Medzi federalizmom, sovietskym Slovenskom a hospodárskym vyrovnaním. Aplikácia stalinskej národnostnej politiky na otázku česko-slovenských vzťahov (od boľševizácie KSČ po začiatok boja proti buržoáznemu nacionalizmu)

This study examines the influence of Stalinism on Czech-Slovak relations from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. It aims to show how Slovak and Czech communists applied the changing doctrines and directives of the Communist International in this field. The author emphasizes the official positions of the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ) and the Communist Party of Slovakia (Komunistická strana Slovenska, KSS), formed illegally after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of an independent Slovak State, and the ideological aspects of the application of Stalinist nationality policy. First, the author summarizes the development of nationality policy in the Soviet Union, which the KSČ leadership began to copy consistently in its programme after the so-called Bolshevization of the KSČ in 1929. During the early 1930s, it questioned the existence of a multi-ethnic Czechoslovakia as an imperialist state of the Czech bourgeoisie and asserted the right of national minorities to full self-determination, arguing that a real solution to the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks would only be possible after the revolution, whether in the form of a socialist federation or some other form of Slovak emancipation. After the Comintern's political shift towards the formation of so-called Popular Fronts in confrontation with fascism, the KSČ abandoned the narrative of exploitation and the colonial status of Slovakia in favour of the thesis that the survival of the Slovak nation was directly linked to the survival of Czechoslovakia, and demanded extensive reforms aimed at social and economic equality between the two parts of the republic. According to the author, the collapse of the existing order after 1939 demonstrated the flexibility of Stalinism on the national question and offered Slovak communists a number of possibilities for development. The ideas about a Soviet Slovakia and a federal Czechoslovakia, disputed by some of the actors, were practical examples of the current dialectical approach to the issue, where the specific historical context was paramount. After 1948, the arrangement of Czech-Slovak relations was dictated by the fact that, since the end of the war, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin had preferred the equalization of economic and social differences as a universal solution to national problems. In terms of state law, this meant adopting an asymmetrical model in which Slovak authorities with limited powers functioned alongside the Czechoslovak state political representation. The protagonists of "Slovak national communism" were politically discredited in the first half of the 1950s, removed from public life, and criminalized as so-called bourgeois nationalists.