czech representatives had linked language rights to state right, repeating the arguments that had justified Magyarization. This confirmed Štúr in his skeptical attitude toward the Slovak-Czech relationship: Czechs were too concerned with their own affairs to help Slovaks in the struggle against Magyarization. Štúr’s own approach, however, had proved equally fruitless. By codifying a new script, Štúr had, in John Morrison’s words, “hoped to persuade the Hungarian authorities that the Slovaks were a distinct nation deserving separate rights, but he only succeeded in inciting increased Magyar aggression.”113 The Zay investigation had cost him his job, but Kossuth’s revolutionary government had sentenced Štúr to death in absentia for treason. After the Revolution, Štúr abandoned all hope of reconciling the Magyars, and concentrated singlemindedly on creating pan-confessional literary unity in Slovakia. Štúr therefore acknowledged that his script had failed to unite the Slovak intelligentsia. While Bibličtina’s supporters were irreconcilably opposed to Štúr’s reforms, however, the Catholic intelligentsia had shown sympathy and interest. In October 1851, therefore, Štúr, Hurban and Hodža invited several Catholic literati to Bratislava hoping to reach some sort of agreement. Catholic participants included Ján Palárik, a Catholic priest and proponent of Bernolákovčina, and Ondrej Radlinský, the Bibličtina convert from Bernolákovčina discussed above. Lutherans were represented only by Štúr’s circle: Lutheran supporters of Bibličtina, such as Kollár, Záborský or Launer, were not represented. Martin Hattala, a hitherto relatively obscure Catholic linguist, dominated the Bratislava conference. Hattala was Catholic, had been educated in

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Bernolákovčina, and taught at the state gymnasium in Bratislava. He had already contributed to Slovak linguistic debates with his 1850 Grammatica linguae slovenicae, collatae com proxime cognata bohemica [Grammar of the Slovak Language and comparison with Bohemian]. Hattala accepted Štúr’s concept of a “Central Slovak” codification, but rejected Štúr’s highly phonetic spelling, suggesting a more etymological approach that made several concessions to Bernolákovčina. When Štúr accepted these suggestions, the Catholic representatives agreed to abandon Bernolákovčina. Hattala and Hodža then collaboratively wrote a popular spelling book, the 1852 Krátka mluvnice slovenská [A Short Slovak Grammar], published anonymously.114 This work enjoyed multi-confessional support: the title page bore the endorsement of three Lutherans and three Catholic Priests.115 Hattalovčina, like Tomsa’s reformed Czech, uses the Latin script, and replaces the Bibličtina {g j w} with {j í v}. Hattalovčina, however, differs visually from both reformed Czech and the various scripts of the Bibličtina tradition by rejecting Bibličtina {ě ř ů}, and introducing four letters not used in anywhere else in the Slavic world: {ä ô ĺ ŕ}. Of these four, the letters {ä ô} most deserve our attention since {ĺ ŕ} occur only infrequently. Hattalovčina, as František Bokes observed, “put an end to the struggle over Štúr’s literary Slovak”116: supporters of Štúrovčina switched to Hattalovčina. Hattalovčina also put an end to Bernolákovčina as a creative literary tradition, though we will see in the next chapter that publishing in Bernolákovčina continued until the 1860s. The Hattalovčina intelligentsia eventually inherited both the Štúrovčina and Bernolákovčina traditions, and successfully claimed several works from the Slovak Bibličtina tradition as well. Ján Palárik’s 1858 poem “Spev slovenský [Slovak Song],” for example, praised Kollár’s Sláwy dcera (transliterated to Slávy dcéra), hailed Bernolákovčina poet Hollý as the “Slovak Homer,” and claimed Štúrovčina poet Andrej Sladkovič as the “Slovak Mickiewicz.”117 Hattalovčina today enjoys general acceptance as the standard Slovak script, though scholars often give Štúr the credit.118 Hattala is probably overlooked because of his disinterest in politics: he never wrote a political pamphlet, for example, though he did publish a comparative study of the ablative declension in Slovak and Lithuanian.119 His linguistic concepts, furthermore, were not linked to any strong sense of Slovak particularist nationalism: he even proved willing to tolerate ambiguity about the distinct status of Slovak vis-à-vis Czech. In his 1857 Srovávací mluvnice jazyka českého a slovenského [Comparative Grammar of Czech and Slovak], a guide to the differences between the Slovak and Czech orthographies, Hattala described Czech and Slovak as distinct groups when contrasting differences: “Before i, Czechs and

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Slovaks write ď, ť, and ň as d, t, and n, but only the old Czechs distinguish the soft ľ.” Hattala nevertheless described common characteristics as features of a single language: “Czechoslovak [českoslovenčina] tolerates double vowels in the middle of words only in compound words.”120 He was also willing to discuss “Czechoslavs,” for example, “the majority of Czechoslavs for a long time have not distinguished y and i.”121 Given that Hattala was the definitive codifier of the “Slovak literary language,” his willingness to think in “Czechoslovak” terms is ironic and surprising. The codification of the definitive Slovak script was not accompanied by the strong assertion of Slovak language-hood that one might have expected. Indeed, most of Slovakia’s great script codifiers were remarkable for their lack of Slovak nationalism. Neither Bernolák, nor Herkel, nor Štúr, nor Hattala consistently proclaimed a Slovak particularist “language.” Nor did any of these figures consistently proclaim a Slovak “nation,” much less articulate demands for Slovak statehood. Of course, the script communities using Bernolákovčina, Štúrovčina and Hattalovčina functioned as Slovak literary communities in practice, since none of these scripts enjoyed any currency beyond the Hungarian frontier. Nevertheless, none of these scripts claimed to represent a “Slovak language” distinct from other Slavic languages: at most, their inventors proclaimed a distinctive Slovak “dialect” or “tribe.” In the final months of his life, Štúr even rejected Slovak tribalism and became a messianic Russophile. In his manuscript Die Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft [Slavdom and the World of the Future],122 he finally abandoned the idea that the Slavic language could have literary dialects: “a multiplicity of literatures only hinders understanding, development of the spirit and common action.”123 An All-Slav to the end, Štúr proposed that all Slavs adopt Russian Cyrillic. Štúr’s Russophilism also had a political dimension: Štúr wanted all Slavs, starting with the Serbs, to join the Romanov Empire, since the Russians were “the only Slavs who have preserved their independence and … saved the honor of the Slavic name.”124 Štúr explicitly rejected a federal Slavic state, which “could only be realized in the form of republics,” and dismissed the federalization of the Habsburg Empire as “insane” and “idiotic.”125 He also found time to condemn universal suffrage, women’s rights, Communism, and Catholicism, which was “far, very far behind the standards of Christianity.” Most surprisingly, he attacked his own Lutheranism as having lost “its sharpness and life.” The Slavs, Štúr wrote, should convert to Russian Orthodoxy, since it “has never contaminated itself with crime.”126 Die Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft is the only over-studied text in Slovak history. Anglophone scholars use it as evidence that Russian

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expansionism enjoyed support among Western Slavs: as Frank Fadner put it, Štúr’s final work shows “the transition from romantic Slavophilism and cultural reciprocity to Russophile political pan-Slavism.”127 Fadner, however, did not ask whether Russophile pan-Slavism was important to Slovak politics, he was satisfied to demonstrate its mere existence. Štúr had enjoyed considerable support for opposing Magyarization, promoting Lutheran-Catholic cooperation, and advocating a uniquely Slovak orthography. But now he asked Slovaks from the Bernolákovčina, Bibličtina and Hattalovčina traditions not merely to modify their spelling, but to abandon the Latin alphabet for Cyrillic. He also wanted to convert both Catholics and Protestants to Russian Orthodoxy. How could such ideas possibly attract popular support? Štúr’s manuscript had little impact in Slovakia. It remained unpublished until 1867, when scholars at Moscow University printed a Russian translation that attracted some attention in Slavophile circles.128 In 1931, the Czechoslovak government published a scholarly edition of Štúr’s original German text. A Slovak translation did not appear until 1993. Given Štúr’s status as a Slovak hero, one can hardly imagine more eloquent proof that his final work had little impact on the development of Slovak thought. Die Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft is best seen as a howl of despair: it shows the depth of Štúr’s disillusionment during the 1848 Revolution. Instead of Magyar-Slav reconciliation and Hungarian freedom, Štúr faced Austrian absolutism and seemingly irreconcilable national conflict inside the Hungarian kingdom. He also found himself in difficult personal circumstances. In 1849, Štúr was placed under house arrest; when his elder brother Karel died in January 1851, he shouldered the responsibility of raising his nieces and nephews. Peter Black’s conclusion is unavoidable: “Ľudovít Štúr died an extremely bitter man.”129 Štúr had a lot to be bitter about. Judged against Štúr’s goals, his political activities had not only failed, they had been counterproductive. Štúr had introduced his new script hoping to place the Magyar leadership and thus preserve the Slavic culture of northern Hungary, but the Magyars reacted with anger, redoubling their efforts at Magyarization. Štúr cared about Slavic unity and worked to promote harmonious relations between different “tribes,” but his reforms had contributed to fragmentation and conflict within the Slavic world. R.W. Seton-Watson considered it “useless to speculate as to the lines on which Štúr’s thought would have developed if he had lived to a full age.”130 Subsequent generations of Slovak nationalists have invoked Štúr’s legacy so frequently, however, that alternative speculations may be a useful corrective.131

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Had Štúr lived to see the hopeful years of the early 1860s, he would almost certainly have abandoned his messianic Russophilism and returned to a national concept less divorced from the main themes of Slovak thought. If he had lived to witness the Czech political successes in Bohemia during the 1870s, Štúr would probably have returned to the Bibličtina tradition, as did Hurban, Štúr’s friend and colleague.132 Indeed: Štúr published a study of Slavic folklore in Czech, complete with {ě ř ů} and {j í v}, only a year after the Bratislava conference.133 He furthermore published this work with the Czech National Museum, which had also printed Kollár’s Hlasowé. Zlatko Klátik claimed that Štúr originally wrote this volume in “slovenský” but was unable to find a publisher.134 If true, this vindicates an argument made by Bibličtina’s champions: Launer had asked who would “collect Slovak books, and write them,” when the entire market consisted of “twenty Protestant princes.”135 Kollár had similarly warned that the number of “Slovaks in Hungary is small, it is not worth the effort to write and print books for them alone … Slovak authors must broaden their horizons.”136 The heretical narrative given here contradicts most existing historical treatments of Štúr. Štúr was not a Slovak nationalist, and did not even believe in a Slovak nation. He gave his loyalty instead to both the Hungarian political nation and an All-Slavic linguistic nation. Štúr, furthermore, never believed in a Slovak language! He believed in a Slavic language, and while he famously advocated a distinctive “Slovak dialect” of this language, he only did so during the nine-year period between 1843 and 1852. Before 1843, Štúr accepted Kollár’s concept of a Czechoslovak dialect, and after 1852 he rejected “literary dialects” in favor of Russian Cyrillic. Štúr’s codification was also ephemeral: Štúrovčina was used for less than a decade, and while Hattalovčina borrowed from Štúrovčina, the two scripts must be kept distinct. Neither Štúrovčina nor Hattalovčina won support because they were based on “central Slovak”: instead, Štúr’s idea of “central Slovak” succeeded because it justified pan-confessional script reform. Štúr’s much-studied Russophile musings, finally, had little impact on Slovak society, though they are perhaps of interest to scholars of Russian Pan-Slavism. Nevertheless, Štúr and the Štúrovci remain the turning point of nineteenthcentury Slovak history. Milan Strhan’s encyclopedia of Slovak history was right to declare Štúr “the most significant personality of the Slovak national movement in the middle of the nineteenth century,”137 and Gogolák was right to say that Štúr “can with a clean conscience be designated the true founder of the new Slovak nation.”138 Štúr may have intended to promote HungaroSlavism, but he unintentionally laid the intellectual foundations of Slovak particularist nationalism.

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Štúr was not the first grammarian to posit a uniquely Slovak category in the Slavic world. Šafařík had posited a Slovak “tribe” in 1826, distinct from a “Czech tribe” divided into Bohemians and Moravians,139 and posited a Hungaro-Slovak “dialect” in his 1849 Slowanský národopis.140 Štúr was not even the first grammarian to suggest a script for the exclusive use of Slovaks: Bernolák designed his script for use in Slavic northern Hungary, though he presented it not as “Slovak” but as either “Slavic” or “Pannonian Slavic.” Herkel had also suggested a unique “Pannonian” script in the context of All-Slavic script reform. Štúr’s true importance lies in the arguments he used to justify his script. With his tripartite division of Slovak dialects, Štúr bridged the orthographic divisions between Catholics and Lutherans. While Štúrovčina failed, the arguments Štúr used to justify his own script were subsequently marshaled in favor of Hattalovčina, ultimately enabling it to claim both Bibličtina and Bernolákovčina as its predecessors. As Kollárian All-Slavism slowly evaporated in the second half of the nineteenth century, Štúr’s Slovak “tribe” with its unique “dialect” eventually came to be seen as a “nation” with its own “language.” The next chapter continues the story of orthographic arguments in Slovakia. But while the narrative so far has been dominated by texts written by leading Slovak intellectuals, the next chapter will also grapple with the problem of reception. The majority of Slovaks living during the Hungarian Reform Era were illiterate serfs, completely unaware of the debate between Kollár and Štúr. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, so did Slovak literacy. The conditions under which Slovak literacy developed would have important consequences. The next chapter, therefore, takes a more structural approach to linguistic arguments: it attempts to situate the works of leading intellectuals in the context of large-scale trends in Slovak literacy.

8 THE DIALECT ARGUMENT AND SLOVAK LITERACY

The linguistic relationship between Slovak and Czech, which had provoked such bitter words between Štúr and Kollár, remained a controversial issue until the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, and for some time after. During the second half of the nineteenth century, many asserted that Slovak was a distinct linguistic collective: either a freestanding dialect of the Slavic language, or an independent language. Others argued that Slovak and Czech together formed a linguistic collective, with Slovak a subcategory of Czech. Disputes of this sort occur in many parts of the world, but seem usually common among the Slavs: similar disputes have contested the status of Ukrainian and Belarussian in relation to Russian, that of Macedonian in relation to Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian in relation to each other, and about Bosnian in relation to both. For convenience, any dispute of this sort could be called a “dialect argument.” The essential point to grasp is that dialect arguments are not linguistic disputes, but political struggles. Theoretical linguists go out of their way to avoid becoming entangled in dialect arguments, and have invented the term “variety” specifically to dispense with what they see as pointless discussions about whether the word “language” or “dialect” is proper in this or that particular case. Indeed, several linguists have explicitly declared that dialect arguments have nothing to do with the discipline of linguistics. Peter Trudgill, for example, was emphatic: Is Macedonian really a language? Is there a Bosnian language which is distinct from Croatian and Serbian? Because of the discreteness and continuity problem, there is no way we can answer these questions on purely linguistic grounds. Ironically, it seems that it is only linguists who fully understand the extent to which these questions are not linguistic questions.1

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Trudgill represents the consensus among theoretical linguists. Gathering similar quotations from other linguists would not be challenging. Dialect arguments, as political disputes, ultimately concern access to power or resources. In the Habsburg Empire, and in Eastern Europe generally, groups hoping to claim collective rights or political privileges as a distinct “nation” found the task easier if they could point to a unique “national language.” The prestige of linguistics as a scholarly endeavor, as a “science,” made linguistic classification a potent political tool for promoting national goals. Pierre Bourdieu, in a discussion of Occitanian claims in France, described dialect arguments as a particular case of the different struggles over classifications, struggles over the monopoly of power to make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate definition of the social world, to make and unmake groups. I have taken the liberty of substituting “Slovak” for “Occitan” for the rest of Bourdieu’s argument: The fact of calling ‘Slovak’ the language spoken by those who are called ‘Slovaks’ because they speak that language (a language that nobody speaks, properly speaking, because it is merely the sum of a very great number of dialects) and of calling the region … in which this language is spoken ‘Slovakia,’ thus claiming to make it exist as a ‘region’ or as a ‘nation’ (with the historically constituted implications that these notions have at the moment under consideration) is no ineffectual fiction.2 These observations, however, apply with equal force to the adjective “Czechoslovak.” Indeed, unsuccessful claims to the status of “language” litter Slovak history: in addition to the well-known Czechoslovak concept, we have also encountered a Slavic language, a Pannonian language, and a “North Hungarian Slavic” language. To understand why the idea of a Slovak language eventually became the effectual fiction requires an explanation why other concepts ultimately proved unpersuasive. Participants in a dialect argument typically claim their position reflects the objective reading of scientific facts. The favored linguistic concept is “natural,” like the law of gravity, and rejected concepts are “artificial.” Consider how Eugen Pauliny criticized the Czechoslovak linguistic project: “such an artificial unification of literary languages is not possible.”3 Tomaš Masaryk dismissed the Slovak language on exactly the same grounds: “nowadays, it is self-evident that

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no literary language can be artificially constructed.”4 In response, one might cite Eric Hobsbawm’s dictum that “national languages are … almost always semi-artificial constructs and occasionally, like modern Hebrew, virtually invented.”5 Charles Wojatsek may have been right to describe the Czechoslovak linguistic idea as “imagined and fabricated linguistic unity,”6 but the linguistic unity between Košice, Ružomberok and Trnava, or between Prague, Brno and Orava, is no less imagined.7 In so far as “national languages” are always written, Walter Ong has the last word: “By contrast with natural, oral speech, writing is completely artificial. There is no way to write ‘naturally’.”8 Several observers disagree, pointing to linguistic differences that allegedly distinguish “the Slovak language” from “the Czech language.” Štúr, for example, noted the Slovak lack of /ř/, differing locative masculine plural endings (Czech slovích vs. Slovak slovách) and several grammatical items, such as Slovak dever and dívat sa for Czech švakr and koukat (“brother in law” and “to look at”).9 Such lists can, of course, be contested: Dagmar Smrčinová’s Slovak-English dictionary translates “brother-in-law” as švagor, while Josef Fronek’s Czech-English dictionary includes dívat se.10 Even an uncontested list, however, resolves nothing, because linguistic discontinuities may also be perceived as “dialectical.” Karel Kálal acknowledged that Slovak differed from Czech in having long syllabic /l/, “ä like in German,” and the pronunciation de, te, instead of dě, tě. Kálal, however, thought such differences merely “dialectical”: “the Slovak says prijď and not přijď; the Slovaks do not have ř, this is the main difference between the Czech and Slovak dialects.”11 It would be a simple matter to compile a long list of linguistic features common to the entire Czechoslovak dialect continuum, or indeed of the Slavic world as a whole. Both Slovak and Czech, furthermore, contain internal diversity, and a linguistic definition of, say, the “East Slovak dialect” would also contain a list of linguistic discontinuities. In short, linguistic facts are only tangentially relevant to the resolution of dialect arguments: concepts of language-hood spring from social and political loyalties, not linguistic minutiae. People frequently imagine a “language” that encompasses great internal diversity: recall how many Slovak literati posited a “Slavic” language spoken by Poles, Russians, Serbs and Bulgarians. While linguists have never devised quantitative methods for measuring linguistic difference, it seems clear that a hypothetical Czechoslovak language would contain less internal diversity than Arabic or Chinese. The sociolinguist literature on diglossia has shown that mutually unintelligible varieties can coexist in stable symbiosis if members of the speech community come to distinguish “low” demotic speech from prestigious “high” standardized language. Kollár’s 1849 defence of Czechoslovakism even foreshadowed

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twentieth-century sociolinguistic jargon: he contrasted “plebeian-Slovak” with “high Bohemian.”12 A Czechoslovak language might have required diglossia, but this poses no theoretical obstacle to the Czechoslovak linguistic project. All texts claiming to “prove” that Slovak is an independent language, or alternatively proving that Slovak is merely a “dialect,” are thus political polemics. Their specious claims to scientific objectivity must be dismissed out of hand, and indeed require vigorous denunciation: such claims have distracted attention from important historical processes by frightening thoughtful scholars away from the problem. R.W. Seton-Watson, for example, wrote in 1943 that little or no purpose is served by learned arguments to prove that Czech and Slovak are two separate languages, or that one is a dialect of the other. The mere fact that it is possible to take sides in such an argument is the best proof of their essential kinship.13 Seton-Watson was of course correct about both the close relation between Czech and Slovak and also about the pointlessness of engaging in the “language vs. dialect” argument on its own shrill terms. Yet the very ubiquity of dialect arguments suggests that they express important political interests, and repay a close examination. This examination requires a clear definition of the problem and a neutral analytical vocabulary. The following discussion draws from both sociolinguistics and the “modernist” school of nationalism. While this book focuses on the Czechoslovak/Slovak dispute, the terminology proposed here is applicable to other dialect arguments, and much of it was developed to discuss other case studies. At present, Slovak generally enjoys the status of a distinct “language”; the concept of a Czechoslovak language has decisively failed to maintain its following. German sociolinguist Heinz Kloss has devised a marvelous technical term to describe this situation: Slovak is an Ausbausprache.14 Kloss’ eloquence unfortunately resists translation into English, but sociolinguist Peter Trudgill has done his best: The fact is that most European languages are ‘languages by extension’ (in German Ausbau languages). They consist of standard varieties which have been superimposed over continua of dialects which, for social and historical reasons, have become heteronomous to them. There are also, however, languages of which this is not true. We can call Basque

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a ‘language by distance’ (in German Abstand language) because it is linguistically so different from all other languages that its status as an independent language cannot be disputed.15 While Slovak is an Ausbausprache with respect to Czech, it is an Abstandsprache from the perspective of Hungarian: the Czechoslovak linguistic dispute thus differed qualitatively from the Slovak-Hungarian Language War. Kloss juxtaposed Ausbausprachen with Abstandsprachen, “languages by distance” whose status cannot be disputed. The question of contingency, however, directs attention to the contrast between Ausbau and the possibility of assimilation, which Benedict Anderson has eloquently described: Certain dialects inevitably were ‘closer’ to each print language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantaged cousins, still assimilable to the emerging print language, lost caste, above all because they were unsuccessful (or only relatively successful) in insisting on their own print form. ‘Northwestern German’ became Platt Deutsch, a largely spoken, thus sub-standard German, because it was assimilable to print-German in a way that Bohemian spoken Czech was not.16 Sociolinguists, furthermore, have attempted to describe the linguistic situation before the moment of decision. One survey of the literature includes “controversial languages,” “quasi-independent languages” and Kloss’s “Halbsprache [half language].” Scholars have also attempted to distinguish between “near dialectalization and dialectalization.”17 All these terms, however, problematically contain either “language” or “dialect,” thus foreshadowing one outcome or the other. Perhaps the concepts “language” and “dialect” could be merged into a “langolect”? At stake in a dialect argument is the choice between assimilation or Ausbau. This choice is not an existential struggle, but a morally neutral political decision that should not be invested with unnecessary melodrama. The success of Czechoslovak, for example, would not have meant Slovak cultural genocide: North Western Germany, to use Anderson’s example, continues to exist, and even retains its cultural distinctiveness, despite the success of High German. This perspective suggests several useful research questions. Which historical actors worked for assimilation, and which for Ausbau? What political benefits did they see in their preferred stance? What political tactics did they use? Were these tactics effective? Historians, not linguists, are best equipped to answer these questions. Linguists discussing linguistic standardization tend to become sidetracked by the technical details of the competing standards.

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Dialect arguments are, however, social questions, and social scientists are best trained to provide answers. Indeed, several linguists examining conflicts over language codification refuse to consider non-linguistic issues, apparently as a point of principle. John McWhorter speculated how linguistic classification would proceed “if the world had not been partitioned into countries,” and even asked the reader to imagine the classification of various South-Slavic dialects into languages if they “were spoken in some uncharted region rather than artificially corralled into ‘countries’.”18 Jack Berry admitted that “an alphabet is successful in so far and only in so far as it is scientifically and socially acceptable,” adding that “where systems of writing become identified, (as often happens), with unreasoning and unreasonable political, national or religious passions there is little that the linguist can or should do.”19 This breathtaking dismissal of historical forces qua historical forces prevents any understanding of how dialect arguments are resolved. Berry and McWhorter may be extreme cases, but Trudgill’s approach, cited above, was altogether typical: he lumped “social and historical reasons” into a black box whose internal mechanisms are ignored. Linguists may discuss the “faults” of various grammatical works, or note that “errors” were “corrected,” but such normative judgments distract attention from the motives of historical actors which are usually grounded in social loyalties, not linguistic preferences. The resolution of a dialect argument is political process, related to yet distinct from script reform. Since historical actors mostly associate scripts with linguistic collectives known as “languages,” the resolution of dialect arguments is intimately related to the promotion of scripts.20 The Slovak tradition of “literary dialects,” however, exceptionally disassociated scripts from the “national language,” and this had far-reaching consequences. For now, the essential point is that script disputes, like dialect arguments, are not decided on linguistic grounds, but for “social and historical reasons.” John DeFrancis, who spent his career unsuccessfully advocating the Romanization of Chinese, correctly noted that “the success of an orthographic scheme is a function less of its quality than of the extent to which it is promoted.”21 Slovak literati confirm DeFrancis’ dictum: Ján Seberini, for example, admitted that he had found Bibličtina difficult to learn: “A born Slovak, I didn’t know … proper writing, reading, declining, etc. … I knew how to read, and write: but in which way? There was no difference between hard and soft letters … swatý as swatí and so on.”22 Such difficulties did not, however, dampen Seberini’s enthusiasm for Bibličtina: “how beautiful, how rich, is our church language, our in truth holy language, in which the most sacred significance for the humanity of Protestant

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Christians are professed.”23 Seberini, an Eastern Slovak, was not interested in the potential pedagogical advantages of Štúr’s script: he supported Bibličtina out of religious conviction. The cream of the Slovak intelligentsia transferred its support to different scripts as the political situation evolved. We have already seen that Štúr and Hurban had learned Bibličtina in school, promoted Štúrovčina in the early 1840s, switched to Hattalovčina in the early 1850s, only to publish their last works in Czech. Palárik similarly abandoned Bernolákovčina for Hattalovčina, yet collaborated with Jozef Viktorin on a Bibličtina newspaper. Michal Godra, according to Helena Saktorová, wrote letters “in Bibličtina, in Štúr Slovak (in Hattala’s modification) with Godra’s other languages mixed in.”24 Šafařík’s letters to Kopitar alternated between alphabets.25 The majority of Slovaks, however, neither shared intelligentsia’s fascination with linguistic issues nor possessed the erudition to leap from one script to another. As “Jan Sztehlo” wrote in Hlasowé, our people, mostly Lutheran, have been taught and educated in Biblical Slovak [w řeči biblické slowenčiny] since they were children. The simple people would rather remain with that which they grew up with, and do not like to receive new things.26 The inherent orthographic conservatism of the barely literate, of course, generated a strong constituency for the status quo, and certainly suffices to explain why many Lutheran intellectuals remained loyal to Bibličtina, and many Catholics to Bernolákovčina. By this same logic, of course, subsequent Slovak generations educated in Hattalovčina would remain loyal to Hattalovčina. Once a script enjoys general use, ideological considerations often fade away. A script that others do not know can only occupy a marginal place in society where literacy is widespread.27 The resolution of a dialect argument thus depends on the literacy rate: when literacy becomes mass literacy, the dialect argument will probably be resolved.28 Consider how Austrian socialist Otto Bauer described the role of education in generating linguistic nationalism: No one can be in any doubt whether an educated person is German or Dutch, Slovene or Croatian; national education, the national language, mark off from each other even the most closely related nations. By contrast, the question as to whether the peasants of some village or other should count as low Germans or as Dutch, as Slovenes and Croats, can only be decided in a somewhat arbitrary fashion … Modern capitalism

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begins gradually to distinguish the lower classes in each nation more sharply from each other.29 British academics working in the Marxist tradition have subsequently refined Bauer’s argument. Hobsbawm wrote that “linguistic nationalism was and is essentially about the language of public education and official use. It is about ‘office and school’,” since: the classes which stood or fell by the official use of the written vernacular were the socially modest but educated middle strata, which included those who acquired lower middle-class status precisely by virtue of occupying non-manual jobs that required schooling … the battlelines of linguistic nationalism were manned by provincial journalists, schoolteachers and aspiring subaltern officials.30 If secondary education is an investment, then linguistic demands reflect the desire for a return on that investment. Hobsbawm did not wish to reduce linguistic nationalism to a “question of jobs,” but suggested that linguistic groups should be seen “as, among other things, a vested interest.”31 Romantic musing about the national spirit, in this reading, is merely humbug masking economic interests. The key figures in Slovak history were more influenced by Herder than Marx, yet the key demands of Slovak of nationalism fit this materialist interpretation. Slovak politicians sought the right to use their language, however imagined, in schools, courts and government administration. Such demands, for example, feature prominently in Michal Hodža’s Der Slowak, the various Slovak proclamations from 1848,32 all the various incarnations of the Slovak Memorandum, Pauliny-Tóth’s language law of 1870, the 1881 election platform of the Slovak National Party, and the 1906 election platform of the Slovak People’s Party.33 If class structure and literacy are key variables in resolving dialect arguments, then a study of Czechoslovakism and Slovak particularism requires a careful examination of the Slovak literacy rate. When did Slovakia cease to be a feudal society of illiterate peasants and became a modern society of clerks, bureaucrats, shopkeepers, and other literate bourgeois? The statistics gathered by the Habsburg government suggest that the absolute majority of Slovaks remained illiterate until the very end of the nineteenth century.34

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Figure 8.1: Literacy in the Kingdom of Hungary by Nationality Nationality

1880

1890

1900

1910

Germans Hungarians Slovaks Croats Serbs Romanians Rusyns

57.0 44.7 32.9 – – 9.2 7.2

63.0 53.6 43.2 42.4 30.9 14.1 9.7

67.9 61.0 50.1 52.8 41.5 20.4 14.5

70.1 67.1 58.1 62.5 51.3 28.2 22.2

The 1900 and 1910 census returns also included national literacy by age cohort; the figures for Slovak speakers are shown in Figure 8.2.35 Figure 8.2: Slovak Literacy by Age Cohort (1900-1910) 1900 1910 % change

1831–40 1841–50 1851–60

1861–70 1871–80 1881–90

30.2 –

41.7 43.4

50.8 51.5

62.3 63.9

74.1 76.4

– 83.9

–

1.7

0.7

1.6

2.3

–

Cohort-based statistics can be confusing. Figure 8.2 does not imply that 30.2 per cent of Slovaks were literate in 1831–1840; 30.2 is the literacy rate of Slovaks who had been born between 1831 and 1840, and were still alive in 1900. Assuming that literacy is acquired in childhood, this figure suggests that around 30 per cent of Slovak ten-year-olds learned to read during the 1840s (that is, the decade in which Slovaks born in the 1830s were ten years old). Can we assume that literacy is acquired in childhood? Every cohort saw a rise in literacy between 1900 and 1910, suggesting that some Slovaks acquired literacy as adults in the first decade of the twentieth century. Of course, the same increase could also be explained by differences in life expectancy: if illiterate lives were comparatively nasty, brutish and short, then their early deaths would improve the literacy rate of a given age cohort. The cohort with the greatest increase in literacy, those born between 1871 and 1880, consisted of people then thirty to thirty-nine years old. It seems unlikely that illiteracy would pose three times a greater risk of death to Slovaks in their twenties and thirties than to Slovaks in their fifties and sixties, so most of this generation’s increased literacy must be the result of adult education. This generation, however, only increased its literacy 3 per cent. So while a few Slovaks indeed learned to read as adults, most acquired literacy in childhood or not at all.

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While around 30 per cent of Slovak children born in the 1830s learned to read and write, the literacy rate increased about 10 per cent a decade for the next half-century. The proportion of Slovak children in school thus increased dramatically as the nineteenth century progressed, and while 50 per cent of Slovaks were illiterate in 1900, in that same year almost three-quarters of Slovaks between the ages of 10 and 19 had entered the world of letters. The foundations of mass literacy were thus being laid in 1900, even though universal literacy would only be achieved as older and less literate generations died off. This picture, however, utterly contradicts scholarly estimates of the Slovak intelligentsia in 1918, universally described as weak and small. One respected Hungarian historian, László Szarka, calculated that only 3,304 “Slovak intellectuals” had mastered written Slovak.36 R.W. Seton-Watson and Owen Johnson cite the “oft-mentioned figure of 750–1,000 nationally conscious Slovak intelligentsia,”37 which seems to derive from a parliamentary speech by Czechoslovakia’s minister of education, Vavro Šrobár. Štefan Polakovič estimated that only 200 people in all of Slovakia had mastered written Slovak in 1918.38 Even taking a figure at the high end of this range (200–3,304), a four-hundred-fold discrepancy separates 3,000 Slovak intellectuals from 1,200,000 literate Slovaks.39 This discrepancy arises from different standards of “literacy.” The Habsburg census asked whether people could sign their names; a test that incidentally enjoys considerable popularity among historians of literacy because it allows statistics to be gathered from marriage records.40 Linguistic nationalism, however, presupposes an intelligentsia, here understood as a class “in which membership is determined by meeting the requirement of formal education. It may safely be said that the equivalent of a high school diploma is the minimum requirement for membership.”41 This is a higher standard: the ability to sign one’s name is not enough for a profession in “office and school.”42 Rudimentary literacy neither generates linguistic nationalism nor resolves dialect arguments. Unfortunately, no statistics measure this higher standard of literacy with any degree of accuracy; even defining “advanced literacy” appears problematic. Anecdotal evidence from the first Czechoslovak republic, however, suggests that hardly any Slovaks qualified: the Czechoslovak government had considerable difficulty finding sufficiently educated Slovaks to fill administrative posts. Owen Johnson’s exhaustive study found that in 1918, only 50 of 600 judges, court notaries and other legal professionals could write Slovak, though another 55 knew it “orally.” This suggests that 52 per cent of Slovaks working in the court system had acquired a legal education without learning to write any Slavic script. In 1919, only 20 Slovaks applied to teach

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in Slovak secondary schools, and according to the official evaluating their competence, “half these were not proficient in Slovak.”43 Šrobár, addressing the Czechoslovak parliament on 18 October 1919, reported that he and his colleagues had found “perhaps three hundred Slovak elementary school teachers and perhaps thirty Slovak high-school teachers” who knew Slovak.44 These educated Slovaks who did not know standard Slovak, and who thus presumably lacked what Uriel Weinreich has called “standard-language attitudes,”45 were products of Hungary’s Magyarized school system. The problem of Slovak education, as Johnson put it, was not one of access to education; from 1851-1915, the number of schools in Hungary rose by more than a fifth. The problem was instead one of access to Slovak education. In the same period, the number of Slovak schools had declined by almost 75 per cent.46 Seton-Watson estimated that in 1908, 66,506 Slovak children attended schools in which Slavic was used alongside Hungarian, 79,415 attended schools using the so-called “parrot system,” and 80,360 attended schools in which Slovak was not used at all. Only 18,312 Slovaks (7 per cent) attended schools using Slovak as the primary medium of instruction.47 From 1883, the Hungarian government also ran an “Upper Hungary Educational Society,” usually known as FEMKE from its Hungarian initials. This eventually boasted 227 libraries reaching 25,000 readers.48 László Katus estimated that a full 21 per cent of Slovaks had learned Hungarian by 1910.49 The majority of literate Slovaks, therefore, had acquired their literacy through Hungarian. Slovaks with a Hungarian education, of course, qualify as literate. Shared use of the Latin alphabet means that literacy in Hungarian, combined with the ability to speak Slovak, implies the ability to read Slovak. Middle-class Slovaks who had risen from the peasantry through Hungarian education, however, could not write in Slovak, and thus had not acquired the specifically Slovak education that would generate Ausbau from the Czechs. If anything, Hungarian education transformed children from Slavic families into Magyars: as Deborah Cornelius summarized, “children spoke both Slovak and Hungarian, but since public schooling was conducted in Hungarian, it became the stronger language, even among children who spoke Slovak at home.”50 R.W. Seton-Watson, traveling in Hungary in the last years of the monarchy, has even described a Ruthenian family whose “rather masterful daughter” had been “so affected by the prevailing Magyarizing tone that she insisted on talking nothing but Magyar.”51

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Literate Slovaks, furthermore, had not always acquired their literacy in Hattalovčina: several scripts coexisted in Slovakia until the end of the Habsburg period. The Bratislava compromise of 1851 was an important moment of cross-confessional Slovak unity; Joseph Kirschbaum claimed that “the century-long clashes between Protestant and Catholic intelligentsia were in principle over.”52 Nevertheless, disagreements continued in practice, and each of the various competing script traditions deserves a brief summary. The Bibličtina tradition remained the most venerable. Štúr’s circle of reformers, mostly Lutherans, had done much to deprive Bibličtina of its confessional support as a Lutheran sacred script. Nevertheless, Bibličtina’s similarities to Czech lent it Czechoslovak connotations, and it attracted pan-confessional support from Czechoslovakists. During the Bach regime, the most important vehicle of Czechoslovakism was the Slovenské noviny [Slovak Newspaper], not to be confused with Štúr’s Slovenskje národňje novini. Founded in 1849, it originally appeared in Štúrovčina, but switched to Bibličtina in 1850. It appeared twice weekly, and was distributed without charge in over 1,000 locations. In November 1852, it received the official endorsement of the Habsburg government at the recommendation of Ján Kollár, then advising the government on Slovak affairs. Slovenské noviny’s chief editor was Daniel Lichard, a Lutheran author often described as Slovakia’s first professional journalist. Lichard shared the Slovak intelligentsia’s fascination with language, but had a practical bent: instead of collecting folklore, he wrote an Italian textbook; at the height of the Language War he published a mathematics primer in Hungarian. Lichard also published Slovakia’s first business journal in Štúrovčina, and later went on to become nineteenth-century Slovakia’s most prolific author.53 Slovenské noviny’s deputy editor was a Catholic priest, Ondřej Radlinský, who had met Lichard during the latter’s 1838-1840 teaching stint in Banská Štiavnica.54 Radlinský was a surprising convert to Bibličtina: he had not only been educated in Bernolákovčina, but had endorsed Hattalovčina at the 1851 Bratislava conference. Radlinský had, however, also written an “Old Slovak” grammar book that won Kollár’s approval.55 When Radlinský left Vienna for Budapest in the early 1850s, the post of deputy editor went to Jonáš Zaborský, a Lutheran convert to Catholicism whose poems defending Bibličtina were discussed above.56 Slovenské noviny could thus boast impressive panconfessional credentials. The orthography of Slovenské noviny was almost identical to the reformed Czech then used in Prague: it used Latin type, the letters {ě ř ů}, and avoided Hattala’s {ä ĺ ô ŕ}. Slovak literary historians generally disapprove of this orthography: Peter Petro felt that Kollár’s support for “what he called ‘Old

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Slovak,’ a slightly Slovakized Czech,” showed that he had become “estranged from things Slovak.”57 Petro not only ignores Zaborský, Radlinský and Lichard and their important careers, but the success of Slovenské noviny itself: the letters to the editor suggest a wide audience in Hungary and Moravia. Figure 8.3: Letters to Slovenské noviny (sample year 1855)

Assuming that Velký Hont lies somewhere in Hungary’s Hont county, 71 of the 106 letters in this sample (67 per cent) come from the kingdom of Hungary, and from most of the Slovak ethnoterritory, including the Slovak communities in Békés and Vojvodina, which still exist today. Only the far East of Slovakia was not represented, perhaps because of transport difficulties. Correspondents from Esztergom were mostly Catholic clergymen; the town hosts an archdiocese. The 23 letters (22 per cent) from Moravia, finally, suggest that Slovenské noviny functioned as a Czechoslovak community in practice. Slovenské noviny took an ambiguous editorial stance toward the Czechoslovak idea. Štúr’s obituary in 1856, proclaiming that “The Memory of Ludevít [sic] Štúr will be in the hearts of the sons of the Slovak nation … the Lord grant his soul great glory!”58 would seem to suggest Slovak particularism. Elsewhere, however, the paper discussed “Grammar books for the Czecho-Slovak language in Austrian schools,”59 and, when listing Slavic almanacs in the Habsburg monarchy, lumped Slovak and Czech publications together as “Czecho-Slavic,” even though Serbian and Croatian almanacs were listed separately.60 Indeed, in 1856 Slovenské noviny implicitly extended the

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Czechoslovak concept beyond the Habsburg frontier by printing the “national anthem of Prussian Czechoslovaks” in Prussian Silesia.61 Vienna’s Slovenské noviny was not the only evidence of Bibličtina’s continued following. The literary supplement to the 1858 almanac Concordia, slovanský letopis, published in Buda, also took an ambiguous stance on orthographic questions. It published original poems in both Bibličtina and Hattalovčina, e.g. Ján Mallý’s Bibličtina “A Young Slovak Setting Down Life’s Path” and Samo Hroboň’s Hattalovčina “With the Nation.”62 Jozef Viktorin, Condordia’s Catholic editor, contributed both a Bibličtina description of Visegrad and a Hattalovčina postscript justifying the simultaneous use of both “the age-old Czech literary language” and “the modern Slovak forms”: We certainly cannot imagine that this dualism will last; in the end it will be decided for one or the other side … We however wanted to publish the efforts of both sides, so that, if the spirit of unity does not exist in literature, we can work toward another goal — to save the life and independence of Slovak literature.63 Viktorin’s postscript also described the Bibličtina tradition as both “Our Czecho-Slovak [česko-slovenčině naše]”64 and an integral part of Slovak literature. Viktorin, furthermore, repeated this opinion in his 1860 Grammatik der slowakischen Sprache, which provided a passage from Kollár’s Sláwy dcera “so that those interested in such things can compare the Czech spelling with the Slovak.”65 He contrasted “the ancient Czech” spelling with “the presentday Slovak forms” while assuring the reader that “the language certainly is always the same.” 66 Slovak particularism was a prominent theme in Concordia. Ján Palárik, a Catholic clergyman whose attempt to found a Matica for all Slavic Nations in Hungary was discussed above, contributed three poems, “Vlasť Slovenská [Slovak Homeland],” “Ľud Slovenský [The Slovak People], and “Spěv Slovenský [Slovak song],” which respectively proclaimed that “of all the lands of the earth, the Slovak homeland pleases me the best,” “of all the nations on the earth, the Slovak people please me the best,” and “of all nations in the world, my Slovak nation pleases me the most.”67 These clear expressions of Slovak particularism, however, were not accompanied by any clear commitment to Hattalovčina: Palárik used a composite orthography containing both Hattala’s {ä} and Bibličtina {ě}. The Bibličtina tradition, in short, enjoyed continued support from various Slovak journalists, educators, and literati throughout the 1850s. It benefited from the passionate endorsement of a great national poet, Ján Kollár, and

