THE SLOVAK NATIONAL ISSUE IN ČSSR ON THE EVE OF THE PRAGUE SPRING 1968

Abstract

The article sheds the light on the key reasons for the aggravation of the Slovak national issue in ČSSR on the eve of the Prague Spring 1968. Particularly, a great attention is paid to the policy of “approaching” of the peoples, the asymmetric model in Czech-Slovak state and legal relations, the low level of economic development of the Slovak lands. The idea of “convergence” of the Czechs and the Slovaks, combined with the voluntarist tendencies in the ideology and political practice of the socialist country, gradually began to approach a peculiar, communist interpretation of the political “Czechoslovakism” from the interwar period. In the framework of the policy of “convergence” of peoples in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, there was a process of centralizing all institutions that still retained formal independence in Slovakia. The initiative to eliminate the last remnants of Slovak self-government came personally from President A.Novotny and led to the complication of Czech-Slovak relations in the state. In 1967, in the field of view of the leadership of the Communist Party of Slovak Republic, in addition to the national, there were also socio-economic issues. This was due to the fact that the restructuring of the Slovak economy, which envisaged the economic and social equalization of the Slovak lands with the Czech regions of the country in the second half of the 1960’s, did not bring the expected results. Slovak national issue in 1967 was stressed. This fact accelerated the formation of the reformation wing in the ruling communist`s party. Its representatives were strongly against the policy of А.Novotný. Therefore, the course on the democratization of the society was declared. The regulation of the Czech-Slovak state and legal relations by means of reformation of the country on the federal basis was announced. Communist reformers, led by O.Dubchek, recognized that the equality of Czechs and Slovaks had damaged by the asymmetry of the state system. Thus, the “Program of Action of the Communist Party of Czechoslovak Republic” advocated the development of a federal system, which was considered the best state legal form of coexistence of equal peoples in one socialist state.

Vovkanych, I., & Shnitser, I. (2018). The Slovak National Issue in ČSSR on the Eve of the Prague Spring 1968. Mìžnarodnì zv’âzki Ukraïni: naukovì pošuki ì znahìdki – The International relations of Ukraine: scientific searches and findings, 27, 55-69 [in Ukrainian].