02/2017

KEYWORDS: Slovak State, Jozef Tiso, Cult, Hlinka‘s Slovak People‘s Party, Martyrdom, Political religion

ABSTRACT: A politician and the first Slovak president, Jozef Tiso, is among the most discussed figures in the Slovak national history and the views of his political activities vary. The wide variability of the reflection of Tiso‘s political activities oscillates from uncritical demonization through professionally balanced views to the eulogizing and apologetic perception of his career and the steps he took in the position of a professional politician between 1938 and 1945. The paper deals with the latter interpretation, analysing the process of building up the cult of Jozef Tiso in the Slovak political culture, from its origin up to the present. In the chronological order, it pays attention to the individual aspects of the image of the „national genius“ and the „first-class statesman“ with the noble human qualities created by the propaganda apparatus of the Ludak regime, and subsequently, after Tiso‘s execution in April 1947, to the image of a martyr created and formed by the pro-Ludak émigrés and the adherents of this ideological line in Slovakia after 1989. The study analyzes the issue in a wider European context against the background of the concept of sacralised policy, using Tiso’s example to point to its similarities with other „New Europe“ leaders as well as to Slovak specifics. The paper also describes the current forms of practising Tiso’s cult, framed by some old-timers’ nostalgia for the wartime Slovak State and the deliberate legendizing Tiso’s person for the purposes of political instrumentalization.
Today, Jozef Tiso is no longer a topic of great interest to the Slovak historiography. Almost all details of his life and political career are well-known. Historical research is unlikely to make any significant discoveries in this respect. All relevant issues related to Tiso’s career were exhaustively discussed and, in principle, concluded as early as in the 1990s. The reason why J. Tiso still remains a subject of lively discussions and polemics primarily lies in the way in which he has been established in the collective memory and public discourse. As early as during the existence of the Slovak Republic of 1939-1945, for a part of the society Jozef Tiso became an iconic fgure representing a culmination of national history in the form of Slovak statehood as well as of the ruling regime. As a central fgure of the Slovak State and the Ludak regime providing the integral nationalism of both these phenomena of modern Slovak history with a “protective armour”, J. Tiso became an object of unearthly respect far beyond a traditional earthly political cult. As a leader and ideologist of Hlinka‘s Slovak People‘s Party and the president of the state and a Catholic priest, he embodied a prototype of a political and spiritual leader in one person; he became a bearer of sacralized politics.
Before October 1938, Jozef Tiso was a politician with no strong story. Neither in AustriaHungary nor in Czechoslovakia was he imprisoned for his opinions for a long period of time. He was never treacherous to any regime and had a reputation of a diplomat trying to reach a political consensus at the negotiating table. After the death of Andrej Hlinka who during his life established himself as an irreplacable and unthreatenable leader of HSPP, the situation changed. In the period of the Slovak Republic during World War II, the propaganda of the Ludak regime worked on building the image of Jozef Tiso as Hlinka’s successor, the “father of the state” and a first-class statesman with a visionary power. All components of the regime‘s propaganda apparatus (print media, radio, literature, film, etc.) participated in creating this image. Jozef Tiso identifed himself with the role of the creator and the most reliable protector of the state, and he himself believed this myth, made by the propaganda apparatus. The propagandist presentation of J. Tiso was much more conservative as compared to other political leaders of “New Europe” (e.g. eccentric Benito Mussolini). In the relation of the president to the nation, the cult-forming discourse in the Slovak State was confined only to the creation of an image of a leader as a political clairvoyant showing the people the right way, which raised J. Tiso’s political self-confidence and confirmed him in the conviction of the natural position of the “first Slovak” and the only authorized preacher of the “national gospel”.
The manner and circumstances of Tiso’s death in April 1947 gave his cult, formed between 1938 and 1945, an aspect of martyrdom. They shifted the cult-forming image to the transcendental plane with mingling political and church formative factors of cult. For his supporters J. Tiso was ceasing to be a real historical fgure and his image was gradually being transformed into the form of a political saint. The sacralized respect for J. Tiso, until 1989 publicly practised exclusively in exile, was, however, not primarily a respect for his person or for the idealized qualities of one politician, priest and man, but for the myth of the perfect world of „Slovak Slovakia“, which the Ludak regime created and implanted into the thinking of its supporters. Pilgrimages to Altötting in Bavaria, to Tiso’s tomb in the Martin Cemetery in Bratislava or to his birthplace in Bytča were not and are not a manifestation of an authentic respect for J. Tiso but for the value world represented by the wartime Slovak State and J. Tiso as its principal representative.
The present day turning to J. Tiso in the form of memorial manifestations, an obstinate confirming in the cult-forming paradigms in various discussion events or even in the form of prayers, is seen by Tiso’s supporters as a transcendent pilgrimage to the mystical ideal and imaginary return to the “golden age” of the political culture of ultra-nationalism sheltered and protected by the state. The provocative declarations of emotional ties to J. Tiso on occasion of anniversary of 14 March 1939 or 18 April 1947 are among few opportunities during a year when the modern ultra-nationalism filled with obsessive ideas of the need for a regeneration of the depraved modernist society has a chance to manifest itself outwardly, to revolt against the values of liberal democracy, to emerge from the self-stylized dissent and under cover of the ritual celebration of Tiso’s cult demonstrate its vision of an ideal, pure and progressive society.
The form of the cult of J. Tiso is not a closed topic. Although in the following years the forms of the overexposed worship of the president of the first Slovak state will be surely patterned on the indicated premises, their precise contours will, to a large extent, depend on the social and political development in Slovakia and Europe.