The View From Above

In Slovakia during the summer the sunsets are legendary. My good friend Ildar caught the above photo of the golden orb going down behind the Male Karpaty (Mah-lay Car-pahtee) to the west of Bratislava. Ildar took this shot from the top of his building on a terrace there. This sliver of the Carpathians wraps around us; extends from near Bratislava Castle out to and including Devin Castle, crossing the Danube and runs into Austria ending on the Danube Plain. I have have spent some time day-hiking in it, and now have cycled out to it and challenged myself on the twisting roads that rise and fall in this green Eden of ours. One of my favorite outings was last year with Prof. Homza, on a revelatory day in which we discussed many subjects as we hiked through these spectacular preserves. He pointed out ruins, caves (only one is open to the public), and very small villages that revealed themselves from open glades. As of now, my outdoor activities are a bit limited due to a heat wave. A few mornings past, I was soaking wet on an early ride up the Danube and immediately returned home and took a cool shower. I will meander on my bike to the Old Town in the evenings to meet friends; until the weather cools I am going to “cave-dwell” during the day and wait patiently for Fall.

I am going to get fingerprinted for another FBI background check to have all the documentation needed for my next visa round. Prof. Homza is pushing for me to stay at least two years to help him get a book written for the US market; after having aroused his anger with the authorities for making it so difficult, this process called for him bringing in big guns and connections in Parliament to help me stay… under his aegis. He is very happy to help, and this should boost my limited knowledge a bit more, and directly reach out to the ancestors of Slovaks in the US. One of the terms of my “mission visa” is to “guest lecture”; I am elated to lecture for Prof. Homza beginning this Fall term, and who knows?… it might be another of his YouTube ventures. Instead of “Ted Talks”, he jokes, we will have “Ne Talks”. All in all, my language is coming bit by bit, and I will enroll in a course this Fall to get a leg up on understanding what exactly is being said to me.

HISTORY CORNER

We last left the Slovaks during the beginning of the Enlightenment in the west. I mentioned Maria Theresa and her following descendant ruling offspring, as being “enlightened despots” and the manner in which they instituted reforms hardly filtered down to the Slovaks who were for the time being subjects of the Austrian Empire. According to British historian Eric Hobsbawm, we are at the start of “the long 19th Century”. Hobsbawm and Ilya Ehrenburg (Russia) coined this term to denote the period of history from The French Revolution (1789) to the start of World War I as a context for understanding the continuation of ideas that led to a change in the balance of power and influence after World War I. Although Hobsbawm was a devout Marxist, and this influenced his work, I have always considered his viewpoints on nationalism, socialism and capitalism as ideas of a larger frame to consider. He is one among many that have colored my study of history.

The turn of the 18th into the 19th century finds the Slovaks with a common language. After graduating from the seminary in 1787, Anton Bernolak codified the first Slovak language standard which he based on western Slovak dialects along with dialects from the central regions. Along with “collective memory”, language is the one of the key components of a recognizable nationality. “Collective memory” is defined by historians as shared memories of the same experience in significant events. For those in the US, 9/11 would be considered as a “collective memory”. To this point, the people living in the Upper Kingdom would have at least a shared experience of living through generations of Hungarian rule. Yet with components of this sense of connectedness heading into “The Long 19th Century”, and a will to be represented and acknowledged… the Slovaks have another 100+ years to go. For me personally, this is where Slovak history becomes especially intriguing. Secularism begins to grow in the early 19th century, and the Slovaks begin to develop a more modern approach to their art, literature, politics, and the implementation of their ideas for the future.

Again, it is important to point out that the Slovaks had been using Old Slavonic, and dialectical Slovak to communicate with each other as this was the language of their confessional history. We have seen in past posts that Latin, Magyar, German, and perhaps Yiddish were the main languages spoken for nearly 4 or 500 years prior to this period. The Hungarians will press the Slovaks even further to adopt Hungarian (Magyar) as the first language of all subjects in the empire.

For context in 1787, Bernolak codifies the Slovak language as the founding fathers in the US are creating the Constitution. Africa is becoming a hub for the slave trade because of the effects of the global cotton trade; it would soon be the sole supplier of labor for the plantations of the Southern United States. South America, having been carved up by Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain, were still at least 40/50 years removed from independence; an estimated 5 million slaves were imported from Africa to the southern continent. Great Britain has installed a puppet ruler in India; the Silk Road had been cut off from the west by the Ottoman empire and the Europeans have militarized their merchant capitalism among themselves in both Asia and the Sub-continent. In Tibet, following the rise of the Manchu and under their protection from the Chinese (Qing dynasty) have installed 8th Dalai Lama (lives until 1804). Napoleon is still just a young lieutenant prior to the French Revolution. All of the aforementioned is a reminder of what happens in history simultaneously; I think it is very important to have this in mind when we look at what is happening in our small 19,000+/- square mile area of the Slovaks. If it is okay with my readers, I will try to include this small paragraph in our History Corner to give an “umbrella view” of what exactly takes place elsewhere while our Slovaks begin to gain their footing in this the most crucial period of their history.

One of the countless back alleys in The Old Town (photo: Ildar Bagautdinov)

In the early 1980’s when I began to take a serious interest in Slovak history… some 40 years ago, I had no idea of its length and breadth. I had no idea what they went through for nearly 1,000 years, and even less of a clue of what transpired after World War I. At that time, there were only some well-dated books, and light overviews of Slovak history. Since Columbia College had a rather limited amount of history books in their library, I took advantage of being allowed to read at the library at near-by Roosevelt University. As I said “read” was all I could do; we were not able to check books out. I would go for two or three hours, read, take notes, and leave a pile of books on the large oak table. Robert Seton-Watson’s “Racial Problems In Hungary” left a huge impact in my study. It was one of the few books written (at that time) by someone from outside of the region; Seton-Watson was a respected London-born Scot who became a voice for the Slovaks (and other ethnicities) in the Hungarian Kingdom. He went to Vienna to write articles for a newspaper, and traveled to Hungary in 1906 to research for the articles. It didn’t take long for his sympathies to turn toward the Slovaks and others. Seton-Watson opened the whole of my heart and mind to learning how the history of the Slovaks unfolded. In 1985 I was nominated to compete for a Fulbright Scholarship, and upon completion of my thesis, it was discovered that I was unable to continue due to history not being claimed as my “first subject” and that I was not in Graduate Studies (I think they have changed it to PHD-study only). I am still indebted to Prof. Bell of the Univ. of Chicago for recognizing my hope for a greater understanding of our history; gone now, he will always be remebered with fondness for our marathon debates, and his caution in studying history with “a chip on my shoulder”.

We will visit our Slovaks in the beginning of the 19th century next and I will give a more in-depth look at what transpired. I will also draw on the past (The Magdeburg Rights, the Poles to the north, and the Rus’ to east), and attempt to weave a clearer fabric from which we can see how our Slovaks had lived through the late Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and on into the beginning of the Modern Era. I am constantly reading new papers (for me) and thus updating what little I already know. Until we meet again; please take of yourselves, and please take care of each other. Thank you for taking the time to read my posts, receive by email/follow, or just pop in from time to time.