Espionage Allegations and First Jail Sentence
On 1 January 1928, Tuka published an article titled "Vacuum iuris", alleging that there had been a suppressed annex to the 31 December 1918 Declaration of the Slovak Nation by which Slovak representatives officially joined the newly-founded state of Czechoslovakia. Tuka argued that the declaration was, by agreement, to be valid for only ten years; after 28 October 1928, he argued, Prague's writ would no longer run in Slovakia without dismissing the existence of the Czecho-Slovak state. The existence of the annex was alleged by well-known declarants: members of the 1918 Slovak national council Andrej Hlinka, F. Juriga, J. Koza-Matejov, Emanuel Stodola, and Joseph Srobar (brother of centralist Vavro Srobar, principal antagonist of Hlinka and Tuka). Without hesitation, the Prague government charged Tuka with espionage and high treason on behalf of the Hungarian government. Tuka was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment; he served about ten years of that sentence.
According to Czechoslovakist historian Kamenec, post–World War II documents retrieved from Hungary showed that Tuka was in the service of the Hungarian Irredent; but Kamenec also said that documents do not exclude the claims of Tuka's supporters that Tuka gained support for Slovakian independence from Austria, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Germany, France, and the Soviet Union.
Read more about this topic: Vojtech Tuka
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