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though Kollár died in 1852, Viktorin’s almanac suggests that Kollár’s prestige and influence endured. Bibličtina also had the endorsement of Pavel Šafařík, the most famous Slavic scholar of his age, though Šafařík died in 1861. The Bibličtina tradition also appealed to those Slovaks inclined to Czechoslovakism. Finally, Bibličtina retained some currency as sacred language for Lutherans: Lutheran presses published religious texts in Bibličtina well into the twentieth century, though we will see below that Hattalovčina made some inroads. Lutherans were not the only religious group in Slovakia with a distinctive confessional script tradition. The literary tradition in Bernolákovčina, recall, mostly consisted of religious works published at Catholic presses. Leading figures in the Slovak Catholic clergy had agreed to switch to Hattalovčina at the 1851 Bratislava conference, and they appear to have spoken for the church hierarchy: while at least one original work appeared in Bernolákovčina every year in the period 1844–1850, after 1851 new Catholic works were written exclusively in Hattalovčina. In the decade after 1851, however, several Bernolákovčina titles were reprinted. A Trnava Katechizmus of 1815, for example, was reprinted in Nitra in 1846, 1858 and 1860. A Prostredný katechizmus [Middle Catechism], first printed in Buda in 1830, was reprinted in 1841, 1846, 1857 and 1860.68 A different Prostredný katechizmus was reprinted in 1858 and 1860. A Trnava work on natural morality, printed in 1825 and reprinted in 1826, was reissued in 1867 by a small press in Skalica, a small town on the Moravian border that presumably did not face strict clerical supervision. Bernolákovčina reprints ceased after 1867, the year of the Ausgleich. The afterlife of the Bernolákovčina print tradition suggests that Bernolákovčina texts enjoyed grass-roots support in Catholic circles despite the decisions taken at the Bratislava conference: why else would works in a disfavored literary standard be so frequently reprinted, but not transliterated? Eastern Slovakia also had a unique script tradition. Calvinist Slovaks, as mentioned above, adopted the orthographic conventions of Hungarian, notably the as digraphs {sz} and {cs} where Bibličtina, Bernolákovčina and Hattalovčina use {s} and {č}. Such books were published in Debrecen, near the Eastern parts of Slovakia, and thus took eastern Slovak speech as a standard. Non-Calvinists in Eastern Slovakia did not use the Hungarian orthography, but some still pattered their writing after local speech. Perhaps the most important author in the East-Slovak literature was a Catholic priest. Ján Andráščik’s 1845 play Šenk palenčeni, attacking the dangers of alcohol, stayed in print for over 40 years, though some editions appeared in Michal Hodža’s Štúrovčina translation.69

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Neither Calvinists nor East Slovaks were represented at the 1851 Bratislava conference, and their script traditions were thus unaffected by LutheranCatholic rapprochement. Andráščik’s work aside, however, very little appeared in so-called “Eastern Slovak,” which never rivaled either Bibličtina or Bernolákovčina. The script did, however, strike roots in the American diaspora: Ján Slovenský, who arrived in the United States in 1879, began publishing the Amerikanszko-Szlovenszke noviny [American-Slovak Newspaper] in 1886, and in 1889 the journal Szlovjak v Amerike [Slovak in America] began publication in Plymouth.70 Péter Király reports that this script tradition clung to life in the United States until 1955.71 Perhaps because of its Hungarian orthography, several Hungarian governments supported the East-Slovak script tradition. In 1875, the Tisza government published a series of school textbooks in this script; a year later, Adolf Urban codified it in a Hungarian-language Slovak grammar.72 A geography textbook and translations of important Hungarian novelists followed; in 1907, the government even organized a newspaper in Prešov. State support for a Slavic script tradition would seem to contradict the policy of Magyarization, but by the 1870s, Hungarian authorities may have promoted “East Slovak” literature as a counterweight to Hattalovčina-based Slovak nationalism. If so, their efforts paid some dividends. In 1918, when most Slovak intellectuals abandoned Hungary for Czechoslovakia, Prešov archivist Viktor Dvortchak, who had written books in the Calvinist script, declared a “Slovak People’s Republic” and asked the Hungarian government for protection. Dvortchak spent the interwar years in Budapest working to restore Hungarian rule.73 Between Bernolákovčina, Bibličtina, East Slovak (“Urbanovčina”?) Hattalovčina, and Štúrovčina, the orthographic situation in Slovak northern Hungary might be characterized as “schizoglossia,” which sociolinguist Einar Haugen defined as “a personality split which leaves many persons divided and uncertain.”74 Slovak schizoglossia handicapped the struggle against Magyarization: as Alexander Bach pointedly remarked to a Slovak delegation, “You want your language to be a diplomatic language, yet nobody knows which language is yours: Kollár writes one way, Štúr writes another way, Hodža yet differently … what is to be done? Agree among yourselves, and then come back!”75 Several Slovaks recognized the force of Bach’s argument. In 1852 Ján Palárik lamented that “until recently we have been divided among ourselves into four opposing literary camps, the orthography of Bernolák, Czech, the Štúr script, and proper Slovak.” Palárik, of course, showed which script he

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favored by describing the Bibličtina tradition as “Czech” and Hattalovčina as “proper Slovak.”76 In 1859, as the Bach regime collapsed in disgrace, the Bibličtina tradition, which had enjoyed state sponsorship during the 1850s, suffered from the association. The three main editors of Slovenské noviny all switched to Hattalovčina.77 “Ondřej” Radlinský had used Bibličtina, with {ě ř ů}, in his 1851 textbook,78 but “Ondrej” Radlinský’s 1861 pedagogical almanac, published at the same press, used Hattalovčina.79 Palárik joined a Hattalovčina newspaper in Budapest, Priateľ ľudu [Friend of the People]. The desire to write in Hattalovčina, however, did not imply mastery of its conventions. When Lichard used Slovenské noviny to disseminate the text of the Slovak Memorandum, for example, his orthography was a mishmash: Bibličtina {ř} coexisted with Hattalovčina {ä ô}; even more strangely, Polish {ż} appeared as an alternative for {ž}.80 Hattalovčina’s new popularity reflected the Slovak political mood during the hopeful era of the Slovak Memorandum. In 1860, Slovaks were optimistic about their chances of winning political rights in Hungary, and thus rallied around the script that not only enjoyed pan-confessional support, but which could, as Štúr had shown, demonstrate Hungarian loyalty. Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak tie did not seem worth cultivating, particularly since in 1860 Czech political leaders were completely preoccupied with the anti-German struggle in Bohemia. Bibličtina, with its Czechoslovak connotations, thus fell out of fashion. In the brief period between the collapse of the Bach regime and the Ausgleich, during which the Slovak educational infrastructure expanded, the Slovak intelligentsia favored Hattalovčina. In 1862, new Lutheran lyceums were founded in Revúca and Martin; both used Hattalovčina as the medium of instruction. In 1867, furthermore, a Catholic gymnasium using Hattalovčina opened in Kláštor pod Zniovom. Martin also became an important center for Hattalovčina journalism. In 1868, the Pešťbudínské noviny [Budapest Newspaper] relocated to Martin, changing its name to Národnie noviny [National Newspaper; not to be confused with either the Bach-era Slovenské noviny or Štúr’s Slovenskje národňje novini]. The most important event establishing Martin as a Slovak national center, however, was the founding of the Matica slovenská in 1863. The Matica enjoyed high profile, pan-confessional support: its first chairman, Štefan Moyses, was a Catholic bishop; the first vice-chairman, Karol Kuzmány, was superintendent of the Lutheran church.81 The Matica had a library, a scholarship fund, a museum, and a printing press publishing works on Slavic folklore and linguistics.82 It also distributed a scholarly journal, Letopisy

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[Annals]. The Matica slovenská favored Hattalovčina: it reprinted Hattala’s grammatical works and sponsored a popular Hattalovčina grammar, Fraňo Mraz’s Slovenská mluvnice, for use in Slovak lyceums.83 Elena Mannová and Roman Holec described the Matica era as the turning point for Hattalovčina, since “the cooperation of Catholic and Lutheran scholars in the framework of the Matica slovenská (1863-1875) contributed to the acceptance of a single written language.”84 The impact of the Matica's Hattalovčina journalism, however, should not be over-estimated. Martin was a small town that lacked the capacity to support a strong national infrastructure. As Seton-Watson summarized, “Národnie noviny, thrice weekly, and the monthly literary review Slovenské Pohladý, had an uphill fight and few subscribers.”85 Martin’s significance as a national center also suffered an important setback in 1875, when Kálmán Tisza shut down both the Matica slovenská and the Martin lyceum on suspicion of Pan-Slavism. The Matica era did not introduce many new ideas into Slovak thought. Mraz’s Slovenská mluvnice followed Štúr and Kollár in describing Slovak as the “dialect” of a “tribe.” Specifically, Mraz divided a Slavic language into two main “nárečia (dialekty),” north-east and south-west, and described Slovak as a sub-dialect of the south-west dialect: Slovak is spoken by the Slovaks, one of the tribes of the great Slavic nation [veľnároda slovanského]. While all Slavs speak one and the same mother language, it has, like other widely-distributed language, various dialects. There are two main dialects: north-east and south-west … The south-west includes 1. the Slovak reč, 2. Czech, 3. Polish, 4. Lusatian.86 Slovak political journalism also continued to concentrate on the Hungarian political context, emphasizing Slovak unity between Catholics and Lutherans over Slovak-Czech cooperation. When Pešťbudínské vedemosti called for “Literary unity!” in 1864, it therefore attacked the Bibličtina tradition: When however these Slovaks who stand by the “literary unity” with the Czechs are examined, duty to one’s own national life requires the introduction of unity and harmony at home, and for this reason the unification of the entire Slovak nation with their own domestic, unified, literary language.87 Surprisingly, this fiery defence of Hattalovčina used the Bibličtina (and “Czech”) letters {ě ů} alongside Hattala’s {ä ô}.88 Members of the Slovak intelligentsia, apparently, often promoted Hattalovčina as a script without

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mastering its conventions. The Matica era nevertheless placed Hattalovčina in a position of hegemony within the world of Slovak letters. This may explain why Henry Baerlein, an English traveler in interwar Slovakia, eccentrically dated the Czech-Slovak orthographic split to 1860.89 While the scholarly works of the Matica slovenská mostly followed Hattalovčina conventions, the same cannot be said of the Slovak popular press. Consider Alojz Bučanský’s Mali obrázkowi kalendár [Small Illustrated Almanac], produced in Pest and presumably sold to semi-literate Slovak farmers. The Kalendár first appeared in 1851, and followed the same basic format until 1880, but its orthography changed several times. In 1851, the spelling most closely resembled Štúrovčina, complete with {uo} and the use of {j} in diphthongs (e.g. rjeka). In 1855, however, it switched to Bibličtina, probably imagined as “Old Slovak,” and began using {ě ř ů}. In 1860, it shifted toward Hattalovcina: {ä} made its first appearance and {ř} disappeared for good. The Kalendár did not, however, start using Hattalovčina {ô} (e.g. in môžem, “I can”) until 1872, when it acquired a new typeface. Even this transition proved transient: Bibličtina {ů} (e.g. in může “he can”) reappeared in 1873. The letter {w}, finally, lasted the entire nineteenth century. A new editor, Erich Bucký, replaced {w} with {v} in the 1901 Aloisa Bucsánszkyho kresťanský obrázkový kalendár [Alois Bučanský’s Christian Illustrated Almanac], but did so while making concessions to the Calvinist “Eastern Slovak” spelling: note the use of {cs} and {sz} in the spelling of Bučanský’s name. Hattalovčina conventions nevertheless struck such deep roots during the Matica era that they began to influence Lutheran religious texts. Ferdinand Rohoň’s 1874 Martina Luthera katechismus, written in “our dear Slovak language in literary language,”90 discarded Bibličtina {ř} and introduced Hattalovčina {ä ô}. Even this, however, was only a qualified victory for Hattalovčina. Rohoň stuck with {ě}, and used both old-fashioned {w} and Blackletter type to create an air of timelessness. Since most Hattalovčina typefaces used Latin letters, the Blackletter type created typographical difficulties. A Blackletter {ä} could easily be borrowed from German type, but German does not use the letter {ô}, so Rohoň, or his printer, was forced to insert single Latin characters in the Blackletter text: e.g. Bôh. The word vôle, furthermore, appears as both wôle and wûle, even though the letter {û} does not appear in any of Slovakia’s many script traditions. Finally, the word chlieb [bread] appears as chlieb, chléb, and chljeb on a single page.91 As late as the 1870s, the desire to use Hattalovčina apparently exceeded both mastery of the script’s conventions and available printing infrastructure. After Tisza closed the Matica slovenská in 1875, Martin remained an important center of Slovak national activity, both literary and political. The

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Národný Dom [National House], a feeble replacement for the closed Matica, opened in 1888. Pavol Országh, a prominent poet better known by his pen-name Hviezdoslav, settled in Martin, as did Svetozar Hurban Vajanský, romantic poet and editor of the scholarly journal Slovenské Pohľady: časopis pre literatúru, vedu, umenie a politiku [Slovak Perspectives: Journal for Literature, Science, Art and Politics]. The title of this journal followed a precedent set by Vajanský’s father, Jozef Hurban, who had published Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umeňja a literatúr between 1848 and 1852. Seton-Watson wrote that Vajansky had “inherited the ideas of his father,”92 though this would not account for Vajanský’s reactionary social views.93 Hviezdoslav and Vajanský both mastered the conventions of Hattalovčina at a high level. Vajanský also developed a certain Czechophobic streak. Visiting Prague in 1900, he insisted on speaking German to avoid awkward questions about the similarity between Slovak and Czech.94 Where Herkel, Hojč, Kollár and Šafařík had focused on the relations between Slavs in the Habsburg Empire, Vajanský was a romantic Russophile who hoped for Russian intervention, particularly after the 1877 war in the Balkans, in which Russia helped establish a Bulgarian state. Yet even Vajanský’s Russophilia should not be exaggerated: his friend Seton-Watson, who described him as “the true Pan-Slav, full of an almost mystical devotion to Russia,” also wrote that Vajanský “naturally looked to Vienna.”95 The Martin circle, with its messianic romanticism, did not represent the entire Slovak intelligentsia. The Social Democratic movement first set down Slovak roots in 1904, when Emanuel Lehocký began publishing socialist newspapers in Bratislava.96 Lehocký attacked Národné noviny as a “famous national journal without a nation,”97 and accused the Martin circle of wanting to be “the spiritual aristocracy of the Slovak nation.”98 But while Bratislava’s Socialists broke with the Martin circle over social and religious issues, they took a similar position on linguistic questions. In 1914, Robotnícke noviny declared: Only such nationality politics in Hungary is healthy and sustainable which secures the Slovak people … their rights in their own language, so that they can get education and assert themselves in public life in their mother tongue.99 Lehocký, true to socialist internationalism, also sought assistance from nonSlovaks in the Habsburg monarchy. Czech Socialists proved willing to help, providing him with start-up funds for his first newspaper. Slovak-Czech relations generally experienced a strong revival at the end of the nineteenth century. When Áugust Trefort expelled 53 Slovaks from

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Hungarian lyceums during his tenure as Hungarian minister of education (1881-86), all transferred to Czech schools. Anton Štefánek reported that 122 Slovaks were studying in Czech schools in 1912; a year later the number had risen to 133.100 Some Slovak students, furthermore, received Czech educations from Czech investors training staff for branch offices in Hungary.101 Such students learned Czech orthography, further complicating the orthographic diversity of the Slovak intelligentsia. Slovaks also learned Czech by studying in Prague. In 1882, Slovak students studying at Charles University founded the student group Detvan in the café “Stará Slavie.” As this birthplace suggests, Detvan situated the Slovak-Czech relationship in an All-Slavic context: its members also sought contact with the Moravian student association Moravská beseda, the Serbian Šumadija, the Polish Ognisko Polskie, as well as various Bulgarian and Russian organizations.102 Nevertheless, Slovaks in Prague engaged most intensively with Czech culture, though they were occasionally mistaken for Russians or Bulgarians.103 Edita Bosák divided the Detvan movement into “the Martin circle and the Czechophiles.”104 The former were Slovak particularists, but a member of the latter circle justified his Czechoslovakism not only All-Slavic terms, but with reference to a more specifically Czechoslovak concept: “We Hungarian Slovaks have a choice between Magyar culture and Czech culture. In as far as we are too weak to develop, it is our duty to attach ourselves to the Czech culture. Were we to join the Magyar culture, we would cease to be Slavs.”105 On the other hand, a member of the Viennese Slovak club Tatran, which organized an excursion to Prague in 1883, rejected the idea that Slovaks “could ever be Czechs, Czechoslavs or Czechoslovaks — we are and remain Slovaks and Slavs.”106 Czech intellectuals at the turn of the century, confident in their control of Prague,107 also began to take an active interest in Slovak affairs. In 1896, Ján Smetanay published a pamphlet calling for the creation of a “Czechoslovak” language.108 In 1898, the organization Českoslovanská Jednota [Czechoslav unity] was founded to promote Reciprocity within the Slavic world, but in 1909 its members decided to focus their efforts exclusively on the CzechSlovak relationship. Czech books were sent to Slovakia, and scholarships were established for Slovak students studying in the Czech lands. In 1903, Českoslovanská Jednota organized a Slovak-Czech conference in the Moravian spa town of Luhačovice. This became an annual event, and by 1913, in Johnson’s words, “hardly a single Slovak political or cultural figure did not attend.”109 Czech intellectuals also began publishing accounts of travels in Slovakia. In 1905, for example, Czech schoolteacher and journalist Karel Kálal published

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Slovensko a Slováci [Slovakia and the Slovaks], hoping to arouse Czech interest in Slovak affairs. Kálal provided his Czech audience with several reasons “why we should worry about the Slovaks,”110 including the claim that Czech nationality had a Slovak origin: Consider Palacký, Šafařík, Kollár … We have said of Palacky that he studied in Slovakia and obtained his national consciousness there, Šafařík and Kollár are Slovaks. So you see what we have from Slovakia. All three of these men were both Czechs and Slovaks. What God unites, let not man break asunder. They, geniuses, know that we are one nation …111 Kálal depicted Slovaks as too downtrodden to resist tyrannous Magyars. When Kálal offered to send Czech books to a Lutheran pastor in Šáriš, for example, the pastor rejected the offer for fear of reprisal. Kálal dramatically concluded: “It is dark in the Tatra counties! And do you know why? Because they are far from the Czech world!”112 Kálal urged Czechs to spend vacations in the Tatras: this would familiarize Czechs with Slovak conditions and provide economic support for Slovak communities.113 He also suggested that Slovak youth could study in Moravian schools.114 This Czechoslovak revival found literary expression in the journal Hlas [Voice], published in Skalica on the Slovak-Moravian frontier. Several “Hlasists,” as contributors to the journal are called, had been members of Detvan.115 Slovak Hlasists wrote in Hattalovčina, not Czech, and Vavro Šrobár, a founding member of both Detvan and Hlas, felt that “it was impossible to speak of a single literary language between us.”116 Šrobár, however, made this comment in an article advocating “Czechoslovak Reciprocity,” consciously evoking Ján Kollár and the tradition of literary dialects. Hlasist Czechoslovakism indeed drew inspiration from Kollár’s vision of Slavic Reciprocity. Kollár, recall, had accepted multiple Slavic scripts, but reconciled orthographic diversity with a unitary concept of a “Slavic language.” He had also called for a literary newspaper that would print articles in all the various Slavic “dialects,” which would be enriched by mutual interaction. The Hlasists applied these ideas to the Czechoslovak relationship. In 1898, a Slovak contributor to Umelecký hlas [Artistic Voice], the literary supplement to Hlas, proposed a bi-orthographical “Czechoslovak” language in which Slovak and Czech would coexist to mutual benefit: “our dialect, elevated with literary worth, has served and will continue to serve the enrichment of the Czech language.”117 By printing articles in both Hattalovčina and Czech, Hlas also matched words with deeds. Milan Hodža, Michal Hodža’s nephew and founder of the Slovak Agrarian party, also printed Czech articles in his

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two Budapest newspapers Slovenský denník [Slovak Daily] and Slovenský týždenník [Slovak Weekly].118 Vladimír Kulíšek was right to characterize the Czechoslovakism of this period as “Czecho-Slovak Reciprocity.”119 Perhaps a less prominent example of multi-script printing best illustrates how Hlasist Czechoslovakism worked in practice. Karol Salva, a schoolteacher in Ružomberok, edited a series of popular almanacs and, from 1886, the Hattalovčina journal Dom a škola [Home and School]. Salva was Lutheran, but his publications were pan-confessional: for example, he printed a collection of sermons by Catholic historian František Sasinek and even Andrej Hlinka’s populist Catholic newspaper Ľudové noviny [People’s Newspaper].120 Though Salva focused on the Slovak market, his 1897 Národní spevník [National Songbook] included songs from the Bibličtina tradition, complete with {ě ř ů}, including Ján Chalupka’s “Chlapci buďme veselí [Let’s Be Happy, Boys]” and August Škultéty’s “Poď že sem, dceruško [Come Here, Little Daughter].”121 Salva’s sympathy for the neo-Kollárian concept of a Czechoslovak language brought him tangible benefits: he developed a personal friendship with Kálal, who sent him Czech books and found Bohemian subscribers for Dom a škola.122 The Hlasists, like Slovak Socialists in Bratislava, were highly critical of the Martin circle with its romantic Russophilism.123 In a series of articles in the Czech magazine Osvěta, Kálal described the Martin circle as having “no welldefined political program beyond recording the attacks of Magyarizers on nationally conscious Slovaks.”124 This criticism was not entirely unfounded: when Seton-Watson visited Martin in 1907, he found Slovak patriots planning not political strategy, but excursions of “twenty or so ‘Pan-Slavs’ far up in the mountains, where all the forbidden folk songs could be sung with verve and sentiment, and without interference of the Magyar gendarme.”125 Kálal also attacked Slovak clericals as overly concerned with “impressing the Slovak people with their exalted priestly state.”126 He also felt Martin was too small and isolated to host an effective national institution and proposed Trnava or Budapest instead.127 Kálal intended these comments in the spirit of constructive criticism, but nevertheless caused great offense. Thomas Marzik concluded that he had “helped to make unbridgeable the rift between the Martin Slovaks on the one hand and the Hlasists and their Czech supporters on the other.”128 Andrej Hlinka felt the insult particularly keenly. Hlasists, including Hodža and Šrobár, had run for office as candidates on the Slovak People’s Party ticket during the election of 1906. After Kálal's article, however, Hlinka began to see Hlasism, free-thinking, and Social Democracy as his main enemies and developed what David Paul described as “an amalgam of ideological-cum-theocratic principles

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that would be central to ľudáctvo (populism) for the rest of its development.”129 This would have consequences in the first Czechoslovak republic. In the last years of Habsburg rule, therefore, the Slovak intelligentsia was divided between Czechoslovak-minded Hlasism, Agrarianism, and Social Democracy on the one hand, and the Slovak particularism of Hlinka's populism and the Martin circle on the other. The relative strength of these various factions is difficult to estimate, but the print runs of their respective newspapers provide a straw in the wind. The Hlasist journal Prúdy had 420 subscribers, and the Martin circle’s Národnie noviny enjoyed a circulation of 1,000. The Social Democratic papers Napred and Slovenské robotnícké noviny reached 8,000, and the populist Ľudové noviny reached 12,000. Hodža’s Agrarian Slovenský týždenník, based in Budapest, boasted 14,000 subscribers and was thus the most important Slovak newspaper.130 These divisions inside the Slovak intelligentsia would haunt the Czechoslovak Republic. Anthony Sutherland wrote that the Hlasists “seriously divided the Slovak national intelligentsia and brought an end to the once united national movement,”131 but this takes a shallow view of Slovak history: the Slovak intelligentsia had been divided over the Czech relationship before. Nor is it clear why Sutherland makes the Hlasist movement shoulder all the blame for Slovak divisions: the religious messianism of Hlinka and Martin circle also contributed to disunity. But the central point is that while the Martin circle articulated strong Slovak particularism, the Hlasists were equally strongly Czechoslovak. Both groups, furthermore, were marginal: the main factions of the Slovak intelligentsia fell somewhere between these two extremes. The dominant national concept among ordinary Slovaks probably remained Hungaro-Slavic. By 1914, Hattalovčina dominated Slovak journalism, and could boast several works of belles lettres. Advocates of Hattalovčina increasingly found Kollár an awkward national poet because of his loyalty to Bibličtina, and by the end of the century Samo Chalupka had emerged as an unproblematic alternative. Hattalovčina’s triumph was not yet complete: a small movement in eastern Slovakia still used the Hungarian spelling, Slovak exchange students brought back Czech orthography from schools in Bohemia and Moravia, and both Prúdy and Hodža’s papers printed articles in Czech. Most Slovak literary activities, however, took place in Hattalovčina. Slovaks may have been divided on ideological grounds, but they had, almost, reached a consensus on their orthography. A dedicated core of Slovak nationalists in Martin, furthermore, had begun to associate this script with the concept of “the Slovak language.” The defining feature of this linguistic ideology was the idea that Slovak was different from

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Czech. Indeed, Samo Czambel, the leading linguist to question the SlovakCzech link, even suggested that Slovak had more in common with Croatian and should be classified as South-Slavic.132 Slovak particularism, furthermore, infused many of the literary works produced in Martin. It bears repeating that the Martin circle did not did not represent the entire Slovak intelligentsia. Socialists attacked their social ideology as reactionary; Hlasists explicitly rejected their Slovak particularism, promoting various Czechoslovak concepts that owed a great deal to Kollár’s Reciprocity. Yet both Socialists and Hlasists accepted Hattalovčina as the proper Slovak script, even if some saw Hattalovčina as a literary dialect subsumed in a larger Czechoslovak linguistic collective. The low literacy rate, however, meant that Hattalovčina’s triumph remained provisional. As Jozef Škultéty put it in 1932: “Sladkovič, Chalupka, Janko Kráľ, Botto, Vajanský, Hviezdoslav, Kukučín, all masters of their mother tongue; but — schools, schools! Without schools the nation could not blossom.”133 The Slovak intelligentsia of 1900, despite claims to the contrary,134 was not a nation, and Magyarization prevented literacy in Slovak from spreading beyond a demographically insignificant clique of literati. The history of the Štúrovci and Bernolákovci, furthermore, demonstrates that a small intelligentsia may decide to shift its orthographic preferences if the political situation provides appropriate incentives. Orthographic standards simply cannot acquire stability in any society where literacy is restricted to a small elite. Mass linguistic nationalism requires mass literacy, which in turn requires mass education. This only came into being during the interwar period. The next and final chapter examines linguistic nationalism in the first Czechoslovak Republic, when the “dialect argument” between the Slovak particularist and Czechoslovak concepts was ultimately resolved. Ironically, the first Czechoslovak government, which so uncompromisingly promoted a Czechoslovak national ideology, adopted policies that strengthened the idea of an independent “Slovak language,” thus ensuring the success of Slovak particularist nationalism.

9 CZECHOSLOVAKIA AS A SLOVAKIZING STATE

This final chapter examines national concepts in Slovakia during the first Czechoslovak republic, 1918-1938. Anglophone scholars have shown considerably more interest in interwar Slovak history than in the last century of Habsburg rule. This chapter, however, emphasizes a theme neglected in existing treatments: the legacy of Habsburg-era national concepts on interwar Slovak thinking. Specifically, this chapter explores how the idea that a “language” could encompass multiple scripts, combined with the tendency to invoke multiple nations to achieve tactical goals, contributed to Slovak particularist nationalism. This chapter also brings to a conclusion the narratives of failure introduced in previous chapters: it opens with the sudden collapse of Hungaro-Slavism, and ends with the demise of Czechoslovakism. By making the interwar period the decisive period in the creation of Slovak particularist nationalism, this account concurs with several other scholarly treatments. Czech émigré historian Jozef Korbel wrote that as of 1939, “a distinct Slovak national identity has become the accepted premise of the Slovak nation and its representatives [emphasis added].”1 Owen Johnson, the leading Anglophone authority on this period of Slovak history, wrote that “in 1918, it could reasonably be argued that any one of three national feelings — Hungarian, Czechoslovak, or Slovak — might come to predominate,”2 but felt that by 1938 Slovak particularism had triumphed. This timing is ironic since the Czechoslovak state promoted a Czechoslovak national ideology in the interwar period. The foundation of the Czechoslovak state, an important turning point in Slovak history, happened because of events beyond the Slovak frontier. By 1918, the suffering and privation of the First World War had created such discontent that the legitimacy of the dual monarchy snapped. Slovak

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intellectuals may have felt a particularly keen disillusionment, since the Slavophobia of the Hungarian leadership had frustrated Slovak political goals for so long. A few dissenters clung to the Hungarian project in the interwar period, but the bulk of the Slovak intelligentsia abandoned the attempt to replace the Magyar politikai nemzet with a multi-ethnic uhorský politický národ when the Habsburg Empire collapsed. The breaking point came in October 1918. With both the Habsburg monarchy and the Hungarian state collapsing, representatives of the various Slovak parties met in Martin to form a Slovak National Council. A majority of the deputies at Martin were Lutherans whose Bibličtina heritage formed a cultural basis for Czechoslovak unity.3 Yet Slovakia’s most prominent Catholic politician, Andrej Hlinka of the Slovak People’s Party, also urged Slovaks “to say openly that we are in favor of a Czechoslovak orientation.”4 Hlinka even articulated a certain linguistic Czechoslovakism: “I am not worried about the language, since each is almost the same as the other; it is atheism which could destroy us.”5 Hlinka’s disillusionment with Czechoslovakia would come swiftly, but his paramount emotion in October 1918 was disillusionment with Hungary, encapsulated in the oft-cited remark: “The thousand-year marriage with the Magyars has failed. We must get a divorce.”6 The leading Czechophobe in Slovak politics, Hurban-Vajanský, had died in 1916. Under such circumstances, supporters of a novel and untried Czechoslovak republic carried the day. The declaration of 30 October ambiguously proclaimed that “the Slovak nation is linguistically and historically a part of the unitary Czechoslovak nation.”7 The three leading Czechoslovak politicians who seduced Slovaks away from their Hungarian marriage were indeed dashing suitors. The leading figure was Tomáš Masaryk, a philosophy professor at Charles University in Prague. During the war, he had progressively won attention, respect and political recognition from the governments of the Entente. Masaryk personally embodied Czechoslovak unity: as Owen Johnson noted, “his mother was a German-speaking Czech, his father a Slovak, and he grew up in an area where Czechs and Slovaks mixed easily and enjoyed friendly relations.”8 Masaryk had made his career as a Czech, but later declared himself “more than half Slovak” in conversation with Karel Čapek.9 He had taken a serious interest in Slovak issues before the war: he had written several pieces for Hlas10 and followed Kálal’s work with such keen interest that he translated some pieces into German.11 Masaryk had also spent several family vacations in Banská Bystrička, making contacts in Slovak intellectual circles and once even shooting a bear.12 Despite these Slovak experiences, Masaryk’s Czechoslovakism, like his political and academic careers, revolved around Prague and the Czech

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experience. In the early stages of the war, hoping to win Anglo-American support, he advocated his cause with Bohemian particularist vocabulary: his 1915 pamphlet Declaration of the Bohemian (Czech) Committee, claimed to “explain briefly the position of the Bohemian people, the Czechs as they call themselves.” This would seem a poor starting point for the demands that follow in boldface capital letters: “We ask for an independent BohemianSlovak State.”13 Masaryk’s attachment to Slovakia stemmed from the Slovak contribution to Czech culture: “the first mighty Czech song was sounded by a Slovak. Everything Czech literature owes to Kollár, and it is a great deal, stems from Kollár’s Slovak origins.”14 Despite his genuine admiration for Kollár, however, Masaryk rejected AllSlavism. “I have no more use for empty talk about Slavism than I have for flagwaving patriots. I wonder how many of our Slavophiles can even read Russian, Polish and Serb?”15 Even before the war, he had taken a skeptical attitude: “We are not satisfied with a study of abstract Slavism,” he wrote before the war, “we study Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs.”16 This list, nevertheless, shows Kollár’s continued influence: substitute “Illyrian” for “Serb,” and Masaryk’s taxonomy corresponds to Kollár’s list of “main tribes,” elevated to nations. The second of the three Czechoslovaks, Edvard Beneš, was a sociologist from Charles University.17 Beneš was more calculating and less charismatic than Masaryk, and did not have any particular record of cultivating Czechoslovak unity. Like Masaryk, however, Beneš was genuinely convinced that Slovaks and Czechs belonged to a single nation and saw Bohemia as the center of that nation. His influential pamphlet Bohemia’s Case for Independence declared: The term Czecho-Slovak, or simply the Czechs, includes two branches of the same nation: seven millions of Czechs living in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and three millions of Slovaks inhabiting the north of Hungary … These two peoples have the same civilization, the same language and history: the Slovak dialect hardly differs from the Czech, certainly less than the Slovene from the Serbo-Croat.18

“Two peoples” were branches of “one nation” speaking “the same language” even if the “Slovak dialect” differs slightly from “Czech.” While this Czechoslovakism did not specify the nature and degree of Slovak distinctiveness, Beneš emphatically denied that Slovaks formed a “nation”: “I will never be persuaded to accept the existence of a Slovak nation. This is my scientific conviction, and I am not willing to depart from it.” His belief in Czechoslovak nationhood implied belief in Czechoslovak language-hood: “I will persist in believing and claiming that the Slovaks are Czechs, and that

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the Slovak language is but a dialect of the Czech in the same way as the Hanák language, or any other dialect.”19 The third member of the Czechoslovak triumvirate, Milan Štefánik, was a proper Slovak. An extraordinarily dashing figure, Štefánik had visited Tolstoy in Russia on his way to Samarkand. He observed Halley’s comet in Tahiti and the solar eclipse of 1911 in the south Pacific.20 He acquired French citizenship in Brazil, and won the Légion d’honneur in Ecuador. In 1914, he flew with the French Air force on the Serbian front before joining forces with Masaryk, whom he had first met as chairman of Detvan while studying astronomy in Prague. Štefánik’s Czechoslovakism was sincere. His wartime statements about the Slovak-Czech relationship resembled those of Masaryk and Beneš, and he claimed personal descent from Lutheran refugees fleeing the Czech lands after the battle of White Mountain. His 1918 memorandum to the Italian government, for example, spoke about both “the Czechoslovak nation” and about “the Czechs and the Slovaks.”21 The full ambiguity of Štefánik’s attitude toward the Czechoslovak question, however, is perhaps best captured by his famous remark that “Czechs are Slovaks who speak Czech and … the Slovaks are Czechs who speak Slovak.”22 Observe the centrality of language in this paradoxical formula. The Czechoslovak nation, as imagined by Masaryk, Beneš, and Štefánik, thus proclaimed the fundamental unity between Slovaks and Czechs while acknowledging Slovak distinctiveness. One final document is worth citing because it shows lingering traces of All-Slavism: when the “Czechoslovak National Council” proclaimed its existence in Paris on 26 November 1916, it called on “Czechs and Slovaks, who feel Czech and Slovak” to take up arms against the monarchy since “a new age awaits for us and for all Slavdom.” Masaryk, Beneš and Štefánik all attached their signatures.23 Once established, the Czechoslovak republic, in the preamble to the 1920 constitution, legitimated itself as the representative of “the Czechoslovak nation, desiring to secure the unity of the nation.”24 This unitary national formula dominated government administration: Czechoslovak nationality became, in Derek Sayer’s words, “a fundamental legal category of the first republic.”25 The Czechoslovak census, for example, infamously refused to distinguish between Czechs and Slovaks, treating “Czechoslovaks” as a single category.26 Though a provisional language law from 10 December 1918 had declared that “Slovakia is administered in the Slovak language,”27 on 29 February 1920 this formula was superseded by a federal language law proclaiming that “the Czechoslovak language is the state and official language of the Republic.”28

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Czechoslovak national sentiment also inspired the men who constructed the Slovak school system. Anton Stefánek, the educational representative of the Skalica provisional government established 4 November 1918 and a former contributor to Hodža’s Slovenský denník, made his dual affiliations clear in 1922: “Apart from purely tribal Slovak nationalism, we must love, cultivate and create Czechoslovak nationalism, i.e., the synthesis of all the elements of Czech and Slovak national culture.”29 The first head of the Slovak department in the Ministry of Education, Jaroslav Vlček, was a literary historian who not only had a Slovak mother and Czech father, but had been chair of Detvan. Karel Kálal became responsible for vocational schools. Textbooks were assigned to Albert Pražák, a Czech historian who wrote several books inspired by Czechoslovak feeling. Given these impressive Czechoslovakist credentials, the textbooks of the first Czechoslovak republic were surprisingly lax about promoting the Czechoslovak national idea. Elisabeth Bakke’s exhaustive study found that while Slovak textbooks were more strongly Czechoslovak than Czech textbooks, “even the Slovak books referred to the Slovaks (albeit not the ‘Slovak nation’) much more often than to the ‘Czechoslovaks’ or a ‘Czechoslovak nation’.”30 Most Slovak politicians in the interwar period accepted the rhetoric of Czechoslovak unity while also claiming a certain Slovak distinctiveness. In 1924, Ľudovít Medvecký, deputy for the Slovak Agrarian Party, proclaimed: I make my stand with the unity of the Czechoslovak nation, for I hold that the Czechs and Slovaks are equal and that the Slovaks have an absolutely equal share in all political rights … the Czechoslovak Republic has been established and because the Slovaks have become the entirely free brothers of the Czechs — as two stocks forming one nation.31 Social Democrat Ivan Dérer similarly wrote in 1932 that We Czechoslovaks declare that there exists only a single Czechoslovak nation with two branches equal in rights and of equal value, the Czech branch and the Slovak branch; each of these cultivates its own language, its own culture and its national peculiarities within the framework of Czechoslovak national unity.32 Where Masaryk posited a Czechoslovak nation with two “peoples” (or “tribes”), Medvecký had two “stocks” and Dérer two “branches.” All three agreed that the “nation” was Czechoslovak.

