(The aged mister Cernovski from Cernova (1898-1987) speaks about Slovak history and
father Hlinka)
After that, the revolution was accepted in this sense, that the
Slovak national party was standing at the unconditional and unreserved standpoint that the
Slovak nation had a right of selfgovernment, and on this base was claiming that the Slovak
nation should be allowed to participate in the formation of an independent state consisting
of Slovakia, Moravia, Czechia and Silesia.
A bit later on, in October, when everybody was feeling that the war would
soon come to its end, doctor Ferdis Juriga came forward in the Ugrian parliament and delivered
a historical address. Meeting with much resistance from the Hungarian members of parliament,
he summed up during almost two hours all wrongs that the Hungarians had done to the Slovak
nation, and finally he proclaimed:"
We do require, for natural and historical reasons, that we will be
allowed as a free nation to form our own free national society in the lands in which we are
resident.
The parliament began yelling outcries like Away with them! Knock him
down! Yokel! Hang them high! But Juriga fearlessly continued his own speech. He declared
that the Slovak nation didn't see why the Hungarian parliament should be competent, since
there were only two instead of forty Slovak members of parliament. The Slovak people wanted
the right of selfdetermination, and only a Slovak national council was competent to speak on
behalf of the Slovaks."
"Did we then already have a Slovak national council?"
"Certainly not, are you mad? However, exactly for that reason, the speech
of Juriga presented the council as an accomplished fact. Whoever had been hesitating up to now to
advise the institution of a national council, hurried to speak a clear word about it after
the speech of Juriga. At the end of October, representatives of all Slovak national parties
came together to celebrate the day of Saint Martin of Tours and to form a Slovak national
council. At the thirtieth of October they issued a separate declaration that the Slovaks should
break with Ugria and ally themselves from their own initiative with the Czechoslovak state.
The Saint Martin declaration was an important historical document, but
from a political viewpoint it was rather imperfect. In fact, one could even say that it was
a lyric. It did not provide the people with any rights. But it was sticking like a straw in
someone's shoe: being nearly a law, it had the effect that we could earlier slip the Hungarian
yoke. It said nothing, however, about the relation between Czechs and Slovaks in the future
state."
"Why didn't it, according to you?"
"There would be too many things disagreeing with the sanctity of the
moment. That saint Martin assembly pronounced the separation from Hungary. They couldn't ask to
speak openly about the conditions of the future life with the Czechs. They talked only in
small isolated circles about that subject, because God forbid that there would arise any
quarrels between them.
To the declaration, which they delivered in Prague, they allegedly attached
a separate resolution, saying that the relation between Czechs and Slovaks should be arranged
within ten years. The reason for this precaution, however, was not made public at all."
"That was a little mistake, wasn't it?"
"Mistake? You shouldn't judge like that. It is true without doubt that
every error is pinning us onto some penalty bench. But it's also true that errors are human,
and that we learn from them. No man is without faults and no way of life is irreproachable.
And in our country we use to say: let's go where we have to go. Limping with one leg is better
than limping with both.
But today, people don't easily understand why these men, who were assembled on
the day of saint Martin of Tours, didn't know anything about the Pittsburgh agreement and the
clear guarantee given by Masaryk. The American Slovaks continued their life in America, and
the Czech foreign employees, when they were coming home, didn't inform the Slovak politicians of
the promises
and agreements that had been made at the other side of the ocean. They remained completely
silent, and life in the new state took from the beginning a course which was contrary to the
Pittsburgh agreement.
From this perspective, the saint Martin declaration seems weak, vague, even
a mere airbubble. In the declaration it wasn't evident at all whether we were a nation or not.
It said something about the industrious and talented Slovak nation, but the same
declaration was also speaking over the Czechoslovak nation. It was a jumble. The woollen clew of
ideas concealed a danger that would come out very soon and very painfully. The equality which
was intended to be the base of the republic, became slowly but doubtlessly a chimera.
We wished to be equal, and yet, some wished to be more equal than the others. Doctor Kramar
said it his way in a Prague newspaper: You Slovaks need a blank paper if you want to write
down your stipulations. But where on earth was such a blank paper, on which we could
freely write some of our demands?
Vavro Srobar became minister for the government of Slovakia. But from the
beginning, he was working with a handicap that originated from an unforgivable mistake. The
Slovaks didn't listen to any advice from the Slovak national council.
After the war, when we came back from Italy with our comrades, Slovakia
had very few experienced and conscious civil officers. In Czechia there were too many of them.
The government began to send them to Slovakia. In fact, whoever was more or less capable, was
not allowed to stay at home. Everybody dared to come to us, even without enough education or
ability. Even Czech workmen left their occupations and went to Slovakia as civil officers."
"So, we ourselves weren't very clever, if anybody was good enough to
work in Slovakia."
