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The Objective is Objectivity:
Nationalism Among Slovak Public Radio Journalists in the New Slovakia
Institute on East Central Europe
Columbia University
March, 1996
Towards an anthropology of nationalism: the view from above, the view from below
The discipline of anthropology has long had as its basis the study of culture. This cultural basis has led to a focus on ethnicity and, indeed, cultural or social anthropologists are often referred to as ethnologists or ethnographers. With its traditional emphasis, and indeed its roots in non-state cultures and ethnicities, anthropology has tended to give less attention to peoples as nations and rather to nation-states, or has come to the subject secondarily. Consequently, I believe that the full potential of anthropology in explaining nationalism has not been realized.
Many outstanding anthropological works regarding the processes of nations do indeed exist, and we could draw up a list here to illustrate this. In the interest of brevity, however, we can consider two contrasting examples of anthropologists who have worked on issues of national identity and nationalism. First, William Lockwood carried out ethnographic research in the late 1960s and early 1970s, focusing on three proximate mountain villages in Bosnia: one in which Muslims held the majority, the second dominated by Croatians, the third, by Serbs. 1 He studied the effect of the nationally integrating mechanisms of large valley marketplaces on these villagers, but his work clearly saw its starting point in ethnic groupings and harkened to Fredrik Barth's Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. 2 Indeed, Lockwood defines "ethnicity" in his opening pages using an anthropologist's ethnic unit classifications from Current Anthropology. 3 Lockwood's is classic ethnography, i.e., based on participant observation in the small village context. What he calls culturally ethnic groups and ethnic chauvinisms are what the West only now emphasizes as nationalities and nationalism in light of the Bosnian conflict.
Ernest Gellner, on the other hand, was perhaps the most well-known anthropologist to have tackled the question of nations and nationalism at book length. However, it is notable that, while most of academia may have regarded Gellner as an anthropologist, some anthropologists were critical of his work because it was closer to social philosophy and macro politics and often lacked a grounding in ethnographic fieldwork. His Nations and Nationalism is general, working towards metatheory, and is rarely site-specific. In contrast to Lockwood, he uses his first chapter to define the nation and state, relating nationalism to ethnic boundaries, but as political principle. His starting point is one of Kant and Weber, and of the national grouping and political state. 4
A space exists between these two approaches that merits greater investigation, a space that should be the starting place to relate culture and where culture and ethnicity interplay with the macro political nation and with nationalism. The research methodology herein should be ethnographic. This does not mean, however, "ethnographic" in the sense of widely reflexive ethnographic content analysis of national and nationalist political discourse and the exploration of theoretical relationships therein, 5 but instead should be traditional ethnographic fieldwork in untraditional places. This is participant observation over long time periods, day-in, day-out with both actors of national politics and nationalism (as well as the people acted upon). This means seeing what people do, as well as hearing what they say and reading what they write. 6
The historian Eric Hobsbawm has clearly recognized this gap in our understanding of nationalism, even to the point of being critical of Gellner's work regarding nations and national identity. Gellner perceives nationalism, Hobsbawm writes, from "his preferred perspective of modernization from above, mak(ing) it difficult to pay adequate attention to the view from below." 7 Hobsbawm's criticism, however, is general, extending to his own discipline because historians have traditionally had a problem with working on the ground.