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These concepts of a Czechoslovak “nation” with its constituent Czech and Slovak “tribes,” “peoples,” “stocks” or “branches” resembled the HungaroSlavic concepts of the Habsburg era. Some Slovak politicians even drew upon the Hungaro-Slavic legacy by invoking a Czechoslovak “political nation.” In 1934 Milan Hodža, a former Hlasist and one of the most passionate Slovak supporters of Czechoslovakia, argued that Slovakia should “obtain all of its political and economic interests in the unitary Czechoslovak political nation,” which “in practical politics means not centralism, not autonomy, but state-political-national unity and regionalism with administrative self-government.”33 Slovak linguist Ľudovít Novák even developed a complex theory of multiple nationality in which three different “nations” coexisted. Novák started by claiming that the “state nation, i.e. the nation that creates, maintains and represents the state, is in the Czechoslovak Republic the Czechoslovak nation.”34 This state nation formed “the majority in the state, i.e. the majority state nation,” even though it had “two branches, Czech and Slovak, i.e. with two nations particularly in the ethnic-cultural sense.”35 But Novák also invoked two different “Czechoslovak” nations: The ‘Czechoslovak state nation’ must be distinguished from ‘the political Czechoslovak nation,’ which should be understood in the spirit of the constitution … i.e. state citizens of the republic without respect to nationality, race, language, confession, etc, and also thus without respect to nationality in its ethnic-cultural sense (in other words: including foreign-speaking national minorities). Novák’s Csehoslovák politikai nemzet, like the Magyar politikai nemzet, existed to justify policies of assimilation: “the Czechoslovak Republic is ours, i.e. it is primarily a state of Czechs and Slovaks, and only secondarily a state for Germans, Magyars, Poles, etc. … Czechoslovak state nation gives our republic not only its name, but also its national character.” Novák did not wish to subject Slovaks to assimilation policies, however: Czechoslovakia was “the national state of Czechs and Slovaks,” listed separately, and the republic had an obligation to protect “the idea of an individual Slovak nation in the sense of a different elementary will and consciousness, or in the ethno-cultural sense.”36 Once again, complex terminology masks a simple political stance: Novák wanted to marginalize or assimilate Germans, Magyars and Poles, but wanted Czechoslovakia to recognize and support a distinct Slovak culture. Interwar concepts of Czechoslovak nationality, however, derived not only from the Hungarian political nation, but also from Kollár’s Slavic nation

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with its component tribes. Kollár’s thought received great attention in the early Czechoslovak republic, as pundits applied the concept of “Reciprocity” to every conceivable issue of in Slovak-Czech relations. In 1919 alone, the magazine Prúdy published articles on “Social Democracy and Czechoslovak Reciprocity,” “the Agrarian question and Czechoslovak Reciprocity,” “Tourism and Economic Reciprocity,” and “Economic Reciprocity.”37 In 1924, new editions of Sláwy dcera were printed in both Prague and Martin for the centenary of its first publication.38 In 1934, Milan Hodža even claimed that Bernolák and Štúr (!) had promoted “a program of Czechoslovak reciprocity [československej vzájomnosti].”39 Kollár’s fateful legacy to Czechoslovakia was the idea that a national “language” could encompass multiple scripts. Masaryk, equating “literary language” and “dialect,” wrote that “the Slovaks are Bohemians, in spite of their using their dialect as their literary language.”40 Medvecký similarly invoked both a Slovak and Czechoslovak language by calling for “the special application of the language law so that, together with the official Czechoslovak language, Slovak affairs are usually conducted in the Slovak language.”41 While serving as Czechoslovakia’s minister of education, Dérer, in an English-language pamphlet, contrasted the Czechoslovak language with constituent “idioms”: The Czechoslovak language means, from the legal angle, the general use of Czech in the Czech territories, and the regular use of Slovak in Slovakia, while at the same time any person may freely use either of the two idioms in any part whatsoever of the Czechoslovak Republic.42 As Dérer’s argument progressed, his terminology became increasingly intricate: That the Czechs employ a different orthography and a different literary language than the Slovaks does not by any means signify that Czech and Slovak are not the same tongue … Even the Norwegians have two literary languages, yet it never occurs to anyone to deny the existence of the Norwegian tongue. In this sense the Czechoslovak language exists and has always existed … The truth is that the Czechs and Slovaks, precisely on the basis of the unity of their tongues, have for nearly one thousand years employed a joint literary language — Czechoslovak. According to Dérer, Czechs and Slovaks thus shared a “joint tongue” and a “joint literary language” even though Czech was a “different literary language” with a “different orthography.”43 This outright contradiction illustrates the analytical value of distinguishing scripts from the status of language-hood,

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but also suggests that even the most passionate Czechoslovakists accepted Hattalovčina as the legitimate Slovak script, even while they disputed the existence of the “Slovak language.” Concepts of a Czechoslovak language with two written dialects served a clear political purpose. Political thinkers in Slovakia frequently linked language-hood and nation-hood, and proponents of the Czechoslovak national idea, even if they accepted Slovak orthographic distinctiveness, felt the need for a “Czechoslovak language.”44 Thus Dérer imagined the Czechoslovak language as “a single language which, however, has two equal forms of expression.”45 While this formula may strike the reader as esoteric, it continued a long tradition in Slovak thought, extending back through Hlasism, “North Hungarian Slavism,” and Kollár’s All-Slavism. Linguistic Czechoslovakism with literary dialects may also have drawn legitimacy from the analogous and neighboring case of “Serbo-Croat.” Several foreign observers, furthermore, proved willing to accept the idea of a single “Czechoslovak language” with multiple scripts. Dutch Slavist Nicolaas van Wijk, for example, accepted the term “Czechoslovak language” either “for the whole complex of Czech and Slovak dialects or for the two written language-varieties.”46 These complex ideologies of the “Czechoslovak nation,” and somewhat counterintuitive formulae of the “Czechoslovak language,” though popular, also aroused unease. In 1918, the Prague journal Naše řeč asked: “What is it, a Czechoslovak? A Czech Slovak? and what is that? There are Slovaks in Moravia and Hungary, but none have settled in Bohemia. No Czech or Slovak understands this word.”47 One symptom of this discontent was the divisive “hyphen debate,” which plagued Czechoslovakia until the republic’s dissolution in 1992.48 In 1920, for example, Naše řeč proposed that the unhyphenated noun Čechoslovák coexist with the hyphenated adjective česko-slovenský.49 This discussion also reached the Czechoslovak diaspora: Joseph Štýbr, writing for Chicago’s Czechoslovak Review, proposed that inhabitants of Czechoslovakia adopt the new name “Cheh,” but his editor insisted on distinguishing the “Bohemian,” a citizen of the new Republic, from unhyphenated “Czechoslovaks.”50 Historian Vladimír Kulísek even found that some Czechoslovakists “wanted to eliminate this complication by changing the name of the Czechoslovak state to ‘Middle Slavia [Středoslávie]’ or ‘Great Moravia’.”51 This acrimony comforted the enemies of the Czechoslovak republic, including the post-war government of Hungary. The interwar Hungarian government attacked the Czechoslovak national concept, hoping to undermine Czechoslovakia’s international legitimacy and eventually reclaim Slovakia for Hungary. The Hungarian political elite, which before 1914 had so vehemently

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denied the existence of non-Magyar “nations” in Hungary, thus abandoned the Magyar politikai nemzet and championed a distinct “Slovak nation” in a series of works published in several languages.52 One organization producing English-language propaganda, the “Hungarian Frontier Readjustment League,” affiliated with the Budapest newspaper Pesti Hirlap, published books, pamphlets, and the semi-scholarly Anglophone journal Danubian Review (Danubian News). In a typical essay in Danubian Review, Oliver Eöttevényi wrote that “there are no Czecho-Slovaks, but only Czechs and Slovaks.”53 Eöttevényi even had the audacity to claim that in pre-Trianon Hungary “the racial and linguistic independence of the non-Hungarians was never infringed. For centuries this freedom existed as if it were subconsciously, unprotected by laws, since these were unnecessary.”54 President Masaryk presumably had such texts in mind when he claimed “there is no Slovak nation, it is an invention of Hungarian propaganda.”55 In the months immediately following the war, the most prominent Slovaks to reject the Czechoslovak state indeed had strong Hungarian connections. The most infamous figure was František Jehlička, a Catholic priest who before the war had been a member of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party. Jehlička set up a Slovak council in Geneva and then a government in exile in Poland.56 He was eventually expelled from the Slovak People’s Party for these foreign connections, but continued his campaign against Czechoslovakia from exile in Budapest, where he founded a pro-Hungarian political party, the Magyarbarát Tót Néppárt (literally, the “National Party for Slovak Friends of the Magyars,” which Miroslav Micheal more elegantly called the “ProHungarian Slovak National Party”57). He contributed to the Danubian Review, attacking Czechoslovakia as “a conglomeration of multifarious races” that should properly be called “Czecho-Germano-Slovak-Polish-MagyarRuthenia,” and improbably claiming that “Czech professors in Slovakia make Slovak girls dance naked before them.”58 Jehlička earned plaudits in Budapest and opprobrium in Prague, but lost contact with Slovak society. When he died in Vienna on 20 January 1939, he had become a marginal figure. Andrej Hlinka, prominent Slovak leader since the 1907 Černová massacre and veteran politician from the Slovak People’s Party, proved a more formidable enemy of the Czechoslovak idea, even though, as noted above, he had supported Czechoslovak unity in 1918. The reasons for his disillusionment are not entirely clear, but the impiety of Czechoslovak soldiers played an important role. Hlinka had entertained daydreams that Slovak piety would somehow end the long Czech tradition of free-thinking: “Let us fear nothing, the Czechs will give us culture, and we shall give them faith.”59 When Czechoslovak soldiers occupied Slovakia, their disrespect for Magyar

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clergymen shocked him profoundly. While on his Paris mission, Hlinka told American journalist Stephen Bonsal that he hoped “religious barriers [would] always keep us Catholics apart from those who were Hussites and now are infidels.”60 Hlinka also apparently believed the rumor that Štefánik’s 1919 death in a plane crash was not an accident but a deliberate assassination. He felt considerable personal animosity against Vavro Šrobár, a lawyer, journalist and Agrarian politician. Šrobár was the only Slovak to sign Czechoslovakia’s declaration of independence, and played an important role in establishing the new Czechoslovak administration. Pondering Hlinka’s change of heart, SetonWatson concluded that “temperament and personality played a more vital part than principle or interest,”61 and suggested in 1921 that Hlinka might support the Czechoslovak republic if elevated to the rank of bishop.62 While the causes of Hlinka’s disillusion remain arcane, its public consequences were impossible to ignore. In 1919, Hlinka traveled to Paris, hoping to prevent Slovakia from being attached to Czechoslovakia by appealing directly to leaders of the Entente. Hlinka traveled with Jehlička, a fellow priest and colleague from the Habsburg-era Slovak People’s Party; the trip may have been Jehlička’s idea. Piłsudski’s Poland, strongly Catholic and angry about the Cieszyn/Těšín dispute, provided false passports and other assistance,63 but Hlinka arrived after the treaty had been signed and his mission failed completely. The French government, at Czechoslovak request, expelled Hlinka from France and Hlinka spent six months in a Moravian prison at Mírov. He was released when Masaryk issued a presidential pardon in April 1920, six months later. Hlinka’s Parisian adventure sparked outrage in Czechoslovakia. The Slovak Club in parliament voted unanimously to strip Hlinka and Jehlička of their parliamentary mandates.64 Struggling to find its bearings while its leader was imprisoned, the Populist newspaper Slovák refrained from demanding Slovak autonomy during the February 1920 debate over the Czechoslovak constitution, publishing instead Anti-Semitic editorials, personal attacks against Šrobár,65 and defiant declarations such as: “we are ourselves! We are our own! We are a nation of one speech [reči]! And we will not yield ourselves!”66 By 1921, however, the party had regained its balance and began publicizing a series of proposals for Slovak autonomy. Vojtech Tuka, Slovák’s editor, accepted the need for a common Czechoslovak president, but wanted him to preside over separate republics, each with its own parliament, army, League of Nations seat, judicial system, state flag, and state language. Tuka’s “CzechoSlovak Federal Republic,” in short, resembled the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, save that a president of alternate Slovak and Czech descent replaced the hereditary Habsburg sovereign.67

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In 1922, Hlinka wrote an anti-Czechoslovak manifesto whose English title captures its hysterical tone: “A Country Doomed to Death, A Nation in her Last Agonies Implores the Civilized World for Help.”68 This document illustrates Yeshayahu Jelinek’s observation that “the almost unbelievable amount of demagoguery in the Party’s publications and speeches would flabbergast a contemporary observer.”69 Hlinka began, for example, with a series of economic complaints: “concessions and licenses were withdrawn and given to Czechs,” a dynamite factory’s closure cost thousands of Slovak jobs, and “the cost of rail freight makes Slovak potatoes unduly expensive.” He then characterized these grievances as “acts of violence and villany [sic]” through which “the Czechs possessed themselves of the riches of Slovakia, cheated the Slovak people of their daily bread, and drove them away from their ancestral hearths to distress and starvation.”70 For Hlinka, developments such as “a regulation according to which workmen in Slovakia had to get 15 per cent more wages than in Bohemia” and the fact that “the Slovak University of Pressburg (Bratislava) has been given the czech [sic] name of Komenský, totally strange to the Slovaks,” constituted a “real reign of terror.”71 The Slovak People’s Party, which in 1925 officially renamed itself “Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party — Party of Slovak National Unity,” spent the interwar period advocating autonomy for Slovakia. Its propaganda concentrated mostly on a few key issues: the Czech presence in the Slovak labor market that allegedly cost Slovak jobs, the Pittsburgh agreement in which Masaryk had supposedly promised to grant Slovak autonomy, and the issue of the Slovak language. The linguistic concepts promoted by Hlinka and his party initially resembled the All-Slavic tribalism of the Štúr era: a March 1920 article in Slovák, for example, sought to answer the question “What is Slovak and what is Czech?” within an All-Slavic context: “as Slavs, we have common root words and grammar [with the Czechs], … but as a Slavic tribe we have nothing in common with them. We could be Polnoslovaks, Russoslovaks, Serboslovaks etc., but never Czechoslovaks.”72 Shortly after Hlinka’s release from prison, however, the Slovak People’s Party abandoned this Štúrist All-Slavism and started to speak in the name of a “Slovak nation” speaking a “Slovak language.” Hlinka's followers sought to portray themselves as more purely Slovak than their rivals, since most leading politicians in Slovakia accepted some formula of Czechoslovak “national” unity.73 Hlinka only acknowledged the Slovak national credentials, and thus the political legitimacy, of his own party: “Slovakia is ours, only we are Slovaks.”74 On 25 January 1923, for instance, Hlinka described Slovak politicians from rival parties as national traitors:

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These gentlemen hail from Slovakia, born of Slovak mothers, their native language is Slovak — but they do not belong to any Slovak party … Their official name is not “Slovak,” but “Czechoslovak” party. It is the same as if an Irishman says that he is a member of an English party … As soon as these gentlemen regard themselves as Czechoslovaks, they cease to be Slovaks.75 This hardly does justice to the multiple loyalties of Czechoslovak ideology, and Seton-Watson, to whom this text was addressed, protested that Slovaks who belonged to or supported Czechoslovak parties remained Slovaks. The Slovak People’s Party, however, was unrepentant: With regard to the great indignation of Scotus Viator [R.W. SetonWatson’s pen name] that Hlinka does not consider Hodza, Markovic, and Kallay as Slovaks, we are surprised that he considers them as such, when they themselves do not acknowledge themselves to be members of an individual Slovak nation, but members of some non-existent ‘Czechoslovak’ one.76 Hlinka enjoyed considerable success with such mudslinging: in 1979, decades later, David Paul still felt it necessary to state that “Slovak intellectuals who adopted the Czechoslovak point of view were in no way traitors to their nation.”77 The Slovak People’s Party also sought to disown any Czechoslovak aspects of Slovak history. When Czechoslovak historians discussed Slovakia’s long Bibličtina tradition as evidence of Czechoslovak continuity, for example, Slovák flatly denied that such books had any relevance to Slovak literature: “it is not a document through which Czechoslovak national unity, or a Czech national language in Slovakia, can be proven. It is a book written in Czech, just as there are similar books in many Slovak towns written in Latin, German or even Polish.”78 This disavowal of Czech also had an anti-Protestant dimension, perhaps unsurprising in a party that, in Wolfram Kaiser’s words, “was in the early years almost without exception composed of Catholic clerics.”79 In an 1834 article in Slovák, Jozef Buday, a doctor of Catholic theology, not only described Bibličtina as “Czech,” but downplayed the significance of the Slovak Lutheran intelligentsia: “The use of the literary Czech language by some Slovaks thus in no way proves linguistic and national unity between Czechs and Slovaks … The great majority of the Slovak nation, i.e. the Slovak Catholics, always demanded the use of the mother tongue.”80

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Czechoslovakism, with its sincere ambiguity and intermittent Czechocentrism, finally collided with the demagogic Slovak particularism of the Slovak People’s Party during the failed spelling reform of 1931. Ivan Dérer, then minister of education, formed a committee in the Matica slovenská in order to produce a new generation of Slovak language primers. The chair of the committee was Václav Vážný, a Czech linguist and an expert in Slovak dialectology teaching at Comenius University in Bratislava. The commission also included Jozef Škultéty, author of several books and editor of Slovenské pohľady, and Heinrich Bartek, a Slovak linguist. Their mandate, as Michal Stehlík summarizes, was to devise a Slovak spelling guide “in the modern sense, and in the spirit of the times, and also to bring the Slovak literary language closer to the Czech.”81 As might have been expected, the scholars on this commission quickly found many things to disagree about, and the discussion quickly bogged down over technical linguistic issues. At one point, Škultéty even proposed distinguishing the “new spelling” from the “new literary spelling [novej knižke pravopisnej].”82 Facing a hopelessly divided committee and wishing to complete his assignment, Vážný published the Pravidla slovenského pravoipisu [Rules of Slovak Spelling] without the unanimous support of the committee. An angered Bartek responded with a hostile editorial in Slovenské pohľady.83 This squabble became a major political issue when Hlinka cried in the pages of Slovák that a Czech linguist had “executed our Slovak.”84 Jehlička also denounced “that hybrid language manufactured by the Czech Academy by the order of the Prague government for the purposes of Czechizing the Slovak tongue.”85 Before long, popular protest against Vážný’s reform had united the Catholic St. Vojtech Society with the Slovak Communist party. As James Felak summarized, One hundred thirty Slovak writers, journalists, and publicists signed a letter condemning the new orthography rule book and calling for the resignation of the commission that prepared it. A number of officials and the Matica itself sympathized with the protest.86

At next meeting of the Matica slovenská on 12 May 1932, Vážný was voted off the board of the Matica slovenská to jubilant shouts that “A Czech has nothing to say here!” and “Let the Slovaks speak about Slovak!” Several other members of the commission resigned in protest out of sympathy for Vážný’s humiliation,87 with the result that “Czechoslovakism was run out of the Matica, and it became a stronghold of Slovak nationalism.”88 In 1932, the

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radicalized Matica slovenská began publishing a new journal, Slovenská reč, which denounced “Bohemianisms” from the first issue.89 Ironically, this great success for the cause of a Slovak national language was in part the work of people whose own mastery of Slovak was imperfect. The clergy that comprised the core of the Slovak people’s party, possibly including Hlinka himself, infamously spoke with Hungarian accents: The Czech as spoken by professors at the University is much closer to literary Slovak and much more dignified than the imperfect Slovak in which the word of God is preached by many autonomous [i.e. Slovak People’s Party] priests who to this day have not succeeded in acquiring correct Slovak speech and grammar.90 This oft-quoted passage from Dérer was a partisan attack: he sought to discredit Hlinka as a political rival and justify the ill-fated appointment of Vážný. However, Stephen Bonsal, a foreign observer sympathetic to Hlinka, also described the members of the Slovak People’s Party as speaking “a strange Magyar-German to which every now and then the priest would attach a Latin tag.”91 Seton-Watson also noted that as late as 1922, Vojtech Tuka, the editor of Slovák, could not “shake the habit of signing in the Magyar way, with the Christian name following the surname.”92 Most tellingly, in 1920 Slovák defended several words of Hungarian origin, including kišasonka and tešík (from Hungarian kisasszony and tessék, respectively the honorific “Miss” and “please”) as having a truly Slovak spirit: “we must now get used to slečna, ráčte from a related nation, from the Czech. Everybody feels that these words are nearer to us than the Hungarian kišasonka and tešík but also feels that they are not Slovak, and that we do not properly understand them.”93 The Slovak People’s Party nevertheless found that its support for Slovak was a vote-winning issue, and its political platform advocated the expanded use of Slovak in government administration. In 1937 its deputies introduced a bill aiming to replace the term “Czechoslovak language” with references to distinctly imagined Slovak and Czech languages.94 This challenged the precedent set by previous Czechoslovak governments, which had cited the constitution as justification for conflating the two categories, thus enabling the People’s Party to pose as the defender of Slovak rights.95 But while the Slovak People’s Party was sincere in its loathing of Czechoslovakia, and thus of the Czechoslovak national concept, its championship of Slovak linguistic rights was probably tactical. Hlinka’s true motives, and those of his most devoted followers, were primarily confessional: in all likelihood, they proclaimed Slovak linguistic distinctiveness not out of affection for speech they themselves

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spoke only imperfectly, but because the issue proved an effective weapon for attacking the secular government of Czechoslovakia. Hlinka’s personal motives for defending “the Slovak language,” however, were less important than those of the Slovaks who rallied behind him on this issue. Owen Johnson’s study of education in interwar Slovakia found that in 1918 the bulk of the Slovak-speaking population “were like unmolded clay, practically illiterate, particularly in the Slovak language, and utterly lacking in national consciousness.”96 Yet after a decade of Czechoslovak indoctrination in Slovak schools, Slovaks of diverse political loyalties united to protest against Vážný. Why had the school system of the Czechoslovak government failed to turn peasants into Czechoslovaks? The answer lies in the history of Czechoslovakia education. The establishment of Slovak schools, starting in late 1918, took place against a backdrop of intense Slovak-Magyar confrontation: as Anton Štefánek saw it, the first task was “the liberation of the schools from Hungarian elements.”97 The first Czechoslovak school opened in Skalica on 9 November 1918, using the Hungarian curriculum but not the Hungarian language. This first “Slovak” school in Czechoslovakia only had two Slovak teachers out of a teaching staff of thirteen, since Slovak teachers could not be found.98 Štefánek was however determined not to use Hungarian staff, so he imported some 300-400 teachers from the Czech lands: “we Slovakized [the schools] and insofar as we did not have enough teachers and professors, we Czechoslovakized the schools.”99 At this early stage, even Hlinka accepted the need for Czech help: “we welcome with pleasure any Czech who wants to help us.”100 When Viktor Přerovský, one of the Czech teachers in Skalica, described the first Czechoslovak classrooms, his attention rested primarily on the Hungarian and Jewish students: The great majority of the students do not know written Slovak, and each speaks in his own dialect, while the Hungarians and Jews come up with the most amazing expressions … In so far as nationality is concerned, they are in the majority Slovak, but rather few among them are nationally conscious.101 Přerovský did not divide his Slovak students into Czechoslovakists and Slovak particularists, but into nationally conscious and unawakened. He linked the lack of national feeling to illiteracy, and probably assumed that as his students would acquire Czechoslovak national feeling as they received their education. Slovak schoolteachers, even Czechs such as Přerovský, used Hattalovčina in the classroom. Pedagogical progress in Slovak schools was understandably

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slow at first, since neither teachers nor students properly mastered the medium of instruction. The Slovak intelligentsia was insufficiently numerous to staff the large school system created by the Czechoslovak government. Štefánek was only able to recruit twenty qualified professors from all of Slovakia; in the early 1920s, a school in Ružomberok advertised seven teaching posts without receiving a single Slovak applicant.102 Low standards of instruction implied poorly educated graduates: Slovak newspapers complained in 1922 that graduates of teacher-training institutes had not yet mastered Slovak spelling.103 Imported Czech faculty had to learn Hattalovčina on the spot, which obviously caused problems, though these should not be exaggerated: imported teachers educated to a high standard in literary Czech probably mastered Hattalovčina more rapidly than Slovak colleagues learning their first Slavic script on the basis of education in Hungarian. Milan Hodža judged that “a good number of Czech professors and instructors sent to Slovakia speak and write Slovak much better than more than one Slovak intellectual.”104 The Czechoslovak government made swift progress establishing a Slovak school system. By March 1919, thirteen schools were operating in Slovakia; and by the end of the 1919 school year, eighteen new lyceums and six teachertraining colleges were open, though four offered only intensive language courses.105 By 1926, more Slovak students were graduating from Czechoslovak schools than Hungarian schools. Johnson, comparing the percentage of Slovak students attending Czechoslovak schools with the Slovak percentage of Czechoslovakia’s population, concluded that “in the space of ten years, Slovakia nearly caught up with the Czech lands.106 As the educational gap between Slovaks and Czechs diminished, many observers expected that Slovaks and Czechs would merge into a single nation. As Masaryk confidently proclaimed in 1921, “we are founding schools in Slovakia. We must await their results, in one generation there will be no differences between the two branches of our national family.”107 Seton-Watson similarly predicted that “linguistic unity” would be created “by the natural growth of the next two generations. Czech and Slovak are so close together, so easily interchangeable, that no human effort can prevent each reacting more and more upon the other with every year that passes.”108 In 1929, English traveler Henry Baerlein thought that Slovaks and Czechs were merging linguistically: “the political union is gradually bringing about the return to one language, the Czechoslovak language.”109 In fact, however, the Czechoslovak school system definitively sundered the “Czechoslovak language” into Slovak and Czech halves, destroying the possibility of a single Czechoslovak nation. The theatrics of the Slovak People’s Party should not distract attention from structural changes that

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sundered a potentially Czechoslovak intelligentsia into distinct Czech and Slovaks intelligentsias. Educated Slovaks, pursuing a limited number of whitecollar jobs in the Czechoslovak economy, increasingly described themselves in “national” terms, even when loyal to the Czechoslovak republic as a “political nation.”110 They formed a different interest group, and the temptation to promote this group’s collective interest with national rhetoric proved impossible to resist indefinitely. Czechoslovakia’s schools, though inspired by a Czechoslovak national concept, educated their students in two different scripts: Czech and Hattalovčina. Slovak schools thus created the social group that Hobsbawm memorably described as the “lesser-examination-passing classes.”111 Children of Slovak peasants hoping for a career in “office and school” sat different exams than their colleagues in the Czech lands, since Slovak students were tested on their mastery of Hattalovčina, not their mastery of Czech. The difference in script, symbolized by the difference between Hattalovčina {ä ĺ ô ŕ} and Czech {ě ř ů}, illustrates the non-transferable quality of educations received in the Czechoslovak republic. Czechoslovak schools may have been ideologically Czechoslovak, but orthographically they were either Czech or Slovak, so they prepared their students for careers that were either Czech or Slovak. These new cohorts of examination-passers formed a “vested interest” in Hobsbawm’s sense: a would-be middle class whose members were quick to defend and promote the market for its skills. Benedict Anderson, comparing the career of civil servants to religious pilgrimage, suggested that the possible career paths of civil servants shaped their national aspirations: American Creoles could not aspire to land jobs in Madrid and thus ceased to feel Spanish; Scots could aspire to jobs in London and thus felt British. The use of a distinctive Slovak script, even if this was presented as a “dialect” of a Czechoslovak language, divided the labor market: mastery of Hattalovčina only qualified Slovak graduates for Slovak jobs. Literate Slovaks, furthermore, had an incentive to expand the sphere in which their education was useful, and thus to limit the use of Czech. Thus in the fall of 1937, Slovak students in Bratislava had an economic incentive to demonstrate against the use of Czech in classrooms. The slogan “In Slovak in Slovakia [na Slovensku po slovensky]”112 can be understood as a declaration that Slovakia possessed a unique national soul in the Herderian sense, but also as an attempt to ensure that graduates educated in Slovak would have a wide selection of potential future jobs in schools, courts, public administration, and so forth. The emergence of a distinctly Slovak script community also made Slovak public life qualitatively different. Anderson evocatively described newspaper reading as national communion, a ceremony “being replicated simultaneously

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by thousands (or millions) of others”113 who read the same words at the same time. The newspapers read by Czechoslovak citizens, no matter how sympathetic to the Czechoslovak national ideal, were printed either in Czech or in Slovak. Anderson suggested that newspaper readers shared “an experience of both literary mythology and of the everyday vagaries reported on the front page, to the exclusion of all who did not read the language.” Even if educated intellectuals easily read both Czech and Hattalovčina, the reading public nevertheless became increasingly divided. As literacy in Hattalovčina improved,114 different reading habits generated borders of linguistic exclusion, even along the Slovak-Moravian frontier, where speech habits differed only slightly. Slovak speech may have been assimilable to a Czechoslovak national language, but the emergence of mass literacy in Hattalovčina institutionalized and solidified linguistic difference. Ironically, the school system that destroyed Czechoslovakism had been created and organized by genuine Czechoslovakists. Johnson expressed surprise “that Ivan Dérer, in the public mind a relatively strong supporter of the concept of a unified Czechoslovak nation, should have introduced a policy constructed on the implicit recognition of a separate Slovak nationality.”115 Apparently, the leaders of the Czechoslovak government did not foresee the consequences of their policies. They assumed a Slovak intelligentsia would secure the Czechoslovak state, since it would promote development and modernity, but they were quite mistaken. This analysis leads to interesting counterfactual speculations. What if Štefánek and Dérer, instead of promoting Hattalovčina, had simply introduced Czech into Slovak schools? Seton-Watson, visiting Šariš and Zemplín in eastern Slovakia, asked a group of Slovaks to discuss whether “the plain man’s talk is … as nearly related to Czech as to literary Slovak.” Whatever linguists may think about this question today, Seton-Watson’s informants in the early Czechoslovak Republic proved “incapable of reaching a definite conclusion.”116 Either way, English traveler Cecil Street was probably correct to claim that “there is far less difference between Slovak and Czech than there is between the English spoken by a peasant north of the Tweed and the same language as spoken in Oxford.”117 No purely linguistic obstacle would have prevented Czech from serving as the script used throughout the Czechoslovak republic, and while Czech schools would have undoubtedly have inspired protest, one should not forget that the introduction Hattalovčina had also encountered resistance. Indeed, a Czechoslovak principal working in Prešov, the stronghold of the Dvortchak’s “Eastern Slovak” tradition, reported that the local population opposed Hattalovčina because they believed it was Czech!118 Posters and fliers in Košice

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similarly urged parents: “Don’t put your son or daughter in a Czech school.”119 If Hattalovčina, despite being mistaken for “Czech,” could eventually overcame popular protest and win general acceptance, the actual Czech script, as used in Bohemia and Moravia, might have enjoyed an equivalent success. Had Masaryk, Štefánek, Kálal, Vlček used the educational bureaucracy of the Czechoslovak government to introduce Czech into Slovak schools, most of the Slovak intelligentsia of 1918 would have had to learn a new script. Perhaps, however, they would not have found this unduly challenging: after all, Czech teachers working in Slovak schools seem to have adjusted to Hattalovčina easily enough. In any event, recall that the most generous estimate of the Slovak intelligentsia counted only 3,304 people. This figure was not demographically significant. Counterfactual speculations, however, should not distract us from the historical record: one can never know whether Slovaks would have accepted literary Czech as their script, and thus as their “literary language,” because in fact the Czechoslovak government chose to promote Hattalovčina. Seduced by the Kollárian notion of a single language with multiple written dialects and preoccupied with the struggle against Hungarians and Germans, the Czechoslovak government failed to recognize the danger. Czechoslovak leaders attributed Slovak-Czech tensions to Slovak economic backwardness; they believed that increased Slovak literacy in Hattalovčina would promote economic development, modernize Slovak society, and thus erase those tensions. A modern and developed Slovakia, they believed, would lead to a stable and prosperous Czechoslovak Republic. This confidence was misplaced: literacy in Hattalovčina instead isolated the Slovak middle class in the poorer half of the Republic, creating a class of discontents unable to compete with Czechs in the Czechoslovak job market. The spread of Hattalovčina literacy strengthened the Moravian frontier as a psychological border, delineating the area beyond which Slovak graduates would be disadvantaged in their professional careers. Czechoslovakia, in short, unintentionally became a Slovakizing state.120 This was not what Masaryk, Dérer, Štefánek, Hodža and the rest had intended, but was nevertheless the result of their policies. The policies promoting the Czechoslovak nation, though meant sincerely, were counter-productive: as Johnson summarized, the “program of Czechoslovak state building had turned into one of Slovak nation building.”121 The emergence of Slovak particularist nationalism in the late 1930s was not, of course, the end of Slovak history, nor indeed was it even the primary reason for the emergence of a Slovak state in 1939. The first Slovak Republic, a oneparty dictatorship headed by Jozef Tiso of the Slovak People’s Party, owed its

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creation and existence to Hitler's patronage.122 Tainted by its dependence on Nazi Germany, this republic progressively lost its legitimacy during the Second World War, and became the target of a Slovak popular uprising in 1944.123 The Czechoslovak idea, however, was already dead. After 1945, the leaders of the restored state abandoned Czechoslovakism and reinvented the republic as a joint home for two related and fraternal yet distinct Czech and Slovak nations: Czechoslovaks had become Czechs and Slovaks. The expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s German population facilitated this shift: Czech politicians had insisted on unitary Czechoslovakism partly because “Czechoslovaks” greatly outnumbered the Republic’s Germans, while Czechs on their own did not. After the Beneš expulsions, Czech politicians no longer felt the need to boost their numbers.124 Slovak autonomy within Czechoslovakia remained an issue after the Second World War, and Slovak-Czech relations went through several phases until the Czechoslovak Republic was finally dissolved in 1992. The post-Communist dissolution of Czechoslovakia is an ironic story, given that Slovak support for independence never exceeded 20 per cent of the Slovak electorate.125 The 1992 dissolution of Czechoslovakia, however, lies beyond the scope of this book. Even though 80 per cent of Slovaks wanted to remain citizens of Czechoslovakia in 1992, they wished to do so as Slovaks, not Czechoslovaks. When the final Czechoslovak census of 1991 gave citizens the option of expressing a “Czechoslovak” nationality distinct from Slovak or Czech, only 3,523 citizens of the republic declared themselves “Czechoslovak,” and only 59 of those lived in Slovakia. As Elisabeth Bakke points out, these figures are miniscule “considering that there were a total of 307,004 mixed marriages, nearly two thirds of which were marriages between Czechs and Slovaks.”126 Those Slovaks who wanted an independent Slovakia may have been a minority, but the Czechoslovakism of the majority lacked passion. This book has sought to explain how, when and why Slovak particularist nationalism came into being. The narrative is ironic: the historical forces that caused Slovak particularist nationalism were unintended consequences of other nationalist movements. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Slavic intelligentsia in northern Hungary combined Hungarian loyalism with a distinctive All-Slavic tradition, according to which all Slavs, regardless of their script, spoke the same language. All-Slavic Hungaro-Slavism inspired Štúr’s linguistic separatism. While Štúrovčina was a failure both as a script and a political project, Štúr’s legacy lived on in Hattalovčina, a script that took on a life of its own during the 1860s because the Slovak desire for pan-confessional literature outweighed the desire for Czecho-Slovak cooperation. Slovak nationalism,

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however, only became a mass movement under the first Czechoslovak republic, whose school system created mass literacy in Hattalovčina. This narrative provides an answer to the chicken-egg question posed in the introduction: the Slovak language came before the Slovak nation. More precisely, a literate social class whose social status depended on the use of Hattalovčina in offices and schools generated the Slovak national movement. This linguistic interest group was in turn the product of nationalist agitation, but not of Slovak nationalist agitation: mass literacy in Hattalovčina came from a counter-intuitive combination of unrequited Hungarianism, unrealistic AllSlavism, and incompetent Czecho-Slovakism. Slovak historian Peter Macho has argued “that Slovak nationalism formed itself in a long-term process of reciprocal causes and that two basic factors overlapped: Hungarism and Slavism.”127 This statement is defensible as it stands, but the causal relationship is clearer if the “Slavic” half is further deconstructed: Slovak All-Slavism, presupposing multiple literary dialects in a single language, encouraged both Štúr and the Czechoslovak government to promote Hattalovčina, the distinctly Slovak script that ultimately generated Slovak particularist nationalism. The greatest irony in this narrative is the insignificance of actual Slovak particularist nationalists. Slovak particularism has not been wholly absent from the story: certain passages from Palkovič, Hurban, Štúr, and Lichard foreshadow Slovak particularism, particularly when cited out of context. Genuine Slovak particularists step onstage during the late nineteenth century: both Hurban-Vajanský and Hlinka are best described as Slovak nationalists, though both can also be analyzed in Hungaro-Slavic terms. Hurban-Vajanský, however, was a marginal figure in his own time; and while Hlinka led a significant political movement, he hardly towered over Dérer or Hodža in the eyes of his contemporaries. The most important figures in Slovak history, however, were not Slovak nationalists. Herkel and Kollár, whose linguistic concepts proved so influential, were both Pan-Slavs. Štúr’s linguistic work, perhaps the decisive turning point in Slovak history, grew from Hungaro-Slavism. Masaryk, Štefánek, Šrobár, Dérer, Hodža and the rest of the Czechoslovak government were sincere Czechoslovaks. The individuals whose actions created the Slovak nation, therefore, did so unintentionally. Marx’s famous comment, cited in the introduction, apparently requires an additional caveat: not only are the people who make history unable to make it just as they please; they are often unable to make it as they intend. The assorted Pan-Slavs, Hungaro-Slavs and Czechoslovaks who made Slovak history did not foresee the consequences of their actions.

NOTES

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Note on Conventions Peter Fassler, ed., Lemberg-Lwow-Lviv: Eine Stadt im Schnittpunkt europäischer Kulturen (Cologne: Bohlau, 1993). Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). On the renaming of Bratislava, see Peter Bugge, “The Making of a Slovak City: The Czechoslovak Renaming of Pressburg/Pozsony/Prešporok, 1918-1919.” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 35 (2004), 205-227; Marián Hronský, The Struggle for Slovakia and the Treaty of Trianon, 1918-1920 (Bratislava: Veda SAV, 2001), 156.

Chapter 1 1 Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (Stanford: University Press, 1976). 2 See Bertrand Petenaude, “Peasants into Russians: the Utopian Essence of War Communism,” Russian Review, vol. 54, no. 4 (October 1995), 552-70; Nikodem Bończa Tomaszewski, “Peasants into Poles: Subjectivization as a strategy to Nationhood in the Polish Village at the Turn of the 20th Century,” Sprawy Narodowościowe, vol. 28 (2006), 75-88; Willard Sunderland, “Russians into Iakuts? ‘Going Native’ and Problems of Russian National Identity in the Siberian North, 1870s – 1914,” Slavic Review (Winter 1996), 806-25; Christine Worobec, “ ‘Galicians into Ukrainians’: Ukrainian Nationalism Penetrates NineteenthCentury Rural Austrian Galicia,” Peasant Studies 16, no. 3 (Spring 1989), 199-209; Alan Knight, “Peasants into Patriots: Thoughts on the Making of the Mexican Nation,” Mexican Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1994), 135-61; Nancy Kwang Johnson, “Senegalese ‘into Frenchmen’? The French Techn ology of Nationalism in Senegal,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 10, no. 1 (2004), 135-58. 3 Jasna Čapo Žmegač, “Anton Radić, Peasants into Croats,” in: Dunja RihtmanAugustin, ed., Ethnology, Myth and Politics: Anthropologizing Croatian Ethnology (Hants: Ashgate, 2004), 35-46; Andrew Wilson, “Peasants into Ukrainians?,” in: The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 119-51; Siegfried Weichlein, “Saxons into Germans: The Progress of the National Idea in Saxony after 1866,” in: James Retallack, ed., Saxony in German History: Culture, Society and Politics, 1830-1933 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000), 166-79; Katherine Verdery, “Peasants into Gentlemen, and a liking for

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5

5 7

8

9 10

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Choosing Slovakia Cattle,” in: Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic and Ethnic Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans; Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998); Riccarda Torriani, Nazis into Germans: Re-Education and Democratization in the British and French Occupation Zones, 1945-49 (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 2005); “Balázs Trenscényi, “Peasants into Bulgarians, or the Other Way Round: The Discourse of National Psychology,” in: Shawn Gorman, ed., Locations of the Political (Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conferences, vol. 15, 2003); David Frye, Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town (Austin: University Press, 1996). My personal favorite of all Weberian titles is Leslie Choquette’s Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997). Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1987 [1983]); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Canto, 1992); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983). Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 23. Robert Kaiser used Hroch’s phase theory in his study of Soviet Nationalism, and Lonnie Johnson listed the phases without attribution, as if an established consensus. See Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 34; Lonnie Johnson, “Eastern Europe,” in: Alexander Motyl, ed., Encyclopedia of Nationalism (San Diego: Academic Press, 2001), 165. Roman Szporluk, Ukraine: A Brief History (Detroit: Ukrainian Festival Committee, 1979), 41-54, cited from Paul Robert Magocsi, “The Ukrainian National Revival: A New Analytical Framework,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, vol. 61, no. 1-2 (1989), 50; which also presents Magocsi’s phase theory. Tomasz Kamusella, “Language as an instrument of nationalism in Central Europe,” Nations and Nationalism, vol. 7, no. 2 (2001), 241. Montserrat Guibernau and John Hutchinson, “Introduction,” in: Guibernau and Hutchinson, eds., History and National Destiny: Ethnosymbolism and its Critics (London: Blackwell, 2004), 1-4. See also Anthony Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998). “Taxonomy is not clear-cut in this literature. For Smith and Hutchinson, Armstrong is a perennialist; while for Hutchinson, both Smith and Armstrong are ‘ethnicists’.” See Mirca Madianou, Mediating the Nation: News, Audiences and the Politics of Identity (London: UCL Press, 2005), 9. Cited from Anthony Smith’s celebrated debate with Ernst Gellner; see “The Warwick Debate,” Nations and Nationalism, vol. 2, no. 3 (1996), 358-65. Smith has criticized Anderson for “excessive emphasis on the idea of the nation as a narrative of the imagination” and Hobsbawm for placing “too much weight on artifice.” Naturally, Smith is free to place emphasis or weight on different aspects of the historical record, but this is hardly a rebuttal of modernization theory. Smith elsewhere argues more vigorously against hypothetical misreadings of Hobsbawm

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and Anderson than against Hobsbawm and Anderson themselves. For example, Smith criticized Hobsbawm’s term “invented tradition” since the term “often carries connotations of fabrication and/or creation ex nihilo — something that Hobsbawm is at pains to repute;” he rejected Anderson’s “imagined community” because the term may be used “in just those senses from which Anderson wishes to distance himself.” Anderson and Hobsbawm can, of course, be crudely misinterpreted, but this observation is hardly a serious critique of modernization theory. See Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 130, 137-38. See the important essays in Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: University Press, 1983). Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 97. Lev Dobriansky, “Introduction,” in: Gilbert Oddo, Slovakia (New York: Robert Speller and Sons, 1960), xii. Stanislav Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, The Struggle for Survival (London: MacMillan, 1995), 105. Andrew Wachtel, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford: University Press, 1998). Larry Wolff, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 333. In his introduction, Heymann attacked the validity of his own book: “it would be a mistake to conclude … that these two modern states and the nations from which they developed have anything like an essentially common history, or that they maintained … an especially close relationship with each other.” See Frederick Heymann, Poland and Czechoslovakia (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), v. Mary Fulbrook, “Myth Making and National Identity: The Case of the GDR,” in: Geoffry Hosking, George Schöpflin, eds., Myths and Nationhood (New York: Rutledge, 1997), 72. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 80. Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 2000), 2. Paul Robert Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity: Subcarpathian Rus’, 1848-1948 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 1. A good example of Magocsi’s national work would be A New Slavic Language is Born: The Rusyn literary Language of Slovakia/Zrodil sa nový slovanský jazyk: Rusínský spisovný jazyk (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). On Magocsi’s subsequent career as a Rusyn nationalist, see Martin Fedor Ziac, “Professors and Politics: The Role of Paul Robert Magocsi in the Modern Carpatho-Rusyn Revival,” East European Quarterly, vol. 35 (2001), 213-32. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (London: Methuen, 1977), 169. Tibor Pichler, “1848 und das slowakische politische Denken,” in: Heiner Timmermann, ed., 1848 Revolution in Europa (Berlin, 1999), 167; “The Idea of Slovak Language-Based Nationalism,” in: Tibor Pichler, Jana Gašparíková, eds., Language, Values and the Slovak Nation (Washington DC: Paideia 1994), 37. Jaromír Bělič, Nástin české dialektologie (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1972), 16.

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29 Ľubomír Ďurovič, “Slovak,” in: Alexander Schenker, Edward Stankiewicz, eds., The Slavic Literary Languages (New Haven: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980), 211. 30 Karl Marx, excerpt from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in: Craig Calhoun, et al, eds., Classical Sociological Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 91; I have altered the sexist language from this semi-canonical translation, which is justified in comparison with the original German “Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte…”, see “Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte,” in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels — Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1972), 115. This piece originally appeared in Joseph Weydemeyer, ed., Die Revolution: Eine Zeitschrift in zwanglosen Heften, vol. 1 (New York: Schmidt und Helmach, 1852). 1 2 3

4 5

6

Chapter 2 Heinrich-Moritz Gottlieb Grellman, Statistische Aufklärug über Wichtige Theile und Gegenstände der Österreischischen Monarchie (Göttingen: Vendenhoek u. Ruprecht, 1795), 380. Johann Csapolovics, Gemälde von Ungern (Pest: C.A. Hartleben, 1829), 1:217. John Paget remarked that a traveler to Hungary “must not imagine that he is about to visit one people on entering Hungary, but rather a collection of many races, united by geographical position and other circumstances into one nation, but which still preserve all their original peculiarities of language, dress, religion, and manners.” John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (London: John Murray, 1850), 1:7. See also Christian Gottfried Daniel Stein, Reise=Taschen=Lexicon für Europa (Leipzig: Friedrich August Leo, 1827). Emphasis in original. Grellman, Statistische Aufklärug, 381. This work refers to the Orthodox Slavs of Subcarpathia as “Rusyns.” Subcarpathia, the territory on the near side of the Carpathians as seen from Budapest or Prague, was part of the Hungarian kingdom until joined to the Czechoslovak republic in 1919. It was annexed to Soviet Ukraine in 1945. Ukrainian nationalists, taking Kiev as their point of reference, claim that the Slavs in “Transcarpathia” are Ukrainian citizens and speak Ukrainian, and so therefore are “Ukrainians.” Even if these claims were unproblematic today, the past remains a different country. Paul Magocsi, the leading Anglophone authority on the region, claims the term “Rusyn” was the most common self-appellation during the nineteenth century; and Hugo Lane informs me that the term was “used by East Slavs throughout the Austrian territory, as well as in western regions of the Russian Empire.” Hungarians spoke of the Ruszin or Rutén; the term Rusín was and remains common in Czech and Slovak. Nineteenth century German texts used the term Ruthenen, which many Anglophone authors render as “Ruthenians.” “Rusyn” is an English neologism, strongly associated with Magocsi, but I prefer it to “Ruthenian” because of the latter term has Galician associations. See Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity. See also Ivan Rudnytsky, “Carpatho-Ukraine: A People in Search of their Identity,” in: Peter Rudnytsky, ed., Essays in Modern Ukrainian History (Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1987), 357. On the Sub-/Trans- question, see Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 111. Sincere thanks also to Hugo Lane, personal communication. Anon., “The Slavonians and Eastern Europe,” in: North British Review, vol. 11 (August 1849), 547. Andrew Paton, furthermore, characterized the Slovaks as

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“the industrial Scot of Hungary.” See Andrew Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1861), 2:212. Charles Pridham, however, described the “Sclavacks” as “the same loathsome, indolent savages as were their fathers, three centuries ago,” even in a paragraph describing their importance to the Váh timber trade. Charles Pridham, Kossuth and Magyar Land: Personal Adventures During the War in Hungary (London: James Madden, 1851), 213. Paget, Hungary and Transylvania, 1:85. Bright here discusses peasants just east of Bratislava. Richard Bright, Travels from Vienna to Lower Hungary (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1818), 99, 103. In 1861, an English observer described Bratislava as “the capital of the Slovackey, and the seat of the Slovack intelligence.” See Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic, 2:211. For scholarly treatments of ethnic politics in Bratislava, see Elenóra Babejová, Fin-de-Siècle Pressburg: Conflict and Cultural Coexistence, 1867-1914 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2003); Peter Slaner, “Ethnic Polarisation in an Ethnically Homogenous Town,” Czech Sociological Review, vol. 9, no. 2 (2001), 235-46. For a similar discussion of multiple ethnic claims to Devín castle, near Bratislava, see Gabriela Kiliánová, “Lieux de mémoire and Collective Identities in Central Europe: The Case of Devín/Theben/Dévény Castle,” Human Affairs, vol. 12 (2002), 153-65. Janšák does not specify the date of this estimate clearly, but refers to the seventeenth century. Štefan Janšák, Slovensko v dobe Uhorského feudalizmu (Bratislava: Kuratoria čs. zemedelského muzea, 1932), 32. See János Kende, Péter Sipos, “Industrial Workers and Assimilation in Hungary,” Acta Historica Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 32, no. 1-2 (1986). Robert Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918 (New York: Octagon, 1983), 111. During the eighteenth century, Transylvanian bishop Ioan Mico invoked a Romanian natio in a series of petitions promoting Romanian collective rights; these ultimately inspired the 1791 Suppelex Libellus Valachorum. See Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 62-63. See István Tóth, “Latin as a Spoken Language in Hungary during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in: Eszter Andor-Andrea, ed., CEU History Department Yearbook 1997-98 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 93-111.  This starting point is a fairly conventional historiographical choice: the first sentence in Konštantín Čulen’s 1941 overview of Slovak history is “Emperor Joseph II wanted to have a single administrative language for all of AustriaHungary.” Konštantín Čulen, Memorandum národa slovenského z r. 1861 (Martin: Hlinkova slovesnká ľudová strana, 1941), 3. Kann, The Multinational Empire, 2:60, 53. Grellman, Statistische Aufklärug, 379. Hungarians may have exaggerated their own backwardness: Andrew Janos observed that Hungarian economic growth was rapid during the nineteenth century, particularly in the 1830s and 40s, and again after 1860, and particularly in comparison to Hungary’s eastern and southern neighbors. See Andrew János, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). “Elegyes Belső Tadófitások,” Magyar Kurir, vol. 4, no. 17 (3 March 1790), 293.

