At the same time, we are witnessing the complete programmatic emptiness of both parties, the radical fluctuations of their leaders’ opinions (is Slovakia committed to remain in the core of the European Union, should democratic parties refuse to collaborate with extremists, etc.) There is an absence of fundamental visions, combined with cheap social demagogy in the form of various packages and ad hoc measures.
We should remember that social policy as such is not intrinsically left-wing. The fascists also had their social policies... It is enough to read the outputs of a series of leftist seminars organised in 1995 by the Ladislav Novomesky Foundation, which were much more radical and stimulating than the futile current programmatic production of Slovakia’s two social democratic parties.
Even F. Hayek wrote that behind the success of the socialists was the courage to be utopian. And the organisational model of the socialists at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was an model, unattainable for all the other political-ideological currents. Today? Neither the organizational nor the intellectual aspects of “Slovak social democracy” are attractive.
This incompetence contributes to the simplistic media image of a “populist left,” contrasted with a “rational, pro-reform and programmatic” right. This blandness is not improved in any fundamental way by Peter Pellegrini’s Hlas party, which differs from Robert Fico’s Smer only by sending out stronger signals about its orientation towards the West, and by its softer style of communication. However, given the history of social democracy, it seems incomprehensible to see these leftist politicians hanging around with the [far right] Republika party, even cooperating with them in regional elections.
In any case, compared to Hlas, Smer represents a more significant departure from classical social democratic values. The transformation of this party [towards left conservatism- ESSF] has been brought about by a number of events and phenomena. A significant role was played by the “party ideologist” Ľuboš Blaha. Nevertheless, these politicians remain the ones who can most credibly aspire to represent the interests of the left-wing electorate.
In 2019 I pointed out that Smer, especially through Blaha, tried to reach out to the so-called anti-system electorate. This was matched by a change in rhetoric, with a radicalised vocabulary and choice of topics. Blaha understood then that if he wanted to revitalise Smer, it would be necessary to embrace and draw on certain historical realities, accepting that the Slovak left was often dominated by a more conservative and nationalist current.
The party preferred a pragmatic adaptation to these realities rather than any ambition to change them. In reviving the concept of the Slovak national left, Blaha refers to realism or neorealism in foreign policy; according to him, national interests and sovereignty must be taken into account. He rejects illusions of a better world, the world “is as it is”, divided between the great powers.
We doubt that leftists should so readily surrender to the concepts of the neorealists, whose theories focus exclusively on power, empire and the military, ignoring other aspects of how the world works.
The thesis of trying to win over the electorate of the far right is no longer relevant to Smer today, because this group of the electorate has gradually become one of the basic components of Smer’s own electorate. Indeed, Smer communicates several far right themes better than the neo-fascist parties like Republika. In the context of the current electoral struggle, Smer is cynically reinforcing these conditions. At the party-to-party level, it does not shy away at all from direct cooperation with the far-right, even neo-fascist Republika.
In the outspoken media of Slovakia’s far right, Smer politicians go to extremes, such as the appearance of prominent Smer member and former Interior Minister Robert Kalinak on the social media show of neo-Nazi rapist and open anti-Semite and racist Danny Kollar. Blaha resorts to such demagoguery that he cynically compared elite and ’coffeehouse liberal’ outrage at the 12 October 2022 terrorist murder of two people outside Bratislava’s LGBT bar Tepláreň to the [understandable] lack of demonstrations following the tragic robbery-murder of a woman in Michalovce in January 2023. Smer reduces anti-fascism to nostalgic reminiscing at WWII Red Army memorials. The party has lost any reflex that would update its reflection, in terms of a response to the modern threats of twenty-first century fascism.
Moreover, internationalism and the class dimension of mobilising the electorate are completely absent from the politics of Smer and Hlas. Despite their pretended concern for the working class male, neither party has been able to reflect on a problem as obvious as the repression of Slovakia’s trade unionists in recent workplace conflicts. Where is the authentic concern for working people that would go beyond empty platitudes at press conferences? Where are the demands on issues such as the reduction in working hours or abolishing the unstable forms of employment contracts that are particularly a problem for young people?
Meanwhile, the feeling that we do not have a “normal”, electable left-wing (or social democratic) party that reflects the current problems and challenges of the near future runs like a red thread through Slovak left-wing circles.
Slovak Social Democracy has abandoned the traditional positions of social democratic politics and is fishing in conspiratorial waters, in the ranks of the ultra-right, and is catching up with conservative currents. Instead of bringing an element of progress or innovation to Slovak politics, it is reactionary, backward-looking. For example, Slovak social democrats’ stubborn rejection of issues related to the rights of LGBTI+ people is at the same time a rejection of the emancipatory element of the left itself.
Blaha argues that Smer, as a “pioneer” in Slovakia, aspires to be the red left (which is national and social) while rejecting the “pink” left. But the red left has always been emancipatory, embracing concern for the weak and fighting hand in hand with them for the betterment of the situation - hence it is also pink.
Also conspicuously absent from Smer is concern for the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century, the climate crisis.