The view from below, i.e. the nation as seen not by governments and the spokesmen and activists of nationalists (or non-nationalist) movements, but by the ordinary persons who are the objects of their action and propaganda, is exceedingly difficult to discover ... First, official ideologies of states and movements are not guides to what it is in the minds of even the most loyal citizens or supporters. Second, and more specifically, we cannot assume that for most people national identification -- when it exists -- excludes or is always or ever superior to, the remainder of the set of identifications which constitute the social being. In fact, it is always combined with identifications of another kind, even when it is felt to be superior to them. Thirdly, national identification and what it is believed to imply, can change and shift in time, even in the course of quite short periods. In my judgment this is the area of national studies in which thinking and research are most urgently needed today. 8
Hobsbawm claims that social historians have learned from their mistakes and have begun to better understand the need to see "from below." I believe, however, that anthropology has already had, well in hand, the tools to work with Hobsbawm's mandate for some time now. Anthropology's fieldwork requirements that demand participant observation "on the ground level" can answer the need for studies of nationalism "from below." 9
With this mandate in mind, I can explain the perspective I have on the young Slovak nation-state by first placing myself in the context of Slovakia and explaining the fluctuating feelings I have experienced with Slovak nationalism. Having first gone to Czechoslovakia in autumn 1989, I settled in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, in mid-1990 and lived there until 1993. In my first two years in Bratislava, I learned about the country primarily through English-speaking friends and by reading occasional English information sources. During this time I predicted Czechoslovakia would break up, and that the cause of the breakup would be the rampant Slovak nationalism I saw and heard. I saw Václav Havel being pelted with Slovak nationalist eggs on a podium, hunger strikers camping out in Bratislava's SNP square to dramatize their demands for passage of a Slovak language law and saw skinheads painting graffiti in support a fringe nationalist-oriented political party. As I slowly began to understand more and more of the Slovak language, I began to see that, while I was correct in predicting the breakup of Czechoslovakia, I was right for the wrong reasons. In the course of reading newspapers and engaging in conversations in Slovak, it became increasingly apparent that the rabble-rousing nationalism of Slovakia roused rabble and not much more. The average Slovak was not particularly nationalist, but instead was particularly ashamed that eggs had once been thrown at Havel in Bratislava. Concerns about economic conditions and fears about rising crime were prominent among many other emotions superseding nationalistic fervor in the hearts and minds of Slovak people. While nationalism did have a role in the so-called Velvet Divorce, it barely played second fiddle in the face of the master orchestrations of economics and the personalities of the Czech and Slovak political leaders in 1992 when the Divorce was planned. True, nationalist personalities had loud voices and economic nationalism had to be considered a notable ingredient in the 1992 mix, though flag-waving nationalism was nowhere near a position of ideological dominance in Slovakia when Václav Klaus and Vladimír Mečiar agreed to split the country.
In mid-1993 I left newly-independent Slovakia with the feeling that Slovak nationalism had not lived up to its name, and returned to the United States for graduate studies in anthropology with plans to concentrate on national identity and nationalism. Stateside, my access to Slovak news decreased considerably as I used the Internet to access very limited news services and news groups (i.e., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Open Media Research Institute, Slovak-l). Reading these sources, I became excited about Slovak nationalism and its consequences once again. 10 Viewed from afar, the country seemed ablaze with nationalist passions, and while I was in my first semesters of graduate school I tried to make sense of it all as an "imagined community" and "an invented tradition." 11 I tried to deconstruct the nation as a cultural artifact of modernity and nationalism in terms of deliberate and vulgar power plays. 12 As I geared up for a semester of fieldwork, 13 my research prospectus reflected these perspectives: I was going to gingerly step into the hornet's nest of rabid nationalism, using old connections to place myself within Rádiozrnál, the news organization of the government-controlled Slovak Public Radio and the most listened-to radio news program in the country. 14 I planned to study journalists as deliberate producers, as well as products of, nationalist rhetoric and manipulation. I expected venom and toxins in an organization abuzz with nationalistic passions and persecutions. Then, in late 1994, I read a Radio Free Europe 15 report stating that a woman whom I had heard of as an outspoken nationalist had been made director of Rádiozurnál. "Perfect!," I thought, romantically imagining myself pretty brave to attempt such fieldwork.
As so often happens in the field, of course, my research prospectus made little sense to me once I arrived in Slovakia. I managed to work my way into the Rádiozurnál organization as a participant observer, working part-time as a journalist and as an observer of Slovak Public Radio journalists. Rabid nationalists, spittle drooling from their lips, however, were not to be found in the electronic media, nor were there more than a few individuals that could even qualify as mild-mannered nationalist sympathizers. The Radio Free Europe report on the appointment of a nationalist as Rádiozurnál's new director turned out to have been based on a rumor. 16 Indeed, most Rádiozurnálworkers scoffed at the nationalist fringe elements and found my fixation on the subject of nation and nationalism a distraction from more serious questions.