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20 The “Slovak” is Bibličtina. German and Latin dominate the songbook; Rumy complained that he had “asked the better Magyar and Slavic poets among my countrymen for submissions.” Rumy spoke German as his native language, but was a sufficiently talented linguist to write and publish in Hungarian, Slovak and Serbian. Karl Georg Rumy, Musen-Almanach von und für Ungarn (Levoča: Joseph Mayer, 1808), 5-6, 124-27. Andreas Angyal, Karl Georg Rumy (1780-1847): Ein Vorkämpfer der deutsch-slawisch-ungarischen Wechselseitigkeit, vol. 8, no. 1 ( Jena: Friedrich Schiller Universität, 1958-59). 21 Angyal, Karl Georg Rumy, 128. Ján Kollár was president of this Pest-based society. 22 Quoted from George Barany, “Hoping against Hope: The Enlightened Age in Hungary,” American Historical Review, vol. 76, no. 2 (April 1971), 345. 23 Quoted from Moritz Csáky, “Introduction,” in: Moritz Csáky, Elena Mannová, eds., Collective Identities in Central Europe in Modern Times (Bratislava: Historický ustav SAV, 1999), 13. In 1778, another Hungarus, György Bessenyei, promoted “cultural nationalism respecting every ethnic group’s right to self-expression,” to cite Peter Sugar’s summary. See Peter Sugar, “The More it Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 31 (2000), 130. 24 Tudományos Gyüjtemény vol. 1 (1826), 13; quoted from László Deme, “Writers and Essayists and the Rise of Magyar Nationalism in the 1820s and 1830s,” Slavic Review, vol. 43, no. 4 (Winter 1984), 629. 25 Horst Haselsteiner, “Comment” on Peter Sugar’s article “The More it Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 31 (2001), 158. 26 Thomson, ignoring the Slovak clerical intelligentsia, wrote that Hungarismus attracted “some few Slovaks, either of the native nobility or of the higher bourgeoisie.” S. Harrison Thomson, Czechoslovakia in European History (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1965), 256-57. 27 Haselsteiner, “Comment,” 158. 28 Miklós Wesselényi, Eine Stimme über die ungarische und slawische Nationalität (Leipzig: Vogel, 1844 [1843]), 201. 29 János Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis: Political Trends and Theories of the Early 1840s (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1993), 54. 30 Barany, “Hoping Against Hope,” 347-48. 31 László Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe: A History of Hungary (Budapest: Atlantisz, 1999), 226. 32 Oddo, Slovakia, 101. 33 Cecil Marcus Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation (New York: Arno Press facsimile, 1971 [London: National Review Office, 1908]), 1: 275. 34 R.W. Seton-Watson, A History of the Czechs and Slovaks (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1965 [1943]), 260. See also Knatchbull-Hugessen, Political Evolution, 1:275-80; Gyula Szekfü, Iratok a magyar államnyelv kérdésének történetéhey 17901848 (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1926). 35 A German nobleman traveling in Italy reports a discussion between two Hungarian nobles. One of them, a “high priestess of the opposition,” complained of the “stubborn pig-headedness of the Croats, who have driven us to distraction with

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40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

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their Latin. Should one believe that after everything that has been done for the culture of our language, so that a native-born Hungarian no longer understands the newest literature, still we must discuss the pro et contra of the necessity that it be elevated to sole language?” Anon., Cancan eines deutschen Edelmannes (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1845), 3:20. Quoted in R. J. W. Evans, “Language and State Building: The Case of the Habsburg Monarchy,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 35 (2004), 9. For a contemporary explanation why “the use of the Latin tongue in diplomatic acts left the national feelings of each race uninjured and unirritated, see Andrew Archibald Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1861), 2:209-10. Quoted from Éva Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs 1765-1800, An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism (Budapest: CEU Press, 1997), 208. Balázs cites Országos Levéltar, Departmentum politicum comitatuum, Dpc 1784, F 202, p.1. Spiegel der Kunst, Eleganz und Mode, no. 13 (13 February 1833), 19. Quoted from Ľudovit Štúr, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig: Robert Binder, 1843), 12. Štúr cited Hírnök, no. 80 (1841), giving “K-u-J” as the author of this plan. Štúr commented: “where are 60,000 Hungarian-speaking soldiers? Certainly not in Hungary!! Here the adventurous plan-maker has allowed himself a small liberty with Hungarian statistics.” Cited from Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, 42. Varga cites Gusztáv Szontágh, Prophylaeumok a társasági philosophiához, tekintettel hazánk viszonyaira (Buda: Emich Gusztav, 1843). Szontágh, Prophylaeumok a társasági philosophiához, cited from Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, 42. Letter of 13 September, 1842, printed in Leo Grafen v. Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843), 27-28. Henrik Marczali, Magyarország Története (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1911), 630. Quoted from Hojč, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus, 111-12. Hojč cites the Allgemeine Zeitung (supplement), 160, 1841; and Társalkodó, 1840. On Slovak attitudes toward Petőfi, see Karol Tomiš, “Petőfi’s Poetry in Slovak Translations (1861-1918),” Hungarian Studies, vol. 11, no. 2 (1996), 181-83. Viktor Karády, Zsidóság, polgárosodás, asszimiláció: Tanulmányok (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1997). Carl Zay, Protestantismus, Magyarismus, Slawismus (Leipzig: George Wigand, 1841), 2. Though intra-Slovak language disputes intensified in this period, I emphasize that I use the term “Language War” only in reference to the national-linguistic conflict between Hungarians and Slavs. Anglophone historiography on Slovakia does not usually give this period a particular name distinct from the Vormärz, but since this study focuses on Slovakia, I have adjusted my periodization to Slovak events. I borrowed the term from the title of Johann Thomášek’s Der Sprachkampf in Ungarn [The Language War in Hungary], a title which presumably inspired Stephen Ludwig Roth’s Der Sprachkampf in Siebenbürgen: Beleuchtung des Woher und Wohin? (Kronstadt: Gött, 1842). Leo Thun also used the term in a letter of 26 February, 1842, as did a Hungarian author in the 1880s. See Johann Thomášek (Thomas Világosváry), Der Sprachkampf in Ungarn (Zagreb: Ljudevit Gaj, 1841);

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52

53

54 55 56

57 58

Choosing Slovakia Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken, 1; Gáspár Tóth, Vertheidigung der Ungarn (Pressburg: Carl Stampfel, 1884), 55. Ján Ormis, O reč a národ: Slovenské národné obrany z rokov 1832-1848 (Bratislava: SAV, 1973). See also Varga, A Hungarian Quo Vadis, 51-72. Quoted from R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 260. Quoted from György Spira, The Nationality Issue in the Hungary of 1848-49 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1992), 38. The Hungarian translation can be found in István Pelyach, “Honpolgárok egyteme,” (Sept. 2002), WWW document, URL: . A different English translation is available in George Barany, “Hungary: From Aristocratic to Proletarian Nationalism,” in: Peter Sugar, Ivo Lerderer, eds., Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Seattle and London: University of Washington, 1969), 269. Pynsent dryly notes that Šafařík’s name “is a problem; he published under the … semi-Hungarian name Safáry, German Schaffarik and Czech Šaffařík,” but never under the modern Slovak “Šafárik.” Šafařík’s contemporaries devised other spellings: Drašković used “Šafařik,” and the subscriber list of Gitřenka gave “Šafarik.” An obituary from 1861 spelled his last name with the contemporary Slovak but with the Czech “Pavel” instead of “Pavol.” This diversity of spelling is curious since Šafařík insisted on a standard spelling in Cyrillic: in an 1836 letter, he asked Pogodin to “bring to the attention of the Russians that they should not write my name with ФФ, but only with Ф: in Greek and Cyrillic one cannot double the Ф, est monstrum, horrendum, ingens!” Pynsent prefers the modern Czech spelling, and I follow his precedent not only with Šafárik but with Kollár, who normally published under the name Kollář. See Robert Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest: CEU Press, 1994), 215; V.A. Francev, Korespondence Pavla Josefa Šafaříka (Prague: Česká Akademie Věd a Umění, 1927-28), 1:529; Janko Drašković, Ein Wort an Iliriens hochherzige Töchter (Zagreb: Ljudevit Gaj, 1838), 48; Gitřenka (Levoča: Jan Werthmüller, 1840); Pešťbudinske vedemosti, no. 30 (4 June, 1861). A Sorb living in Prague and some Carpathian Rusyns also joined the CzechoSlovak contingent. Two Russians attended as guests: professional anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a clergyman from Bukovina. Stanley Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 126. Deák, Lawful Revolution, 123. For a good description of Hungarian national martyrology after 1848, see Alice Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000). In the words of one Hungarian historian, “Although the Slovak leaders had not dropped the idea of coming to an agreement with the Hungarian Revolution even at Liptószentmiklós [Mikuláš], the Hungarian authorities did not so much as allow them time to hand in their petition to the government, but on receiving news of what had happened … instantly issued arrest warrants on the most trivial grounds.” Spira, The Nationality Issue in the Hungary of 1848-49, 81, 92. Deák, Lawful Revolution, 211; Michaelson and Bodea, The Revolution of 1848 in the Romanian Lands (Iaşi: Center for Romanian Studies, 2001). I. D. Suciu, “Rumänen und Serben in der Revolution des Jahres 1848 im Banat,” Revue des études sud-est européennes, vol. 6 (1968), 609-623.

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59 Even the sympathetic Pester Courier admitted that the Slovak volunteers faced a discouraging welcome in Martin, since the Slovak population was “mistrustful.” See Pester Courier, no. 26 (7 March 1849). 60 Therese Pulszky, Aus dem Tagebuche einer ungarischen Dame (Leipzig: F.W. Grunow and Company, 1850), 2:9, 214, 250. 61 The standard treatment of the Hungarian revolution in English is István Deák, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-49 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). 62 Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 67. 63 A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Empire, 1809-1918 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 [1948]), 85. 64 Kann intended this summary of the Bach regime to describe the monarchy as a whole, but note that Slovaks, unlike the Czechs, held few grudges against the Germans. Kann, Multinational Empire, 1:86. 65 Kann, The Multinational Empire, 1:126. 66 C.A. Macartny, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968), 482. 67 On the brief Transcarpathian district, see Florian Zapletal, A. I. Dobrjanskij a naše Rusíni r. 1849-51 (Prague: Nákladem vlastním, 1929); Ivan Žeguc, Die Nationalpolitischen Bestrebungen der Karpato-Ruthenen, 1848-1914 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965). 68 Michal Hodža, Der Slowak, 74. 69 Provinces and seats were allocated as follows: Hungary 85, Bohemia 54, Galicia 38, Transylvania 26, Moravia 22, Venice 20, Lower Austria 18, Steiermark 13, Tyrolia 12, Upper Austria 10, Silesia 6, Istria 6, Krain 6, Bukovina 5, Carinthia 5, Dalmatia 5, and Salzburg 3. 70 Quoted from Arthur May, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951), 83. 71 Kann, The Multinational Empire, 1:135. 72 An English translation appears in Oddo, Slovakia, 124-28. A Slovak version is available in Ján Beňko, Dokumenty slovenskj národnej identity a štátnosti (Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum — Dom slovenskej literatúry, 1998), 1:336-43; for a Hungarian translation, see Mihály Bihari, Ferenc Gazsó, István Vida, eds., Pártok és Politika: Magyarorszígi pártprogramok, 1867-1919 (Budapest: Eötvös, 2003), 71-79. 73 The proposed draft law accompanied the December Memorandum presented to Franz Joseph did not acknowledge the difference between fully and partly Slovak counties; imagine Figure 3 with the “partly Slovak” counties shaded as “Slovak.” Documents 111-112 in Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:344-47, 348-57. 74 Mannová described “memorandum rings and bracelets,” inscribed with lines from the text. Elena Mannová, “Culture in a Multi-Ethnic Environment, Way of Life, Regional and Social Differences,” in: Elena Mannová, Roman Holec, eds., A Concise History of Slovakia (Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 2000), 217. For a photograph of a “commemorative glass,” see Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:330. 75 Ministry oversight worked to strengthen Magyar dominance, since the franchise for these assemblies was restricted to virilists, the largest taxpayers. Kontler commented that “most of the anti-democratic features of these measures placed

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84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91

Choosing Slovakia the ethnic minorities, which were over-represented among the rural poor, at a peculiar disadvantage.” See Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe, 285. See Leslie Tihany, “The Austro-Hungarian Compromise, 1867-1918: A Half Century of Diagnosis; Fifty Years of Post-Mortem,” Central European History, vol. 2, no. 2 ( June 1969), 114-138. I. T. Berend, G. Ranki, Hungary: A Century of Economic Development (Devon: David and Charles Holdings, 1974), 29, 35-6, 43. This quotation does not come directly from Kisfaludy társaság, but from a summary printed in Slavisches Centralblatt (13 January, 1866), 14. No Magyars attended St. Slava celebrations in 1867, though Magyar notables had regularly been present in the years before. Gale Stokes, Legitimacy through Liberalism (Seattle, London: University of Washington Press, 1975), 96-97. Quoted in Peter Sugar, ed., A History of Hungary (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1990), 249. For Viennese writer with ties to liberal journalists expressing fear of Pan-Slavism, see Berta Szeps, My Life History (New York: Knopf, 1939), 80. After consulting with Slovak leaders, Serbian deputies tabled a draft law for discussion; Magyar deputies mostly ignored it. See Barany, “From Aristocratic to Proletarian Nationalism,” 279. Medieval history explains Hungarian willingness to extend special consideration to the Croats. The medieval Croatian kingdom had its own crown and law; since Magyar patriots based their claims against the Habsburgs on medieval precedent, they respected Croat rights. Croats then imitated the Magyars, conflating “Croatian political nationality” with Croatian culture. August Harabašić, for example, called on Serbs to “simply declare that you are Croatian citizens, that your homeland is Croatia, and that you are in that regard political Croats.” Nicholas Miller, Between Nation and State: Serbian Politics in Croatia Before the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 55, 43. Miller took the Harabašić quotation from Stenografički zapisnici sabora Kraljevine Hrvatske, Slavonije, i Dalmacije (Zagreb: Kraljevska zemaljska tiskara, 1903), 2:2:70. See also Vasilije Krestić, History of the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia, 1848-1914 (Belgrade: Beogradski izdavačko-grafički zavod, 1997), 102, 104-05. For a Hungarian noble who respected Croatia’s legal distinctiveness see Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken. Gábor Kemény, Iratok a nemzetiségi kérdés történetéhez Magyarországon a dualizmus korán, vol. 1 (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1952), 49-52. For a Slovak translation, see Beňko, Dokumenty, 1: 361-366. In case of conflict between Hungarian and another language, Hungarian would always prevail. Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:362. Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:361-66. This provision was abandoned because “Eötvös’ original proposal enjoyed no support at all in leading Hungarian circles.” Paul Bödy, Jozef Eötvös and the Modernization of Hungary: 1840-1870: A Study of Ideas of Individuality and Social Pluralism in Modern Politics (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1985), 113. May, The Habsburg Monarchy, 83. Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe, 283. Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: Phoenix, 1964 [1929]), 317. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 165.

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92 Matica is Serbian for “queen bee.” Serbs in Pest founded the Matica srpska as a center for literary and cultural activity in 1826. The Serbian example inspired the Matica Česká in 1834, the Matica Ilirska in 1842, the Maćica Serbska (for Lusatian Sorbs) in 1845, the Halicsko-russka Matica in 1848, the Matica Moravská in 1849, and a Slovene Matica slovenska in 1864. A Dalmatian Matica was first proposed in 1849, but did not get off the ground until 1862. Russians never founded a Matica, presumably because the Russian Academy of Sciences filled the need. See “Die slavischen Matica-Vereine,” Slawisches Centralblatt (2027 January, 1866), 17-18, 25-28. 93 Peter Toma and Dušan Kováč, Slovakia: From Samo to Dzurinda (Stanford: Hoover Press, 2001), 37. 94 Quoted from John Lukacs, Budapest, 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), 126. 95 R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 272. 96 Jósef Madarász claimed that “true citizens” would desire “not only an independent and free Hungary, but also a Magyar state!” Adolf Zay however called for “patience, legality, and equality for the law,” and both Serbian and Romanian deputies denounced the law. See the anonymous volume Magyarisirung in Ungarn (München: Theodor Ackermann, 1879), 30, 80; also Tisza’s speech 51-54. 97 Sugar, “The More it Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” 139. 98 László Katus, “Die Magyaren,” in: Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848-1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), III.1.479. 99 Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-Central Europe since the Congress of Vienna (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970), 98. 100 Quoted in Sugar, “The More it Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” 142. Sugar cites Ferenc Pölöskei, Kormányzati Politka és parlamenti ellenzék, 1910-1914 (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1970), 50. 101 For a Magyar justification for closing Slovak schools, see László Ruttkay, A felvidéki szlovák iskolák megszűntetése 1874-ben (Pécs: Felvidéki Tudomanyos Társaság, 1939), 92-96, 121-23. Józsa Hévizi’s summary of this work claims that a Slovak teacher named Zoch had forbidden students to speak Hungarian or dance Hungarian dances, while a student named “Csuík” dismissed Hungarian as a language for draymen and expressed a preference for Mongol. See Józsa Hévizi, Autonomies — Hungary and Europe: A Comparative Study (Buffalo: Corvinus Society, 2004), 54. 102 Ľudovít Holotík, “Die Slowaken,” in: Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848-1918 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), III:2:781. 103 Kann, The Multinational Empire, 1:272. 104 Joseph Zacek, “Nationalism in Czechoslovakia,” in: Sugar, Lerderer, eds., Nationalism in Eastern Europe, 190. 105 Oddo, Slovakia, 116. 106 Macartny, The Habsburg Empire, 729. 107 Palacký made this outburst on 12 December, 1865; it proved empty bluster. Otto Urban, Die tschechischen Gesellschaft, 1848-1918 (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 1994 [1983]), 311.

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108 Holotík, “Die Slowaken,” 783. 109 Milan Podrimavský, “The Idea of National Autonomy in Slovak Politics (18481914),” Studia Historica Slovaca, vol. 19 (1995), 121-22. 110 Podrimavský, “The Idea of National Autonomy,” 124. 111 Marie Neudorfl, “Slovakia in the Czech Press at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in: John Morison, ed., The Czech and Slovak Experience (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 55. 112 Quoted in R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 273. Also available in Oddo, Slovakia, 147. 113 R.W. Seton-Watson, “The Persecution of the Slovaks,” letter to the London Spectator (14 December, 1907). Reprinted in Jan Rychlík, ed., R.W. Seton-Watson and his Relations with the Czechs and Slovaks, Documents (Matica slovenská: Ústav T. G. Masaryka, 1995), 137. 114 Quoted from Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, 321-22. 115 William Wallace, Czechoslovakia (Boulder: Westview, 1976), 95. 116 See Beňko, Dokumenty, documents 119, 120. 117 Macartny, The Habsburg Empire, 733. 118 See Victor Mamatey, “The Establishment of the Republic,” in: Victor Mamatey and Radomír Luža, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Josef Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1986); Josef Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). The importance of Anglophone opinion inspired the Czechoslovak legation to publish several pamphlets in English; see in particular Vladimir Nosek, Independent Bohemia (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1918); Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation by its Provisional Government (18 October 1918, Paris). Other document collections include Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson; Frank Hadler, ed., Weg von Österreich! Das Weltkriegsexil von Masaryk und Benes im Spiegel ihrer Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1918 (Berlin: Akademie, 1995). 119 Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation, 4. Also reproduced in Karen Henderson. Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility (London, New York: Rutledge, 2002), 5. The “Secretary to the Czecho-Slovak Legation in London” also spoke of the “appalling terrorism prevailing in Hungary.” See Nosek, Independent Bohemia, 132. 120 Ľudovít Holotík, Štefánikovská legenda a vznik ČSR (Bratislava: SAV, 1958), 14. 121 Vladimir Matula, “The Conception and the Development of Slovak National Culture in the Period of National Revival,” Studia historica slovaca, vol. 27 (1990), 153. 122 Jozef Lettrich, History of Modern Slovakia (New York: Praeger, 1955), 42. 123 For the crudest type of Hungarian apologia written in English, see Albert Apponyi, ed., Justice For Hungary: Review and Criticism of the Treaty of Trianon (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1928). For an uncritical British Magyarophile, see Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation. For a sophisticated pro-Hungarian study, see C.A. Macartny, Hungary and her Successors. The Treaty of Trianon and its Consequences, 1919-1937 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937).

Notes

199

124 See Ľubica Droppová, “Reflixia ‘svojho’ a ‘iných’ etník v  slovenskom folklóre (k otázkam etnickej identity Slovákov),” Slovenský národopis, vol. 46, no. 2 (1998), 156. 125 Gunther Rothenberg, “The Habsburg Army in the First World War: 1914-1918,” in: Robert Kann, Béla Király, Paula Fichter, eds., The Habsburg Empire in World War One (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1997), 79. 126 These figures are widely cited. See for example Miroslav Kusý’s 1991 essay “Slovenský fenomén,” in: Rudolf Chmel, ed., Slovenská otázka v 20. storočí (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1997), 465. Kusý draws his figures from František Bokes, Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov (Bratislava: SAV, 1946), 176. One Hungarian scholar, however, claims that only 8 per cent of the Slovak volunteers were Slovaks: the rest were “Czechs and Viennese riffraff.” See Józsa Hévizi, Autonomies — Hungary and Europe: A Comparative Study (Buffalo: Corvinus Society, 2004), 52; originally published as Autonómia típusok Magyarországon es Európában (Budapest: Püski, 2001). 127 This figure comes not from disgruntled Hungarians, but the Slovak Academy of Sciences. See Mannová and Holec, A Concise History of Slovakia, 196. Therese Pulszky also characterized the “Farmer-Heroes” who defeated Hurban’s third operation as predominantly Slovak. Pulszky, Tagebuche einer ungarischen Dame, 2: 249. 128 Daniel Rapant, Slovenské povstanie roku 1848-49, five volumes (Bratislava: SAV 1937-1967). 129 Kann, The Multinational Empire, 1:81. 130 Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 172. 131 Győrgy Lukács, “The Injustices of the Treaty of Trianon,” in: Albert Apponyi, ed., Justice For Hungary: Review and Criticism of the Treaty of Trianon (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1928), 147. 132 Anthony Filkorn, Albert Mametey, Memorandum Slovenskej Ligy v Amerike, vydané menom Amerických Slovákov (10 September, 1914). Printed in Slovenský Sokol (New York: 30 November, 1914); and Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:436. An English translation is available from Gregory Ference, Sixteen Months of Indecision: Slovak American Viewpoints toward Compatriots and the Homeland from 1914 to 1915 as viewed by the Slovak Language Press in Pennsylvania (London: Associated University Press, 1995), 200-209. 133 Cited from Ference, Sixteen Months of Indecision, 147. Ference commented that this showed “the political immaturity of the New York Slovaks.” 134 See Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 30-31. Chapter 3 1 See Alexander Maxwell, “Hungaro-Slavism: Territorial and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Slovakia,” East Central Europe/l’Europe du Centre-Est, vol. 29, pt. 1 (2002), 45-58. 2 Some Anglophone scholars have distinguished [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial] with the contrast between “Magyars” and “Hungarians.” Robert Pynsent, for example, wrote: “I use ‘Hungarian’ to mean someone living in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen and ‘Magyar’ for someone whose native language was Hungarian or who considered himself to belong to the Magyar race.” Pynsent felt that this

200

Choosing Slovakia

explanatory footnote provided sufficient justification for statements such as “Both [Kollár and Šafařík] were Hungarians.” This usage breaks with everyday English usage: it becomes nonsensical, for example, to speak of “the Hungarian language.” I have felt the need to devise a blunter terminology. Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 44, 214. 3 István Szamota, Magyar oklevél szótár (Budapest: Hornyánszky Viktor Könyvkereskedése, 1902-06), 606. 4 Alexander Maxwell, “Magyarization, Language Planning, and Whorf — The Word ‘Uhor’ as a Case Study in Linguistic Relativism,” Multilingua, vol. 23 no. 3 (2004), 319-337. 5 I first encountered the “Onogur” derivation from Colin McEvedy’s nonspecialist New Atlas of Medieval History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 44. Perhaps, by presenting McEvedy’s hypothesis, I have fallen into the common trap of believing the first folk etymology one encounters. However, medievalist J. Szűcs derived “the name ungri ~ ungari ~ Hungari” from “the name of the Onogur confederation of tribes to which the ancestors of the Magyars once also belonged,” and Gogolák also supported the Onogur thesis. Some Hungarian scholars derive Onogur from Turkic words for “ten arrows,” signifying ten tribes; Béla Kálman and Charles Macartney both promoted this theory. See Lázló Veszprémy, Frank Schaer, eds., Simon of Kéza: The Deeds of the Hungarians (Budapest: CEU press, 1999), xlvi; Ludwig v. Gogolák, Beiträge zur Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 1:48; Béla Kálmán, The World of Names: A Study in Hungarian Onomatology (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1978), 105; Charles Macartney, Hungary: A Short History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962), 6 6 Just as gray is American and grey British, so uhor is Slovak and uher is Czech. Confusion over the correct form persisted. In 1902, for example, Czambel explicitly proscribed “Uher, uherský” and “Uhersko,” giving “Uhor, uhorský” and “Uhorsko” as the proper forms. Samo Czambel, Rukoväť spisovnej reči slovenskej (Martin: Vydanie kníhkupeckeho-nakladateľského spolku, 1902), 360. 7 The variant Uhár also existed, see e.g. Michal Hodža’s Štúrovčina Dobruo slovo Slovákom (Levoča: Tatrín, 1847), 78; Samo Czambel, Príspevky k dejinám jazyka slovenského (Budapest: Joloman Rózsu a manželka, 1887), 1. 8 The {ř} has no relationship to the vowel {e}, but instead derives from the convention that final {-i} palatalizes the preceding consonant. The vowel {e} in the word “Uher” and use of {ř} are theoretically independent variables, but in practice, both are associated with Bibličtina, and a Slovak author who used one likely used the other. 9 Slovak texts referring to “Maďarorság” include Jozef Škultéty to G. Augustin, 24 October 1886. Michal Kocák, ed., Listy Jozefa Škultétyho 1871-1910 (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1982), 49; ‘Naši Maďaróni’ in Slovák, vol. 2, no. 99 (20 May, 1920). Other Slovaks posited magyari who spoke magyarski. Ján Francisci, for example, added Slavic inflections to Hungarian root words in an 1846 letter to Štúr: “Keď som ja z Magyarmí magyarski hovoriu…” See Karol Rosenbaum, ed., Listy Ľudovita Štúra (Bratislava: SAV, 1960), 3:87. 10 The title page of Komenský’s Orbis Sensualium Pictus is reproduced in Vojtech Breza, Tlačiarne na Slovensku, 1477-1996 (Bratislava: Univerzitná knižnica, 1997), 80. This quatralingual work gives a Latin, German and Hungarian name

Notes

11

12 13 14

15 16

17

18 19 20

21 22

201

for the Slavic language of northern Hungary (Bohemica, Böhmisch, and Tót, respectively), but does not describe it with any Slavic word. Presumably this reflects language purism: Bernolák rejected maďar as an unnecessary loan word for which uher was a perfectly serviceable Slavic equivalent. Anton Bernolák, Slowár Slowenská= Česko= Laťinsko= Německo= Uherski seu Lexicon Slavicum (Buda: Typographie Universitatis Hungaricae, 1825), 4:3407. Karl Bobok, Martin Ďurgala, Prakycká uherská gramatyka (Trnava: Felix Wachter, 1835). Both Slovak words are translated with the German Ungar. Jungmann also described the Hungarian language as uherčina. Josef Jungmann, Slownjk Česko‑Německý (Prague: Arcibiskupská knihtiskarna, 1835), 1:717-18. “O Christians! Have you ever dreamed of anything more horrible and terrible than the many horrors and terrors which stand before your eyes in the present unhappy French Revolution?” Mossotcy explicitly rejected the notion of equal citizens: “The heavenly angels have their princes and archangels; dark devils their Lucifer and Beelzebub, and outlaws their captains and hetmans.” Michal Mossotcy [Michala Institoris], Strom bez kořene, a czěpice bez hlawy: to jest nesstastný staw kraginy bez krále (Bratislava: Simon Petr Wéber, 1793), 14, 25. Mossotcy, Strom bez kořene, a czěpice bez hlawy, 16. Juraj Palkovič, Známost Wlasti, Neywjc pro sskoky slowensčé w Uhřich (Bratislava: Simon Petr Weber, 1804), 1:13. I thought it unwise to attempt a translation which preserved the rhyme. Note that Palkovič described the ethnic Hungarian as an Uher, not as a Maďar. Quoted from Moritz Csáky, “Die Hungarus-Konzeption: eine ‘realpolitische’ Alternative zur magyarischen Nationalstaatsidee?” in: Adam Wandruszka, ed., Ungarn und Österreich unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaftern, 1982), 80. All proper names and adjectives derived from them have been left in the German original, including the neologism “Arpadier.” Samuel Hojč, Sollen wir Magyaren Werden? Sechs Briefe geschrieben aus Pesth (Karlstadt: Johann Prettner, 1833), 1. István Széchenyi, the “greatest Hungarian” of lore, commented in his diary “bitter, but mostly true.” Ján Ormis, O reč a národ: Slovenské národné obrany z rokov 18321848 (Bratislava: SAV, 1973), 813. Šulek was born in Slovakia, but moved to Croatia as a young man and became a passionate Illyrian. Copies of Šulek’s booklet, interestingly, found their way back to Bratislava. The edition in Bratislava’s university library once belonged to Ľudovít Štúr: Štúr signed his name in the front with his own hand. Šulek thus embodies the mutual interaction between Slovaks and South-Slavs. Bogoslav Šulek, Šta naměravaju Iliri? (Belgrade: Pravitelstvena knjigopečatnja, 1844), 37. Hojč deserves special emphasis because both Slovak and Hungarian historiography tend to ignore him. This may be because his ideas find no resonance in twentiethcentury nationalist concepts, but it is also worth noting that Hojč shunned public limelight to such an extent that Sollen Wir Magyaren Werden? was falsely attributed for over a century. Ján Kollár was first suspected, then Croatian official Antony Vanković. That the potential attribution leapt from a Slovak to a Croat demonstrates both the affinities between Slavs in the north and south of Hungary and Hojč’s influence throughout the Hungarian kingdom.

202

23

24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Choosing Slovakia See R.W. Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969 [1911]), 28. Note that Adolf Zay discussed “Arpad’s sons” in the Hungarian parliament: see his speech in Magyarisierung in Ungarn (München: Theodor Ackermann, 1879), 14. Note that Maďarshchyna is a derogatory colloquialism used only in western Ukraine. Standard Ukrainian, probably under Russian influence, only uses Uhorshchyna. Romanian has only one word for “Hungary,” Ungaria, and while Romanian has a word pair maghiar and ungur they seem to be stylistic variants. Romanian also has two words for the Hungarian language, a vorbi ungureste and limba maghiara. Certainly, Romanian patriot Alexander Vajda did not make this lexical distinction when writing in German in 1910: both “Romanians and Magyaren,” he wrote in German, “are members of the magyarischen Nation with equal rights.” Vajda’s Slavic contemporaries would have posited an ungarischen Nation. Romanian reformer Aurel Popovici, however, distinguished the ungarische Staat from the magyarische in the Slavic fashion. Letter of January 14, 1910, quoted in Keith Hitchens, ed., The Nationality Problem in Austria-Hungary; The Reports of Alexander Vaida to Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s Chancellery (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), 132; Aurel Popovici, Die vereinigte Staaten von Groß-Österreich (Leipzig: Elishcer, 1906), 52. For linguistic information, I am indebted to Yaroslav Hrytsak (Ukrainian), Alina Preda (Romanian), and Djurdja Hrzenjak (Slovene and Croat). Ján Beňko, Dokumenty slovenskj národnej identity a štátnosti (Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum — Dom slovenskej literatúry, 1998), 1:269. Hojč, Apologie, 72. Hojč, Apologie, 73. The word Hunnia derives from the ethnonym Hun, the early-medieval nomadic people whose leader Attila won such enduring fame. Despite the fact that the Huns were probably a Turkic people, many Hungarian nationalists claim ethnic kinship with them. Mainstream scholarship rejects this thesis utterly. Lászlo Deme, “Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism among the Hungarian Radicals,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 12-13, pt. 1 (1976), 37. Leo Grafen v. Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843), 7. The parenthetical explanation is Thun’s. I left the proper names untranslated. Thun, Stellung der Slowaken, 20. Thun, Stellung der Slowaken, 28. Franz Löhner, Die Magyaren und andere Ungarn (Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1874), 14. Spectator (December, 1907). Cited from Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 925. Emily Balch, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910), 112. Rustem Vambery, Hungary – To Be or Not to Be (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1946), 61. Hojč, Apologie, 11. Hojč went on to claim that this derivation had been “established as clearly as is possible.” Alexander Pusztay, writing in German, similarly asserted in 1843 that “the name ‘Ungar’ or ‘Hungar’ is indisputably of Russian-Slavic origin” without providing any etymology. See Hojč, Sollen wir Magyaren Werden? 28; Alexander

Notes

37 38 39 40 41

42 43

44

45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52

203

Pusztay, Die Ungarn in ihrem Staats- und Nationalwesen von 889 bis 1842 (Leipzig: Meyer, 1843), 1:15. Jozef Cieker, Slovenská otázka na prelome storoči (Bratislava: Nakladateľstvo slovenskej ligy, 1935), 195. Cieker cites Slovenskje národnje novini, no. 195 (1847). Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 23. One scholar of Slovak literature has called the Národinié zpiewanky “a textbook for the romantic period.” Peter Petro, A History of Slovak Literature (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), 58. Jan Kollár, “Pešt a Temešwár,” in: Národinié zpiewanky čili pjsně swětské Slowákůw w Uhrách (Buda: Králowská universická tiskárna, 1834), 1:390. Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 42. Békés is in the south-east of modern Hungary, not far from the Romanian border; the Slovak settlement there still exists. Kollár apparently had good contacts there: several Békés correspondents contributed to his Hlasowé. The Hungarian word is istenem [my God]. Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 86. A line in verse three, furthermore, contains the phrase “špacierugem kde se ljbj [I stroll where I please]”: note that Kollár affixed a Slavic suffix to an italicized German root, yet spelled the German root with Slavic orthography, including {š}. Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 179. A 1988 Yiddish songbook published in New York, however, includes the trilingual song “Katarina Moloditsya Poydi Syuda,” in which a Yiddish-speaking narrator ironically interprets the syllables of a bawdy Ukrainian melody as a Hebrew prayer. The Mloteks note that this song was a favorite of pioneer sociolinguist Uriel Weinreich. Elenor and Joseph Mlotek, ‫פּערלן פון יידישן ליד‬/Pearls of Yiddish Song (New York: Education Department of the Workmen’s Circle, 1988), 167. According to Jozef Škultéty, “Historians of Magyar literature accused Kollár of mystification” for allegedly copying the poem “Sziladi a Hadmázdi” (Národinié zpiewanky, 1:45), from a Hungarian source. Škultéty argued that the Hungarian was in fact a translation from Slovak. See Joseph Škultéty, Sketches from Slovak History (Middletown, Pennsylvania: First Catholic Slovak Union, 1930), 135-36. The “Slovak” poem was in Bibličtina. The Transylvanian German was in a “kronstädtisch-siebenbürgisch-sächsischer (deutscher)” dialect song with a HighGerman translation. See Karl Georg Rumy, Musen-Alamanch von und für Ungarn (Levoča: Joseph Mayer, 1808). See Ľubica Droppová, “Reflexia ‘svojho’ a ‘iných’ etník v slovenskom folklore (k otázkam etnickej identity Slovákov),” Slovenský národopis, vol. 46, no. 2 (1998), 147-62, esp. 155-56. “Odboj kupov,” Samo Chalupka, Spevy Sama Chalupku (Martin: Nákladom kníhtlačiarskeho účastinárskeho spolku, 1912), 37. Chalupka, Spevy, 37-39. Originally published in Orel, 1875. Slovenské Noviny, no 36 (23 March, 1861). Gogolák also commented dryly that “as a born political speaker, J. M. Hurban was not excessively suited to his spiritual office.” Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:165-66. I was only able to cite this text from a 1960 Hattalovčina reprint of Hurban’s travelogue. Hurban’s original phrase was probably “gsem Uher”. Jozef Hurban,

204

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75

Choosing Slovakia Cesta Slováka k slovanským bratrom na Morave a v Čechách (Bratislava: Slovenské vydavateľstvo Krásnej literatúry, 1960), 52. Originally published in Pest, 1841. Hurban, Cesta Slováka, 52. Jozef Hurban, Českje hlasi proti Slovenčiňe (Skalice: Skarniel, 1846), 26. Ľudovít Štúr, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig: Robert Binder, 1843), 35. Jozef Ambruš, Slovo na čase (Martin: Kompas, 1941), 1:93. Ambruš cites Ľudovít Štúr, “Ňeopúšťajme sa!” Slovenskje národňje novini (14-24 April, 1846). Ľudovít Štúr, “Najstaršje príhodi na zemi Uhorskej a jej základi,” Orol Tatrásnky, vol. 1, no. 1 (1845), 42. Bohuš Nosák, “Listi k ňeznámej zeme …” Orol Tatrásnky, vol. 1, no. 11 (1845), 85. Later, the hero also declares his loyalty to King Matyás. Janko Kalinčjak, “Milkov hrob,” Orol Tatrásnky, vol. 1, no. 8 (1845), 60. See Orol Tatrásnky, vol. 1, no. 14 (1845), 109. Hodža, Der Slowak, 73, 14, 9, 26. The two different words for “our” in this sentence draw a distinction that cannot be made as elegantly in English. Svojej národnosťi [our nationality] referred to the subject of the sentence, i.e. the non-Magyar inhabitants of Hungary. Našej vlasťi [our homeland] included the Hungarian audience. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 30. The Magyar is addressed with the informal “du,” which I felt justified the informal use of contractions in my translation. Michal Hodža, Der Slowak: Beiträge zur Beleuchtung der slawischen Frage in Ungarn (Prague: Expedition der slawischen Centralblätter, printed in Altstadt, Königsbad, 1848), vi. Michal Hodža, Der Slowak, 74-75. Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:311. Beňko cites Golaň, Príspevok k vývoju slovenskej politickej myšlenky (Bratislava: Slovenská učená spoločnosť, 1940), 270-76. Výzava k národu slovenskému, in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 1: 316. Pamätný spis návrhov riešenia slovenskej otázky, in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:318-119. Pamätný spis, in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 318. Emphasis in original. Daniel Lichard, Rozhovory o matiči slovenksej (Banská Bystrica: Matičnych spisov no. 4, 1865), 8. After Lichard’s parson-spokesman explains the distinction between uhor and maďar, a member of the audience exclaims “it’s very strange to me, strange! [Divno mi je to, divno!]” Lichard apparently feared a peasant audience might not understand the lexical distinction between [Hethnic] and [Hterritorial], providing historians a useful reminder of the gap separating peasants from intellectuals. Lichard, Rozhorory o matiči slovenksej, 8. Ondrej Radlinský, Školník … pre katolícke elementárne školy (Vienna: Mechitaristov, 1871), 1: 272. Anon., “Nejnowejssja slowenská pjeseň,” Mali obrázkowi Kalendár (Budapest: Alojz Bučásnsky, 1871), 32. František Sasinek, Dejepis Slovákov (Ružomberok: Karl Salva, 1904), 29. See Alexander Maxwell, “Budapest and Thessaloniki as Slavic Cities (1800-1914): Urban Infrastructures, National Organizations and Ethnic Territories,” Ethnologie Balkanica, vol. 9 (2005), 43-64. Joseph Vavrovič, Jean Palárik, son oecuménisme et son panslavisme (Cleveland: Slovak Institute, 1974), 147.

Notes

205

76 Vavrovič, Jean Palárik, 265. 77 “Memorandum národa slovenského,” in Beňko, Dokumenty 343. 78 “Regnum unius lingae imbecile et fragile est.” St. Stephen’s actual quotation proclaimed the country with one language and one custom weak and frail; but nineteenth-century Slovak authors typically omitted the reference to diverse customs. See Memorandum národa slovenského. Quoted from Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:340. An English translation of the Memorandum appears in Oddo, Slovakia, 124-28. 79 St. Stephen was the medieval Hungarian King who converted Hungary to Christianity. Quoted from František Bokes, Dokumenty k slovenskému národnému hnutiu v rokoch 1848-1914 (Bratislava: SAV, 1962), 2:435. 80 Štefan Daxner, Hlas zo Slovenska (Pest: Trattner-Karoly, 1861), 6. 81 Letter to Ján Francisci, December, 1869. See Bokes, Dokumenty, 2: 231-32. 82 Slovenský týždennik (18 August 1905), cited from Johnson, “Losing Faith,” 302. 83 For a selection of scholars who view the Hlasists as Czechoslovaks, see Paul Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 1898-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 13; Owen Johnson, Slovakia 1918-1938: Education and the Making of a Nation (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1985), 43-44; Deborah Cornelius, In Search of the Nation: The New Generation of Hungarian Youth in Czechoslovakia 1925-1934 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1999), 67. 84 Vavro Šrobár, “Maďarisácia,” Hlas, vol. 1, no. 3 (1898), 68. 85 “Tiszov národnostný programm a národnostní agitátori,” Umelecký hlas, vol. 1, no. 5 (1898), 321-22. 86 Robert Kann, A History of the Habsburg Monarchy 1526-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 495. 87 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 30-31. 88 Anon., “The Territorial Claims of the Czecho-Slovak Republic,” (Paris: CzechoSlovakia Delegation, 1918), 17-18. 89 “… noch lebendige universale ungarländische Hungarus-Patriotismus …” Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 1:215. 90 Daniel Rapant, Maďarónstvo Bernolákovo (Bratislava: Slovenskej grafie, 1930), 13. 91 Hojč admittedly looked to Austria, not Hungary, for defence against Russia: “However proud I am of Hungary’s autonomy in respect to her constitution and domestic affairs, I can not at all separate her from the foreign policy of Austria, because it is her position to be an important part of a greater and more powerful whole.” Hojč, Apologie, 86-87. 92 Wesselényi, Eine Stimme über die ungarische und slawische Nationalität, 175-76. 93 Leo Grafen v. Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843), 24-25. 94 Macartny, The Habsburg Empire, 723. 95 Charles Hokky’s claim that “Hungary was the only country of the world which had the value of the currency printed in seven languages on the bank notes” was disingenuous to the point of dishonesty. The Austrian half of the banknote, incidentally, printed the warning against forgery only in German. Observed at the Széchenyi Isván Emlékmúzeum, Nagycenk, Hungary. Charles Hokky, Ruthenia (Gainesville: Danubian Research and Information Center, 1966), 35.