"Some of us were clever, but others were not. For us there came some jobs
out of the official mill as well, but not very good ones. The Slovaks were in the new state the
fifth wheel on the wagon, they were scattered so far as to become invisible. If we have to
describe Slovakia in that time with one word, we'd best say that it was a Czech colony. Hlinka
was among the first people who noticed that dangerous tendency. He paid a visit to Masaryk
and asked for Slovak autonomy. Masaryk said to him:
You want autonomy? You will have it.
When the American president Wilson asked the Czech minister Benes, how
he wished to solve the Slovak problem, he gave a similar answer:
On the base of the Pittsburgh agreement.
Take a man at his word, but a dog by his ear, people say. However, you
can't take a Czech statesman by his ear, nor at his word. He always behaves as best suits him.
Hlinka did another almost final attempt to set things right. When that didn't succeed, he went
with a false passport through Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Italy to Paris in order to
secure the fulfilment of the Czech promises during the peace conference that was taking place
there."
"Did he speak French?"
"It is good that you ask me this. Hlinka spoke German, Russian, Polish and
Hungarian. But he didn't speak French. He presented to the representatives of the victorious
western countries a facsimile of the Pittsburgh agreement and a memorandum on the injustice done
to the Slovak nation, which had been redacted in French by one of his assistants - doctor Frantisek
Jehlicka. It is a pity that Hlinka didn't recognize how Jehlicka redacted that text in French.
Hlinka, with his good intentions, didn't know anything more than what Masaryk had promised to
the Slovaks and what Benes had said to president Wilson. After his bad experiences, he wanted
to have a warranty in the peace agreements. But Benes didn't want this. It should be enough
that he had given the promises, why should he give a warranty as well? He arranged that the
French police summoned Hlinka to leave Paris. And Hlinka went home, to his own parish house
in Ruzomberok. In the night from eleven to twelve October 1919, the secret police came with
soldiers, they put him in a truck, and took him to the prison in Mirova. He had done so
much for the birth of the new state, and now he had to sit behind bars again for seven months.
"So you must have been right angry with them Czechs."
"Not really. But in the beginning Czecho-slovak state, there was too much
deceit and manipulation. And on that base we couldn't build anything durable. You may
object that it wasn't quite as bad as I am stating it, because in the first government we
really had a Slovak representation: the minister of national defence general Milan Ratislav
Stefanik and the minister of health doctor Vavro Srobar. Okay, let's say that we weren't
real poor cousins. But Stefanik fell down with his aeroplane near Bratislava in very mysterious
and hitherto unexplained circumstances, shortly after his return from abroad, so he didn't set
foot on earth alive in the republic. And what about Srobar? In the beginning of the republic,
he was an important man, he was the only Slovak representative in Prague. But thereafter?
Like Masaryk, he soon was standing out of the circle of main representatives, who were
promoting Czechoslovakism and Prague centralism. Then he made a turn and went into the camp of
the centralists, like Masaryk. He was even the inventer of some naive arguments against the
Pittsburgh agreement that reputedly had no validity at all. I still know that they signed
this agreement on an American national feastday, and American citizens signed it too. It was
no miracle that he soon got an offensive nickname. Do you know which one?"
"No."
"I must tell you that. He got that nickname in Prague, but it had its
background in the old time, when he was still living and working as a physician in Ruzomberok.
At that time there occurred the following incident. People pulled a corpse out of the river
Waag. They supposed that it was a man. It had no clothes and was terribly mutilated. The hands
had been chopped off from the wrists and the legs amputated below the knees. It had a big
belly, certainly full of water and sand. People were talking about it. They took the local
physician doctor Polgar to the corpse, but doctor Polgar called doctor Srobar for help.
The doctors confirmed the postmortem examination on a paper, writing that the corpse was a
man indeed, that the body had been lying in the water during a long time, that it was in a
state of decomposition and the fishes were already treating themselves with it. They ordered
to bury the poor drowned man. So people put him in a coffin and gave him a proper burial.
Not in the graveyard, for drowned people and dead foundlings couldn't be buried there, but on
a factory site along the river Waag, close to the place in Cernova where now the benzine
station is. Not long ago, there was also a playground with iron playthings
for children on that spot.
But what had really happened? Near Liptov Castle, hunters had shot a
bear. They cleaned up the spoils, chopped off the paws, took off the skin, and dragged the
rest of the body into the water. The torrent drove it to Ruzomberok, where people conferred
all possible honour on it.
Polgar got most of the blame. People said: He is a Hungarian. Budapest
sent him to Ruzomberok, and now he shows his true colours. He is so dumb that he cannot
distinguish a skinned bear from a man. Srobar was only his assistant and his consultant. So, when
he smelled the corpse, he only glanced at it and then he immediately walked away in agreement
with doctor Polgar. In the eyes of the people, Srobar was to blame less than Polgar. But
Srobar has been suffering quite a lot as well. After many years, when he was already working
in Prague and had converted himself to the idea of Czechoslovakism, people stuck on him the
nickname Srobar-hrobar, that is: Srobar the gravedigger. For he didn't only bury a bear, but
also the freedom of the Slovak nation."