Across the Slovak Republic, I re- realized, nationalism was but a factor in the larger scheme of things. Yes, there were a few brave souls ready to starve to death for the sake of depriving Hungarians of the right to speak their native language in Slovak territory. And, yes, there were some politicians and organizations ready to egg them on. However, I came to see that too much reliance on an English language press, too much distance from the field, and too much viewing "from the top" as opposed to the view "from below" distorted my vision of Slovak political and cultural events as understood by Slovaks.
"Nationalism" as often understood in the West, tends to range from the ugly mug of Zhirinovsky and his populist/nationalist politics to the political brutality of "ethnic cleansing" in former Yugoslavia. This political nationalism, is not at center stage in Slovak life, but the idea that it is remains a favorite formula for Western journalists covering Slovakia -- through much of the 1990s rarely could one find a newspaper article about Slovakia wherein "nationalism" was not blamed for whatever ailed the country at any given time, as well as for the breakup of Czechoslovakia. 17 The Slovak information filtering through the English language popular press and scholarly journals has usually been subject to slow-to-change processes, leading to depictions of Slovakia that hinder us from seeing how the Slovaks may have been acting, thinking, and seeing themselves. 18
political and cultural nationalism
Slovakia is awash with competing possibilities. Ideas of socialist leveling processes and planned economies serve as a strong bulwark against the onslaught of free market ideology and capitalist stratification. These are respectively created by and reinforced by material deprivations and desires (a Dubcekian "Third Way" is not altogether forgotten). A once-enforced collective social identity stands contrary to the reified ideas of the individual and the "me-first" mentality of "yuppyism." A lingering East/West bipolar world competes for international loyalties. "Actually-existing socialist" inefficiencies hold over in the face of economic responsibilities, which are, in turn, in competition with a slowly-growing consciousness of environmental responsibility. Centralized bureaucracy balks at decentralization. A male-dominated public life remains prevalent, but a glimmer of feminist hope exists. The "new traditions" of atheism encounter the revitalized "old traditions" of Catholicism, as Scientologists and fundamentalist religions set up shop. And nationalism competes with cosmopolitanism, Europeanism, Westernization, transnationalization, etc. The list of ideological trends and tendencies could continue, but suffice it to say, the field is wide open and fluid. No ideology can be considered completely entrenched or dominant in today's Slovakia, with one exception: the notion of Slovakia as a nation-state. This idea makes up the parameters of this field of discourse. It has become an ingrained concept, an idea no longer idealized but internalized and no longer discussed. It is a done deed.
The remainder of this essay attempts to explore this notion through the world-view of Rádiozurnáljournalists as reflected in the process of news production in the early to mid-1990s. Their understanding of cultural nationalism and national identity at this point in time are obviously a synchronic view, a slice of national life at a certain time and place. It is important to understand that the idea of Slovakia is the result of deliberate efforts in the past. It was a tool of resistance, of motivation, of unification, as well as a tool of manipulation and subterfuge. Socio-historical "archaeology," à la A. D. Smith reveals the idea of Slovakia as a piece of social engineering dating back 150+ years to the Herderian, romantic, intellectual or aristocratic nationalists. 19 The idea may also be considered a primordial entity for which an archaeologist may try to find perennial proof in the soil of Slovak territory or for which a historian or a storyteller may seek origins in the Great Moravian empire of a millennium past. 20
Political nationalism began to foster the idea of the Slovak nation in the 18th century, which increased and dissipated and increased again in the 19th century, then went through various political forms in the 20th century. 21 L'udovít Stúr's codification of the Slovak language in the 1840s is considered an important benchmark in the establishment of the idea of Slovakia. At that time, using the Slovak language would have been considered a political act because it was resistance to the political ideology of Magyarization in force at that time. Similarly, to write in the Slovak language in the later 19th century would be an act of political nationalism. 22 Today, however, with the Slovak nation-state an accepted entity, writing in Slovak is a cultural, national trait to be taken for granted. It is no longer a nationalist political statement. This is because Slovakia, for most Slovaks, has become a place, first of all, of "nation," not "nationalism." It has become "naturalized" in the minds of people as the accepted way of life, and is not considered further in everyday existence. It is the un- articulated emergence of the new experience of nationhood, once a part of overt social ideology (i.e., political nationalism) that a person could once recognize as such when it was political, but no longer. I use Raymond Williams' term "structures of feeling" (perhaps somewhat differently than he originally intended) to describe this cultural nationalism, this nation having been built: it is a conversion of experience into a finished project, converted into a formed whole, rather than being strictly formative. Institutions of the past and "current" social national experiences form a living, present presence in the personal, and are internalized as subjective, reality. 23 The individual experiences the reality, however, as objective, and in the everyday world of the news journalist this is fixity of the place of "objectivity," i.e., objective, unbiased news reporting. And, although "structures of feeling" are not readily articulated, "they exert palpable pressures and set effective limits on experience and on action." 24 This is not ideology per se, though indeed it is inextricably interrelated. Instead, Williams' use of the word "feeling" (and hence my attraction to using the term) indicates
that we must go beyond formally held and systematic beliefs, though ... we have always to include them. It is that we are concerned with meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt, and the relations between these and formal or systematic beliefs are in practice variable ..., over a range from formal assent with private dissent to the more nuanced interaction between selected and interpreted beliefs and acted and justified actions ... specifically affected elements of consciousness and relationships: not feelings against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought: practical consciousness of a present kind, in a living and interrelating continuity.