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96 “One more thing must be introduced before we can complete the picture of the nineteenth century, namely the Hungarian patriotism of many Slovaks, also among those who loved their language … there are many positive examples for this consciousness. And there was nothing unnatural about it, because the Hungarian state was to a certain degree anational and not at all Magyar-exclusive.” Yet even Locher downplayed the significance of Hungarian patriotism: “when a Slovak describes himself as Hungarus, one does not need to consider this a sign of his affection for the Hungarian fatherland.” Noting that Michal Semian’s history textbook repeatedly refers to Hungary as “our dear Hungarian homeland,” Locher comments parenthetically that “here Hungary is really meant in a politicalterritorial sense.” It is not clear why “political territorial” loyalties should lack significance. Theodore Locher, Die nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen Verlauf bis 1848 (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk & Zoon, 1931), 93-94. 97 Hans Kohn invented this dichotomy to contrast Nazi Germany with democratic France and England. Michael Ignatieff later developed an influential and equally normative dichotomy between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman’s survey of nationalism theorists groups the theories of Kohn and Ignatieff with eleven other binary dichotomies, summarizing them as “Good and Bad nationalisms.” See Hans Kohn, “Western and Eastern Nationalisms,” in: Hutchinson and Smith eds., Oxford Reader on Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 163-65; David Brown, “Are there Two Nationalisms? Good-Civic and Bad-Ethnocultural,” Contemporary Nationalism: Civic, Ethnocultural and Multicultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 2000), 50-69; Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging (London: BBC Press, 1992), 3-5; Philip Spencer, Howard Wollman, Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (London: Sage, 2002), 96. 98 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 2. 99 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 5. 100 Domnique Schnapper, Community of Citizens: On the Modern Idea of Nationality (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998 [1994]), 16. 101 Hans Kohn, “The Nature of Nationalism,” The American Political Science Review, vol. 33, no. 6 (Dec., 1939), 1001-1021 esp. 1001. 102 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 1 2 3 4 5

6

Chapter 4 Samuel Hojč (“S. H****”), Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus (Leipzig: Friedrich Vlockmar, 1843), 27. Hojč, Apologie, 27. German – Volk; Hungarian – nép, faj; Latin – gens. Hojč, Apologie, 12. German Volksthümlichkeit; “in Hungarian no term is in common use, maybe one could say nèpiesség.” The eccentric diacritics on nèpiesség and nàrodnost are from the original text. Today, neither Hungarian, nor Slovak, nor Czech make any distinction between ascending and descending accents, so we may safely read {è} {à} as equivalent to {é} {á}. Hojč, Apologie, 13. German – Nation, Staatsbürger; Hungarian – nemzet; Latin – populus, civis.

Notes 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

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German – Nationalität; Hungarian – nemzetiség Hojč, Apologie, 17. German – Vaterland; Hungarian – haza; Latin – patria. Hojč, Apologie, 16. German – Vaterlandssöhne, Staatsbürger, Nation; Hungarian – hazafiak, “the collective name nemzet”; Latin – cives, populus. Hojč, Apologie, 15-16. Hojč may have borrowed the idea of a three-way division of political loyalties from Alexander Pusztay’s three-way division between the nation “in the geographic sense,” “in the genetic or historical sense,” and “in the political sense.” See Alexander Pusztay, Die Ungarn in ihrem Staats- und Nationalwesen von 889 bis 1842 (Leipzig: Mayer, 1843), 1:12-13. Hojč, Apologie, 20-21, 82-83. Hojč, Apologie, 97. Hojč, Apologie, 99. Hojč, Apologie, 101. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo Slovákom (Bratislava: Tatran, 1970 [Levoča: Tatrín, 1847]), 30. “Mi ňecheme sa pomaďariť, ale chceme v našej vlasťi vlastní si rodáci pri svojej reči, pri svojej národnosťi ostávať.” Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 30. This passage was a chapter title. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 27. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 27. The parenthetical remarks distinguishing long {á} from short {a} are present in the original text. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 28. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 44. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 61. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 9. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 30. The final {-i} distinguishing the Slovak národnosťi from the Slavic národnosť comes from a locative case declension, it is not an attempt at lexical differentiation. Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 43. Suzanna Mikula, Milan Hodža and the Slovak National Movement, 18981918 (Syracuse University, Ph.D. thesis, 1974), 17. Note that Mikula has since Anglicized her given name as Susan. Daniel Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum národa slowenského (Buda: University Press, 1861), 8. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 8. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 14. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 23. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 9. Elsewhere, Lichard adds the dolná zem to this “Pressburg-Košice” geography. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 21, 11. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 21. “M.M.” might be Michal Hodža, who adopted the Slavic name “Miloslav” and often signed his name “M.M. Hodža.” “Betrachtung über die österreichischen Länder und Nationen,” Slavisches Centralblatt (16 December, 1865), 84. “Betrachtung über die österreichischen Länder und Nationen,” 83. Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, Návrh zákona o urovnoprávnení národností (23 October, 1870). Beňko, Dokumenty, 367-68.

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38 Pauliny-Tóth, Návrh zákona, 341. 39 Quoted from Samuel Osuský, Filosofia Štúrovov (Myjava: Daniel Pažický, 1928), 2:314. Osuský gives no date, but the original quote appeared in Cirkevní Listy, no. 10, 314, which appeared around 1874. 40 Karl v. Zmertych, Rhapsodien über die Nationalität (Skalice: Fr. X. Skarnitl’s Söhne, 1872), 7. 41 Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 8. 42 Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 8. 43 Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 25. 44 Strangely, Zmertych feared the political death of the magyarischen Nation, not the ungarischen Nation, and conflated the ungarischen and magyarischen political nations: “there cannot be the tiniest difference between the Slowaken and the Magyaren in the civil and criminal law, for both are members of the magyarischen — or alternatively the ungarischen — political nation.” Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 19, 21. 45 For Gaj’s correspondence, see Karel Paul, Dopisy československých spisovatelů Stanku Vrazovi a Ljudevitu Gajovi (Prague: Nákladem české akademie věd a uměni, 1923). For Štúr’s contribution to Gaj’s newspaper, which described Štúr as “a brother of the Illyrian Slavs,” see Ljudevit Štur, “Nitra,” Danica Ilirska, vol. 3, no. 22 (1837), 85. For Gaj’s orthographic work, which shows the strong influence of Kollár, see Ljudevit Gaj, Kratka osnova Horvatsko-slavenskoga pravopisaňa (Buda: Tiskarnica Kraľevskoga Vseučilišča, 1830). See also Elinor Despalotović, Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian National Movement (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1975); Josip Horvat, Ljudevit Gaj, njegov život, njegova doba (Zagreb: Sveučilišna Naklada Liber, 1975). 46 Ljudevit Gaj, “Odgovor gospodinu Kossuthu,” Novine, vol. 12 (14 January 1845), 14. Cited from Despalotović, Ljudevit Gaj, 172. 47 Dragutin Rakovac, Mali katekizam za velike ljude (Zagreb: Ljudevit Gaj, 1842), 96. Cited from Despalotović, Ljudevit Gaj, 141. 48 Ljudevit Gaj, “Odgovor gospodinu Kossuthu,” Novine, vol. 12 (14 January 1845), 14. Cited from Despalotović, Ljudevit Gaj, 172. 49 For an example of Hungarian noble respect for Croatia’s distinctive institutions, see Pulszky’s comments in Leo Grafen v. Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843). 50 R.W. Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question, 67. 51 The “Triune” kingdom got its name from its claim to (1) historic Croatia (the province around Zagreb), (2) Slavonia, and (3) Dalmatia, then under the jurisdiction of the Austrian Reichsrat. On the status of Dalmatia in Croatian politics, see Mirjana Gross, “The Union of Dalmatia with Northern Croatia: A Crucial Question of the Croat National Integration in the Nineteenth Century,” in: Mikuláš Teich, Roy Porter, eds., The National Question in Europe in Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 270-292. 52 Quoted from John Lukacs, Budapest, 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1988), 126. 53 The Felvidék [highlands] is the mountainous north of Hungary that later became Slovakia. Béla Grünwald, A Felvidék (Budapest: Ráth Mór, 1878), 35. 54 “Reč Ferdiša Jurigu v uhorskom parlamente.” Quoted from Beňko, Dokumenty, 499-502. Beňko cites Képviselőház-Napló, vol. 41 (1918), 345-357.

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55 Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, an Inquiry into the Foundation of Nationality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1953), 63. 56 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” Theory and Society, vol. 29 (2000), 1-47, especially 5. 57 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 16. 58 Johnson, “Losing Faith,” 297. 59 Ľudovít Štúr [“Ludwig Šlur”], Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert und der Magyarismus (Vienna: Wenedik’schen Buchhandlung, 1845), 36. 60 Ľudovít Štúr, Slovenskje národňje Novini, no. 279 (18 April, 1848). Quoted from Karel Chotek, “ ‘Ján Holák’: Politické snahy slovenské v rokoch 1848-49,” Carpatica (Prague: Orbis, 1936), 115. 61 Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 46. 62 Hojč, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus, 43. 63 Štúr, Beschwerden und Klagen, 1. 64 Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 8. 65 Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 35. 66 Newolny’s conversion speech lasts two pages. Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum, 52-53. 67 Hodža, Dobruo slovo, 43. 68 Daxner, Hlas zo Slovenska, 5. 69 Daxner, Hlas zo Slovenska, 5-6. 70 Jan Francisci, “Severoslovania v Uhrách, t. j. Slováci a Rusíni, a krajinský snem uhorský,” Pešťbudínske Vedemosti (5 April 1861). This text was reproduced in Bokes Dokumenty, 1:262. 71 Note the use of the singular “nation,” not “nations.” Beňko, Dokumenty, 1:311. Beňko cites Karol Goláň, Príspevok k vývoju slovenskej politickej myšlenky (Bratislava: Slovenská učená spoločnosť, 1940), 270-76. Hurban was not the only thinker suggesting Rusyn-Slovak unity during the Revolution. A January 1849 pamphlet suggested to the Habsburg court fourteen reasons why “the Carpathian Slavs and Rusyns [die karpatischen Szlaven und Ruthenen]” should receive an autonomous district. See Ján Majláth, Beleuchtung der Frage, ob die karpatischen Szlaven und Ruthenen wieder den Magyaren zuzuteilen, oder als selbständige Distrikte nach ihrer Nationalität zu behandeln sind ( January, 1849); quoted from Daniel Rapant, Slovenské povstanie roku 1848-49, Dejiny a dokumenty (Bratislava: SAV, 1954), 3:495. 72 Žeguc, Die Nationalpolitischen Bestrebungen der Karpato-Ruthenen, 20. 73 A főispan (supremes comes, Obergespan) was an administrative rank equivalent to a count. This Uzhhorod district was formally under the control of Ignác von Villetz, but Villetz delegated much of the actual work to Dobrians’kyi. See Wilson, The Ukranians, 113; Magocsi, Shaping of a National Identity, 47. 74 Ivan Žeguc, Die Nationalpolitischen Bestrebungen der Karpato-Ruthenen, 18481914 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1965), 50. For the Hungarian reaction to Dobrians’kyi’s activity, see the hostile letter of Count Anton Forgách (25 August 1852) and resulting discussion between Habsburg officials in Daniel Rapant, Slovenské povstanie, roku 1848-49, Dejiny a Dokumenty (Bratislava: SAV, 1961), 4:466-83.

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75 Florian Zapletal, A.I. Dobrjanskij a naše rusíni r. 1849-51 (Prague: Nákladem Vlastním, 1929), 43-49. 76 Dobrians’kyi then took his struggle to Vienna, where he gave an important speech. See Maria Mayer, The Rusyns of Hungary: Political and Social Developments 1860– 1910 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1997), 34. 77 Ivan Rudnytsky described Dobrians’kyi as “most instrumental in spreading the pro-Russian orientation in Subcarpathia,” while Michael Hrushevsky argued that Dobrians’kyi’s “Russophile, or ‘Muscophile’ inclinations ruined his efforts.” See Ivan Rudnytsky, “Carpatho-Ukraine: A People in Search of their Identity,” Essays in Modern Ukrainian History (Cambridge, Mass: University Press, 1987), 357 [353-73]; Michael Hrushevsky, A History of Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970 [1941]), 492. 78 Emphasis in original. Vavro Šrobár, “Naše snahy,” Hlas, vol. 1, no. 1 (1898), 6. 79 Tibor Pichler, “The Idea of Slovak Language-Based Nationalism,” in: Tibor Pichler, Jana Gašparíková, eds., Language, Values and the Slovak Nation (Washington, D. C.: Paideia, 1994), 37; Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 169. 80 American sociolinguist Dennis Preston has developed the field of “perceptual dialectology” to study how members of a speech community perceive linguistic divisions. Preston works mostly with face-to-face interviews, however; a technique that cannot be applied to the past. For a case study of historical perceptual dialectology, see Alexander Maxwell “Why the Slovak Language has Three Dialects,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 37 (Spring, 2006), 385-414. On ahistorical perceptual dialectology, see Dennis Preston, “Folk Dialectology,” in: Dennis Preston, ed., American Dialect Research (Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1993); Dennis Preston and Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000). 81 Ján Kačala, Slovenčina — vec politická? (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1994), 12. 82 Josef Kirschbaum, Slovakia: Nation at the Crossroads of Central Europe (New York: Robert Speller and Sons, 1960), 49. 83 Italics in original. Hudson adds a parenthetical qualification: “(except with reference to prestige, where it would be better to use the term ‘standard language’).” R.A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 36. 84 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 48. 85 “Language in the Herderian sense of the language spoken by the Volk was … plainly not a central element in the formation of proto-nationalism.” Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 59. 86 Prague School, “General Principles for the Cultivation of Good Language,” translated by Paul Garvin, in: Joshua Fishman, ed., Advances in Language Planning (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), 420. This essay originally appeared as an appendix to Bohuslav Havránek, Miloš Weingart, eds., Spisovná čeština a jazková kultura (Prague: Melantrich, 1932), 417-426. 87 Gedrius Subačius, “The Choice of Symbolic Codifying Work in the History of Standard European Languages,” in: Jolanta Gelumbeckaitė, Jost Gippert, eds., Das Baltikum im sprachgeschichtlichen Kontext der europäischen Reformation (Vilnius: Lietuvių Kalbos Institito Ledykla, 2005), 129. A similar point has been made about French: “The most obvious feature of variability in late medieval written French was spelling.” See Anthony Lodge, French: From Dialect to Standard (London: Routledge, 1993), 164.

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88 Krajčovič and Žigo define the “predspisovné obdobie” as “a development stage before the appearance of written language,” ending with Bernolák’s codification in 1795. See Rudolf Krajčovič, Pavol Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny (Bratislava: Comenius University Press, 1999), 60. 89 On the German origin of Slovak Lutheran Bibles, see Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes 1:141. 90 The Blackletter {š} looks like a {\} with a small hook at the top. 91 The original terms, in various declensions, are čeština, jazyku biblickému, slavobohemicae, českoslowenská řeč, řeč biblická čili československá, naši krásnau, notau, biblickau slowenčinu, českoslowenská biblická řeč … naše prawá starootcowská řeč. Respectively: Matej Bel’s 1746 introduction to Doležal’s grammar, A.W. Šembera’s 26 February 1846 letter to Kollár, Jonáš Záborský’s 1845 letter to K. Fejerpataky, Kollár’s O českoslowenské jednotě w řeči a w literatuře, Jiří Sekčik, Jan Stehlo, Michal Linder. Záborský, incidentally the only Catholic quoted here, also claimed that “the Czech language has also entered into the blood of our Slovaks.” See Jan Kollár, ed., Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky (Prague: Czech Museum, 1846), 184, 7, 90, 112, 222, 190, 197. 1 2

3 4

5

6

Chapter 5 J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, Dialectology (Cambridge: University Press, 1998 [1980]), 93. Paul Selver explained this diversity by observing that “some philologists designate as a language what others will admit only as a dialect.” P. Selver, Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1919), x. Endre Arató, “The Slavic Thought: Its Varieties with the Slavonic Peoples in the first half of the Nineteenth Century,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 22 (1976), 74. Selver may have felt that Old Church Slavonic, as a dead language existing only in archaic texts, did not count; alternatively, he may have decided to count both upper and lower Sorbian as a single language. Arató, for his part, must have been examining another text. See Joseph Dobrovský, Lehrgebaeude der boehmischen Sprache (Prague: Gottlieb Hasse, 1819), 4-5. The document was a debt certificate. The oldest Slavic document mentioned in Krajčovič and Žigo’s Handbook of the History of Written Slovak is a threatening letter from 1491, though they also reproduce an 1113 Latin text with Slavic loan words. See Daniela Dvořáková, “Culture in the 15th Century,” in: Mannová and Holec, A Concise History of Slovakia, 98; and Rudolf Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 86. The Brno library presumably did not acquire every book published in the north of Hungary, but it would not have any reason to exclude Slavic books, so the small percentage of non-Latin books seems representative. Even if the Brno library were a perfectly representative sample, however, these numbers would not be completely trustworthy. The Latin word agenda, for instance, has passed into several languages, so the Banská Štiavnica volume Agenda cannot be classified with certainty. The fact that all other books published in Banská Štiavnica were printed in German, however, suggests that this Agenda happened to be German. The

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8 9 10

11 12 13

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Choosing Slovakia Jesuit press in Trnava published seven Slavic books (five aids to Catholic prayer, a presumably unflattering description of Lutheranism, and a spelling guide, Přívod ku dobropísebnosti slov. písma). The 21 printers in Bratislava published 168 titles in all, including 24 Slavic books. Reprints of the same title were counted as separate publications. Statistics gathered by the author, who is solely responsible for any errors. See Katalóg slovacikálnych kníh do roku 1800 univerzitnej knižnice v Brne (Martin: Matica slovenská, Národná knižnica), 1969. The total number of books published by language was as follows: Latin, 557; Hungarian, 331; German, 320; Slavic, 234. Cited from Lukáš Dzurilla, Život Levoče v  období tzv. „Bachovo“ Neoabsolutizmu, Ph.D. Thesis, Ružomberok (2003), 18. Dzurilla cites Ján Mišianik, Dejiny Levočského kníhtlačiarstva (Trnava: Fr. Urbánek, 1945), 48. “All the books concerned are now very rare.” See Ralph Clemenson, “Cyrillic Printing in Trnvava, 1680-1727,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol. 26 (1993), 40-54. Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 102. The word “deň” requires a palatized letter {ň}, but this letter does not appear in the phrase “šesť dní” because of the plural ending: {í} automatically palatalizes the preceding consonant. Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 103. Edward Brown, A Brief Account of some Travels in Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carnolia and Friuli (London, Benjiman Tooke, 1673), 13. Brown, A Brief Account of some Travels, 14. Three main etymologies exist for the word “Slav.” Suggesting that escaped slaves may have adopted the name given to them by their captors, some scholars have derived the term from Latin sclavi “slave,” which in turn comes from Greek Σχλαβήοι, Σχλαβίνοί. How this appellation could have become popular among East Slavs hundreds of miles from Roman frontiers is unclear, but a German scholar argued in 1834 that “the name Sclav must not have originally belonged to the Slavs, they probably adopted it from the Germans.” Another derivation from the word sláva [glory] has long enjoyed popularity among Slav patriots; Ján Kollár notably promoted it in his poem Sláwy dcera [The daughter of Sláwa]. A third theory derives “Slav” from slovo “word,” suggesting that Slavs divided humanity into speaking Slavs and non-Slavs babbling incomprehensible gibberish. This theory neatly compliments the accepted derivation for Slovak nemecký, Czech německý, and Croat njemački [all meaning “German”] from an Old Slavic word meaning “mute.” It also evokes the famous folk etymology of the word “barbarian”: people whose speech consists of the meaningless syllables “bar-bar-bar.” Ľudovít Štúr favored this third theory, but Robert Pynsent had the last word when he characterizes the etymology of the word Slav as “unsolved.” See “Geschichte und Recht,” Anzeiger für Kunde des deutschen Mittlealters (May-July 1834), 134; Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 69. For a nineteenth-century discussion of all three possible derivations, see Charles Kratisir, The Poles in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Kinderlen and Stollmeyer, 1837), 37-38. German scholar Theodore Locher wrote that the word “Slovak” emerged at the end of the fifteenth century, adding that it may have originally been a Czech term of abuse. Ľubomir Ďurovič similarly suggested “the word Slovák, a continuation of the common [Slavic] Slověnin, appears for the first time in 1485, but its

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18 19

20 21

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exact meaning is vague until the eighteenth century.” Theodore Locher, Die nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen Verlauf bis 1848 (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk & Zoon, 1931), 173, 86; Ľubomir Ďurovič, “Slovak,” in: Alexander Shenker, ed., The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development (New Haven: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980), 211. In the discussion that follows, note also that adjective endings decline by gender and case, and recall that the letter {w} was often used instead of {v}, e.g. Slowák, slowenský, slowanský. Robert Pynsent wrote that “at the beginning of Šafařik and Kollár’s writing lives slovenský could mean Slav or Slovak … There are occasionally indications in [Pavel Šafařík’s 1826] Geschichte [der slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten] that Slav and Slovak are sometimes interchangeable.” I suggest that Pynsent could have made this point more forcefully. See Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 60. Jozef Ambruš, “Die slawische Idee bei Ján Hollý,” in: Ľudovít Holotík, ed., Ľudovít Štúr und die slawische Wechselseitigkeit (Bratislava: SAV, 1969), 46-49. Ambruš was discussing the poet Ján Hollý; for a similar discussion of Bohuslav Tablic, see Locher, Die nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen, 106. Bohuslav Nosák, “Slowenka,” in: Jozef Hurban, ed., Nitra — dar dcerám a synům slowenska, morawy, čech a slezka obětowaný (Bratislava: Šmid, 1842), 1:164. Hurban, Nitra, 166. Radlinský’s 1861 version of this poem not only changed the orthography (wěky zpomjná > veky spomína) but also changed the final line from “Tam wlast ge má, toť wlast ge má!” to “Tam vlasť moja, tam vlasť moja!” Radlinksý omitted the word “to be,” using the long form of the possessive adjective to make up the lost syllable, and deleted the word toť, a Hungarian word for “Slovak, Slav” now considered pejorative. Ondrej Radlinksý, Tatran: Letopis paedagogický, vedecký, národní, hospodarský literárny a zabavný, Kalendár (Buda: Buda University Press, 1861). Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 2: 140-41. Bernolák only included a Czech word if it differs from the slovenský. For a random sample of Bernolák’s definitions, consider the entries on page 18 (the author’s lucky number). This page contains 12 entries directing the reader to see another word (e.g. under archangelski, Bernolák directs the reader to archanďelski), 17 entries with Latin, German and Hungarian translations, and two entries that also include a Czech translation alongside the Latin, German, and Hungarian. For both of these two entries, furthermore, the difference between Bernolák’s standard and Czech is visible only in the possessive adjective form of the noun. Bernolák’s neglect of Czech, furthermore, cannot be explained from the desire to save space: the definition of “Arad,” provided German and Hungarian translations, even though these are identical to the Slovak: “Aradinum, Arad, eine Stadt, Arad.” See Anton Bernolák, Slowár Slowenská = Česko = Laťinsko = Německo = Uherski seu Lexicon Slavicum (Buda: Buda University Press, 1825), 1:18. Bernolák, Slowár, 4:3010. Josef Jungmann, Slownjk Česko‑Německý (Prague: Arcibiskupská knihtiskarna, 1835), 1:155. Jungmann, Slownjk Česko‑Německý, 1:155.

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25 Frake developed this concept to explain the diagnosis of disease among the Subanun, a farming people in the Philippines, but argued that multiple levels of contrast are a common linguistic phenomenon: “The word man, for example, designates at one level a category contrasting with nonhuman organisms. At a more specific level, man designates a subcategory of human organisms contrasting with woman. Subordinate to this we find the contrast: man (adult male) – boy. Man can even appear at a more specific level to designate a kind of adult male human, as in Kipling’s ‘…you’ll be a man, my son’.” Charles Frake, “The Diagnosis of Disease Among the Subanun of Mindanao,” in: Dell Hymes, ed., Language in Culture and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 197. 26 See for example, Oddo, Slovakia, 102-03; Josef Kirschbaum, Anton Bernolák, The First Codifier of the Slovak Language (1762-1812) (Cleveland: Jednota Press, the Slovak Institute; Slavistica, no. 52); Michal Šebík, Stručné dejiny Slovákov (Pittsburgh: Slovenský Hlásnik, 1940), 61; Lev Smirnov, “K diskussii o ‘nachale’ istorii literaturnogo slovatskogo,” Slavica Slovaca, no. 2 (2000), 141-149. 27 Dušan Kováč, “Die Geschichte des Tschechoslowakismus,” Ethnos-Nation, 1 (1993), 23-32. 28 Anton Bernolák, Dissertatio Philologico-Critica de Literis Slavorum (Bratislava: SAV, 1964), 22/xiii (The first number is the page number from the 1964 translation, the second the original page number from the 1787 preface). 29 Bernolák, Dissertatio, 22/xii. 30 Bernolák, Dissertatio, 18/v. 31 Bernolák, Dissertatio, 18/iii. 32 Bernolák, Dissertatio, 22/x, 24/xiv. Bernolák also makes several references to a “Slavic” orthography. 33 Anton Bernolák, Schlowakische Grammatik (Buda: University Press, 1817), 3-4. 34 Eugen Pauliny, Dejiny spisovney slovenčiny od začiatkov po súčasnosť (Bratislava: Slovenské pedagogické nákladateľstvo, 1983), 163. 35 Since the Slowár was published posthumously, several Slovak scholars have argued that Bernolák did not write this introduction himself. See Elisabeth Bakke, Doomed to Failure? The Czechoslovak National Project and the Slovak Autonomist Reaction, 1918-38. Ph.D. Thesis, Oslo University 11:99 (1999), 271. This work is also available at URL . 36 Milan Pišút, Dejiny slovenskej literatúry (Bratislava: Obzor, 1984), 184. Cited from Kirschbaum, The Struggle for Survival, 93. 37 An additional 51 books, excluding reprints, were published anonymously. These figures include unpublished manuscripts and pamphlets, but exclude magazine articles and reprints. Kotvan has transliterated the titles. 38 Kotvan lists 105 Bernolákovci, who between them wrote around 326 books in Bernolákovčina. Given that the Bernolákovci are traditionally divided into three generations, this is a significant if unimpressive output of texts. See Imrich Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolákovcov (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1957). 39 Jozef Kardhordó, member of a winegrowers’ association, wrote two books in Bernolákovčina: a guide for cultivating fruit trees and tobacco and an instruction book “dedicated to the Slovak people in Hungary, but especially the village schoolteacher.” Neither Kotvan nor the Slovenský biografický slovník provide any information about Kardhordó’s birthplace, date of birth or education. He was probably petty bourgeois, but Kotvan, writing in 1957, found it expedient to

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41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

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describe him as one of “those enlightened workers who built the material basis of Slovakia.” Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolákovcov, entry 50, 194. Kotvan estimates that only 100 members were active. Butvin reports that the secular members included 13 clerks, 11 bureaucrats, seven notaries, seven schoolteachers, six farmers, three professors, three lawyers, two organists, two merchants, an engineer, a postmaster, a factory owner, and an architect. Butvin characterized a futher 19 as “bourgeois” without specifying any profession, and a final nine as “citizens … probably serfs.” Jozef Butvin, Slovenské národno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 51; Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolákovcov, 404. In the decade immediately preceding the publication of Bernolák’s work, Landerer also produced a Turkish dictionary and a Hungarian language textbook. My data on Landerer’s book production may not be exhaustive: I drew my data from a list of titles in the Brno university library, helpfully organized by publisher. But though this sample may be incomplete, it is at least, for present purposes, random. Katalóg slovacikálnych kníh do roku 1800 univerzitnej knižnice v Brne (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1969), 192-95. Bernolák, Dissertatio, 22-23. “Czech grammars” listed in Franz Pelcl, Grundsätze der böhmischen Grammatik (Prague: Franz Gerzabek, 1795), Georg Ribay, Handbuch zum Gebrauche der Jugend bei Erlernung der deutsch, französisch und böhmischen Sprachen (Prague: Martin Pelzel, 1775). Juraj Palkovič [Georg Palkowitsch], Bestreitung der Neuerungen in der böhmischen Orthographie (Bratislava: Belnay’s Erben, 1830), title page. Giřiho Ribay, Poklad národu aneb prospěssné naučenj (Prague: Bernák, 1796), ii. Ribay, Poklad národu, ii. Juraj Palkovič, Známost Wlasti, Neywjc pro sskoky slowensčé w Uhřich (Bratislava: Simon Petr Weber, 1804), 1:13. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 118. This map was constructed from examining the biographies in the Slovenský biografický slovník for the 105 Bernolákovci Kotvan listed in his Bibliografia Bernolákovcov. The map only shows 45 Bernolákovci for two reasons: some of Kotvan’s Beronlákovci were not listed in the Slovenský biografický slovník, and some had not yet been born in 1800. Think of the children’s song ending: “now I know my A-B-Cs/next time won’t you sing with me?” The full 26 letters are {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z}. Abeceda zamilowaného, Abeceda panenská and Abeceda ženská (respectively the alphabet songs of lovers, ladies, and women), in: Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 2:182-90. “Alphabet song of Youth.” Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 187. In this song, {h} comes after {j}. Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 184. Kollár, Národinié zpiewanky, 191. Letter to Ribay of 6 December, 1789. Quoted in Hugh Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 217. Ján Herkel [ Joanne Herkel], Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae (Buda: University Press, 1826), 4. Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, 4

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59 Herkel used the Latin word “nations”: “slavicarum nationum,” later “slavicae Nationes.” Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, 4,5. 60 A digraph is a two-letter combination representing a single sound, e.g. English {sh} or {th}. Anglophone readers can appreciate the drawbacks of digraphs by comparing the word “singer,” in which {ng} is a digraph representing the nasal consonant /ŋ/, to “finger,” in which {ng} represents a consonant cluster /ng/. 61 Transliterated Ukrainian also uses the letter {x} in this way. 62 The idea of combining Cyrillic and Latin characters into a single orthography resonated elsewhere in the Habsburg Empire: Iakiv Holovatsky, a Galician language planner, devised a “Latin Ruthenian” or “Latin Slavonic” orthography “based on the principle of using whatever was best in the individual alphabets for a new Ukrainian alphabet.” Jan Kozik, The Ukrainian National Movement in Galicia 1815-1849 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1986), 96. 63 Stankiewicz wrote that Herkel proposed “a common Slavic literary koine in which Polish and Czech were to figure as basic models.” This description is simply inaccurate. See Edward Stankiewicz, Grammars and Dictionaries of the Slavic Languages from the Middle Ages up to 1850 (Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 26. 64 Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, 11. 65 Hodža’s scripts were Glagolitic, Cyrillic, the Russian civil alphabet (grazhdanka), ancient Serbian, Vuk Karadžić’s Serbian, Polish, Bohemian, Illyrian, Bosnian-Dalmatian, Croatian, Slavonian, Dalmatian, Ragusan (from Dubrovnik), “Sloveneian or Wendish,” “Vandalicum seu Slovenorum Blatensium (Evangelicorum),” Sotac-Slovene, Latin Lusatian-Sorbian, Latin BohemoSlovak (Bernolák), Slovak (Štúr), Kralice Czech, Blackletter Bohemo-Slovak (Bernolák) and Blackletter Lusatian-Sorbian. Brlić’s scripts were Cyrillic (OCS), Hieronyomous-Dalmatian, modern Russian (grazhdanka), Polish, Kopitar’s Carinthian, Metelko’s Carinthian, Dainko’s Wendish, Croatian, “Bohemian and Slovak” (as a single script), Cyrillic-Dalmatian, Serbian Cyrillic, Vuk Karadžić’s Cyrillic, ancient Dalmatian-Bosnian, old Dalmatian-Bosnian, modern DalmatianBosnian, Ragusan (from Dubrovnik), ancient Slavonian, imperial Slavonian, “das kanixlich’sche und katanesich’sche slawonische Alphabet” (?), Brlić’s own alphabet, and “the alphabet necessary for the Illyrian dialect.” See Michal Hodža, Epigenes Slovenicus (Levoča: Joannis Werthmüller, 1847), 19-22; Ignac Brlić [Ignatz Berlich], Grammatik der illyrischen Sprache (Buda: Buda University Press, 1833), 4. 66 In “tslovek.” Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 103. 67 The tendency to replace digraphic {cz} with {č}, incidentally, explains the English spelling of the word “Czech” (Čech). Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, 12. My grateful thanks to Petra Mutlová for her assistance in translating this passage. 68 See Alexander Maxwell, “Literary dialects in China and Slovakia: Imagining Unitary Nationality with Multiple Orthographies,” International Journal of Sociolinguisitics, no. 164 (2003), 129-49. 69 Readers proficient in Slovak may be interested in a specimen of the “Pannonian Dialect” in Herkel’s “Universal style”: “Jisti vladar juz na smertnej loze zivot svoj knoajuci pred skonanim svokum svolal sinov svojix, a jim mnoge razdilne nauke

Notes

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74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88

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daval, medzi jinimi verejnimi naukami tato byla najglavneiшa: dal kazdemu pro prutu do ruki, a kazal, da by jedenkazdi svoj prut zlomil, чto laxjo jeden kazdi udielal: po tim skasal vsi prouti sebrati, a do vjedna sviazati a dal kazdemu, da by zviazek lamal; ale zaden zlomiti ne mogel; na to mudri vladar, a peчlivi otec ova slata Slova mluvil: Premili sinnove!” Herkel, Elementa Universalis Linguae Slavicae, 163. The original edition had three cantos. In 1832, Kollár published an expanded version with two additional cantos. Ján Kollár, Dielo (Bratislava: Slovenský Tatran, 2001), 1:174; song 268. Pulszky’s letter to Thun of 24 April 1842, reprinted in Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn, 5 Owen Johnson translated the Slavic term vzájemnosť as “mutuality,” while Peter Black preferred “solidarity,” but most scholars, including Pynsent, prefer “reciprocity.” Johnson, “Losing Faith,” 301; Peter Black, Kollár and Štúr, Romantic and Post-Romantic Visions of a Slavic Future (New York: Institute on East Central Europe, 1975), 6; Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 56-57. Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 56. Pynsent cites Jan Kollár, Rozprawy o gmenách, pocátkách, i starožitnostech národu slawského a geho kmenů (Buda: Buda University Press, 1830). Ján Kollár ( Johann Kollár), Über die Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen Stämmen und Mundarten der slawischen Nation (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1844), 6. This text was first published in Pest in 1837. These two versions have almost the same text, though pages numbers differ. All citations are taken from the 1844 edition, which was the basis for my own translation, Reciprocity Between the Various Tribes and Dialects of the Slavic Nation (Bloomington: Slavica, 2008). An earlier version, with significantly different final demands, appeared as “O literarnég wzagemnosti mezi kmeny a nářečjmi slawskými,” Hronika, vol. 1, no. 1 (1836), 39-56. This passage uses the German word Nation; Kollár elsewhere refers to the Slavs as “ein grosses Volk.” Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 4, 1. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 1. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 1. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 45. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 6. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 21. “O literarnég wzagemnosti,” Hronika, vol. 1, no. 2 (1836), 50. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 92-3. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 94, 95. In translations of folk songs or proverbs, “the distance between the different dialects is not as great as in educated style. Translating books and other writings from one dialect into another is also worth the effort, since it leads to a manysided knowledge of the Slavic tribes. Translations will neither ruin our taste, nor do violence to our constructions.” See Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 96, 21. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 96, 97. Slovak Calvinists and South Slavs used the digraph {cs}. See Michal Hodža, Epigenes Slovenicus, 63. For a sample text in a similar orthography, described as “Eastern Slovak,” see Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 102-03. Kollár, Über die Wechselseitigkeit, 99-100.

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89 Pražák, “The Slovak Sources of Kollár’s Pan-Slavism,” 590. Locher, incidentally, found “Slavi” more typical of Bél’s writings. 90 At a certain point in early medieval history, Bačkovský wrote, “the Slovanéčechoslováci began to appear with greater density.” “Slavo-Czechoslovaks” appear only once in the text, probably as a form of political correctness. Bačkovský’s work focuses exclusively on Bohemian history. Rudolf Bačkovský, Stručné dějiny Československé (Prague: Československé kníhkupectví, 1919), 7. 91 See Frank Fadner, Seventy Years of Pan-Slavism in Russia: Karazin to Danielevskii, 1800-1870 (Haarlem: Enschede, 1962), 57-59. 92 From 1862-1864, this was the Zeitschrift für slavische Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft. From 1865-1866, it was the Slavisches Centralblatt: Wochenschrift für Literatur, Kunst, Wissenschaft und nationale Interessen des Gesammtslaventhums. Finally, from 1867-1868, it was the Centralblatt für slavische Literatur und Bibliographie. 93 This passage was originally printed in italics for emphasis. Ljudevit Gaj, Kratka osnova Horvatsko-slavenskoga pravopisaňa/Kurzer Entwurf einer kroatischslavischen Orthographie (Buda: Tiskarnica kraľevskoga vseučilišča, 1830), 25. 94 Cited from Gadány, The Evolution of Vocabulary in Literary Slovenian, 79. 95 For a full treatment of Gaj in English, see Elinor Murray Despalatović, Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement (to 1843) (Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia, Political Science, 1969). 96 John Bradley, Czech Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), 1-2. 97 Václav Žáček, “Die Rolle des Austroslavismus in der Politik der österreichischen Slaven,” in: Ľudovít Holotík, ed., Ľudovít Štúr und die slawische Wechselseitigkeit (Bratislava: SAV, 1969), 146. 98 Invitations were issued in Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, German and French. Pech, from whom this information was drawn, does not say which script was used for the “Slovak” invitations. Stanley Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 124. 99 Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848, 125. 100 Jelena Milojković-Djurić, Panslavism and National Identity in Russia and the Balkans 1830-1880: Images of the Self and Others (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 35. 101 Pamphlet of 1 May, 1848. See Miloslav Novotný, ed., Letáky z roku 1848 (Prague: Elk, 1948), 218. 102 Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848, 125. Pech cites Der Freimütige (10-11 May, 1848). 103 Schulsekla distinguished between Russian and Austrian Slavs: “over sixteen million Slavs live in Austria. They are mostly from those tribes of whom Hegel says that they have been won for western reason.” Franz Schuselka, Deutsch oder Russisch? Die Lebensfrage Österreichs (Vienna: Jasper, Hügel und Manz, 1849), 49. 104 Pavel Josef Šafařík, letter to Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin, 18 April, 1841. Quoted from V.A. Francev, Korespondence Pavla Josefa Šafaříka, I Vzájemné dopisy P.J. Šafaříka s ruskými učenci (1825-1861) (Prague: ČAVU, 1928), 2:634. 105 Launer said that such names were applied to those who “spoke well” of Russians. Stěpán Launer, Povaha Slovanstva se zvláštním ohledem na spisovní řeč Čechů,

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Moravanů, Slezáků a Slováků (Leipzig: Kommissí Slovanského Kníhkupectví, 1847), 104. 106 Michal Hodža, Der Slowak, 24. 107 Kacír, pansláv and rusomil. Jonáš Záborsky, “Ohavnost odrodilostvi mezi námi Slováky,” in: Žehry: Básně a dvě řeči (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1851), 176. 108 Jozef Miloslav Hurban, Die Kirchenparteien und die Kirche (Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1861), 64. 109 Samuel Hojč, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus (Leipzig: Friedrich Vlockmar, 1843), 95. 110 Hojč, Apologie, 97. 111 Hojč, Apologie, 99. 112 Jonáš Záborsky, “Predmluva,” Žehry: Básně a dvě řeči (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1851), second unnumbered page of the introduction. 113 Daniel Lichard, Rozhovory o Matici Slovenskej, 5,7. 114 Quoted in Vavrovič, Jean Palárik, 169. 115 Peter Yurchak described Pan-Slavism as “one of the bogeys of history,” while Oddo spoke of “the phantom Pan-Slavism which the Magyars blindly saw under every bed.” The metaphor dates back at least to 1872, when Karl Zmertych discussed how the “giant ghost of Pan-Slavism” frightened the Magyars. See Peter Yurchak, The Slovaks: Their History and their Traditions (Whiting: John Lauch, 1946), 119; Oddo, Slovakia, 112; Zmertych, Rhapsodien, 8. See also János Varga, “Fear of Pan-Slavism” in: A Hungarian Quo Vadis, 110-132; S. Harrison Thomson, “A Century of a Phantom: Pan-Slavism and the Western Slavs,” Journal of Central European Affairs, vol. 11, no. 1 ( Jan-April 1951), 57-77. Finally, see the cartoon “Panslavismus” in Humoristické listy, vol. 5, no. 41 (11 July 1863), 328. 116 Thomson, “A Century of a Phantom,” 57. For an example of Hungarian fears of Russian intervention, see Stefan Kápolnai, “Die strategische Verteidigung Ungarns gegen einer von Osten oder Norden kommenden Angriff,” Ungarische Monatschrift für Politik, Landes-Wehr, Staatsoekonomie, Statistik, Völkerkunde, Geschichte, usw. no. 1 (April 1868), 57-75. 117 Quoted from R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 260. 118 Letter to the editor, written on 9 January 1861. Slovenské noviny, no. 6 (12 January, 1861). In a similar story, Jászi describes an acquaintance angry that “Pan-Slavs” had been brazen enough to speak in Slavic while riding the train. See Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: Phoenix, 1964 [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1929]), 338. 119 Kálal’s shamelessly Czechoslovak text possibly overstated the pastor’s Czechoslovak sentiments. Karel Kálal, Slovensko a Slováci (Prague: František Šimáček, 1905), 50. 120 For English traveler who described Pan-Slavism as “a name of terror,” see Georgena Mackenzie, Adeline-Paulina Irby, Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-inEurope (London: Alex Strahan, 1866), xv, 635. 121 The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1265. 122 Cecil Marcus Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation (London: National Review Office, 1908), 319.

