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The Politics of History in Croatia and Slovakia in the 1990s

This dissertation compares the politics of history and the national identity-building ideologies used by the ruling parties in Croatia and Slovakia in the 1990s. The politics of history turns to be important since Croatia and Slovakia were the only two countries in the region of the post-communist East Central Europe which through the 1990s suffered from democratic deficits. These deficits were to a great extent caused by peculiar use of history in politics. It turns of a special importance that the both countries share outstandingly similar patterns of historical legacies, characterized by the junior-partner roles the two nations had in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia respectively, as well by the traumatic legacies of the Croat and respective Slovak WWII Nazi-satellite states. Thus the main focus of this dissertation is to research on a nexus between history/memory and political power in Croatia and Slovakia in the 1990s in respect to the nations’ historical legacies as well as to the contexts of Yugoslavia's and Czechoslovakia's respective dissolution processes. The dissertation shows that the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Franjo Tuđman and the Movement for Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) led by Vládimir Mečiar gained and maintained power to a great extent by convincing the electorate to be the best state-creating agents and hence the best “saviors of nations” against resentments exercised by the senior partners of the Serbs and the Czechs respectively towards the Croat and respective Slovak claims on sovereignty. The both parties managed to present as state-creating agents by conceptualizing themselves as all-embracing national movements bringing about reconciliation of historically fractioned nation. The concept of reconciliation was forged by presenting the parties to embody the synthesis of the entire nations’ historical statehood-building legacies regardless of factions, as well by exploiting the traumatic historical legacies. Presented ideologies brought about democratic deficits in both countries, characterized inter alia by revisionism towards the Nazi-satellite pasts. Designing the research in the area of cultural comparison in political science and approaching it by the various theories of nationalism and the conceptual analyses of ideologies, this dissertation brings in line histories of the Croat and respective Slovak national identity-building processes with the nationalist ideologies of the HDZ and the HZDS. Finally, the dissertation exposes on the operation of the ideologies in political legitimizing processes as well on transfer of the politics of history into the various policies of history, including national symbols and commemorations, naming and renaming of public spaces, as well policies of transitional justice and school textbooks. Finally, the dissertation elaborates on both similarities and differences in approached cases, the later stemming from the differences of the Yugoslavia's and Czechoslovakia's historical legacies, as well from the differences in dissolution processes of the mentioned countries.

politics of history; historical legacies; HDZ; HZDS; Franjo Tuđman; Vladimir Mečiar.

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