This is not a lived process of political domination; it is not hegemony in a Gramscian sense. Also, while I argue that these "structures of feeling" are not possible to articulate and can ultimately serve the institution of the nation-state, neither are they Althusserian ideas of ideology, that is, unconscious and institutional.
In Williams' understanding, "structures of feeling" are possible emergent forms of consciousness. They are struggling to break through and have not attained the formalized nature of ideology. 25 Here my "structures of feeling" differs in attempting to interpret the situation of cultural nationalism and national identity in today's Slovakia: far from being a currently emergent form of consciousness, I argue that the cultural nationalist idea of Slovakia is a "structure of feeling" in the fact that it is currently submerging, from being explicit ideology in the minds of Slovak journalists to being something no longer discussed but implicitly assumed (all the while, of course, political nationalism remains an outspoken, if somewhat marginalized, voice in the clamor of ideologies in the Slovak world-view). As the cultural nationalist idea of Slovakia is an accepted concept in the sense that it has achieved a status that has gone beyond questioning, this once "invented tradition" has become "naturalized" doxa (that which is taken for granted) in simply being "the way it is." 26 Slovak ethnicity and Slovak culture have come to a point of universal acceptance such that the Slovak nation is a readily "justified" entity taking its place amongst the ranks of world nations. The nation is institutionalized politically as a state, and, along with an established and more-or-less unequivocal ethnic/national identity, the idea of Slovakia is no longer something overtly demanding legitimation. It is a social construction that is reality for nearly every Slovak person within and involved with it. 27 No "agents" need push the idea -- the idea has taken hold in the structures of feeling, in the mindsets of the people in a Herderian solidarity. 28 The fact of this acceptance should be considered a lived "cultural nationalism." The idea of Slovakia is now a self-driven product that will reproduce itself culturally in generations to come without a need for agents' forces to continually re-establish its legitimacy.
As it exists in the mid-1990s, Slovakia is now embedded in modernist conditions. While ideologically "all over the map," it is the national map that unifies the current ideological fluidity as a community of culture and power. The nation provides the vessel shaping the doxic space as an ideological field of discourse. The "just-the-way-it-is" lived cultural nationalism defines the relations between it and other international discourse entities through the construction of these boundaries. 29
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek uses a quite sublime image to write about the vacuum of power and the seeming absence of ideology that followed the 1989 Eastern European revolutions: protesters cut the communist symbols out of the Romanian flag during the December 1989 overthrow of Ceausescu. The hole left in the middle symbolized this vacuum of power and this absence at the center of the nation. The forced ideology of the communist police state, the organizing principle of national life, had been removed.