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123 Hugo Hentsch, “Pan-Slavism, Austro-Slavism, Neo-Slavism: The All Slav Congresses and the Nationality problems of Austria-Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 1 (1965), 23. 124 Hentsch, “Pan-Slavism, Austro-Slavism, Neo-Slavism,” 25. 125 Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:178. 126 Hentsch, “Pan-Slavism, Austro-Slavism, Neo-Slavism,” 25. 127 László Szarka, A szlovákok története (Budapest: Bereményi, 1994), 93. 128 Karel Havlíček-Borovský, “Slovan a Čech,” Pražské noviny (15 February – 12 March, 1846), reprinted in Zdeněk Veselý, Dějiny české politkiky v dokumentech (Prague: Professional Publishing, 2005). See also Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (New York: Van Nostrand, 1965), 155-59. 129 Daniel Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum národa slowenského (Buda: Buda University Press, 1861), 20-21. 130 Lichard, Rozhowor o Memorandum národa slowenského, 21. 131 Lichard, Rozhovory o Matici Slovenskej, 5-6. 132 Slavisches Centralblatt (18 November, 1865). 133 Kollár, Wechselseitigkeit, 30. 134 Kollár, Wechselseitigkeit, 9. 135 Bernolák, Dissertatio, 18/v. 136 Kollár, Wechselseitigkeit, 9. 137 A řeč is larger than a nářeč. Pavel Šafařík, Slowanský Národopis (Prague: Haase, 1842). 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

Chapter 6 King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans, 40. Josef Jungmann, Slownjk Česko‑Německý (Prague: Arcibiskupská knihtiskarna, 1835), iii. Jungmann, Slownjk Česko‑Německý, iv-vi. Leo Thun, Die Stellung der Slowaken in Ungarn (Prague: Calve’sche Buchhandlung, 1843), 18. In 1855, Antonín Vrťátko wrote an ode to the “Čechoslované”; Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia received one stanza each. An 1869 article in the Časopis Matica moravské discussed the “československá” language, emphasizing an unitalicized {e} in an italicized word. In 1883, Jaroslav Vlach borrowed the morpheme Čecho into German without transliterating the {Č} into {Tsch}. See Antonín Vrťátko, “Čechoslované,” in: Perly české (Prague: Czech Museum, 1855), xi-xii; A. Matzenauer, “Příbuznost jazyk-ův indoevropejských,” Časopis Matica moravské, vol. 1 (1869), 32; Jaroslav Vlach, Die Čecho-Slaven (Vienna: Verlag von Karl Prochaska, 1883). “Čechoslovák,” Naše řeč, vol. 3, no. 4 (1919), 118. Pražák, “The Slovak Sources of Kollár’s Pan-Slavism,” 587. František Prusík tells us that the name česta was an intermediate phase in the word’s development, warning that the word Čach, which appears in various Czech place names, is unrelated. In 1770, Francisci Pubitschka suggested that the name Czech might derive from the name Zichi (Ζήχοις), noting also that “however the name Czechen may have arisen, it is certain that our Slavs were named bohemi as early as the 14th century by domestic authors.” František Prusík, “Původ jmena ‘Čech’,” Zprávy o Sasedání kral. české společnosti nauk, vol. 1885 (Prague: České společnosti

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10 11

12

13

14 15

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nauk, 1886), 10-14; Francisci Pubitschka, Chronologische Geschichte Böhmens unter den Slaven (Leipzig, Prague: Franz Augustin Hochenburg, 1770), 1:169. Čech decided to settle in Bohemia after admiring the view from Říp hill (near Litoměřice), which remains a tourist attraction. Čech’s brothers, Lech and Mech, allegedly settled Poland and Russia; “Lachian” survives as a synonym for “Polish.” The Čech-Lech-Mech story has a long pedigree; see e.g. Bartossz Paprocki, Diadochos id est successio, ginak Rostaupnost kniźak a kráuw czeskych (Prague: Ján Ssuman, 1602), 1:5-8. “Common Czech … with its core in the speech of Prague … has spread out from central Bohemia.” David Short, “Czech,” in: Bernard Comrie, Greville Corbett, eds., The Slavonic Languages (London: Routledge, 1993), 531. Jeremy King, alluding to “what might be termed the failed ethnic group of Slavic Moravians,” cites Robert Luft, “Politische Kultur und Regionalismus in einer Zentrallandschaft zweiten Grades: Das Beispiel Mähren im späten 19. Jahrhunderts,” in: Werner Bramke, Thomas Adam, eds., Politische Kultur in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa (Leipzig: Universitätsverlag, 1999), 125-60. In German, the word Tschechien has won widespread acceptance; die Tschechei, popular during the Second World War, has been tainted by Nazi associations. On the history of the word Česko, see Libuše Čižmárová, “K peripetiím vývoje názvů našeho státu a postojů k nim od roku 1918, Naše řeč, vol. 82, no. 1 (1999), 1-15; Leoš Jeleček, Jozef Rubín, “Čechy jako synonymum pojmů Česká republika,” Geografické rozhledy, vol. 7, no. 4 (1997-98), 100-02. For further discussion of the word Česky in relation to its German counterpart Böhmen, see King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans, 24. See for example Ivan Poldaufem, Anglicko-český a česko-anglický slovník (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství), 755; Dagmar Smrčinová, Erna Haraksimová, Rita Mokrá, eds., Anglicko/slovenský, slovensko/anglický slovník (Bratislava: Slovenské pedagogické nakladeteľstvo, 1997) and Željko Bujas Velki HrvatskoEngleski rječnik (Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Globus, 1999), 165. Josef Fronek’s excellent Česko-anglický Slovník (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1993) gives Čech as “Czech,” Čechy as “Bohemia” but český simply as “Czech.” Derek Sayer, “The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language: Prague 1780-1920,” Past and Present, no. 153 (1996), 164-210. Václav Mourek, Pocket Dictionary of the English and Bohemian languages, Kapesní slovník jazyka ceského i anglického (Prague: Korber, 1879); Václav Jung, Slovník anglicko-český: A Dictionary of the English and Bohemian Languages (Prague: Otto, 1912); John Vášna, New Pocket-dictionary of the English and Bohemian Language (London: Bailey and Switfen, 1941); Karel Jonás, A Complete Pronouncing Dictionary of the English and Bohemian Languages for General Use (Chicago: Pancer, 1945). Cited from Albert Pražák, Československý národ (Bratislava: Académia, 1925), 14. Grellman listed Hungary’s Slavic languages as “Bohemian, Moravian, Croatian, Serbian [Serbisch oder Raizisch], Wendic, Dalmatian, Russian and quasi-half Polish.” Where are the Slovaks? Croatian, Wendic, Serbian and Dalmatian are South-Slavic, and “Russian” is Subcarpathian Rusyn/Ukrainian. “Moravian” probably refers to the Moravian brethren, a religious group. This leaves the Slovak territory divided between Bohemian and Polish. A 1664 reference work similarly characterized

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Choosing Slovakia the speech of Košice as “Polish,” while otherwise describing Hungarians as fluent speakers of “the Bohemian language.” See Grellman, Statistische Aufklärungen über wichtige Theile und Gegenstände der österreichischen Monarchie (Göttingen: Vadenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1795), 1:380; Anon., Neue und Kurze Beschreibung des Koenigreichs Ungarn (Nüremburg, 1664), 21, 15. For further discussion of this “Polish” theme, see Maxwell, “Why the Slovak Language has Three Dialects,” 385414. See Gizela Gáfriková, “K Tablicovmu historiografickému konceptu slovenskej literatúry,” Slovenská Literatúra, vol. 60, no. 40 (2004), 260-268. Ján Kollár, “Čechowi,” in: Díla básnická Jana Kollára, Menší básně (Buda: Gyurián a Bagó, 1845), 2:55. Franz Pelzl, Grundsätze der Böhmischen Grammatik (Prague: Franz Gerzabek, 1795). Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:35. “Palkovič’s lectures in Latin on Czech literature were quite unpopular and somewhat irregular … Palkovič was a better publisher, and a patriot, as his good relations with the Slovak Learned Society testify.” See Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 51. Juraj Palkovič, Dwa buchy a třj ssuchy: Sľowenská komédya k zasmánj pro pána y pro sedláka (Bratislava: Weber, 1810). Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:46. Palkovič, Bestreitung der Neuerungen in der böhmischen Orthographie, title page. “Professor řeči a literatury slowenské w Presspurku.” The “Slovak” orthography in the latter case was Bibličtina, complete with {g, j, ř, w}. Juraj Palkovič [Giři Palkowič], Známost Wlasti, Neywjc pro sskoky slowensčé w Uhřich (Bratislava: Simon Petr Weber, 1804), 1:title page. Juraj Palkovič [Giři Palkowič], Muza se Slowenských Hor (Vác: Antonin Gotlib, 1801), 1:introduction. Special thanks to James Krapfl for assistance translating this passage. Tomsa’s spelling guides include the 1789 Malý německý a český slovník, the 1802 Über die čechische Rechtschreibung, the 1805 Über die Veränderungen der čechischen Sprache and the 1812 Grössere čechische Orthographie. See Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 78-79; 87. See Bernolák, Schlowakische Grammatik, 12. Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 79. Juraj Palkovič [Georg Palkowitsch], Bestreitung der Neuerungen in der böhmischen Orthographie (Bratislava: Belnay’s Erben, 1830), 21. Komenský’s Orbis Pictus was a reading primer and a Latin textbook; it typically appeared bilingually. Its many translations include a German-Latin edition from 1658, an English-Latin edition from 1659, a quatralingual Latin-GermanHungarian-Bibličtina edition in 1685, and a Swedish-Latin version from 1689. On Czech attitudes toward Comenius, see Jan Kumpera, “Comenius Between Hagiography and Historiography: Reflections on the Changing Image of the Czech Reformer,” Verhandelingen der koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenshappen, no. 166 (1994), 41-45. On Lutheran exiles from Hungary, see Eva Kowalská, “Z vlasti: Skúsenosti evanjelických fárarov z prenaslekdovania a exilu v 17. storočí,” Slovenský národopis, vol. 52, no. 4 (2004), 249-59.

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34 Letter of 11 December, 1794. Quoted in Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 88. On of Dobrovský’s relationship to Slovakia, see Milada Dísková; see also “Josef Dobrovský a Slovensko,” Studia Moravica, no. 1 (2004), 317-20. 35 Juraj Palkovič, Böhmisch-deutsch-lateinisches Wörterbuch: Mit Beyfügung der den Slowaken und Mähren eigenen Ausdrücke and Redensarten (Bratislava: Belnay, 1820-21), 2 volumes. 36 Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 51. 37 Aleksandr Pypin, Vladimir Spasovič, Geschichte der slavischen Literaturen, vol. 2, part 2 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1880), 318. 38 David Short, “The Use and Abuse of the Language Argument in Mid-nineteenth Century “Czechoslovakism,” An Appraisal of a Propaganda Milestone,” in: Robert Pynsent, ed., The Literature of Nationalism, Essays on East European Identity (London: Macmillan, 1996), 65. 39 See Imrich Sedlák, “Ľudovít Štúr a slovenské studentské hnutie,” in: Imrich Sedlák, ed., Ľudovít Štúr v suradniciach minolostí a sučastnosti (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1997), 28-39; Daniel Veselý, Dejiny kresťanstva a reformácie na Slovensku (Bratislava: Evanjelická bohoslovecká fakulta, 1998), 133-34. 40 Plody zboru učenů řeči Českoskowanské presporského (Bratislava: Landerer, 1836). 41 Hodža’s speech introducing Daniel Lichard to Bratislava students; quoted from Pražák, Československý národ, 30. 42 Pavel Šafařík, Tatranská můza s ljrau slovenskau (Levoča: Jozef Mayer, 1814). 43 “Meine Muttersprache ist das Böhmische.” See Vladimir Francev, Korespondence Pavla Josefa Šafaříka, I Vzájemné dopisy P. J. Šafaříka s ruskými učenci (1825-1861) (Prague: Česká Akademie Věd a Umění, 1927-28), 1:503 44 See Janko Larvin, “The Slav Idea and Russia,” Russian Review, vol. 21, no. 1 ( January, 1962), 13; Pavel Šafařík, Slowanské starožitnosti (Prague: Spurný, 1836). Lubor Niederle, the Czech scholar whose work Larvin described as supplanting Šafařík’s, paid further homage to Šafařík by also naming his multi-volume work Slovanské starožitnosti (Prague: Bursík and Kohout, 1902-1934). 45 Pavel Šafařík, Slowansky národopis (Prague: Haase, 1842; Wrocłow: Schletter, 1843; Moscow: University press, 1843). On Šafařík’s influence on Slavic studies, see Pavol Petrus, ed., Pavol Jozef Šafárik a slavistika (Prešov: University Library, 1996). 46 In his 2 June 1842 “Slovo o českém pravopise,” delivered to the Czech academy of sciences, Šafařík justified the transition {g} > {j} with an appeal to “common sense” and “the custom of almost all Europe.” Josef Jireček, ed., Pavel Josef Šafaříka sebrané spisy (Prague: Bedřich Tempský, 1865), 323; see also R.G.A. de Bray, Guide to the West Slavonic Languages, third edition (Chelsea, MI: Slavica, 1951), 36. 47 A different Světozor began publication in 1867 under the editorial direction of Emanuel Tonner and survived until the end of the century. 48 Jozef Hurban similarly dedicated an 1842 collection of poems to “the daughters and sons of Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia.” See Jozef Hurban, Nitra — dar dcerám a synům slowenska, morawy, čech a slezka obětowaný (Bratislava: Šmid, 1842). 49 From Lusatia, see the letter of “Mosiga z Aehrenfeld,” no. 17 (29 April 1841), 135. The correspondent from Brno suggested that “we Czechoslavs” celebrate the six hundredth anniversary of saving Europe from Batu Khan’s Mongol army; Kwěty, no. 3 (21 January 1841), 23. Several “voices from Slovakia” discussed the Language

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Choosing Slovakia war and the Slovak controversy with Társalkodó; see e.g. “Hlas ze Slowenska,” Kwěty (7 January 1841), 6 and “Hlas ze Slowenska,” Kwěty no. 7 (18 February 1841), 53. A 4 January 1841 letter from a “born Hungarian Slovak [rozený uherský Slowák]” in Vienna appeared in Kwěty no. 8 (25 February 1841). Finally, a letter from “Mr. Hawel” in New Orleans appeared in Kwěty no. 20-21 (20 April 1841). On the Czech community in Louisiana, see James Hlavac, A Hidden Impact: The Czechs and Slovaks of Louisiana from the 1720s to Today (Lincoln: iUniverse, 2006). “Welkomožnému, důstognému pánu Giřjmu Palkowičowi,” Kwěty (29 April 1841), 129. “Z cesty po slowenských Kragjich,” Kwěty, no. 28 (15 July 1841), 221. “Mjsto Předmluwy,” Hronika, vol. 1, no. 1 (1836), 8. “Mjsto Předmluwy,” Hronika, vol. 1, no. 1 (1836), 12. See “Pieśń narodowa, Básně od A ...” Hronika, vol. 2, no. 1 (1837), 88-93. “Slowo k panu Drowi Jos. Chmelenskému,” Hronika – podtatranská zábawnice, vol. 2, no. 1 (1837), 93. “Mjsto Předmluwy,” Hronika, vol. 1, no. 1 (1836), 13. František Kampelík (Kampeljk), Čechoslowan čili Narodnj gazyjk w Čechách, na Morawě, we Slezku a Slowensku (Vienna and Prague: Czech Museum, 1842), title page. Kampelík, Čechoslowan, iv-v. Kampelík, Čechoslowan, iii. Kollár, Hlasowé, 124. The small province of Czech Silesia in the modern Czech Republic should be distinguished from the much larger province annexed by Frederick the Great and now part of Poland. For the national history of both Silesias, see Tomasz Kamusella, Silesia and Central European Nationalisms: The Emergence of National and Ethnic Groups in Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2006). A document of February 3, 1919, noting that the Lusatians had once been “connected to the kingdom of Bohemia,” reported that “they demand union in one independent sate connected with Tschecho-Slovak republic,” though the same document commented that “for geographical reasons, the Lusatian Serbs cannot possibly form part of the Tshecho-Slovak state. Their national consciousness is little developed.” The March 12, 1919 Report Presented to the Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated Governments by the Committee on Tchecho-Slovak Claims similarly reported that “the committee examined the question of the Serbs of Lusatia,” and concluded that “it is impossible to consider the solution of this question by any territorial adjustment.” See Kenneth Bourne, D. Cameron Watts, eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs (Frederik, Maryland: University Publications of America, 1991), part 2, series 1, vol. 10, 46, 47, 60. See also Lawrence Ralston, “The Lusatian Question at the Paris Peace Conference,” American Slavic and East European Review, vol. 19, no. 2 (April 1966), 248-258. Janko Drašković, Ein Wort an Iliriens hochherzige Töchter (Zagreb: Ljudevit Gaj, 1838), 20. This book’s contents are better summarized by the title of the Czech translation “The Ancient History and Modern Literary Revival of the Illyrian Nation,” Starši dějepis a nejnowější literární obnowa národu ilirského (Prague: Pospíšíl, 1845), 29.

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64 Josef Páta, “Lužickosrpské národní obrození a československá účast v něm,” Slavia: časopis pro slovanskou filologii, vol. 2 (1923-24), 344-70. 65 Peter Brock, “Jan Ernest Smoler and the Czech and Slovak Awakeners: A Study in Slavic Reciprocity,” in: Peter Brock, ed., The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1970), 76-81. 66 Peter Kunze, “The Sorbian National Renaissance and Slavic Reciprocity in the First half of the Nineteenth Century” Canadian Slavic Papers, vol. 41, no. 2 ( June 1999), 193. Kunze cites P. Nowotny, “Listy, pisane serbskemu gymnazialnemu towarstwu w Budyšinje z lět 1839-50,” Lětopis A 12:2 (1965), 186. 67 Ján Kadavý, Wzájemnost we příkladech mezi Čechy, Morawany, Slowáky, Slezáky i Lužičany (Pest: Josef Beimel, 1843); see also Ivana Novotná, “Jan Kadavý – Hlasitel česko-slovenské vzájemnosti,” in: Kolokvium slovenských, českých a moravských bibliograov, 3-5 October, 2004, available as an e-document, URL , accessed 10 October 2006, 109-114. 68 Josette Baer, “National Emancipation, not the Making of Slovakia,” Studies in PostCommunism, Occasional Paper no. 2 (2003), 13-14. 69 Peter Brock, “Jan Ernest Smoler,” 83. 70 Brock, “Jan Ernest Smoler,” 82. 71 Kunze, “The Sorbian National Renaissance,” 190-91. 72 The last stanza runs: “long the glowing coals hissed among the pines, long the fickle winds scattered the ashes to the mountains. Still, however, when the day is done, something still can be heard where the border was burned: Lusatia, Sorbs, Lusatia!” One must, of course, imagine the ABAB, CCDD rhyme scheme for full effect. Jozef Hurban, ed., Nitra — dar dcerám a synům slowenska, morawy, čech a slezka obětowaný (Bratislava: Šmid, 1842), 1:67. 73 Edmund Hleba, Michal Hlaváček a levočské literárne tradície (Bratislava: Slovenské pedagogické nakladateľstvo, 1974), 37. 74 See Adolf Hroboň, “Ku bratům,” in: Gitřenka čili wýbornegšj práce učenců ČeskoSlowenských A. V. Lewočských (Levoča: Jan Werthmüller, 1840), 49, 50. 75 See Ondrej [Ondreg] Ďurček, “Dunag,” in: Gitřenka, 11-12. 76 “Odbjrka od učencu řeči českoslawenské,” Gitřenka, 84. 77 Note the distinction between řeč and nářeč. “Odbjrka od učencu řeči českoslawenské,” Gitřenka, 84. 78 Peter Brock, The Slovak National Awakening: An Essay in the Intellectual History of East Central Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 72. 79 “Phantasiebeflügelte Romantiker.” Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 178. 80 The sole subscriber from Krupina was a woman, as well as three of the seven subscribers in Banská Stiavnica. Famous names among the list of subscribers include Hurban, Hodža, Šafařík, Jungmann, Palacký, Hanka and Amerling. Štúr is conspicuous by his absence; according to Gogolák, Štúr and Hlaváček disliked each other personally. 81 The family names include such specimens as Bárczy, Draskóczy, Farkas, Fejérpataky, Ghillányi, Marosi, Palugyay, Szalay and Szilvágyi. See Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:176. 82 Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:171-186. 83 Kramarcsék published this under the pseudonym K. Szatócs, “The Czechoslav heroes of Panslavism,” Társalkodó, no. 92, Pest (November 14, 1840). Ľudovít Štúr

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Choosing Slovakia printed a German translation in Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig: Robert Binder, 1843), 51. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:179. Karl Zay invited him to his castle and the two daydreamed about using Hungarian schools as an instrument of Magyarization. These conversations inspired Zay’s 1840 Mahnruf an das Professorenkollegium des evangelischen Gymnasiums von Leutschau, a precursor to Zay’s infamous Protestantismus, Magyarismus, Slawismus, which sparked the Language War. Cited from Hojč, Apologie des ungrischen Slawismus, 111-12. Hojč cited the Allgemeine Zeitung (supplement), 160, 1841; and Társalkodó (1840). Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:142 Pražák studied philology in Prague, and wrote his books in Czech. During his years in Bratislava, however, he developed a serious professional interest in Slovakia. Pražák’s more thoughtful works on Slovak Czechoslovakism include “Slovenská otázka v době J. M. Hurbana,” Sborník filozofickej fakulty, vol. 1, no. 13 (Bratislava: Comenius University, 1923); Slovenská svojkost (Bratislava: Comenius University, 1926); and Češi a Slováci (Prague: Státní nakladatelství, 1929). Pražák’s Czechoslovak arguments are problematic since he habitually overstated his case. See Jan Štehlík, Olga Doubravová, eds., Československý biografický slovník (Prague: Encyckopedický institut ČSAV, 1992), 567. Three quotations are from František Palacký, a Moravian historian of Bohemia who admittedly spent his adolescence in Slovakia as a boarder in Ľudovit Štúr’s childhood home. Russian author Nikolay Danielevsky, a passage from whose Russia and Europe appears on Pražák’s list, is an even less credible Slovak. Albert Pražák, Československý národ (Bratislava: Nákladem Academie, 1925). For a description of Palacký’s career in Slovakia, see Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:75-87. Theodore Locher, Die nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen Verlauf bis 1848 (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk & Zoon, 1931), 84. Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 67. Jozef Butvin, Slovenské národno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 12. Pilip Anthony Hrobak, ‘Czechoslovakia,’ History ‘Made to Order’ (Cleveland: Slovak League of America, 1958), 16. Kirschbaum, The Struggle for Survival, 105.

Chapter 7 1 Slovak historiography imagines the Štúrovci quite differently from the Bernolákovci” while a Bernolákovec, by definition, wrote in Bernolákovčina, some “Štúrovci” never published anything in Štúrovčina. Indeed, Imrich Kotvan’s bibliographical work on the Štúrovci includes one author, Jonáš Bohumil Guoth (Kotvan’s author #12), who never wrote anything in any Slavic script: Guoth wrote his medical dissertation in Latin. Kotvan’s Štúrovci span the long nineteenth century: the earliest Štúrovec birth was in 1801 (Michal Godra), and the last death in 1910 (Samuel Štefanovič). Despite this range, all of Kotvan’s Štúrovci were alive during the years 1830-42. Butvin similarly dated the “new Štúr generation” to the period 1835-43. Though both Kollár (1795-1852) and Šafařík (1795-

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1861) lived during this period, their public opposition to Štúrovčina disqualifies them as Štúrovci. Slovak scholars thus apparently consider a Štúrovec any Slovak patriot who (1) was alive during Štúr’s most productive years and (2) did not explicitly reject Štúrovčina. Kotvan incidentally defined the Bernolákovci at least in part by generation. Bernard Seifried, one of Kotvan’s 105 Bernolákovci, never published a single book, though Kotvan claims that he “generationally belongs among the Bernolákovci; and he held to Anton Bernolák’s linguistic norms in his manuscripts.” Kotvan, incidentally, spelled his name as “Berard,” but the Slovenský biografický slovník confirms the familiar “Bernard.” See Imrich Kotvan, Štúrovské tlače univerzitnej knižnice v Bratislave (Bratislava: Univerzitná knižnica, 1956); Jozef Butvin, Slovenské národno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 13; Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolákovcov, 298. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:141. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:147. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:150. Though Štúr was fiery in his defense of Slavic rights and quick to denounce perceived injustice on the part of the Magyars, Gogolák was probably wrong to interpret Štúr’s rhetoric as “hatred.” See Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes 2:147, 149. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes, 2:154. However, it is fair to note that Wesselényi’s ideas about a federal reorganization of the Habsburg Empire did not foresee any autonomy for Slovaks: “There was no notion of an ‘internal federalization’ of Hungary.” See Horst Haselsteiner, “Comment,” Austrian History Yearbook, no. 31, (2001), 159. Jelena Milojković-Djurić, Panslavism and National Identity in Russia and the Balkans 1830-1880: Images of the Self and Others (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 21. “Pomněnky z Děwjna,” Hronika, vol. 2, no. 1 (1837), 7-8; Slovenský biografický slovník (od roku 833 do r. 1990) (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1987), 5:532; see also Milojković-Djurić, Panslavism and National Identity, 21-26. See the opening page of Kwěty no. 40 (7 October 1841), 313. See Jozef Hurban, “Cestopisné zlomky,” Kwěty no. 42 (21 October 1841), 334; the quotation is from “Zlomky cestopisné,” Kwěty no. 50 (16 December 1841), 398. Jozef Butvin, Slovenské národno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 13; Imrich Kotvan, Štúrovské tlače univerzitnej knižnice v Bratislave (Bratislava: Univerzitná knižnica, 1956). Petro similarly called Hurban “Štúr’s closest lieutenant; see A History of Slovak Literature, 70. Pypin and Spasovič, Geschichte der slavischen Literaturen, 331. The poster is reproduced in Fraňo Ruttkay, Ľudovít Štúr ako Novinár (Brno: Vydavatelsví novinář, 1982), plate 14. Carl Stock, under the pseudonym “Deutscher Michel.” Die Umtriebe Hurbans und Compagnie und das Schattenreich der Slowakei (Vienna: Carl Gerold & Sohn, 1850). A Hungarian history from 1911 described the Slovak volunteers as “the Panslav Slovak band of soldiers under Hurban,” without so much as mentioning Štúr; see Henrik Marczali, Magyarorzág Története (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1911), 670. However one compares Štúr and Hurban, M.M. Hodža clearly had the least historical impact. One Hungarian historian omits Hodža altogether: he sees the Slovak national movement has having two leaders. See László Deme, The Radical

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Choosing Slovakia Left in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1976), 67. Thirteen continued their studies at Levoča. One of the students who left Bratislava in protest was Ján Matuška, who wrote the lyrics for the Slovak national anthem. See R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 261; Joseph Mikus, Slovakia and the Slovaks (Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1977), 598. Ľudovít Štúr, Beschwerden und Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn über die gesetzwidrigen Uebergriffe der Magyaren (Leipzig: Robert Binder, 1843), 35. The full proverb runs: Extra Hungaricum non est vita, si est vita, non est ita: “Beyond Hungary, there is no life, and if there is, it is different.” Letter to Havlíček printed in Národní noviny, no. 23 (2 May, 1848). Quoted in Milan Hodža, Československý rozkol: príspevky k dejinám slovenčiny (Martin: Nákladom vlastným, 1920), 399. Barbara Törniquest-Plewa, “Contrasting Ethnic Nationalisms: Eastern Central Europe.” In: Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael, Language and Nationalism in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 202. Theodore Locher, Die nationale Differenzierung und Integrierung der Slovaken und Tschechen in ihrem Geschichtlichen Verlauf bis 1848 (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk & Zoon, 1931), 163-64. Brock, The Slovak National Awakening, 45. Petro exaggerated the success of Czech orthographic reforms in the 1830s: criticism of Štúr’s orthography actually reflected the bitter orthographic struggle then being waged in Prague. Šafařík’s Bibličtina Swětozor continued publication in Blackletter type until 1835. While Česká wčela appeared in Latin, not Blackletter, it still used {g j w} in the 1830s. Jungmann’s 1835 Slownjk česko-německý used Latin {g j w}, and Václav Hanka’s spelling guide, which went through at least nine editions between 1817 and 1849, only changed its conventions in 1845: the Prawopis český, the sixth edition of 1844, still uses {w}, but the seventh edition of 1845 is the Pravopis český. See Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 65; Josef Jungmann, Slownjk česko-německý (Prague: Arcibiskupská knihtiskarna, 1835), Václav Hanka [Wáclaw Hanka], Prawopis český [Czech Spelling] (Prague: Václav Hanka, 1844); reprinted as Pravopis český (Prague: Spisovatel, 1847, also reprinted 1848 and 1849). Most Czechoslovak scripts have a rule allowing the palatalized consonants {ď} {ň} {ť} to be written as unpalatalized {d} {n} {t} when followed by the letter {i}: the {i} self-evidently palatalizes the previous consonant. Štúrovčina, however, frequently uses {j} instead of {i} in diphthongs, so authors must explicitly mark palatalized consonants that other scripts implicitly palatalize with {i}. Štúr himself found this convention difficult: he spelled the modern Slovak nie [no, not] as both nje and ňje, but was consistent about the {ď} in ďjela, today spelled diela. See Ľudovít Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňje v tomto nárečje (Bratislava: K. F. Wigrand, 1846, 31), 37. Bernolák, Dissertatio, 22-23. See Ľudovít Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňje v tomto nárečje (Bratislava: K. F. Wigrand, 1846), 51. A Hattalovčina translation by Heinrich Bartek was published as “Nárečie slovenské alebo potreba písania v tomto náreči” (Martin: Kompas, 1946).

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28 Cambel describes Štúr’s argument as follows: “Slováci sú osobitný národ a ako národ majú svoj vlastný jazyk (v dobovej terminológii „Kmen“ a „nárečie“).” When the Slovak Academy of Sciences reprints Slovaks historical sources, the original spellings are routinely adjusted to the conventions of modern Slovak orthography. This regrettable practice provides a charitable explanation for Cambel’s error: he may have considered himself to be paraphrasing. Substituting jazyk and národ for nárečie and kmen, however, is more than a transliteration: the modern spelling of nárečja is simply nárečia, and kmen remains kmen. Changes in “the terminology of the age” never justify the substitution of key words: what would have prevented Communist historians from having Štúr proclaim the Slovaks a distinct brigade of the international proletariat, which as a distinct brigade of the international proletariat, had its own revolutionary rhetoric, different from that of the Czechs? See Samuel Cambel, ed., Dejiny Slovenska (Bratislava: SAV, 1987), 2:721. 29 Hugh LeCaine Agnew, “Czechs, Slovaks and the Slovak Linguistic Separatism of the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in: John Morison, ed., The Czech and Slovak Experience (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 28. 30 Emil Horák, “Štúrov spis Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňja v tomto nárečí v aktuálnom slovanskom kontexte,” Slavica Slovaca, vol. 38, no. 2 (2003), 97. 31 Brock, The Slovak National Awakening, 48, 80. 32 Mikus, Slovakia and the Slovaks, 76. 33 Kirschbaum, The Struggle for Survival, 100. 34 See Stanley Pech’s review of Peter Sugar and Ivo Lerderer’s Nationalism in Eastern Europe in Slavic Review, vol. 29, no. 4 (December, 1970), 720. 35 Peter Toma and Dušan Kováč, Slovakia: From Samo to Dzurinda (Stanford: Hoover Press, 2001), 31. 36 Brock, The Slovak National Awakening, 48. 37 Ĺubomír [sic] Ďurovič, “Ľudovít Štúr,” in: Richard Frucht, ed., Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe: From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism (New York, London: Garland, 2000), 770. 38 Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 67. 39 Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo, 13. 40 Berger rendered the title in German as Der slowakische Dialekt oder die Notwendigkeit, in diesem Dialekt zu Schreiben. See Tilman Berger, “Nation und Sprache: das Tschechische und das Slowakische,” in: Andreas Gardt, ed., Nation und Sprache: Die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 849. Hans Kohn also translated nárečja correctly, see his Panslavism: Its History and Ideology (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953), 21. 41 Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo, 13. 42 Kollár, Hlasowé, 108. 43 Štúr specifically listed the grammars of Nejedlý, Dobrovský, Burian, Žak, Konečný “and many others!” Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo, 76, 81. 44 Zacek, “Nationalism in Czechoslovakia,” 189. 45 Ľudovít Štúr, “Panslavism a naša krajina,” Slovenskje národňje novini (3 – 14 September, 1847). Cited from Slovo na čase, 2:239. 46 Karel Chotek, “ ‘Ján Holák‘: Politické snahy slovenské v rokoch 1848-49,” Carpatica (Prague: Orbis, 1936), 115.

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47 Ambruš transliterated many of Štúr’s works; see his 1941 introduction to Slovo na čase, 7-8. 48 Milan Podrimavský, “The Idea of National Autonomy in Slovak Politics (18481914),” Studia historica Slovaca, vol. 19 (1995), 117. 49 Vyšná-Lehocká apparently ended her Hugnaro-Slavic argument by invoking a Slovak particularist nation: “But especially the reason is that our národ itself requires it.” Letter of November 1843 to Antonia Reiseová. Quoted from Rudinsky, Incipient Feminists, 32. 50 Ľubomír Ďurovič, “Štúrova Nauka reči slovenskej z  perspektívy začiatku XXI storočia,” Slovenská reč, vol. 67, no. 6 (2002), 342. 51 Katarína Sedláková, “Dôležité momenty pri utváraní slovenského a bulharského spisovného jazyka,” Slavica Slovaca, vol. 40, no. 2 (2005), 137. 52 Hanka only adopted Tomsa’s reforms in 1847, in the seventh edition of his spelling guide. Compare Wáclaw Hanka, Prawopis český (Prague: W. Hanka, 1844) with Václav Hanka, Pravopis český (Prague: Spisovatel, 1847). 53 George Thomas, The Development of Slovak Purism, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series vol. 30 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 72. Tomas cites sample Bohemianisms such as cestopis (travelogue), dusík (nitrogen), kyslík (oxygen) and predmet (grammatical subject). 54 Thomas, The Development of Slovak Purism, 72. 55 Jan Kollár, Ueber die Wechselseitigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen Stämmen und Mundarten der slawischen Nation (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1844), 94. 56 See Fraňo Ruttkay, Ľudovít Štúr ako Novinár (Brno: Novinář, 1982). 57 Peter Brock, The Slovak National Awakening: An Essay in the Intellectual History of East Central Europe (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1976), 13. This passage was approvingly cited by James Ramon Felak, “At the Price of the Republic”: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, 1929-1938 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1994), 5. 58 Some foreign observers divided the Slovak territory into a Czech part in the west, and a Polish part in the east, e.g. Therese Pulszky, Aus dem Tagebuche einer ungarischen Dame (Leipzig: F. W. Grunow and Company, 1850), 1:84, 85-86, 91; Grellman, Statistische Aufklärungen über wichtige Theile und Gegenstände der österreichischen Monarchie (Göttingen: Vadenhoek und Ruprecht, 1795), 1:380. Other Slovak literati used either what David Short described as “hybrid dialects,” or open-ended taxonomies ascribing a different dialect to each town. For taxonomies with “hybrid dialects,” see Kollár, Hlasowé, 102-04; Michal Hodža, Dobruo slovo Slovákom (Levoča: Tatrína, 1847), 91; Short, “The Use and Abuse of the Language Argument.” For open-ended taxonomies, see the Anti-Fandly polemic in Imrich Kotvan, Bernolákovské polemiky (Bratislava: SAV, 1966), 33, and Jonáš Záborský and J. Pavel Tomášek’s contributions to Kollár’s Hlasowé, 89, 199. 59 The tripartite division is an article of faith for Slovak linguists, and features prominently in the linguistic analyses of Anton Habovštiak, Atlas slovenského jayzka, (Bratislava: SAV, 1984), vol. 1; Ivor Ripka, ed., Slovník slovenských nárečí (Bratislava: Jazykovedný ústav Ľudovíta Štúra), 1994. Western scholars accepting the tripartite division include R.G.A. de Bray, Guide to the West Slavonic Languages, third edition (Chelsea, MI: Slavica, 1951), 146-48; Short, “Slovak,” 588-89; C.F. and F.M. Voegelin, Classification and Index of the World’s Languages

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65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72

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(New York: Elsevier, 1977), 311-14. Scholars projecting the tripartite division back in time before Štúr include Ľubomír Ďurovič, “Slovak,” in: Alexander Schanker and Edward Stankiewicz, eds., The Slavic Literary Languages: Formation and Development (New Haven: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1980). The now-defunct study of the “Czechoslovak language” also accepted the tripartite division of the Slovak dialect of Czechoslovak, see e.g. Miroslav Štěpánek, ed., Malá československá encyclopedie (Prague: Academia, 1987), 695; Václav Vážný, “Nářečí slovenská.” Československá vlastiveda (Prague: Sfinx, 1934), 3: 223. For a full-length discussion, see Alexander Maxwell, “Why the Slovak Language has Three Dialects: A Case Study in Historical Perceptual Dialectology,” Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 37 (Spring, 2006), 385-414. Letter of 22 August 1845 to Osyp Bodjans’kyi, printed in V.A. Francev, Korespondence Pavla Josefa Šafaříka: Vzájemné dopisy P. J. Šafaříka s ruskými učenci (1825-1861) (Prague: ČAVU, 1927-28), 1:93. On the circumstances behind the volume, see Karel Tieftrunk, Dějiny Matice české (Prague: František Řivnáč, 1881), 99. David Short persuasively attributes this to Kollár. Short, “The Use and Abuse of the Language Argument,” 45. This figure reflects certain judgment calls. David Short claims without evidence that Kollár wrote entry xxiv (p. 204), which purports to be the work of Martin Durgala and Emerich Šulek “in the name of many Pressburg and Nitra Slovaks.” I split the difference and counted this article as a single author. Entry xxix (p. 217) is signed by three students “and many others”; I also treated this entry as the work of a single author. Finally, I discarded the entries of Wawřinec Benedikti, Jan Komenský, Matěj Mathias Bél, Bohuslaw Tablic, Josef Dubrovský, František Palacký, and Josef Jungmann: the first four were dead when Hlasowé was published, the last three authors were Prague-based Czechs, and thus do not reflect Slovak ideas. I included A.W. Sembera, a “professor of Czech language and literature” in Olomouc. Jan Kollár, ed., Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky (Prague: Czech Museum, 1846); see also Short, “Use and Abuse of the Language Argument.” Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 216. Quoted from R.J.W. Evans, “Language and Society in the Nineteenth Century: Some Central European Comparisons,” in: Geraint Jenkins, ed., Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), 415. 397-424. Quoted from Short, “Use and Abuse of the Language Argument,” 55. Kollár, Hlasowé, 162. Kollár, Hlasowé, 240. Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 64. J. Pawel Tomášek, in Kollár, Hlasowé, 198. Charles Ferguson first formulated this concept in “Diglossia,” Word no. 15 (1959), 325-340, reprinted as “Diglossia,” Language Structure and Language Use (Stanford: University Press, 1971), 1-22, but see also the classic treatment in Joshua Fishman, “Bilingualism With and Without Diglossia, Diglossia With and Without Bilingualism,” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 23, no. 2 (1967), 29-38. J. Pawel Tomášek, in Kollár, Hlasowé, 198. Tomášek, in Kollár, Hlasowé, 199.

