„Heslo autonómie alebo právo na odtrhnutie?“ (Komunistické ponímanie národnostnej a „slovenskej“ otázky do polovice 20. rokov)
“Autonomy vs. the Right to Separation?” (The Communist concept of the national and the so-called “Slovak” questions in the first half of the 1920s)

Author(s): Xénia Šuchová
Subject(s): Governance, Nationalism Studies, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of Communism, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Historický ústav SAV
Keywords: Slovakia; Autonomy; Separation; Right to Separation; Communist Party of Czechoslovakia;
Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the ambiguous concept of the national and the specifically “Slovak“ questions as applied by the Czechoslovak Communists in the first half of the 1920s. Two contradictory concepts – the Austro-Marxist slogan of cultural and territorial autonomy within a multinational state and the Bolshevist claim to national self-determination leading to the separation from such a state – were followed by different streams of the former “Marxist Left“ and, later, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC). Since the Party´s activities were legal within the framework of parliamentary democracy, the search for some kind of autonomous application of the Communist International resolutions on national policy, which were binding for the Party, was marked with sharp factional struggles. On the one hand, the faction of Slovak “Communists-Nationalists“ (Slovak: “nacionálni komunisti”), belonging to the radical Left, challenged the concept of cultural autonomy and broad local self-government formulated by the moderate leaders of the Communist Party. On the other hand, it faced the slogan of full political autonomy voiced by the Slovak People's Party in accordance with the Pittsburgh Agreement. The Resolution on the National Question adopted by the 5th Congress of the Communist International held in 1924 eliminated all differences. As a result, the uniform ”revolutionary” solution to the national question was definitely imposed upon the CPC´s policy by the Executive of the Communist International in 1925.

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