"And ever since then, they call the Ruzomberok people connoisseurs
of the honey bear?"
"Yes. But something else jumps into my mind. About this Czechoslovakism.
You have to consider the case from another side as well. I had a flashback to the events
after the return of Hlinka from Paris. I was then twenty-one years old, I saw everything with
my little eye, and I remember how certain suspect people came from Ruzomberok to Cernova ..
for what?
People said that these men would steal Hlinka from us. I held fast immediately, and many others
did the same. From the wide surroundings, people came together on the Ruzomberok market
square. I listened what they said to each other. They stole Hlinka in the night and took him
to prison, and one man called Lichardus revealed that it were Czechs who did it."
"Lichardus? I have heard that name somewhere before ... the steel constructions
in Bielo Potok!"
"Yes. He built them. But that was later on, in the Slovak state. And he
gained a lot of money with it. He produced swords and sabres and more such things for the army.
But people say that Lichardus did also reveal the following.
When there came noise from a balcony, a gang of youngsters
captured the balcony at once. They talked with the Saint-John's guard who was standing near that
place.
There were also some elder people among them. In Lichardus' house they broke all panes.
And after that, they did the same in the house of Jancek below, because they had heard his name
too in the rumours. The crowd grew ever more numerous, and it already looked like a
revolution. The army had to come to maintain order.
But what was really the background of Hlinka's nocturnal abduction?
The prison of Mirova is still preserving notes that Hlinka wrote himself.
It is interesting that these notes don't blame the Czechs or Prague for the imprisonment, but
his own Slovak political adversaries. Prague gave the order, and Hlinka confirms that in his
notes, but nonetheless he tells everywhere that it were Slovaks who put him in jail. He writes
that these Slovak usurpers were against him and against an autonomous Slovakia, and that
these people had little vision. But he says also from the beginning that he was sitting
alone among Czechs in the car that carried him to Mirova.
Hlinka has recorded what he had been thinking in the car: It is
night all around me, the dark night of Slovak freedom. This freedom has been born just one
year ago, and is now already dying. Why must we beg for freedom like drones, who don't bring
honey at all and don't work? Traitors are taking Slovak freedom away. O Slovak people, will you
ever understand that your own sons are selling your freedom and language to gain authority
and profit only for themselves?
In his Mirova notes, Hlinka is sinking into deep thoughts and
contemplations. He is also examining his own conscience.
It grieves him that he was so unwary at that thirtieth day of October 1918, the holiday of
Saint Martin of Tours, when the Slovaks delivered the Declaration of the nation. In the prison
of Mirova, he discovers that the Slovaks can't be enthusiastic about the idea of Czechoslovak
fraternity. And yet, he had promoted this idea among Slovak people.
Why had he done that?
He gave the following answer, literally:"
Only to take care that the nation wouldn't die, I gave to the people
the following thought as a bitter poison in a sweet waffle: it's better to be and to live with
somebody whosoever than to die all alone.
"And he also wrote the following:"
If I can repair the mistake that I made one year ago, then I'll have
gained a lot. I didn't work without success, I don't live in vain.
"Hlinka knew very well what he was regretting. The Saint Martin declaration
was so imperfect that it became in practice a sort of trap for the Pittsburgh agreement.
If it had been formulated differently, more thoughtful, then the development of the Slovak people
in the new republic might have gone along quite better ways. So the Slovaks had set their own
home afire, so to speak. Their situation was precarious indeed. The Pittsburgh agreement with
the signature of Masaryk did exist, but on the other hand, Hlinka or the other participants
couldn't change the Saint Martin declaration any more."
"And you didn't meet Masaryk by chance?"
"We did! I remember him as well as if I would have seen him today. At the
twentyfirst of September 1921, he came with the train into the Ruzomberok railway station.
Representatives of all offices showed up before his wagon. The city president was the first to
welcome him. After that, president Masaryk answered that he intended to come to Ruzomberok once
more, and that's why the city president said to him: Goodbye!
In the city hall, Hlinka spoke to Masaryk. He said that Ruzomberok
knew its obligations to the state and its head, and that the president could rely upon the help
of the Catholic Slovaks when building up the republic.
The president answered with a long speech, in which he made reference to
Saint Augustine's doctrine that learns In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus
autem charitas - that is: in all things necessary we should be united, in all things
dubious we can be free, but we must always act with love. After that he continued:"
Sir deputy, I am glad that you emphasize that you have to support the
state. Centralism and autonomy are two antipodes, but on the same sphere. It is a mistake to
think that centralism predominates over autonomy. Or process of automy is guaranteed by the
constitution, and that's another reason why the government has to guide us as soon as possible
to autonomy. I myself appreciate the peculiarity and individuality of Slovakia.
And I will be happy, sir deputy, when the Slovak nation will secure, consolidate and elaborate
its own peculiarity and individuality. May God give that you will attain this goal.
"After the speech of the president there was music, and he took the train
to Kosice.