Post-War Retributive Jurisdiction in Slovakia (original) (raw)
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Collective Guilt in Central Europe after the Second World War and Now, ed. Iván Gyurcsík, 2024
The topic of the article is the role of the so-called Beneš Decrees in the formation of bilateral relations between Slovakia and Hungary, as well as between Slovakia and the members of the local Hungarian minority after 1993. In addition to traditional actors, such as, according to Rogers Brubaker, members of national minorities, their “external homeland” and the country in which they live, these relations are also influenced by integration processes and the action of international institutions, nowadays especially the EU. The EU’s current position is that it regards the resolution of past issues as an internal matter for its member states or for bilateral resolution between individual states. The article points to the fact that although the joint action of Slovakia and Hungary in the EU and in the Visegrád Group has long contributed to the diminishing relevance of controversial issues of the common past, it is the integration processes that may contribute to their re-escalation in the short term. The differentiated expectations of EU membership also affect the quality of bilateral relations of its member states. The relevance of research on post-1993 Slovak–Hungarian relations, based primarily on legal norms but also on statements by representatives of the political elites of both Slovakia and Hungary, has an increasing relevance in the context of the forthcoming further enlargement of the EU to include the states of Southeastern Europe and the former USSR.
Transitional Justice Dynamics in Slovakia: From Silence to the Nation's Memory Institute
CEU Political Science Journal Vol.7, No. 4 (Dec. 2012)
The purpose of this article is to identify and explain the dynamics of transitional justice in Slovakia. Furthermore, it focuses on the Nation's Memory Institute and its role in the process of dealing with the past. The dynamics are explained through the existence of constraints -the type of the regime change, the nature of the Communist regime and elite configuration. Transition process in Slovakia can be divided into three distinct phases, in which the interplay of the constraints allows for the application of various transitional justice mechanisms. The main finding of the article is that throughout the existence of the independent Slovakia, the elite configuration was the variable which affected the process the most. Favorable elite configuration allowed for the establishment of the institute in 2002, which can be considered a "breaking of the silence" when it comes to dealing with the past in Slovakia.
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free download in pdf: Political and Transitional Justice in Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s, edited by Magnus Brechtken, Władysław Bułhak und Jürgen Zarusky, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019, 336 pp. The book contains chapters by Yuri Shapoval: The »Union for the Liberation of Ukraine« (»SVU«) trial: fabrication, mechanisms, consequences Iryna Ramanava (Irina Romanova): The “Lepel Case” and Regional Show Trials in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in 1937 Ingo Müller: Judicial and Extrajudicial Political Persecution under the National Socialist Dictatorship - Structures, Logic, and Developments Wladyslaw Bulhak: In Search of Political Justice, 1939-2000. From the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland to the Institute of National Remembrance Joanna Lubecka: German Crimes Tried in Poland: A political and legal analysis on the example of Supreme National Tribunal Trials in Southern Poland Adam Dziurok: The specific character of prosecuting Nazi crimes in the borderlands Lukasz Jasinski: Polish and Czechoslovak Retribution against Germany, 1945-1949: A Comparison.
The Communist Party of Slovakia between the liberation and the gain of totalitarian power
Securitas Imperii, 2021
This study deals with the tactics, means and methods by which the Communist Party of Slovakia, as a regional branch of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, politically fought for a monopoly of power after the Second World War. First, it briefly describes the development of this party and its acceptance by the Slovak society in the interwar and war period. Then, it presents a picture, analyses and compares the ways in which the Slovak Communists tried to disqualify their insurgent partners and postwar rivals for power in the political strugglethe Slovak Democrats. It notes the relations between the Slovak and Czech Communists, the transformation of communist propaganda and tactics, conditioned by a single goal-the gain of totalitarian power, the introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the replacement of capitalism by communism. Until the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the Communists used a variety of democratic, semi-democratic and outright violent and undemocratic practices to win-from hyperbolizing the party propaganda, via the abuse of mass social organizations and the secret police, to purposeful investigation and intimidation and the threat of using a forceful solution of the political struggle. 1
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The people's courts were special judicial bodies in Hungary in the wake of the Second World War, operating between February 1945 and 1 April 1950. During this period, more than 59,000 people were brought before people's courts under Act VII of 1945. However, the people's courts, in tandem with the prosecution of war criminals, became the controversial instrument of a regime change intended to be democratic. On the one hand, the people's courts tried to convey the democratic values of the new political order to society, while on the other hand political justice increasingly became a tool for the Hungarian Communist Party's aspirations for power. So far, no comprehensive summary has been published on the history of the Hungarian people's courts. In the present article, I focus primarily on the most recent works of historians, including those who have become familiar over the years with a significant amount of proceedings from the people's courts.
Although the revival of pragmatic, as well as scholarly, interest in transitional justice has been prompted by recent democratization procedures, this chapter argues that the general spirit of transitional justice in post-communist states in East-Central Europe is very similar to those purges which took place in Europe after the Second World War. Not only did the new elites in both cases aim to rewrite history by drawing a clear line between the guilty (collaborators, former elites, and secret service agents) and the innocent/victims (the rest of the population), but they also used transitional justice (trials, “national disgrace”, screening, and lustration) to stabilize and legitimize their rule. This chapter analyzes these parallels between postwar and post-communist transitional justice, focusing on several Central-European countries (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland). These countries offer good examples to prove the above-mentioned hypothesis, and they also provide good cases for comparative studies not only between countries, but also over time. At the same time, examples and arguments are also drawn from postwar France, the exemplary case of postwar transitional justice and the reconstruction of history