A return to historical traditions?
The issues described above have a common denominator: nationalism. In order to explain why nationalism keeps returning, it is necessary to go back in time.
The roots of social democracy in Slovakia go back to the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To organise politically and to educate the working class, social democrats had to overcome ignorance and obstacles emanating from Budapest, the centre of the Hungarian half of the empire, which included the territory of today’s Slovak Republic.
Even before the First World War, Slovak social democrats took the position that social questions were linked to the national question. This was in the context of repressive Magyarisation/Hungarianization [eliminating Slovak language from school programmes, requiring knowledge of Hungarian for all public positions, etc - ESSF]. Maygar-Hungarian socialists had no understanding of this aspect of the struggle of the [Slovak, Serbian, Romanian] social democratic national minorities in the Hungarian part of the empire. The leadership of the “Slovak Social Democracy” therefore asked: “Can the working class, which has so many common international interests, also have national demands in its political programme?” Of course, the Social Democrats then operating in what was then northern Hungary and today constitutes Slovakia) distinguished between bad and good nationalism, the good variant being supposed to protect “the bare life of the nation as a whole given by nature.”
The creation of a Slovak National Council, uniting all political activists of the Slovak minority in the Hungarian part of the empire, became the basic concept of Slovak politics, accepted also by the Social Democrats. Their attitudes were appreciated, for example, by [leading nationalist] Milan Hodža.
Slovak social democrats rejected the new manifesto of the Social Democratic Party of Hungary, which wanted to preserve Hungary within its original borders. They adopted this policy at a congress, to which the Slovak Social Democrats refused to send a representative, not least because his participation was conditional on his subscribing to the manifesto. Slovak Social Democrats supported the idea of the creation of Czecho-Slovakia and were present in Martin on 30 October 1918, at the adoption of the Declaration of the Slovak Nation and the formation of the Slovak National Council. [1]
However, the Slovak question did not dissapear with the establishment of Czechoslovakia. Various political currents, including the communists, struggled to find solutions. For many, ’Czechoslovakism’ [Prague-centralism and the idea of a single Slav Czecho-Slovak nation - ESSF] became the target. And although the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia’s Social Democratic Party supported the development of Czechoslovak institutions (the “state-forming position”, it did not avoid the trends of the time. Indeed, from the summer of 1938 onwards, the now well-known concept of a specifically Slovak Social Democracy began to appear. During the existence of the [Nazi allied] Slovak State, the national question also came onto the agenda. The Slovak National Uprising of 1944 [2] is not called ’Slovak’ and ’national’ for the sake of it. The element of nationalism was strongly at work, including among the Communists, who at that time had already integrated the social democrats into their ranks. The enemy in this case were the German Nazis and their domestic henchmen of Slovakia’s ruling People’s Party.
The Slovak question survived the end of the Second World War, the three post-war years before the Communists took power in October 1948, and the entire ’socialist’ period until 1989. In these decades, the problem was Prague centralism and the question of federalisation.
The religious dimension was also part of Slovak left-wing thinking. The co-founder of the communist movement in Slovakia, Július Verčík, once proclaimed that for Slovak communists the first communist was Christ, the second Jan Hus [3] and the third Karl Marx. Even after 1945, Communists went first to mass and then to the demonstration. Many communists were also Catholics. It was only during the fifties that a turning point occurred and the party became heavily atheised.
Historically, social democracy has played a significant role in the secularisation of society, but today’s Slovak social democracies have completely bypassed this issue. Today we even see that the chairman of the Communist Party of Slovakia, Jozef Hrdlička, wants to defend conservative-Christian values.
Budapest, Prague, Berlin... Brussels
Nowadays, neither Hungarians, Prague nor the Nazis are relevant anymore. Fortunately, Brussels has emerged. Smer fustigates against what it claims is a “violent promotion of the western agenda”, against which it presents itself as a model of what an exemplary social democrat and leftist should look like. This is where the whiff of populism comes in. Smer is not primarily about social packages and false promises, as is often said here, but rather it focuses on criticism of the Brussels elites, while claiming to promote the protection of the ordinary Slovak population. Despite some attempts to set out a vision of Europeanism within the modern left-wing programme (e.g. by the leading Smer member Boris Zala), Smer has been successful in defining itself against the western left. The European left is liberal, cosmopolitan and globalist, which Smer portrays negatively.
Smer cannot and will not overcome the nationalist currents and trends in the Slovak left. Its delusions about George Soros and its promotion of a narrative of national sovereignty in today’s world facing planetary crises sounds simplistic. Aggressively defining itself in against the demands and interests of LGBTI+ people, Smer is being dragged into the crosshairs of wider authoritarian-conservative forces operating from Poland, Hungary, the US (Republican Trump) to Turkey, as has already been noticed and criticised by other European socialist parties.
Left-wing forces from all over the world should pull together in an internationalist spirit and respond to real problems. Unfortunately, it is precisely nationalism that links Smer to far-right and conservative movements and distracts it from left-wing entities at home, in Europe and in the world.
Adam Šumichrast is a historian
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