Prvé máje v režimovej tlači 1939 -1944
May Day Festivals in the Slovak Regime's Press in 1939-1943

Author(s): Marína Zavacká
Subject(s): Customs / Folklore, Media studies, Recent History (1900 till today), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of Communism
Published by: Historický ústav SAV
Keywords: The First of May; Slovak Regime's Press in 1939-1943;
Summary/Abstract: The First of May has remained rooted in the public memory as an exclusively “Communist holiday”. In an attempt to distinguish one-self from the previous totalitarian regime, the Communist power not only neglected but even censored the Socialist dimension of its predecessor. The wartime regime was continuously labelled as “reactionary”, “conservative” and “right-wing”. The post-1989 historiography has focused on the description of both regimes, partially in comparative studies (e.g. the concepts of totalitarianism). It has approached them as two regimes produced by two distinct sets of individuals and embedded in two different sources of ideology and power (the U.S.S.R. and Germany). There are almost no hints to mutual connections and even support, to the adoption and “inheritance” of rhetoric, rituals, programmes and activists. Dealing with the wartime May Day rituals, the study exploits period papers as an interesting source of political and medial discourse which echoed in public celebrations during the following forty years.

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