Slovaks - Name and Ethnogenesis

Name and Ethnogenesis

The origin of the Slovaks is disputed among scholars and it is very contentious. The term of "Slovak" is problematic in relation of the medieval period, because it is essentially the product of the modern nationalism as it emerged after the 18th century. Throughout history, the diverse theories regarding the ethnogenesis of the Slovaks were used to justify or unjustify historical situations from variant historical perspectives, as the argument of ‘my-nation-was-here-first’ type was, and still remains to be a useful instrument of legitimizing a nation-state's ownership of a given territory or its claim to an area outside its current borders. The national ideology that the Slovaks are descended from the Slavs who inhabited the territory of present-day Slovakia between the 5th-10th centuries has a long story and it is connected with the ambition of the Slovaks to reach self-determination or autonomy within Hungary (mostly under romantic nationalism of the 19th century and during the Slovak national revival). This continuity theory, supporting the supposed former common past of the Czech and Slovak nations, thus also legitimizating the creation of the united Czechoslovak nation, gained political subvention during the formation of Czechoslovakia. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, and the formation of independent Slovakia motivated interest in a particularly Slovak national identity. One reflection of this was the rejection of the common Czechoslovak national identity in favour of a pure Slovak one. Although the definition and identification of the inhabitants of Great Moravia proved to be politically imperative and difficult, additionally historical records are anything else but precise in this question, the current consensus among most of the Slovak historians is that Slovaks exist as a people with consciousness of their national identity since the 9th or 10th century, therefore we can identify the Slavic inhabitants living on the territory of this realm as Slovaks.

Naming various institutions after the saintly brothers and Great Moravian rulers and devoting commemorative plaques and monuments to them became widespread in post-1993 Slovakia. The laudation of the imagined history of Slovak culture and language led to the myth of the Cyrillo-Methodian dawn of the Slovak nation and was incorporated into the 1991 Slovak Constitution, which adverts the spiritual heritage of Cyril and Methodius and the historical heritage of the Great Moravian Empire as inherently Slovak.

On the other hand there are Slovak historians who suggest that:

It is not correct to label Great Moravia as the first state of the Czechs and the Slovaks for the simple reason that the membership of the Czechs in this state had been short lived. —Stanislav, Kirschbaum (1995), A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival, p. 35.

As Stanislav Kirschbaum points out:

Slavist and literary historians consider the Cyrillo-Methodian literature as the heritage of all Slavs. Other claim that it is the heritage of the Slavs who laid the bases of the Empire of Great Moravia, namely the Slovaks, the Moravians and the Slovenes. Slovak scholars have been saying for three centuries that the literature created in Great Moravia or translated by Sts. Cyril and Methodius and their disciples for the ancestors of the Slovaks are rather part of the Slovak cultural heritage. —Stanislav, Kirschbaum (1995), A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival, p. 35.

It seems reasonable to propose that the modern Slovaks may be descendants of the Great Moravian population, this proposition is also true in the case of many modern Central European countries. In fact denial of the continuity of the Slavs living in the territory of what is today Slovakia (before the eleventh century and those who have been living there since the eleventh century) is (also) incorrect. In particular the oldest local names in a written form can serve as evidence. On the basis of the known development of the (Slovak) language these names can serve for determining the time of their formation (before the thirteenth century; in the tenth century or before the tenth century). Therefore it should be adequate to deal with the ethnogenesis of Slovaks in more detail. The Catholic Church in Slovakia claims the Byzantine rite from Great Moravia is still preserved in Slovakia, mainly in eastern Slovakia. Also Slavic pagan elements may still be found in many demonstrations of folk culture, forming part of Slovak folklore even to the present day. According to political scientist Timothy Haughton:

The Great Moravian Empire is viewed by some as a kind of golden age of Slovak nationalism. Such harking back to distant history is not retricted to expat nationalist Slovak historians, but is also enshrined in the preamble to the Slovak constitution. The golden age view has much to do with the fact that the Great Moravian Empire was followed by what is labeled as '1000 years of Magyar rule', followed by seventy years of second class citizenship in Czechoslovakia. —Timothy, Haughton; (2005) Constraints and opportunities of leadership in post-Communist Europe, p. 109.

The theory of the "Great Moravian" and "Cyrillo-Methodian" heritage dates back to the 18th century. In his writing (Historia gentis Slavae. De regno regibusque Slavorum ) Georgius Papanek (or Juraj Papánek) traces the roots of the Slovaks to Great Moravia.

