From region to nation and back again: Moravian parties’ rhetoric and politics in the course of time
From region to nation and back again: Moravian parties’ rhetoric and politics in the course of time

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the history and political impact of “Moravist” or Moravian political representation. The movement that started already during the 1968/1969 period to rise claims of Moravian political autonomy or “home rule” and that was transformed after 1989 into a full-fledged political party to compete for chairs in the Czech diet and Czechoslovak federal parliament presents an interesting example of a failed attempt in regional and later on even ethnic mobilization in the history of recent Czech politics. The paper will focus on the development of the Movement for Autonomous Democracy – Society for Moravia and Silesia and the parties and movements that followed after the disintegration of the movement in mid-1990s. The second aim of the paper is to analyse and evaluate strategies employed by Moravian regionalist parties in order to valorise the issue of regional minority claims. The original appeal of the Movement for Autonomous Democracy was based on claims for territorial autonomy lost during the communist period. Later on, together with the marginalization of political relevance of Moravian parties and politicians (loss of parliamentary relevance after 1996), a distinct tendency towards radicalization could be observed. The new generation of Moravian activists reframed actually the minority claims from territorial / regionalist context and started to adopt the language of an oppressed national minority distinctive from and suppressed by the Czech majority. This “invention” of separate Moravian “nationality” was by far the most original, though unsuccessful, attempt to mobilize cleavages of ethnic politics in the Czech Lands after 1989.

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