This article focuses on the early post-1989 period when the ''Slovak question'' returned with full force to the gradually democratizing political arena and surprised Czech society and its budding political elite, who were both unprepared to address the question. The author reveals the imbalance of ''Czechoslovakism'' - its story and historical lesson - between the two sides of the once united country. In Slovakia, Czechoslovakism was ''part of the living language of politics and journalism of the Slovak experience,'' whilst in Czech society, its reception was lukewarm and superfi cial. Thanks to his insight into federal and republican politics in the early days of democratic revival, the author presents his readers with a fascinating breakdown of the factual-historic presence of Czechoslovakism at a time when its word-historical presence was minimal. He analyzes how Slovakia stepped into democracy by exercising its national sovereignty in federal structures and played as active a role as ever in Czech-Slovak relations. Meanwhile, the Czech side remained merely reactive. In contrast to the Slovak scene, Czechs were engaged in a ''politics of returns,'' buttressed by a resolutely idealized image of the First Republic and a renewed spirit of ''Czechoslovakness,'' which was deceptively refreshing for Czech society. These were two political worlds, able to fi nd a common denominator only with great effort. The author explains that Czech politics were de facto forced - by the Slovaks, who were developing federal principles and creating policies for national sovereignty - into lackluster policy-making of their own national sovereignty. Even so, these forced politics had their advocates, such as national-socialist politicians in the Czech National Council at that time. and Překlad Tereza Jonášová a Kathleen Geaney
The paper focuses on the analysis of wartime Slovak political parties’ views on Slovakia’s status after the World War II. The paper is divided into two main blocks. The first one deals with the shy plans of the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s representatives to maintain Slovak independence on a post-war map. Second one clarifies changing attitudes of resistance and its dialogues with the London and Moscow exile concerning the question of Slovak statehood in the context of expected Czechoslovakia’s rebirth after fall of the Nazi rule and in the very first months of 1945. The authors analyse complicated “behind-curtain” debates, the nature of discourse regarding the face of post-war Slovakia and Slovak question as a serious problem between the Slovak political opposition, Beneš’ exile government in London and communist exile in Moscow that shaped Czechoslovak internal policy even after liberation in May 1945.