Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Separation, Judgment, and Laments of Civic Criticism
- 2 Civility and Crisis in the Slovak Public Sphere
- 3 Sentimental Kritika
- 4 Love, L'udskost', and Education for Democracy
- 5 Young Literary Critics
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Civility and Crisis in the Slovak Public Sphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Separation, Judgment, and Laments of Civic Criticism
- 2 Civility and Crisis in the Slovak Public Sphere
- 3 Sentimental Kritika
- 4 Love, L'udskost', and Education for Democracy
- 5 Young Literary Critics
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Longtime friends have become fervid political enemies; politicians of one movement, political opponents who spew at each other truths, half-truths, extreme statements, and intimate gossip in the struggle for influence and power. Some of them do not even call their former allies by their names; when they have no more arguments against them, they would send them most gladly to a psychiatric ward…. Their arrogance, hate, and lupine morality exceed the norms of human venom.
—Ladislav Ťažký, Horúce témy (translation mine)Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution of late 1989 has been memorialized in the West as a model for peaceful political transitions from one-party states to pluralism. This image was further reinforced three years later when Czechoslovakia split with minimal physical violence into the independent Slovak Republic and Czech Republic on January 1, 1993. Indeed, while these events were consistent with the nonviolent political transitions that took place in other East Central European states such as the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and Hungary, still other parts of Eastern Europe such as Romania and the former Yugoslavia did not see such peaceful mass politics. There was therefore much to celebrate in this accomplishment. So when the Slovak writer Ladislav Ťažký wrote over a year later, in 1991, of “arrogance, hate, and lupine morality [that] exceed the norms of human venom,” to what was he referring?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Critical Thinking in Slovakia after Socialism , pp. 65 - 103Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013