232 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82

83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96

Choosing Slovakia Jan Seberini, in Kollár, Hlasowé, 232-33. Brock, The Slovak National Awakening, 35. Kollár, Hlasowé, 232-33. Kollár, Hlasowé, 214-15. Kollár, Hlasowé, 222-23. Kollár, Hlasowé, 222. Kollár included passages from Komenský, Ribay and Palkovič. Since these figures were dead when Hlasowé was published, their contributions do not count as expressions of Slovak loyalty to Bibličtina in response to the Štúr codification. The Prague contributor, incidentally, is Šafařík. This incidentally supports the “wave hypothesis” theory of language change: the impact of Štúr’s innovations spread only so far, leaving outlying regions such as Békés and Levoča with closer ties to Bohemia than Central and Western Slovakia. On the wave hypothesis, see Johann Schmidt, Die Verwandschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen (Weimar: Böhlau, 1872). Miroslav Hurban, Českje hlasi proti Slovenčiňe (Skalice: Skarniel 1846), 18. Kmen v Slovanstve and kmen státu uhorskjeho. Hurban, Českje hlasi proti Slovenčiňe, 26. Jozef Hurban, Cjrkewnj swětlo we tmách času přjtomného (Pest: Trattner-Karoly, 1860), 8. Jozef Hurban, Die Kirchenparteien und die Kirche (Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1861), 75. Hurban’s motives for abandoning particularist Slovak have been the subject of much debate among Slovak historians: Skultéty attributes Hurban’s switch “to anger”; Zechenter, to the hope of Czech support in the struggle against Magyarization; Francisci saw it as a demonstration against Tisza; and Pražák as a rejection of Slovak linguistic particularism. Osuský says that Hurban switched back to Bibličtina in 1876-77, just after Tisza’s accession to power, but Cjrkewnj swětlo suggests an earlier date. Samuel Osuský, Filosofia Štúrovov (Myjava: Daniel Pažický, 1928), 2:320. Cited from Pražák, “Slovenská otázka v době J. M. Hurbana,” 530/202. Jozef Butvin, Slovenské národno-zjednocovacie hnutie (1780-1848) (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 376. Eugen Pauliny, Dejiny spisovney slovenčiny (Bratislava: SAV 1948), 70. See the list of subscribers in the first pages of Gitřenka čili wýbornegšj práce učenců Česko-Slowenských A.V. Lewočských (Levoča: Jan Werthmüller, 1840). The paper’s editorial stance defended “linguistic and national unity of the Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks; at the same time he adhered to Hungary as a political mother country,” according to Domokos Kosáry, The Press During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849 (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1986), 277. See also László Sziklay, Launer István: Egy 1848-evi Szlovák ropivat szeroje (Budapest: Pázmany Péter Tudomanyegytem Szláv Filologiai Intézet, 1948). Launer, Povaha Slovanstva, 122-23. Launer, Povaha Slovanstva, 185. Launer, Povaha Slovanstva, 205. In an article responding to “New Arguments Against Slovak,” Štúr was dismissive: “Launer has been sentenced by himself. His life has been short.” Oral Tatránsky, vol. 2, no. 84 (1848), 640; cited from Braňo Hronec, Controversy Among Slovak

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Intellectuals in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Central European University: MA Thesis, 1995-96), 44, see also 49-50. For a more sympathetic discussion of Launer, see Oskar Čepan, “Ideové rozpory slovenského romantizmus,” Slávia, 48 (1977), 48. 97 Dohnány’s original text confuses any distinction between “Czech” and “Bohemian”: “…žeby pri češťiňe museli biť češi, a ňikdi dobrí uhorski vlasťenci.” See Dohnány, Historia povstaňja slovenskjeho, 8, 21. 98 Dohnány does use bibličtina as an analytical term; he also speaks of a stará a nová škola. Dohnány’s old and new schools must be distinguished from the betterknown stará škola and nová škola that split over the 1867 Ausgleich. Mikuláš Dohnány, Historia povstaňja slovenskjeho z roku 1848 (Skalica: Skarniel and Son, 1850), 18-19. 99 Specifically, in Hodža’s Větín o slovenčině (Levoča: Werthmüller, 1848). See Rudolf Krajčovič, Svedectvo dejín o slovenčine (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1997), 205. 100 Dohnány, Historia povstaňja slovenskjeho, 22. 101 Ondřej Radlinský, Prawopis slowenský s krátkou mluwnicí (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1850). 102 Samuel Cambel claimed that Cyrill a Method promoted Old Slovak as a literary language for Slovaks, but does not explain why Radlinský did not himself write in the script be promoted. Samuel Cambel, ed., Dejiny Slovenská (Bratislava: SAV, 1992), 3:225. 103 Radlinský, Prawopis slowenský s krátkou mluwnicí, introduction. 104 See Jonáš Záborský’s contribution to Kollár, Hlasowé, 123-27. 105 Jonáš Záborský, “Predmluva,” Žehry: Básně a dvě řeči (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1851), second unnumbered page of the introduction. 106 “Štúrovi,” “Proti novotám v řečim v řeči,” and “Slovákům,” in: Záborský, Žehry, 69, 74, 88-89. 107 Štúriste not Štúrovci. Samuel Krištóf, Daniel Zajac and Jan Kutlík, “Hlasy spojené,” in: Kollár, Hlasowé, 203. Krištóf, the first author listed, held a noble title and presumably spoke for his companions. 108 Anneliese Gladrow, “Slowakisch,” in: Lexikon der Sprachen des europäischen Ostens (Klagenfurt: University Press, 2002), 479. Richard Wallace similarly wrote that Štúr “is today considered to have been the most important patriot in Slovak history largely because his codification of Slovak stuck.” See Richard Wallace, “The Slovaks,” in Jean Forward, ed., Endangered Peoples of Europe: Struggles to Survive and Thrive (Westport, Conn., London: Greenwood Press, 2001), 159. 109 Karel [Karol] Štúr, Řeč kterau při úvodu svém do cirkvi slovensko-evanjelické modránské dne 8-ho listopadu, 1846 (Skalica: František Xavier Škarnicla, 1847). 110 Mikus, Slovakia and the Slovaks, 76. 111 An 1850 Slovak language textbook directed at German-speakers warned its students that every grammar is “written in a different dialect, and often speakers of other dialects find fault with a newspaper for that reason alone,” and suggested that students study Bibličtina because “the literary language of the Slovaks will probably remain the Czechoslovak, also called by Slovaks the Biblical language, because all Protestant sacred and religious books, and most Catholic books, were written in it.” See Albert Pražák, “Slovenská otázka v době J. M. Hurbana,” Sborník filozofickej fakulty, vol. 1, no. 13 (Bratislava: University Komenského v Bratislave, 1923), 410/82 (for some reason, this work has two sets of page numbers). Pražák

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cites Kašpar Dianiška, introduction to Theoretische Grammatik zur schnellen Erlernung der slowakischen Sprache für Deutsche (Vienna: N.P. 1850). 112 Geoffrey Drage, Austria-Hungary (London: John Murray, 1909), 552. 113 John Morrison, “The Road to Separation: Nationalism in Czechoslovakia,” in: Paul Latawski, ed., Contemporary Nationalism in East Central Europe (London: MacMillan, 1995), 68. 114 Martin Hattala, Grammatica linguae slovenicae, collatae com proxime cognata bohemica (Banská Štiavnica: Lorber, 1851); Krátka mluvnice slovenská (Bratislava: Schmidovy, 1852). 115 The Lutherans were Štúr, Hurban and Hodža, the Catholics were Ján Palárik, Ondrej Radlinský and Štefan Závodnik. Kohn, Panslavism, 21. 116 František Bokes, Dokumenty k slovenskému národnému hnutiu v rokoch 1848-1914 (Bratislava: SAV, 1962), 159. 117 See “Spev slovenský,” in: Jozef Viktorin, Ján Palárik, Concordia, slovanský letopis (Buda: Vsago, 1858), 198. 118 Derek Sayer, for example, wrote that “a separate written Slovak was first differentiated from Czech and formalized by Ľudovít Štúr in the 1840s.” See Sayer, “The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language,” 164-210. 119 Martin Hattala, O oblativě ve slovenčině a lítvančíně (Prague: Antonín Renn 1858). 120 Martin Hattala, Srovnávací mluvnice jazyka českého a slovenského (Prague: Nákladem Calveova Kněhkupectví, 1857), 131. 121 The term “old Czechs” here refers to Czechs who used Bibličtina. Hattala, Srovnávací mluvnice, 114. 122 Ľudovít Štúr, Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft (Bratislava: Stát. tisk, 1931); first published in Russian as Slavjanstvo i mir budushchago (Moscow: Universitesk. tipogr, 1867), later published in Slovak as Slovanstvo a svet budúcnosti (Bratislava: SIMŠ, 1993). 123 Štúr, Slovanstvo a svet budúcnosti, 173, cited from Oskar Krejčí, Geopolitics of the Central European Region: The View from Prague and Bratislava (Bratislava: Veda, 2005), 172. 124 Štúr, Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft, cited from Peter Black, Kollár and Štúr, Romantic and Post-Romantic Visions of a Slavic Future (New York: Institute on East Central Europe, 1975), 24. 125 Štúr, Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft, cited from Black, Kollár and Štúr, 23. 126 Štúr, Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft, cited from Black, Kollár and Štúr, 21, 26. 127 Frank Fadner, Seventy Years of Pan-Slavism in Russia: Karamzin to Danilevskiĭ, 1800-1870 (Haarlem: Enschede, 1962) 304. 128 On the reception of Štúr’s work in Russia, see Fadner, Seventy Years of Pan-Slavism in Russia, 252-53; Michael Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), 233. 129 Black, Kollár and Štúr, 28. 130 R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 264. 131 On Štúr’s multivalent appropriation, see Stefan Auer, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe (London: Routledge, 2004), 137. 132 See for example Hurban’s speech at the ceremony marking the completion of Prague’s national theater, available in Ladislav Bátola, Česká revue, WWW

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document, URL , accessed 25 September 2006, 7-8. 133 While the text is in Czech, passages from Slovak songs are printed in Hattalovčina. Ľudevít Štúr, O národních pisních a pověstech plemen slovanských (Prague: Czech Museum, no. 16, 1852). 134 Zlatko Klátík, Štúrovci a Juhoslovania (Bratislava: SAV, 1965), 34. 135 Launer, Povaha Slovanstva, 197. 136 Jan Kollár “O českoslowenské jednotě w řeči a w literatuře,” Kollár, Hlasowé, 111. 137 Milan Strhan, ed., Slovakia and the Slovaks: A Concise Encyclopedia (Bratislava: SAV, 1994), 628. 138 Ludwig v. Gogolák, Geschichte des slowakischen Volkes (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1972), 3:23. 139 Šafařík united Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lustatians and Slovenes into a “north-western branch” of the Slavic languages. In 1844, however, he divided the “Czech-Slovak division” of the Slavs into three equal categories: Bohemian, Moravian and Slovak. Pavel Šafárik, Dejiny slovanského jazyka a literatúry všetkých náreči (Bratislava: Učená Společnost Šafaříkova, 1903), 66; Pavel Šafařík [Paul Schafarik], Slawische Alterthümer (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1844), 2: 50. 140 Pavol Šafařík, Slovanský národopis (Prague: Československé Akedemie Věd, 1955), 7. Chapter 8 Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society (London: Penguin, 1995), 145. 2 Pierre Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation,” in: Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 221-223. 3 Eugen Pauliny, Dejiny spisovney slovenčiny (Bratislava: SAV 1948), 70. 4 Tomaš G. Masaryk, The Meaning of Czech History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 51. 5 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 54. 6 Charles Wojatsek, From Trianon to the first Vienna Arbitral Award: The Hungarian Minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic (Montreal: Institut des Civilizations Comparées, 1980), 7. 7 David Short, a leading Anglophone expert on Czech and Slovak, concluded that “standard Czech is then a semi-artificial creation” since a single individual, Dobrovský, played such an important role in creating it. Short, however, implied that this made literary Czech somehow unusual. Short, “Czech,” in: Comrie and Corbett, The Slavonic Languages, 531. 8 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World (London: Routledge, 1997 [1982]), 82. 9 See Štúr’s massive nine-page paragraph in Ľudovít Štúr, Nárečja slovenskuo alebo potreba písaňje v tomto nárečje (Bratislava: K. F. Wigrand, 1846), 52-59. Heinrich Bartek, incidentally, broke this paragraph into twelve smaller paragraphs; for his edition, see “Nárečie slovenské alebo potreba písania v  tomto náreči” (Martin: Kompas, 1946). 10 Dagmar Smrčinová, Erna Haraksimová, Rita Mokrá, eds., Anglicko-Slovenský, Slovensko-Anglický Slovník (Bratislava: Slovenské pedagogické nakladateľstvo, 1

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16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24

25

Choosing Slovakia 1997), 54; Josef Fronek, Česko-anglický slovník (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1993), 76; Karel Kálal, Slovensko a Slováci (Prague: Šimáčka, 1905), 60-61. “Unmaßgebliche Vorschläge,” (Vienna: 22 March 1849); cited from Ánges Deák, “Nemzeti Egyenjogúsítás”, Kormányzati nemzetiségpolitika Magyarországon, 1849-1860 (Budapest: Osiris, 2000), 195. R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 250. Heinz Kloss, “Abstandsprache und Ausbausprache,” in: Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus Mattheier, eds., Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987, 1:302. Kloss originally formulated this idea in his Die Entwickelung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen von 1800 bis 1950 (Munich: Pohl, 1952). The difference between an Abstandsprache and an Ausbausprache, of course, depends on the point of comparison: Slovak is an Abstandsprache compared to Magyar. Basque is unique not because it is an Abstandsprache, but because it is not an Ausbausprache for anybody. Trudgill, Sociolinguistics, 145. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 48. Robert McColl Millar, Language, Nation and Power (London: Palgrave, 2005), 52-53. John McWhorter, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language (New York: Times Books, 2001), 74, 84. See Jack Berry, “The Making of Alphabets,” in: Joshua Fishman, ed., Readings in the Sociology of Language (The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1970), 737-38. Einar Haugen, “Language, Dialect, Nation,” American Anthropologist, new series, vol. 68, no. 4 (August 1966), 922-935 John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 1984), 255. Both swatý and swatí are different declensions of the adjective “holy.” The letters {ý} and {í} represent the same sound, but differ in the degree to which they palatalize the previous consonant. Slavic grammar describes palatalized consonants as “soft”; thus Seberini’s reference to “hard and soft” letters. Learning Bibličtina’s rules for consonant palatalization requires considerable effort, but it is worth noting that palatalization rules are difficult in all Slavic scripts, including Hattalovčina. Jan Seberimi, letter from Banská Štiavnica, in Kollár, Hlasowé o potřebě jednoty spisowného jazyka pro Čechy, Morawany a Slowáky, 231. Seberini’s letter in Kollár, Hlasowé, 231. Godra was hardly the brightest light of nineteenth-Century Slovakia, but he did correspond with the great and famous, including Šafařík, Kollár and Štúr. Notice that Saktorová retroactively describes Bibličtina, the script Kollár defended as a common language for Czechs, Moravians and Slovaks, as “Slovak.” Helena Saktorová, “Z korešpondencia Michala Godra,” Literárny archív, vol. 19/82 (1983), 111. In a letter of 3 September 1827 Šafařík used Latin, Greek and Old Church Slavonic letters in a single paragraph: “Rusum teneatis. This is a compendium, but the Greek αι stands for AI. The I has been pushed into the A. Also, among all Slavs, it sounds like ä, not ja, not e. Vuk [Karadžić] is greatly mistaken when he says that the Serbian ε is older than Ѧ. Nothing of the sort. Nunc etiam lodd prodecemus. One need only hear the Slovak peasant: mäso, MѦCO.” See Václav Burian, ed.,

Notes

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29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36

37

38

39

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Šafaříkovy dopisy slovinci Jer. Kopitarou v letech 1826-1827 (Prague: Nákladem učené společnost, 1931), 34. “Jan Sztehlo,” letter of 5 January 1846, in Kollár, Hlasowé, 190. For a case study on the runic alphabet in modern Hungary, see Alexander Maxwell, “Contemporary Hungarian Rune Writing: Linguistic Nationalism within a Homogenous Nation,” Anthropos, vol. 99 (2004), 161-175. The collapse of Serbo-Croat, which occurred well after Yugoslavia had attained near universal literacy, is not a true exception, since “Serbo-Croat” was imagined as having multiple standard scripts. This prevented uniform and homogenous literacy and continually pushed linguistic questions into the public sphere. See Robert Greenberg, Language and Identity in the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna: Brand, 1907), 106. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 96, 117. The phrase “office and school” comes from Peter Burian, “The State Language Problem in Old Austria,” Austrian History Yearbook, no. 6-7 (1970-71), 87. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 117-18. See the various documents reprinted in Mikuláš Dohány, Historia povstaňja slovenskjeho z roku 1848 (Skalice: Skarnicel and Son, 1850). See Michal Hodža, Der Slowak, 75; “Žiadosti slovenského národa” in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 307-10; “Memorandum národa slovenského” and “Slovenský prestolný prosbopis o vydanie privilégia (Viedenské memorandum slovenské,” in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 336-47; Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, Návrh zákona o urovnoprávnení národností (23 October, 1870) in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 367-68; “Program Slovenskej národnej strany ohľadne snemových volieb,” in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 370; and “Volebný program Slovenskej ľudovej strany (13 April 1906)” in: Beňko, Dokumenty, 387. The census only asked about the literacy of inhabitants over six years old. The first two censuses did not count soldiers in the army. Taken from Michail Kuzmin, Vývoj školství a vydělání v československu (Prague: Akademia, 1981), 166. Kuzmin, Vývoj školství a vydělání, 146. László Szarka, Szlovak nemzeti fejlodes — Magyar nemzetisegi politika 1867-1918 (Bratislava: Kalligram Könyvkiadó, 1995), 187-188. I drew this quotation from Irina Popova’s review, “Szarka, Szlovak nemzeti fejlodes; Megalomanians and Ruritanians.” Habsburg list, May 15, 1996. WWW document: URL . Johnson questions the accuracy of the figure, noting that “the number … represents only those persons who were observed by the Hungarian authorities to be ‘conscious Slovaks’.” Citation from Johnson, Slovakia, 2. See also R.W. SetonWatson, The New Slovakia (Prague: F. R. Borový, 1924), 14. Johnson, from whom this citation is drawn, comments “it is unclear how [Polakovič] derived this figure.” Johnson, Slovakia, 333. Johnson cites “Evolution of the Slovak National Philosophy,” in: Jozef Kirschbaum, ed., Slovakia in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Toronto: Slovak World Congress, 1973), 31. The total Slovak population was 1,946,000; of whom around 60 per cent were literate. See Robert Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918 (New York, Octagon books, 1983),

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43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

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Choosing Slovakia 2:303; Kuzmin, Vývoj školství a vydělání, 166. Josef Korbel incidentally suggests that the Slovak state founded in 1939 experienced similar difficulties: “Slovakia could not furnish even a minimum number of individuals who possessed … demanding qualifications.” Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 102. See David Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture: England, 1750-1914 (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), 17-31; and the particularly strong François Furet and Jaques Ozouf, Reading and Writing, Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Definition from Tadeus Cieplak, Poland since 1956: Readings and Essays on Polish Government and Politics (New York: Twayne, 1972), 96, cited approvingly in Johnson, Slovakia, 5. Linguist Paul Garvin similarly observed that “literacy is not the same as standard language.” See Paul Garvin, “The Standard Language Problem – Concepts and Methods,” in: Dell Hymes, ed., Linguistics in Culture and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 521. Johnson, Slovakia, 279. Quoted from Sayer, “The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language,” 180. Weinreich defined such attitudes as “language loyalty, … pride, and awareness of the norm.” Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact (New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953), 99-102. Quoted from the excellent discussion in Paul Garvin, “The Standard Language Problem — Concepts and Methods,” in: Dell Hymes, ed., Linguistics in Culture and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 522. Johnson, Slovakia, 37. Johnson cites Ľudovít Bakoš, “Päťdesiat rokov slovenského školstva a učiteľstva,” Jednota škola, vol. 20, no. 8 (October, 1968), 675. Scotus Viator [R.W. Seton-Watson], Racial Problems in Hungary (London: Archibald Constable, 1908), appendix seven. Available as an e-book at Razvan Paraianu,

(2001), accessed 25 August 2006. FEMKA stands for “Felvidéki Magyar Közmüvelödési Egysület.” This organization was later accused of kidnapping Slovak children to be raised as Magyars. See Mannová and Holec, A Concise History of Slovakia, 195. Katus, “Die Magyaren,” 3:433. Cornelius, In search of the Nation, 39. See the article prepared for Herkeľ Florin, editor of Nové časy (1942), reprinted in: Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 114. Kirschbaum, Slovakia: Nation at the Crossroads, 47. Daniel Lichard, Gramatica linguae italicae (Kőszeg: Carl Richard, 1837); Daniel Lichard, Mathematikai előcsarnok (Bratislava: Wigand, 1842); noviny pre hospodárstvo, remeslo a domáci život, 27 numbers of which were published in Skalica. See also Štefan Janšák, Daniel G. Lichard (Skalica: Pomocné pokladnice, 1912). Jozef Hurban, incidentally, had unsuccessfully applied for Lichard’s teaching post. Fraňo Ruttkay, Daniel Lichard a slovenské novinárstvo jeho doby (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1961), 21. Ondřej Radlinský, Prawopis slowenský s kratkou mluwnici (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1850).

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56 Zaborský may have won the post through flattery: he had written a poem describing Radlinský as “the mouth of the nation.” Jonáš Záborsky, “Radlinskému,” Žehry: Básně a dvě řeči (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1851), 96. 57 Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 59. 58 Slovenské noviny, no. 12 ( January 26, 1856), 8. According to Osuský, Štúr’s death reconciled Lichard and Hurban; the two had previously been estranged. Samuel Osuský, Filosofia Štúrovov, II. Hurbanova Filosofia (Myjava: Daniel Pažický, 1928), 47. 59 This covered gymnasia Lower Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary. See “Vyučování jazyku česko-slovenskému na gymnasiích rakauských,” Slovenské noviny, no. 27 (1 March 1856), 18. 60 Slovenské noviny’s 1856 guide to Slavic almanacs listed 21 “Czecho-Slavic” almanacs (ten in Bohemia, six in Moravia, four in Budapest, one in Vienna); five Polish (all from Galicia); six Serbian (two in Vienna and four in Novi Sad); two Croatian (both in Zagreb); three Slovenian (all in Ljubljana); one Ruthenian (presumably Galicia), and one Bulgarian (Vienna). See “Slovanské Kalendáře na r. 1856 v Rakusku,” Slovenské noviny, no. 12 (26 January, 1856), 8 and the supplementary calendars listed as errata in Slovenské Novini, no. 30 (1856), 20. 61 “Národní hymny pruských čechoslovanů,” Slovenské noviny, no. 47 (1856), 32. 62 “Mladý Slovák na rozcestí života,” and “Národom,” in: Concordia, slovanský letopis, 199-201 and v, respectively. 63 Jozef Viktorin, “Miesto predmluvy,” in: Concordia, slovanský letopis, 379-380. 64 Viktorin, “Miesto predmluvy,” in: Concordia, slovanský letopis, 381. 65 Josef Viktorin, Grammatik der slovakischen Sprache (Pest: Lauffer and Stolp, 1860), 239. 66 Viktorin, “Miesto predmluvy,” in: Concordia, slovanský letopis, 379. 67 See Jozef Viktorin, Concordia, slovanský letopis (Buda: Nákladom vydavateľov, 1858), 193, 194, 198, respectively. 68 Trnava accounted for almost half of all Bernolákovčina publications. See the list of anonymous works published in Bernolákovčina gathered in Kotvan, Bibliografia Bernolákovcov, starting on 335. 69 The catalogue of the Czech national library has Ján Andraščík, Šenk Palenčeny (Banská Bystrica: Filip Machold, 1845), and describes it as a “Czech drama.” Another version appeared Ján Andraščík, Šenk Palenčeni (Budapest: Koloman Rózsa, 1903). See also Aleksandr Duličenko, “Ostslovakisch,” in: Miloš Okuka, Lexikon der Sprachen des europäischen Ostens (Klagenfurt: Klagenfurt University Press, 2002), 356. 70 Two other papers appeared in New York. See Štefan Švagrovský, Slavomír Ondrejovič, “Východoslovenský jazykový separatismus v 19. a 20. storočí,” Slovenská reč, vol. 69, no. 3 (2004), 144; Eugen Pauliny, Dejiny spisovnej slovenčiny od začiatkov po súčasnosť (Bratislava: Slovenské pedagogické nákladateľstvo, 1983), 147. 71 Péter Király, “Vznik a zánik kalvinskej východoslovenčiny,” Studia Slavia, vol. 51, no. 1-2 (2006), 31-64. 72 Adolf Urban, Sárosi tót nyelvtan vázlata (Prešov: Petrik, 1876). Duličenko gives 1875 as the date of publication. 73 Owen Johnson gives his name as “Viktor Dvorcsák,” an interesting compromise between his Slovak name, Viktor Dvorčák, and his Hungarian name, Győző Dvortsák. I refer to him by the name he used in his English language pamphlet

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76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83

84 85 86

87 88 89

Choosing Slovakia ‘Independent’ Slowakia (Geneva, Paris: Auter, 1939). On Dvortchak’s “East Slovak” identity and interwar loyalty to Hungary, see Johnson, “Losing Faith,” 297; Miroslav Michela, “The Question of Slovakia in Hungarian Politics, 19201927,” in: Zora Hlavičková, Nicolas Maslowski, eds., The Weight of History in Central European Societies in the Twentieth Century (Prague: CES, 2005), 127; Béla Angyal, Érdekvédelem és önszerveződés: Fejeztek a csekszlovákiai magyar pártpolitika történetéből (Galanta: Fórum Intézet, 2002), 15, 49. Haugen, Language Conflict and Language Planning, 280. Cited from Ánges Deák, “Nemzeti Egyenjogúsítás”, Kormányzati nemzetiségpolitika Magyarországon, 1849-1860 (Budapest: Osiris, 2000), 195. Deák cites Georg Idézi-Bartholy, Die Entwicklung des slowakischen Zeitungswesens (Doctoral Dissertation, Deutsche Karls-Universität, Prague). Ján Palárik, Ohlas Pravdy na ‘Ohlas strany dáľšeho vydavania Cyrilla a Methoda’ v záležitosti spisovného jazyka slovenského v čislo 38 Cyrilla a Methoda uverejnený (Pest: Ladislav Lukáč, 1852), 3. David Short, “The Use and Abuse of the Language Argument in Mid-nineteenth Century ‘Czechoslovakism,’ An Appraisal of a Propaganda Milestone,” in: Pynsent, The Literature of Nationalism, 59. Ondřej Radlinský, Stručný wýtah z náwrhu o ustrojnosti gymnasii a wěnic cili realek (Buda: Buda University Press, 1851), 7. Radlinský also used Hattalovčina in his 1871 textbook for Catholic schools. Ondrej Radlinský, Tatran: Letopis paedagogický, vedecký, národní, hospodarský literárný a zabavný (Buda: University Press and Martin Bagó, 1861); Ondrej Radlinský, Školník (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1871). Slovenské noviny, no. 79 (6 July 1861). See R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 266. R.J.W. Evans, “Language and Society in the Nineteenth Century: Some Central European Comparisons,” in: Geraint H. Jenkins, ed., Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), 422. Fraňo Mraz, Slovenská mluvnice pre gymnasia, reálky, praeparandie a vyššie oddelenia hlavných škôl (Vienna: Mechitarist, 1864); then reprinted as Slovenská mluvnice pre gymnasia, reálky, praeparandie a vyššie oddelenia hlavných a mešťanských škôl (Pest: Wilema Lauffer, 1872). Mannová, Holec, eds., A Concise History of Slovakia, 198. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 282. The other three subdivisions in the north-east dialect are the extinct old Slavic, Russian, and South-Slavic; the latter two are in turn respectively subdivided into Great and Little Russian, and into Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Slovenian. Krajčovič and Žigo, Príručka k dejinám spisovnej slovenčiny, 131. Krajčovič and Žigo cite Mráz, Slovenská mluvnice. “Spisovní jednota!” Pešťbudínské vedemosti, vol. 4, no. 71 (2 September, 1864). Other linguistic features of this text that suggest Slovak speech include ktorí instead of kteří, infinitives with -ť, not -t, and the absence of {ř}. “So closely akin are these two branches of the great Slav family tree that up to 1860 they used the same literary language; it was only then that one of the Slovak dialects was adopted as the Slovak language. And now the political union is gradually bringing about the return to one language, the Czechoslovak language.” Henry Baerlein, In Search of Slovakia (London: Trinity, 1929), 11

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90 Ferdinand Rohoň, Martina Luthera katechismus (Budapest: Viktor Horňansky, 1874), 1. 91 Modern Hattalovčina uses “chlieb”; modern Czech “chléb.” Rohoň, Martina Luthera katechismus, 36. 92 See Seton-Watson’s 1942 article in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 113. 93 When Hana Lilge-Gregorová, author of a 1912 volume of mildly feminist short stories, encountered Vajanský in Martin, he spat at her. See Nora Weber, “Feminism, Patriarchy, Nationalism, and Women in Fin de Siècle Slovakia,” Nationalities Papers, vol. 25, no. 1 (1997), 55, 65. 94 Marie Neudorfl, “Slovakia in the Czech Press,” 56. Neudorfl cites the article “O věcech Slovenských” from the Czech journal Naše doba, vol. 3, no. 3 (20 December 1900), 190, which apparently described Vajanský’s behavior as “pathological.” 95 Seton-Watson described his relationship with Hurban Vajanský as a “very genuine friendship.” See Seton-Watson’s 1942 article in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 113. 96 Lehocký founded the Slovenské robotnícke noviny in 1904. The Habsburg government required newspapers that appeared more than once a month to post a deposit of 12,000 Crowns against potential libel damages. To avoid this rule, Lehocký founded a second monthly, Napred, in 1906. The publication of Napred and Slovenské robotnícke noviny was synchronized so that in practice they formed a single socialist paper appearing fortnightly. In 1909, the two papers officially merged as Robotnícke noviny. See Elenóra Babejová, Fin-de-Siècle Pressburg: Conflict and Cultural Coexistence, 1867-1914 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2003), 406. 97 “Dľa martinských Národných novín,” in: Robotnícke Noviny, no. 19 (12 May 1911), 7, cited from Babejová, Fin-de-Siècle Pressburg, 143. 98 “Naša taktika,” in: Napred, no. 5 (15 May 1907), 1; cited from Babejová, Fin-deSiècle Pressburg, 140. 99 “IV. Sjazd slovenskej sociálnej demokracie,” in: Robotnícke noviny, no. 16 (16 April 1914), 3, cited from Babejová, Fin-de-Siècle Pressburg, 145. 100 See Johnson, Slovakia, 32; Johnson cites Prúdy vol. 4 no. 7 (May 1913), 75; and Prúdy vol. 4, no. 10 (October, 1913), 418. 101 See Franišek Bokeš, “Slovenské školstvo a česko-slovenská vzájemnosť v  rokoch 1848-1918,” in: Ľudovít Holotík, ed., O vzájemných vzťahoch Čechov a Slovákov (Bratislava: SAV 1956), 204-17. 102 Detva is a small town near Zvolen; “Detvan” is epic poem about an inhabitant of the town originally published in Oral Tatránsky in 1847-48. The club’s members frequently heard lectures on Russian literature; Tolstoy’s pacifism attracted particular attention. See Edita Bosák, “Czech-Slovak relations and the Student Organization Detvan, 1882-1914,” in: Stanislav Kirschbaum, ed., Slovak Politics: Essays on Slovak History in Honor of Joseph M. Kirschbaum (Cleveland and Rome: Slovak Institute, 1983), 9-11; Andrej Sládkovič, Detvan (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1928); Petro, A History of Slovak Literature, 118. 103 Bosák, “The Student Organization Detvan,” 9. 104 Bosák, “The Student Organization Detvan,” 15. 105 Detvan minutes from 14 December 1902, Detvan papers, cited from Bosák, “The Student Organization Detvan,” 31. 106 Letter from Tatra, 2 December 1883, Detvan papers; cited from Bosák, “The Student Organization Detvan,” 13.

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107 See Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 108 Ján Smetanay, under the pseudonym Ondrej Kalina, Slovensko, Sborník časových úvah o vecech veřejných [Slovakia, A Collection of Contemporary Reflections on Public Affairs] (Prague: Studentský Sborník, 1896). See Hugh LeCaine Agnew, “Slovakia in the Czech Press at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in: John Morison, ed., The Czech and Slovak Experience (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 53; see also Neudorfl, “Slovakia in the Czech Press,” 53. 109 Johnson, “Losing Faith,” 301. 110 This quotation is the title of a pamphlet: Karel Kálal, Proč se o Slováky staráme? (Prague: Československá jednota, 1906). 111 Kálal, Slovensko a Slováci, 58. 112 Kálal, Slovensko a Slováci, 51. 113 Karel Kálal, Jděte na Slovensko! (Vinohrady: Svoboda, 1904). 114 Thomas Marzik, “The Slovakophile Relationship of T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal prior to 1914,” in: Stanley Winters, ed., T. G. Masaryk (1850-1930): Thinker and Politician (London: MacMillan, 1990), 198-99. 115 For a discussion of the Hlasist movement, see Johnson, Slovakia, 43-44; Vyšný, Neo-Slavism and the Czechs, 13; Mikus, Slovakia and the Slovaks, 103. 116 Vavro Šrobár, “Vzájomnosť československá,” 1902, reprinted in Šrobár, Boj o nový život (Ružomberok: Parička, 1920), 16. The article originally appeared in Prúdy, vol. 3, no. 1 (1911). 117 “Slováci a čeština,” Umelecký hlas, vol. 1, no. 3-4 (1898), 290-91. 118 Slovenský denník, published from 1900 to 1901, proved financially unviable, but Slovenský Týždenník survived from 1903 to 1914. Mikula argues that Hodža was “supporting Czecho-Slovak unity” by publishing Czech articles. Suzanna Mikula, Milan Hodža and the Slovak National Movement, 1898-1918 (Ph.D. thesis, Syracuse University, 1974), 48. 119 Vladimír Kulíšek, “O činnost a význama českoslovanské jednoty před vznikem ČSR,” Historický časopis, vol. 10, no. 3 (1962), 354. 120 Ľudové noviny was originally published in Martin, and moved to Ružomberok only in January 1897. Salva’s press collapsed later that same year. See also Božie rodina: Katolický kalendár na rok 1903 (Ružomberok: Salva and Herle, 1902); Evanjelický kalendár … na r. 1902 (Ružomberok: Karol Salva, 1901); František Sasanik, Sbierka kázni na všetky nedele (Ružomberok: Karol Salva, 1872). 121 Chalupka and Škultéty had both studied with Palkovič in Bratislava, and both had been members of the Czecho-Slav society, but both later converted to Hattalovčina. Salva’s willingness to print songs with {ě ř ů} probably reflects turnof-the-century Slovak-Czech rapprochement, not Palkovič’s continued legacy. Karol Salva, Národní spevník (Ružomberok: Karol Salva, 1897), 115-16, 194. 122 Marzik, “T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal,” 193. 123 See Ján Bodnár, “Philosophy and National Identity in Slovakia,” in: Tibor Pichler, Jana Gašpariková, eds., Language, Values and the Slovak Nation (Washington: Paideia, 1994), 32. 124 Cited from Marzik, “T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal,” 196-97. 125 Seton-Watson’s 1942 article in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 113. 126 Cited from Marzik, “T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal,” 196-97.

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127 In 1898, Hlas listed the print runs of 23 Slovak journals, enabling a comparison of these cities as centers of Slovak journalism. In 1898, 9,600 copies of various periodicals were printed in Martin, significantly more than Trnava’s 3,000. The five newspapers based in Budapest, however, counted 16,300 copies, more than Martin and Trnava combined. See Hlas, vol. 1, nos. 1-2 (1898); 19-20; 50-52. 128 Marzik, “T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal,” 196, 200. 129 David Paul, The Cultural Limits of Revolutionary Politics: Change and Continuity in Socialist Czechoslovakia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1979), 201. 130 Figures for Prúdy come from Johnson, Slovakia, 342. Johnson cites Ján Páriška’s report in Prúdy, vol. 4, no. 10 (October 1913), 399-400. All other figures come from Paul, The Cultural Limits of Revolutionary Politics, 203. 131 Anthony Sutherland, “The Ideas of the Hlasist Movement,” Slovakia, no. 49 (1976), 83. 132 See Samo Czambel, Slovenská reč a jej miesto v rodine slovenských jazykov (Martin: Nákladom vlastným, 1906). For the Hlasist response, see “česko-slovenské národnia jednota,” Hlas, vol. 8 (1903), 53-57. 133 Jozef Škultéty, “Slovenčina vo verejnom živote, Miesto úvodu,” Slovenská reč, vol. 1, no. 1 (1832), 18. 134 In his opening editorial for Hlas, for instance, Šrobár declared: “we, the Slovak intelligentsia, are the nation.” See “Naše snahy,” Hlas vol. 1, no. 1 (1898), 4. Chapter 9 Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 97. Johnson, Slovakia, 3. Wolfram Kaiser, Political Catholicism in Europe (London: Routledge, 2004), 228. Quoted from Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 93. Korbel cites Holotík, “Vzník Československa a jeho význam pre slovenský národ,” Historický časopis, vol. 6, no. 4 (1958), 494. Seton-Watson gives this quotation as “linguistically, culturally, historically a part of the unitary Czechoslovak nation,” see R.W. SetonWatson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 311. 5 Quoted from Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 100. 6 As yet, there is no established English translation of Hlinka’s “Tisícročné manželstvo s  Maďarmi sa nevydarilo. Musíme sa rozísť.” Ference gives “our thousand year old marriage with the Hungarians as not a success. We must part,” Kaiser “the thousand-year marriage with the Magyars has foundered. We must separate.” Kaiser, Political Catholicism in Europe, 227; Gregory Ference, Sixteen Months of Indecision: Slovak American Viewpoints toward Compatriots and the Homeland from 1914 to 1915 as viewed by the Slovak Language Press in Pennsylvania (London: Associated University Press, 1995), 23. 7 Quoted from R.W. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 311. 8 Johnson, Slovakia, 56 9 Karel Čapek, President Masaryk tells his Story (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942 [1934]), 167. 10 See e.g. “Ideály humanitní,” Hlas, vol. 6, no. 1 (1903), 4-5. On Masaryk’s influence on Hlasist social thought, see Robert Klobucký, “Vplyv T.G. Masaryka na konštituovanie slovenskej sociológie,” Sociologia, vol. 33, no. 2 (2001), 207-20. 1 2 3 4

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11 Thomas Marzik, “The Slovakophile Relationship of T.G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal prior to 1914,” in: Stanley Winters, ed., T. G. Masaryk (1850-1937): Thinker and Politician (London: MacMillan, 1990), 1:194. 12 Marzik, “The Slovakophile Relationship of T. G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal,” 1:192, 202. On the bear, see Čapek, President Masaryk tells his Story, 194-96. 13 T.G. Masaryk, Declaration of the Bohemian (Czech) Foreign Committee (Chicago: Bohemian National Alliance of America, 1915), 6,8. 14 Masaryk, The Meaning of Czech History, 59 15 Čapek, President Masaryk tells his Story, 166. 16 T.G. Masaryk, The Meaning of Czech History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 63. 17 For a full biography, see Zbyněk Zeman, The Life of Edvard Beneš 1884-1948 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 18 Edvard Beneš, Bohemia’s Case for Independence (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917), 1. 19 Cited from Jozef Jabonický, Slovnensko na prelome: Zápis o víťazstvo národnej a demokratickej revolúcie na Slovensku (Bratislava: Politickej literatúry, 1965), 162. 20 Štefánik’s name is mentioned in A.L. Cortie, “Report on the Total Solar Eclipse of 1911, April 28,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, vol. 87, no. 595 (19 September 1912), 293-310. 21 See “Memorandum of M.R. Štefánik to the Government of the Kingdom of Italy, March 1918,” in: Antonín Klimek, Helena Nováčková, Milada Polišenska, Ivan Šťovícek, eds., Vznik Československa 1918 (Prague: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů, 1994), 70-75. 22 “Češi jsou Slováci mluvící českým jazykem a Slováci jsou Češi kteří mluví po slovensky.” Cited from Zacek, Nationalism in Czechoslovakia, 191. 23 Czechoslovak National Council, Provolání Československé národní rady (Paris: Typescript, 26 November 1916), 6. Original document available online at Nienke Koster, “Milan Rastislav Stefanik,” WWW Document, URL , accessed 16 October, 2006. 24 Emil Sobota, Národností právo československé (Brno: Barvič & Novotný, 1927), 68. See also the discussion in Felak, “At the Price of the Republic”, 43. 25 Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 175 26 This is often explained from the desire to make “Czechoslovaks” a majority in the new state, and thus strengthen the Czech position vis-à-vis the Sudeten Germans. See Yeshayahu Jelinek, The Parish Republic: Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, 19391945 (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1976), 140. 27 Sobota, Národností právo československé, 51. 28 Sobota, Národností právo československé, 75. 29 Prudy vol. 4, no 1-7 (1922), 24. Cited from Vladimír Bakoš, “Two Concepts of Nation and Two forms of Nationalism,” in: Tibor Pichler, Jana Gašparíková, eds., Language, Values and the Slovak Nation (Washington: Paideia, 1994), 82. 30 Elizabeth Bakke, Doomed to Failure? The Czechoslovak Nation Project and the Slovak Autonomist Reaction, Ph.D. Thesis, Oslo University 11:99 (1999), 238. 31 Quoted from Alexander Kunoši, The Basis of Czechoslovak Unity (London: Andrew Dakers, 1944), 39-40. 32 Kunoši, The Basis of Czechoslovak Unity, 16.

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33 Hodža, “Nie centralizmus, nie autonomizmus, ale regionalizmus v  jednom politickom národe,” in: Rudolf Chmel, ed., Slovenská otázka v  20. storočí (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1997), 183-188. 34 This entire passage originally appeared in italics. Ľudovít Novák, “Československý národ ako väčšinový národ štátny,” in Chmel, Slovenská otázka, 208. 35 Novák, “Československý národ ako väčšinový národ štátny,” 209. 36 Novák, “Československý národ ako väčšinový národ štátny,” 210, 211, 213. 37 František Soukup “Sociální demokracie a československá vzajemnosť,” 414; Štefan Janšak, “Agrárny otázka a československá vzajemnosť,” 401-04; Stanislav Klíma, “Turisitka a československá vzajemnosť,” 411-13; and Feodor Hotek, “O vzajemnosť hospodárskej,” 415-25; all from Prúdy, vol. 3 (April 1919). For a discussion of Kollár in popular history textbooks in the first Czechoslovak Republic, see Bakke, Doomed to Failure, 249. 38 Jána Kollára Slávy dcera z  roku 1924 (Martin: Matica slovenska, 1924); Jána Kollára Slávy dcera ve třech spěvích (Prague: Wiesner, 1924), complete with the essay “Sto let Slávy dcery.” 39 Hodža, “Nie centralizmus, nie autonomizmus, ale regionalizmus,” 185. 40 T.G. Masaryk, “Independent Bohemia,” memorandum of 1915, cited from Jan Rychlík, ed., R.W. Seton-Watson, 229. 41 Quoted from Kunoši, The Basis of Czechoslovak Unity, 39-40. 42 Ivan Dérer, The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks (Prague: Orbis, 1938), 36. See also Sobota, Národností právo československé, 23. 43 Dérer, The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks, 37-38. 44 See the discussion in Lonnie Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 141-42. 45 Dérer, The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks, 37. 46 Cited from Jan Paul Hinrichs, Nicholaas Van Wijk (1880-1941): Slavist, Linguist, Philanthropist (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 85. 47 “Čechoslovácia, čechoslovácký,” Naše řeč, vol. 2, no. 9 (1918), 280. 48 On the hyphen debate during the Second World War, see Alois Nykl, “Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia?” Slavonic and East European Review, American Series, vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1944), 99-110; Milan Šutovec, Semióza ako politikum alebo ‘pomlčová vojna’ (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1999), 299. Rick Fawn also discusses the hyphen debate in The Czech Republic: A Nation in Velvet (Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000), 29. 49 “Jazyk česko-slovenský,” Naše řeč, vol. 4, no. 2 (1920), 41. 50 See Joseph Štýber, “Bohemians or What,” The Czechoslovak Review (April 1919), 104-106. 51 Kulísek attributed these ideas to Šrobár and Beneš, respectively, but provided no citations. Owen Johnson felt Kulísek’s article was reliable enough to quote, explaining Kulísek’s lack of citation as follows: “remember that in 1964, it was only in Slovakia, and had only been for a year that censorship allowed the discussion of the national issue. My guess is that the author of the article could have provided sources, but that they might well have been to people who still could not be publicly recognized in the media, even academic media.” On such alternative names for the Czechoslovak state, Johnson added: “I also doubt that any of them were given serious consideration.” Vladimír Kulísek, “Úloha českoslovakismusu

246

52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72

Choosing Slovakia ve vztazích čechů a slováků,” Historický časopis, vol. 12, no. 1, 1964, 68; Johnson’s comments from a private email to the author, 20 August 2001. British works sympathizing with Hungarian treaty revision include Viscount Rothmere, My Campaign for Hungary (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939). On British revisionism, see Gábor Bátonyi, “British Foreign Policy and the Problem of Hungarian Revisionism in the 1930s,” conference paper from 16 April 2004, WWW document, URL . Oliver Eöttevényi, “Cultural Effects of the Treaty of Trianon,” in: Albert Apponyi, ed., Justice for Hungary (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), 206. Eöttevényi, “Cultural Effects of the Treaty of Trianon,” 202. Cited from Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 98. Charles Wojatsek, From Trianon to the first Vienna Arbitral Award: The Hungarian Minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic (Montreal: Institut des civilizations comparées, 1980), 60; Thaddeus Gromada, “Pilsudski and the Slovak Autonomists,” Slavic Review, vol. 28, no. 3 (September 1969), 455-62. Michela, “The Question of Slovakia in Hungarian Politics,” 128. See “Answer to Dr. Seton-Watson’s Pamphlet,” Danubian Review, vol. 1 no. 1-3 (August 1935), 15-16. Quoted from Anton Kompánek, “The Catholic Church in Slovakia,” Slavonic Review, vol. 12, no. 36 (April 1934), 621. Stephen Bonsal, Suitors and Supplicants: The Little Nations at Versailles (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press [1946]), available as an e-book, see URL . See Seton-Watson’s 1942 in Nové časy, reprinted in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 113. See his memorandum for Ján Černý in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 312-14. Gromada, “Piłsudski and the Slovak Autonomists,” 448-49. See Bakke, Doomed to Failure, 466. Vasil, “Židovská otázka,” Slovák, vol. 2, no. 117 (10 June 1920); “Hlinka alebo Šrobár,” Slovák, vol. 2, no. 109 (2 June 1920). Janko Mudroň, “Všeličo a literka ‘a’,” Slovák, vol. 2, no. 13 (3 February 1920), 1. See the summary in Bakke, Doomed to Failure, 468. This document is also known as the Žilina memorandum. An English version was mailed to Seton-Watson with a cover letter from Vojtech Tuka, editor of Slovák, appealing “for help for a small and worthy people, but also for the defence of our common Faith and the Church.” This English version apparently differed from the Slovak version published in Slovák on 16 and 22 December that same year, but Hlinka also avowed the English version. See Andrej Hlinka, “A Country Doomed to Death, A Nation in her Last Agonies Implores the Civilized World for Help,” in: Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson 319-332; for Tuka’s letter see 333; for Hlinka’s acceptance of the English version, see his “Scotus Viator,” Slovák (21-25 January 1923), in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 352. Jelinek, The Parish Republic, 14. Hlinka, “A Country Doomed to Death,” 325. Hlinka, “A Country Doomed to Death,” 328. “Lupčan z Jasenia,” “Kde si sa podela slovenčina drahá?,” Slovák, vol. 2, no. 69 (31 March 1920), 3.