Other Slovak scholarly view is that the emergence of sense of a common Slovak nationhood did not appear until the 18th or 19th century. According to polish scholar Tomasz Kamusella tracing the roots of the Slovak nation to the times of Great Moravia, claiming the polity to have been the first Slovak state is nothing else but "ethnolinguistic Slovak nationalism". This 'continuity theory' also contradicts with the internationally accepted theory that distinct Slavic nations had not yet emerged by the 9th century and the culture and language of various Slavic tribes in Central Europe were indistinguishable from each other.

In this interpretation, the Slovaks have the oldest tradition of statehood in Central Europe, but unfortunately, the 'millennium of Hungarian occupation’ caused them to ‘forget’ their proud traditions. Although the idea of the Cyrillo-Methodian heritage is very prevalent in nowadays Slovakia. Some scholars claim there is no continuity in politics, culture, or written language between this early Slavic polity and the modern Slovak nation.

The modern Slovak nation is the result of radical processes of modernization within the Habsburg Empire which culminated in the middle of 19th century. According to the philosopher Ernest Gellner this is contrary to the Slovak myth, which traces the beginnings of the Slovak nation back to the 9th century or even earlier.

According to the Czech priest Josef Dobrovský, Great Moravia was located in Upper Hungary and Moravia (i.e. Present-day Slovakia and Czech Republic). Writers of Slavic origin like Juraj Sklenár, and Juraj Fándly praised Great Moravia as opposed to the ‘heathen Magyars’ who destroyed this realm. In 1879, Jaroslav Vlček wrote that Great Moravia was a common state of Slovaks and Moravians. František Viktor Sasinek asseted in his work "Die Slovaken. Eine Ethnographische Skizze" (The Slovaks: An ethnographic outline) that Great Moravia was the state of the Slovaks, Moravians and Bohemians. According to Josef Ladislav Píč ("O methode dejepisu Slovenska" ) Great Moravia was the state of the Czechoslovak nation, but he agreed that the separate Slovak nation emerged after the Hungarians destroyed the polity. Slovak historian Julius Botto Jr. asserted ("Slováci. Vývin ich národného povedomia" ) that Great Moravia was solely a Slovak realm. Interestingly, Samuel Timon Jesuit priest claimed ("Imago antiquae Hungariae" ) that the Hungarians by destroying Great Moravia, had liberated the Slovaks from the Moravian yoke. It was Ján Hollý who imprinted the idea of Great Moravia and the Cyrillo-Methodian literacy on the ideological blueprint of Slovak nationalism with his poems (Svatopluk, 1833; Cyrilo-Methodiana, 1835; Slav, 1839). When the Slovaks and Czechs lived in a common state it was suggested that Great Moravia was the equal legacy of both nations. However, Russian historian George Vernadsky asserted that Great Moravia is the legacy exclusively of the Czechs.

The opinion of Hungarian historian János Karácsonyi was, that the indigenous Slavs had died out or they had been assimilated by Hungarians, therefore contemporary Slovaks are the progeny of the White Croats (arrived from the north and north-west by the twelfth century in to Hungary) the Czech (Bohemian, Moravian), Polish (Lesser Polish) and German (Silesian, Saxonian, Swabian) settlers who came to Hungary during 10th–18th century. According to this theory, only a small part of present-day Slovakia was inhabited during the reign of Stephen I, thus there is no direct connection between the autochthonous Slavic population living in the territory of present-day Slovakia before the 12th century and modern Slovaks. After the Treaty of Trianon, the theory of Karácsonyi became very popular among Hungarian politicians and it was utilized to prove the Hungarian view that the separation of the territory of Slovakia from Hungary was unjustified. Czech historian Václav Chaloupecký also admitted that most of the territory of present-day Slovakia (except the southern parts) was a primeval forest until the thirteenth century and an intentionally unpopulated frontier region of the Kingdom of Hungary. Chaloupecký asserted that Slovaks are Czechs by origin but their almost 1000-years’ existence in the Kingdom of Hungary led to their separation from the Czech nation. Furthermore, he also considered that the Walachian populations, especially in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were significant agents in the ethnogenesis of the Slovaks. However Chaloupecký had no doubts about that after the eleventh century the Slavonic inhabitants of south-western Slovakia were descendants of those Slavs who had lived there in the ninth and the tenth centuries. Regardless of the fact that modern historical and archaeological exploration in the last decades showed the opinions of both Karácsonyi and Chaloupecký to be wrong, their views can be considered in a way identical as they both wanted to put forward arguments for the integrity and legitimacy of the Kingdom of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the period of writing their works. None of them concealed their intentions, they even underlined it.