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73 In the 1920 elections, the Social Democrats and Agrarians polled 38 per cent and 18 per cent of the Slovak vote, 56 per cent of the vote together. The Slovak People’s Party polled 18 per cent. See Johnson, Slovakia, 64. 74 Hlinka, Slovák, no. 86 (16 April 1927), 1. 75 The targets of this invective are Milan Hodža, Ivan Markovič and Josef Kállay. Letter to Seton-Watson, reprinted in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 351-52. The original appeared in Slovák (25 Jan, 1923). 76 Declaration of April 5, 1923. Reprinted in English translation in Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 363. 77 David Paul, The Cultural Limits of Revolutionary Politics: Change and Continuity in Socialist Czechoslovakia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1979), 195. 78 Slovák, vol. 16, no. 255 (11 November 1934), 4. Cited from Bakke, Doomed to Failure, 253. 79 Kaiser, Political Catholicism in Europe, 228. 80 Jozef Buday, Slovák, vol. 16, no. 111 (17 May 1934), 4. Cited from Bakke, Doomed to Failure, 253. 81 Summary of Michal Stehlík, Lichal Lukeš, “Die Sprachfrage in der ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik” Ausgangssituation und Kodifizierungsstrebungen der slowakischen Sprache am Beispiel Václav Vážnýs,” Zeitschrift für Slawistik, vol. 49, no. 4 (2004), 427. 82 Cited from Štefan Švagrovský, Slavomír Ondrejovič “Prvé pokusy o slovenskú lekársku a lekárnickú terminológiu,” Slovenská reč, vol. 68, no. 4 (2003), 202. See also Eva Eckert, Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 282-83. 83 Heinrich Bartek, “Pravidla slovenského pravopisu,” Slovenské Pohľhady, no. 47 (1931), 579-86. 84 Cited from Michal Stehlík and Michal Lukeš, “Die Sprachenfrage in der ersten tschechoslowakischen Republik, Ausgang Situation und Kodifiezierungsbestrebungen der slowakischen Sprache am Beispiel Václav Vážnýs,” Zeitschrift für Slawistik, vol. 49, no. 4 (2004), 428. 85 “Father Jehlička,” “Answer to Dr. Seton-Watson’s Pamphlet,” Danubian Review (Danubian News), vol. 1, no. 1-3 (August 1934), 16. 86 Felak, At the Price of the Republic, 87, 230. 87 Cited from Stehlík and Lukeš, “Die Sprachenfrage in der ersten tschechoslowakischen Republik,” 430. 88 Felak, At the Price of the Republic, 88. 89 “Slovenčina v učebniciach,” Slovenská reč, vol. 1, no. 1 (1832), 23-24. 90 Cited from Paul, The Cultural Limits of Revolutionary Politics, 212. 91 Bonsal, Suitors and Supplicants. 92 R.W. Seton-Watson, “Minorities in Czecho-Slovakia,” letter to the Nation and the Athenaeum of 20 December 1922, in: Rychlík, R.W. Seton-Watson, 336. 93 “Lupčan z Jasenia,” “Kde si sa podela slovenčina drahá?,” Slovák, vol. 2, no. 69 (31 March 1920), 3. 94 Charles Wojatsek, From Trianon to the first Vienna Arbitral Award: The Hungarian Minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic (Montreal: Institut des civilizations comparées, 1980), 98. 95 Bakke, “Czechoslovakism in Slovak History,” 27. 96 Johnson, Slovakia, 106.

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97 Johnson, Slovakia, 91-92. Johnson cites Viera Machačková, “Dr. Anton Štefánek a slovenské školstvo,” Diploma thesis (Comenius University: 1972), 31. 98 Jozef Šatek et al., Tristo rokov Skalického gymnázia (Skalica: Školská a kultúrna komisia, 1965), 43. 99 Anton Štefánek, Základy sociografie Slovenska (Bratislava: SAV, 1944), 297; cited from Johnson, Slovakia, 104. 100 Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 100. 101 Johnson, Slovakia, 101. Johnson cites Viktor Přerovský, “Masarykové první slovenské reálne gymnasium v Uherské Skalici,” Věstník českých profesorů, vol. 26, no. 5 ( January 1919), 111. 102 R.W. Seton-Watson, The New Slovakia (Prague: F.R. Borový, 1924), 60; Johnson, Slovakia, 109; Karol Medvecký, Slovenský prevrat (Bratislava: Comenius University, 1930-31), 2:360. 103 See Volná myšlenka, vol. 17, no. 10 (1 August 1926), 234; cited from Johnson, Slovakia, 147. 104 Milan Hodža, Bulletin periodique de la presse tchécho-slovaque, no. 20 (22 December 1926); cited from Johnson, Slovakia, 240. 105 Johnson, Slovakia, 102. 106 The ratio of percentages for the 1921-22 school year are 13/23, for the 1931-32 school year, these had improved to 23/24. Johnson, Slovakia, 127. 107 Interview of 14 November 1921; quoted from Johnson, Slovakia, 95. 108 R.W. Seton-Watson, The New Slovakia, 129. 109 Baerlein, In Search of Slovakia, 11. 110 Unwilling to juxtapose a Slovak nation with a Czechoslovak nation, Korbel wrote that “more and more Slovaks identified themselves not only as Czechoslovak citizens, but also as Slovak nationals.” Korbel, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia, 101. 111 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 64. 112 František Hrušovský, Slovenské dejiny (Martin: Matica slovenská, 1939), 411. Cited from Johnson, Slovakia, 241. 113 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 33. 114 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 44. 115 This passage actually refers to a system granting Slovak teachers precedence over Czech teachers. Johnson, Slovakia, 276. 116 R.W. Seton-Watson, The New Slovakia, 63. 117 Cecil John Charles Street, East of Prague (London: Geoffry Bles, 1924), 112. 118 The principal wrote that “Slovak is even considered as Czech.” Johnson, Slovakia, 107. 119 Johnson, Slovakia, 106. Johnson cites Ján Beniač, “Stredné školy,” 1 1:149. 120 Rogers Brubaker has argued convincingly that the Soviet Union was unintentionally a “nationalizing state,” since its educational policy nationalized the Soviet populations. Brubaker seems to have been influenced by a Yugoslav author thinking on similar lines. See Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, especially chapter 2; Veljko Vujacic and Viktor Zaslavsky, “The Causes of Disintegration in the USSR and Yugoslavia,” Telos, 88 (1991), 120-140. 121 Johnson, Slovakia, 332. 122 On the establishment of the Slovak Republic, see Felak, At the Price of the Republic; Jelinek, The Parish Republic, Josef Anderle, The Slovak Issue in the Munich Crisis of 1938 (Chicago: Doctoral Dissertation, 1961); Karol Sidor, “What Led to the

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Proclamation of the Slovak Republic,” Slovakia, vol. 3, no. 3 (December 1952), 1-12. On the first Slovak state, see Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939-1945: Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003). 123 See Ružena Machánková, Slovenské národné povstanie a národnooslobodyovací boj Slovenského ľudu 1938-1945 in three volumes (Bratislava: Slovenský výbor pro dejiny protifasistického odboje, 1967); Viliam Plevza, Slovenské národné povstanie: začiatok národnej a demokratickej revolúcie v Československu (Bratislava: Roh, 1984); Viliam Plevza, Slovenské národné povstanie: dokumeny (Bratislava: Politická Literatúra, 1965), Andrew Elias, “The Slovak Uprising of 1944 (New York: New York University, Doctoral Dissertation, 1963). 124 On the Beneš decrees, see Ronald Smelser, “The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, 1945-52,” Nationalities Papers, vol. 24, no. 1 (March 1996), 79-92; Wilhelm Turnwald, ed., Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (Munich: Arbeitsgemeinschaft zur Wahrung Sudetendeutscher Interessen, 1953). 125 See Paal Hilde, “Slovak Nationalism and the Break-up of Czechoslovakia,” EuropeAsia Studies, vol. 51, no. 4 (1 June 1999), 647-65; Otto Ulč, “Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce,” East European Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3 (1996), 331-52; Carol Leff, “Could this Marriage have been Saved? The Czechoslovak Divorce,” Current History, vol. 95, no. 599 (1996), 129-34; Erin Jenne, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), chapter 5. 126 Bakke, “Czechoslovakism in Slovak History,” 30. 127 Peter Macho, “Slováci a Maďari v Roku 1848,” Česko-slovenské vzťahy — Slovenskočeské vzťahy: Liberecký Seminář (Bratislava: Historický ústav SAV, 1998).

Index

Agrarianism 162, 164, 170, 172, 175 Alagović, Aleksandar 86 All-Slavism 3, 7, 34, 53, 59, 61-62, 65, 67, 72, 78, 83, 85-87, 91, 94-99, 101, 10910, 112-13, 115-17, 123, 132-33, 137, 161, 168, 173, 176, 185-86; distinction between All-Slavism and Pan-Slavism 97; as a motive in language codification 86-87, 89-90, 123, 139-40 ; of Kollár 91-94, 109, 112, 115; of Štúr 112, 117, 123, 125, 132, 137, 139; as a model for Czechoslovakism 168-69, 173, 176, 18586; see also Pan-Slavism, Reciprocity Almanacs 13, 42, 48, 48-49, 106, 153-55, 157, 159, 163

Austria-Hungary, see Ausgleich, Habsburg monarchy Ausgleich 25-29, 50, 144, 155, 157; Croat and Slovak experiences compared 67-68; Slovak responses to 62-63 Bach, Alexander 21-22; on Slovak language 156 Bach regime 21-25, 60, 62, 152, 157 Bačkovský, Rudolf 94 Baerlein, Henry 159, 181 Bakke, Elisabeth 86, 170, 185 Balch, Emily 39

America 9, 21, 32, 85, 105, 110, 168, 182; Slovak diaspora in 4, 116, 156

Bánffy, Dezső 30

Anderson, Benedict 2-3, 55, 125, 182-83; on print languages 76, 145

Banská Bystrička 167

Andráščik, Ján 155-56 Andrássy, Gyula 25 Anglo-American travel accounts 9, 39, 81, 151, 159, 163, 181, 183 Ausbausprache 144-45 Austria, see Habsburg dynasty

Banská Bystrica 73, 109 Bartek Heinrich 178 Bauer, Otto 147-48 Bél, Martin 93 Belgrade 49, 92 Bělič, Jaromír 6 Beneš, Edvard 168-69, 185 Berlin 53

Index

251

Bernolák, Anton, 76, 85-87, 90, 99, 101, 106, 110, 115, 121, 126, 132, 137, 172; Bernolák’s Slovak dictionary 35, 84, 126; Hungarian loyalties 52, 85-86, 99, as organizer, 87

Bosnian (language) 90, 141

Bernolákovci 85-88, 104, 129, 136, 147, 152, 155, 165 confessional nature of, 86-87, 147, 155

Bourgeoisie 31, 114, 148; see also middle class

Bernolákovčina 76, 85, 106, 109, 121, 126, 133-36, 140, 147, 154-56; technical description 85; Štúr’s attitude toward 126, 138; abandonment by Catholic clergy 136, 155; post-1851 publications in 155 Beschwerden und Klagen 43-45, 119-120 Beust, Friedrich 25

Bosnia 86 Botto, Ján 165 Bourdieu, Pierre 142

Bratislava, x, 10-11, 61, 84, 98, 113, 115, 131, Center of Lutheran intelligentsia, 36, 87, 104-5, 108, 111-12, 117-19; Center of Catholic intelligentsia, 85, 126, 135; as center of Socialist movement, 160, 163, Comenius University in Bratislava 102, 176, 178, 182 Bratislava Conference of 1851, 136, 139, 152, 155-56

Bibličtina 77-78, 85, 87, 101-2, 106-7, 109-112, 114-18, 120, 126-27, 129-36, 138-40, 146-47, 152, 154-59, 163-64; technical description 77; as a Lutheran script 87, 104, 121, 146-47, 152, 155; as a Czechoslovak script, 104,

Breuilly, John 55

Bibličtina, continued 107, 129-30, 13233, 167, 177; Palkovič’s attitude towards 106-7; Kollár’s attitude towards 77-78, 110-11, 127; Štúr’s attitude towards 11112, 117-18, 120-21, 138-39; modern assessments of 115-16, 177

Bright, Richard 9-10

Bihar Points 27 Blackletter, xi, 90, 106, 109, 111, 132, 159; part of Bibličtina, 77 Bobok, Karl 35 Bohemia 12, 22, 25, 81, 86-88, 90, 94, 95, 102-4, 106-7, 109-13, 124, 130, 133, 139, 145, 157, 163-64, 168, 172-73, 176, 184, ; Bohemian vs. Czech, 102-3

Brlić, Ignac 90 Brock, Peter 111, 113, 121-22, 126 Brown, Edward 81-82, 89 Brno, 80, 92, 143 Britain 17, 51, 177, 182; see also England, Scotland Brubaker, Rogers 69, 76 Bučanský, Alojz 159 Bucký, Erich 159 Budapest (Buda, Pest) x, 10-11, 13, 16, 20, 22, 25, 30, 40, 49, 50, 53, 87, 92, 152, 163; as a center of Slovak publishing 154-55, 157, 163-64; base for interwar anti-Czechoslovakism, 157, 174; Kollár’s home 81, 104, 112, 131 Buday, Jozef 177

Bohemianisms 106, 125, 179 Bonsal, Stephen 175, 179

Čapek, Karel 167

252

Choosing Slovakia

Černová massacre 30, 174 Českje hlasi proti Slovenčiňe 131-32 Českoslovanská Jednota 161 Česko-Slovanská Spoločnosť, see CzechoSlav Society Calvinism, Calvinists 13, 18, 88, 156 Calvinist Literary Tradition 81, 126, 155-56, 159 Carpathians 9, 44 Catholicism, Catholics, 11, 22, 28, 85-88, 96, 104, 116, 126, 133, 134-38, 140, 147, 152-58, 163, 174-75, 177, 178; Štúr’ attitude towards, 121, 126-27, 135-8, 140, Catholic schooling, 86, 157; Hlinka and Catholicism, 163, 167; attitudes toward Czechoslovakia, 174-75, 177; rapprochement with Protestants, 12627, 135-36, 138, 152, 156-58, 177 Čech, praotec 102 Charles University (Prague) 161, 167-68 Chalupka, Ján 163, 165 Chalupka, Samo 42-44, 164 Chotek, Karl, 124 Cieszyn, see Těšín Comenius, see Komenský Comenius University (Bratislava) 102, 176, 178, 182 Communism 137, 178, 185; see also Socialism Congress of Nationalities (1895) 30 Croatia 15, 22, 28, 67-68, 86 Croatian (language) x, 37, 42, 49, 52, 54, 80, 90, 94, 98-100, 110, 141, 147, 165, 168, 173 Croats 14, 26, 47, 54, 57, 71, 80, 89, 94, 153; literacy of, 149, military actions

in 1848 Revolution, 20, 32, Croatian Political Nation, 26, 67-68, Slovak attitudes toward 53, 58-59, 61, 98-99, 122, 165 Csaplovic, Ján 8, 36 Cyril a Method 96, 134 Cyrillic alphabet 54, 81; in Herkel’s script, 89-91; Štúr’s advocacy of 137-39 Czambel, Samo 165 Czech (language), x, 6, 35, 54, 75-80, 84-85, 89-90, 93, 100, 102-16, 121-22, 125, 129, 130, 132-37, 141, 143, 145, 147, 152-54, 156-58, 160-62, 164, 16869, 177, 179, 181-84, Bernolák’s attitude toward 87; Palkovič’s attitude toward 106-8; see also Bibličtina, Czechoslovak (language) Czecho-Slav Society, 108, 111-12, 11819 Czecho-Slovak cooperation 50, 51, 74, 87, 97, 100-1, 104, 115, 121, 125, 158, 160-3, 171-72, 180-81, 185 Czechoslovak (language) 74-78, 87, 102, 104-5, 108-16, 118, 122-23, 126, 129, 131-33, 139, 142-45, 153-55, 16162, 165, 168, 171, 183; legal status in Czechoslovakia, 169, 172, 179; Language Reform of 1931, 178-79; Hattala’s attitude toward 137; see also Czech (language) Czechoslovakism 3-6, 50, 51-52, 74-75, 94, 97, 100, 101, 104-113, 115-19, 124, 126-30, 132-29, 142-43, 152-55, 157, 161-85; motive of Slovak Volunteers, 32; in Lusatia 111-12; of Ľudovít Štúr 112, 118-19, 138; Štúr’s break with 12122, 124-25, 139; Kollár’s defence of 123, 127-28, 132, 139, 143, 148; of Masaryk, 167-170; of Stefánik, 169; Czechoslovak tribalism 168, 170, 172

Index Czechoslovak Republic 3, 5, 10, 50-51, 87, 100, 110-11, 138, 150-51, 163, 166; 170-86, founding of 31, 52, 71, 156, 166-67, 169; name disputes 102, 173; opposition to 174-79 Czechs 22, 32, 50, 71, 73, 77, 84, 89, 91, 95, 98, 101, 102-3, 107-16, 118-21, 129, 140, 144, 151-52, 161-63, 167, 169, 170, 174, 176, 180, 184; at Prague Slavic Congress, 20, 95; as Slovak Volunteers, 21, 32; Slovak attitudes toward 53, 61, 84, 94, 107-16, 98; 121-24, 127-28, 13235, 139, 160-61, 164, 169, 171, 174, 180, 185; Czech struggle with Germans, 22, 29, 95, 124, 135, 139, 157, 162, 185; Independence movement during WWI, 167-70; see also Bohemia Czechoslovak Review 173 Danube river 13, 44, 49, 84, 104, 112 Danubian Review (Danubian News) 174 Daxner, Štefan 29, 50, 66, 72 Deák, István 20 Deák, Ferenc 22, 24, 27, 30, 71 Debrecen 11, 20, 81, 155 Dérer, Ivan 170, 172-73, 178-79, 183-84, 186 Detvan 161-62, 169-70 Devín 82-83, 118-19 Dialect Argument 141-48, 150, 165 Diglossia 129, 143-44 Dobriansky, Lev 4 Dobrians’kyi, Adolf 20, 73 Dobrovský, Josef 80, 89, 107-8, 118, 125 Dohnány, Mikuláš, 133 Doležal, Pavel 87, 115

253

Dom a škola 163 Drašković, Janko 111 Ďurovič, Ľubomír 6, 123, 125 Dvortchak, Viktor 156, 183 Eger 73, 85 Enlightenment 4, 12, 86, 88, 110 England, 13, 107; see also Britain English (language) 35, 37, 52, 84, 90, 97, 100, 103, 105, 143-44, 172, 174, 176, 183 Eöttevényi, Oliver 174 Eötvös, József 24, 26-27, 63, 71 Esztergom 85, 87, 153 February Patent 22 Felak, James 178 FEMKE 151 Ferdinand I (Habsburg) 19 Ferjenčík, Samuel 130, 134 First World War 15, 21, 32-33, 53, 71, 166-67 Fišer, Raymond 102 Francev, Vladimir 127 Francisci, Jan 29, 50, 72 Franz Ferdinand (Habsburg) 31 Franz Joseph I (Habsburg) 21-22, 24-25, 47, 73 Freimütige, Der 95 France 13, 22, 142, 175 French Revolution 12-14, 35

254

Choosing Slovakia

Gaj, Ljudevit 67, 90, Kollár’s influence on 94

Halle, 77, 111-12, 118

Galicia ix, 12, 20, 22, 95

Hanka, Václav 125

Gemer 109 German (language) x, 35, 38, 84-85, 1056, 111, 133, 145, 147, 159, 167, 177, 179; Josephinian administrative language, 12, 15; as a language of Hungary, 13-14, 16, 41-42, 63, 80-81, 84; as administrative language of the Bach regime 21-22; as language of inter-ethnic communication 44, 54, 56, 66, 84, 86, 92, 94-95, 138, 160 Germans 14, 19, 25-26, 39, 53-54, 95-97, 102, 103, 112, 119, 124, 157, Literacy, 149; in Hungary 9-10, 13-14, 16, 35-37, 44, 45, 47, 53, 54, 57, 61, 62, 79, 104, 114, 118; in Czechoslovakia, 171, 174, 184-85 Germany 5, 9, 22, 103, 111, 145, 185; see also Prussia, Saxony Gitřenka 112-14, 116, 119, 126, 132 Godra, Michal 147 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 108 Gogolák, Ludwig 43, 52, 97, 105, 113-14, 117-18, 139 Greek Catholicism 73 Grellman, Heinrich 8, 103 Grünwald, Béla 68 Győr 118 Habsburg monarchy ix-xi, 6, 8, 11-14, 19-22, 25-29, 30-31, 47-49, 51, 54, 57, 59-60, 62-64, 66-69, 71, 73, 76, 88, 94-95, 97, 102, 107, 119, 124, 133, 135, 137, 141-42, 148, 150, 152-54, 160, 164, 166-67, 175 Halas, Ondrej 30

Haselsteiner, Horst 13-14 Hattala, Martin 76, 136-37 Hattalovčina xi, 77, 81, 136-40, 147, 152, 154-60, 162, 164, 173, 180-86 Havlíček-Borovský, Karel 98 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 148, 182 Herkel, Ján 89-93, 97, 99, 137, 140, 160, 186 High Tatras 9-10, 79, 104, 114 Hlavaček, Michal 112-14 Hlinka, Andrej 30, 66, 163-64, 167, 17480, 186 Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, see Slovak People’s Party Hírnök [Herald] 16 Hobsbawm, Eric 2-3, 5, 76, 88, 143, 148, 182 Hodža, Michal 21-22, 39, 44-46, 58-60, 66, 72, 90, 95, 108, 110, 119, 121, 125, 133-36, 148, 155-56 Hodža, Milan 50-51, 66, 162-64, 170-72, 177, 181, 184, 186 Hojč, Samuel 36-39, 44-45, 52-53, 56-61, 65-66, 70, 72, 96, 118, 160 Heyman, Frederick 5 Hlas, Hlasists 51, 54, 74, 162-65, 167, 171, 173 Hlasowé o potřebě jednoy spisowné jazyka 77-78, 127-28, 130-31, 134, 139, 147 Hlboké meeting 121 Hollý, Ján 86, 121, 126, 136 Hradec Králové 118 Hrdlička, Ján 37

Index

Illyrian (language) 80, 90, 100, 122; see also Serbian, Croatian

Hrobak, Philip 116 Hroboň, Samo 154 Hroch, Miroslav 2-4, 39-40, 43, 46, 49, 51, 54; Hroch’s schema 2 Hronika 109, 118

Illyrians 67, 84, 93, 111, 168; see also Serbs, Croats Italian (language) 5, 12, 54, 152

Hungarus concept (Hungari) 13-16, 33-34, 44, 52, 72

Italy, Italians 9, 19, 21-22, 169

Hungarian League 174

Jacobinism 12

Frontier

Readjustment

Hungarian (language) x, 10, 12-17, 35, 37-39, 41, 42, 56-57, 71, 80-81, 84, 87, 114, 118, 145, 151-52, 155-56, 164; as an administrative language 15, 17, 19, 24, 26, 28, 61, 63; as language of instruction 17, 26, 28, 86, 114, 151-52, 161, 18081; Non-Magyar attempts to reform its lexicon 37-39; influence on Slovak, 41, 81, 155-56, 164, 179, 181; literacy in 149, 151; see also Magyarization Hungarian nobility 8, 9, 10-15, 18-19, 21, 24-26, 37-38, 45, 56, 102, 105-6, 114, 118 Hungarian parliament 15, 19-21, 24-29, 37, 46, 50, 54, 62-63, 65, 67-68, 72-73, 95, 128 Hungarian political nation, see Magyar (politikai) nemzet Hungarians vs. Magyars 34-39, 43, 51-2, 124 Hurban, Jozef 21, 24, 29, 43, 45, 63, 66, 72, 82, 96-97, 105, 115, 119-21, 125, 131-35, 139, 147, 160, 186; at Pan-Slav Congress, 46; on nationality, 63; author of Českje hlasi 131-32 Hviezdoslav, see Országh, Pavol Hyphen debate 173

255

Jászi, Oscar 27, 30 Jehlička, František 174-75, 178 Jelinek, Yeshayahu 176 Jelačić, Josip 20, 32 Jesuits 80, 86 Jews x, 9-11, 18, 65, 180; Anti-Semitism 65, 175 Johnson, Owen 69, 150-51, 161, 166-7, 180-81, 183-84 Joseph II, 12, 15, 19 Journalism 11, 37, 44, 47, 50, 54, 94, 97-98, 109, 133-34, 148, 152, 154, 15658, 160-64, 173, 175, 178; of Magyars 19, 25, 71, 114, 174; Štúr’s 118-21, 126, 131 Jungmann, Josef 35, 84, 102, 108, 121, 125 Juriga, Ferdiš 68 Kadavý, Ján 111 Kálal, Karel 97, 143, 161-63, 167, 170, 184 Kalinčjak, Janko 44 Kampelík, František 110 Khuen-Héderváry, Károly 28 Kirschbaum, Josef 75, 152 Kirschbaum, Stanislav 4, 116, 122

256

Choosing Slovakia

Kláštor 28, 157 Kloss, Heinz 144-45 Kohn, Hans 55 Kollár, Ján 40-42, 53-54, 66, 81, 83-84, 88-89, 91-95, 97, 99-102, 109, 104-5, 110-16, 118, 121-3, 125, 127-29, 135, 131-32, 135-36, 139-41, 143, 152, 15456, 158, 160, 162-65, 171-73, 184, 186; relations with non-Slovak Slavs 67, 73, 94-95, 111-13; Slavism 91-95; Czechoslovakism, 110-12; dispute with Štúr 121-23, 127-29, 139; influence on the Czechoslovak republic, 168, 171-73, 184; death 155 Komenský, Jan Amos (Comenius) 35, 106-7, 176 Kopitar, Jernej 89, 147 Korbel, Jozef 166 Košice ix, 10, 61, 73, 85, 87, 98, 104, 130, 143, 183 Kossuth, Lajos 19-21, 24, 32, 37-38, 47, 67, 70, 95, 114, 133, 135

Language, 75-76

terminological

discussion

Language War 18-19, 21, 27, 95, 145, 152; and Štúr, 115, 119, 124 Latin (language) x, 11-15, 17, 56, 80-81, 84, 104, 107, 122, 177, 179; songs 41-42 Latin (alphabet or type) 77, 89-90, 106, 109, 111, 133, 136, 138, 146, 151-52, 159 Launer, Stěpan 95, 132-35, 139 Lehocký, Emanuel 160 Levoča 10, 81, 104-5, 112-14, 126, 129 Libelt, Karol 20 Lichard, Daniel 47-49, 60-62, 64-66, 70, 96, 98-100, 186; editor of Slovenské noviny 47, 152-53, 157 Literacy 11, 31, 86-88, 140, 147-52, 159, 165, 180, 183-84, 186; rates in the Kingdom of Hungary 149; difficulties of measuring 150-51 Löher, Franz 39

Kotvan, Imrich 86-87

Ľudové noviny 163-64

Kráľ, Janko 20, 165

Luhačovice 161

Kralice Bible 77, 81, 106-7

Lusatia, 109-12, 118

Kramárcsik, Karl 114

Lusatians, see Sorbs

Krištóf Samuel 134

Lutheranism, Lutherans 11, 13, 22, 81, 87-88, 97, 104-5, 107-9, 112-19, 121, 123, 126-27, 129, 132-14, 136-38, 140, 147, 152, 155-59, 162-63, 167, 169, 177; Zay’s leadership 18-19, 114, 117-18, 121; Lutheran schools 36, 87, 105, 112-13, 117-19, 157

Kukuljević, Ivan 94 Kukučín, Martin 165 Kulísek, Vladimír 163, 173 Kuzmány, Karl 109-10, 118, 157 Kwěty 109, 119 Kymlicka, Will 33, 51

Magda, Pál 13 Magocsi, Robert 2, 5 Magyarbarát Tót Néppárt 174

Index Magyar Kurir [Hungarian courier] 13 Magyar (politikai) nemzet 8, 16-17, 26, 35, 38-39, 52, 61-62, 64-66, 106, 108, 117, 120, 139, 167, 170

257

Moravia 9, 12, 22, 77, 81, 83, 86-88, 94, 103, 106-14, 119, 124, 129, 132-33, 140, 153, 161-62, 164, 168, 173, 175, 184; Hurban’s visit to 43 119

Magyarization 9, 15-19, 22, 24, 28, 30-34, 39, 44-46, 51-53, 57-58, 66-67, 69-71, 114, 116, 118-21, 124, 126, 129, 134-35, 138, 151, 156, 165; of Hungarian nobility 9; national goal of ethnic Magyars, 15-19, 24, 28, 31, 114, 118; Slovak responses to 30-32, 34, 44-46, 51, 57-58, 66-67, 70-71, 116, 119, 126, 134, 163; of Hungarian schools 28, 30-31, 151, 158

Moravská Beseda 161

Magyarones 28, 43, 60-61, 114

Nagdoba 67-68

Mallý, Ján 50, 154

Naše řeč 173

Maria Theresa, 12

Nárečje slovenskuo 121-24

Martin, 10, 24, 28, 157-61, 163-65, 167, 172; seat of the Matica slovenská, 157-58; Martin Circle 160-61, 163-65; meeting of the Slovak National Council 167

Národnie noviny 157-58, 164; see also Pešťbudínské noviny

Masaryk, Tomaš 142, 167-70, 172, 17476, 181, 184, 186

Národný Dom 160

Matica Slovenská 27, 47, 60, 68, 98, 15760; in interwar Czechoslovakia 178-79 Matica slovanských Národov v Uhorsku 49, 154 Matica srpska 49 Marx, Karl 6, 148, 186 Medvecký, Ľudovít 170, 172 Memorandum, see Slovak Memorandum Mesaroš, Ondrej 86

Mosak-Kłospólski, Korla Awgust 111-12 Moscow 138 Mossotcy, Michael 35 Moyses, Štefan 24, 157 Mraz, Franjo 158

Národnié zpiewanky čili pjsně swětské Slowákůw w Uhrách 40-41, 88-89 Natio Hungarica 11, 13-14, 45, 52, 56 Nationalities Law LXIV (1868) 26-28, 63; Pauliny-Tóth’s proposed replacement, 62-63 Nitra (city) 16, 82-85, 109, 155 Nicholas I (Russian Emperor) 73 Nobility, Hungarian, see Hungarian nobility Non-Magyars 14-17, 19-20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 36-37, 45-46, 61, 66, 118, 174

Middle classes 11, 17, 148, 150-51, 182, 184, 186; see also Bourgeoisie

North Hungarian Slavism 72-74

Mikuláš declaration 20-21, 71

Nová škola 29, 50, 54

“M.M.” (pseudonym) 62, 65

Nosák, Bohuslav 82 Novák, Ľudovít 171

258

Choosing Slovakia

Ong, Walter 143 Ormis, Ján 19 Országh, Pavol (Hviezdoslav) 160, 165 Orol Tatránsky 44, 120, 125 Orthodoxy (branch of Christianity) 89, 137-38 Osvěta 163 Ottoman Empire 21, 42 Paget, John 9 Palacký, František 29, 73, 118, 121, 135, 162

Peasantry 9-12, 20, 31-32, 43, 48, 119, 126, 147-48, 151, 182-83 Peasants into Frenchmen 1-2; references to 3, 6, 17, 103, 180 Pelzl, Franz 104 Pest, see Budapest Pešťbudínské noviny 157-58; see also Národnie noviny Pesti Hirlap 174 Petőfi, Sándor 18 Petro, Peter 107, 115, 121, 123, 152-53 Piłsudski, Józef 175

Palárik, Ján 29, 49, 96, 135-36, 147, 154, 156-57; as patriotic organizer 49, 154; as journalist 96, 157

Pittsburgh Agreement 176

Palkovič, Juraj 36, 44-45, 87-88, 90, 97, 99-100, 102, 105-9, 122, 115, 117-19, 121, 186; Czechoslovakism 105-9

Poland 5, 86, 94, 174-75; Cieszyn/Těšín border dispute with Czechoslovakia 175

Pan-Slav Congress (Prague, 1848) 20-21, 32, 43, 46, 94-95, 132, 135 Pan-Slavism 26, 28, 58, 61, 89-99, 114, 119, 138-39, 158, 160, 163, 186; distinction between Pan-Slavism and All-Slavism 97; as Herkel defined it 89; as bogey 95-97, Pan-Slavism, continued political vs. literary 58, 96; of Štúr 137-39; see also All-Slavism, Reciprocity Paris 1, 19, 169, 175 Paris Peace Conference (1918) 52, 111; Hlinka’s mission to 175

Pogodin, Mikhail 108 Polakovič, Štefan 150

Poles 20, 22, 71, 135, 161, 174 Polish (language) x, 54, 79-80, 90-91, 93, 100, 108-9, 122, 157-58, 168, 177 ; Slovak seen as 103-4 Pospíšil, Ján 118 Prague ix-x, 20, 21, 53, 76-77, 80-81, 87, 92, 102-4, 107-9, 111, 113, 118-21, 126, 134, 143, 152, 160-61, 167, 169, 172-74, 178; as center of Czechoslovak culture 102-4, 120; see also Pan-Slav Congress Pražák, Albert 93, 102, 115, 170 Přerovský, Viktor 180 Prešpurské noviny, 105

Paul, David 163, 177

Prešov 96, 183

Pauliny, Eugen 86, 132, 142

Proletariat 11

Pauliny-Tóth, Viliam 29, 62-63, 65-66, 72, 148

Protestantism, see Lutheranism and Calvinism Protestants, see Lutherans and Calvinists

Index Prúdy 164, 172

Rudnaj, Alexander 87

Prussia 22, 25; Slavic population of 111, 154

Rumy, Karl Georg 13, 42

Pulszky, Ferenc 17, 38, 53, 67, 102 Pulszky, Theresa 21 Pynsent, Robert 70, 127-28

259

Russia 5, 20-21, 53, 86, 96-97, 160, 169; intervention in Hungary 73, Slovak fear of 53, 97; non-Slavic fear of 53, 95-97, 137

Pypin, Aleksandr 107, 119

Russian (language) x, 61, 80, 90-91, 93-94, 100, 108, 122, 137-39, 141, 143, 168; see also Rusyn (language)

Radlinksý, Ondrej 48, 73, 133-35, 15253, 157

Russians 61, 73, 82-84, 93-94, 98, 101, 160-61, as a Hungarian ethnic group 47, 62, 73, 99; see also Rusyns

Rakovac, Dragutin 67 Rapant, Daniel 32, 52 Rát, Matthias 13 Reform Era 13, 15, 19, 36, 39, 96, 124, 140 Reciprocity 91-94, 96, 100, 109, 111, 118, 161-63, 165; Kollár’s proposals 92-93; advocated by Kuzmány, 109; advocated by Štúr 112, 121, 138; Czechoslovak 161-63, 165, 172 Revolution of 1848 19-22, 26, 29, 32, 46-47, 66-67, 70, 72, 94, 113, 135, 138 Ribay, Juraj 87, 89-90, 99-100, 102, 107, 115

Russophilia (among Slovaks) 137-38, 160, 163 Russo-Turkish War of 1877 160 Ruthenians, see Ukrainians, Rusyns, Russians Rusyn (language) 6, 46, 63, 79 Rusyns 5-6, 9, 20, 22, 46, 49, 58-59, 61-63, 72-74, 151, 174; described as Russians 5, 47, 62, 73, 99; literacy 149; as Slovak allies 24, 46, 49, 53, 72-74; see also North Hungarian Slavism Ružomberok, 143, 163, 181

Robotnické noviny 160, 164

Salva, Karol 163

Rohoň, Ferdinand 159 Roma (Gypsies) 9, 65

Šafařík, Pavel (Pavol Šafárik) x, 20, 40, 80-81, 95, 100, 102, 105, 108-9, 116, 118, 127, 140, 160, 162; orthographic preferences 109, 147, 155

Romania 5, 19, 40; see also Wallachia

Šariš 61, 96-97, 109, 162, 183

Romanian (language) 37, 63

Sasinek, František 49, 163

Romanians (Wallachians) 9, 30, 32, 36, 48, 53-54, 58, 61-62, 64, 83, 104; literacy 149

Sava river 44, 91

Rohoni, Juraj 15

Romanticism 91, 105, 112-13, 138, 148, 160, 163

Saxony 81, 104, 111 Sayer, Derek 169 Schmidt, Mina 91

260

Choosing Slovakia

Schools / Schooling, Slovak 1, 20, 24, 27-28, 31, 46, 62-63, 65, 104, 114, 11820, 132, 148, 151, 153, 157-58, 161-62, 164-65, 170, 180-84, 186 Schuselka, Franz 95 Scotland 9, 17, 51, 182, see also Britain Scotus Viator, see Seton-Watson, R.W. Scripts (definition) 76-77, 123 Seberini, Ján 129-30, 146-47 Second World War 32, 185 Sekčík, Jiří 130 Selver, Paul 80 Serbian (language) x, 52, 54, 63, 80, 86, 90, 93, 141, 153, 168, 173; see also Illyrian (language) Serbia 169 Serbo-Croat (language) see Serbian (language), Croatian (language), Illyrian (language) Serbs 24, 27, 30, 47, 49, 57-59, 61-63, 64, 84, 93, 98-99, 108, 122, 137, 143, 161; St. Slava’s day celebrations 25, Serbian students in Bratislava 113, 118; literacy 149; “Serboslovaks” 176 Serfdom 9-10, 13, 19, 43, 140; abolition of 9-10, 19, 43 Seton-Watson, Hugh 6, 27, 32 Seton-Watson, R.W. (Scotus Viator) 28, 30, 138, 144, 150-51, 158, 160, 163, 175, 179, 181, 183; debate with Hlinka 177

Škultéty, Jozef 165, 178 Sladkovič, Andrej 136, 165 Slavic Congress, see Pan-Slavic Congress of 1848 Sláwy dcera 91; as canonical text 116, 118, 136, 154, 172 Slovak League of America 116 Slovak Memorandum 23-24, 29-30, 50, 54, 63, 68, 70-72, 148, 157; Lichard’s advocacy of 60-61, 70-71, 98 Slovak National Council (Vienna, 1849) 21-22, 29, 47, 54; organization of Volunteers 32; leading members 43-44 Slovak National Council (Martin, 1918) 167 Slovak National Party 29 Slovak People’s Party 148, 163, 167, 17479, 181, under Tiso, 184 Slovak volunteers (1848 Revolution) 21, 29, 32, 43, 47, 50, 66, 72 Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft 53, 137-38 Slawisches Centrallblatt 94, 99 Slovák 175-76, 179 Slovene (language) x, 37, 42, 52, 54, 80, 82, 90, 100, 168 Slovenes 80, 89, 122, 147 Slovenská reč 179 Slovenské Učené Tovarišstvo 85, 87

Silesia 83, 86, 154; Czech Silesia 12, 103, 109-11, 132-33, 168

Slovenské noviny 43, 47, 96, 152-54, 157

Skalica 61, 155, 162; Czechoslovak school in 170, 180

Slovenskje národňje novini, 44, 120, 12426

Sklendár, Juraj 86

Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umeňja a literatúr 160

Škultéty, August Horislav 82-83, 163

Slovenské pohlady 158, 160, 178

Index Slovenský denník 163-64, 170 Slovenský týždeník 162-63

261

Štúrovci 117, 119, 121, 124-25, 128-34, 138-39, 147, 152, 165

Smoler, Ján 111-12

Štúrovčina 76-77, 115, 121, 125-27, 129-40, 147, 152, 155-56, 159, 185; opposition to 127, 129-35; defenders of 131-33; Štúr’s abandonment of 135-36

Sorbia, see Lusatia

Štýbr, Joseph 173

Sorbian (language) 80, 90, 111-12, 122, 158

Subcarpathia 5, 22, 24, 73, 110

Sorbs 109-12, 118

Széchenyi, István 13-15, 70, 96, 118

Smetanay, Ján 161 Smith, Anthony 3

Socialism, Social Democracy 147, 160, 163-65, 170-72 Societas Slavica 112 Spectator 39 Spolok milovníkov řeči a literatury slovenskej, 13

Szarka, László 97, 150

Tablic, Bohuslav 104, 108 Társalkodó 114 Tatran (Viennese Slovak Society) 161

Šrobár, Vavro 51, 74, 150-51, 162-63, 175, 186

Teaching (profession), 11, 16, 46, 94, 102, 105, 110, 112, 114, 117-18, 120, 129, 132, 148, 150-52, 161-63, 178, 18081, 184

Stamatović, Pavao 20

Těšín (Cieszyn) 175

Stará škola 29, 50, 54, 62-63

Thun, Leo 38, 102

Štefánek, Anton 161, 170, 180-81, 18384, 186

Tiso, Jozef 184

Štefánik Milan 169, death 175

Tisza, Kálmán 27-30, 68, 114, 156, 15859

Street, Cecil 183

Tisza river 44

St. Petersburg 53, 92

Tolstoy, Leo 169

St. Slava’s Day 25

Tomášek, Ján Pavel 129

Štúr, Karel 135, 138

Tomsa, František Ján 106-7, 136

Štúr, Ľudovít 7, 20-21, 43-45, 53, 67, 69-70, 73, 100, 105, 111-12, 115-28, 13041, 143, 147, 152-53, 156-58, 172, 176, 185-86; as a civil rights leader 66; early life 117-18; investigated for Pan-Slavism 119-20; dispute with Kollár 121-23, 12729, 139; tribalism 121-25, 127-28, 137, 139, 158; Russophilia 137-39; death 138

Transylvania 12-13, 20, 42, 53

Štúr, Samuel 117

Trefort, Áugust 160 Transcarpathia, see Subcarpathia Trianon, Treaty ix, 31-32, 174; see also Paris Peace Conference Tribalism, 43, 53, 59, 61, 84, 92, 96, 98-99, 110-12, 121-25, 127-28, 130-33, 137-38, 140, 158, 168, 170, 172, 176;

262

Choosing Slovakia

of Štúr 121-25, 127-28, 137, 139, 158; Czechoslovak 168, 170, 172

Warwick Debate, 3

Trnava 61, 80, 88, 109, 143, 155, 163

Wesselényi Miklós 14, 53, 118

Trudgill, Peter 141, 144, 146 Tudományos Gyüjtemény 13 Tuka, Vojtech 175, 179

Weber, Eugen 1-2 Wijk, Nicholaas van 173 Women in the Slovak movement 137; see also Vyšná-Lehocká, Johana

Turkey, see Ottoman Empire Yiddish x Ukrainian (language) x, 6, 37, 54, 79, 90, 95, 141; see also Rusyn (language) Ukrainains 5-6, 9, 20, 95; see also Rusyns Ukraine 86 Umelecký hlas 162 Urban, Adolf 156 Ústav řeči a literatúry česko-slovenské 108 Uzhhorod 73-74, 153 Váh river 82-83 Vajanský, Svetozar Hurban 160, 165, 167, 186 Važný, Václav 178-80 Vienna ix-x, 11-12, 14, 21-22, 32, 47, 53, 68, 85, 92, 95, 104-5, 108-10, 119, 134, 152, 154, 160-61, 174 Viktorin, Jozef 147, 154-55 Villafranca, treaty 22 Vlček, Jaroslav 170, 184 Vojvodina 20, 108, 153 Vyšná-Lehocká, Johana 125 Wachtel, Andrew 4 Wallachia 86 Warsaw ix, 92, 94

Zaborský, Jonáš 95-96, 134-35, 152-53 Žaček, Václav 28, 94, 124 Zagreb 37, 92 Zay, Emmerich 117 Zay, Károly 18-19, 114, 117-120, 135 Zemplín 183 Zips region 10 Zmertych, Karl 63-65, 70