It is difficult to imagine a more salient index of the 'open' character of a historical situation 'in its becoming' ... of that intermediate phase when the former Master-Signifier, although it has already lost the hegemonical power, has not yet been replaced by the new one ... not yet hegemonized by any positive ideological project... 30
I have taken this image further in applying it to Slovakia, a country also formerly subject to a police-state enforced ideology, which on New Year's Day 1993 became separate from the Czechs. Unlike the altered Romanian flag, Slovakia's is a new flag. As Slovak citizens have accepted it as the flag of Slovakia, they have accepted the new Slovak nation-state. The parameters of the field of ideological discourse are defined in the bunting. With "structures of feeling" comprising cultural nationalism, the acceptance of this space can now be virtually taken for granted. One evening at Rádiozurnál, for example, Dana 31 did the lead story on the holiday events commemorating two saints, Cyril and Metod, 32 who are considered as having been important to developing Slovak culture 1,100 years ago. We talked at length about this and it clearly had never occurred to her that the images of Cyril and Metod could have been historicized or that a Western journalist, on the prowl for information that would fit the comfortably acceptable "nationalism" formula for stories about Slovakia, would have probably found her text rich in so-called nationalist statements. She considered her story to be absolutely objective, and not the least bit nationalist. My "insinuations" were hard for her to understand at first, but as she comprehended more of what I was getting at, she found my questions both odd and somewhat insulting.
Having established Slovakia as a cultural, nationalistic "structure of feeling" and as a sovereign nation-state, theneed to use political nationalism to further the idea of Slovakia no longer really exists. While it is far from static and will be continually refined and reshaped, the idea is now a self-reproducing social construct. Dana's story is a case in point -- her work has become part of the national process, an accepted story fed by the culturally nationalistic idea of Slovakia and in turn feeding back to the same. The cultural structure is active, flexible, shifting,not passive, rigid and static. Unquestioned renewals continually happen (like Dana's) as legitimating consent is regularly and unwittingly reinforced.
While I downplay the importance of political nationalism in Slovakia (as compared to the importance usually accorded it in the West), it is not dead. Indeed, it remains a tool that politicians and businesspeople can use to incite and motivate constituencies. The agency of political nationalism now forms a dialectic with the non-agents' nature of cultural nationalism as a "structure of feeling" such that it is difficult to discern between the two -- no clear line can simply be drawn between them. 33 With cultural nationalism now a given and the sovereignty of the Slovak nation-state established, this ideational context and physical space contain the workspace for Slovak political nationalists. However, the need for such political nationalist work has now ebbed, while the need existed when the ideology was under construction. In the mid-1990s, agents' political nationalist work, while still political, is largely limited to refinement and reprocessing in its dialectic with culturally nationalistic notions. Agitated political nationalist work in Slovakia has been occurring among some political groups, and this work will have some effects, but it has largely been marginalized in everyday life.
Slovak political nationalists try to exploit Slovak nation-ness and are indeed picking fights with the Hungarian minority, some of which have become full engagements. The Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná strana, or SNS), having seen its dream of Slovak sovereignty come to be reality without itself coming into major political power, needs to have an "enemy/other" upon which to lean. Otherwise, it will slip below the threshold it needs to make parliament (in autumn 1994, the SNS only barely reached the 5 percent threshold). 34 A radio journalist colleague of mine, Rast'o, essentially said that this party worked as a smokescreen for other power activities in government. Its agenda was important to a very small percentage of the population. He thought, however, that the possibility existed that a Hungarian-baiting strategy could succeed in the future, something that concerned him. The SNS should not be altogether discounted and forgotten, for they do have the potential to destabilize the country and even the region -- and, as part of the current governing coalition, the party does wield some minor influence.
The dominant party of the governing coalition, the "Movement for a Democratic Slovakia" (Hnutie za demokratického Slovenska, HZDS), likewise uses political nationalism. In attacking political enemies and their activities, the HZDS leader, Prime Minister Vladimír Meciar, frequently charges them with "damaging the good name of Slovakia" and with anti-Slovak sentiments. His party has also supported a language law aimed at promoting Slovak as the national language at the expense of the Hungarian minority in particular. Using political nationalism, the HZDS and SNS can create the perception of a threat to Slovak national sovereignty and the Slovak language, tapping otherwise culturally "hegemonized" "structures of feeling" within some parts of their potential voting base. This strategy, while being worth a few percentage points in the polls, does not make or break the basic realities of Slovak life. 35 Despite the attention the Western press is willing to give to these stories, I argue that such stories are blown out of proportion. Political parties do indeed wrap themselves in the flag and the SNS maintains a steady stream of political nationalist rhetoric. That notwithstanding, the SNS struggles only to keep itself afloat. Items linked to political nationalism always appear much lower on the list of the average Slovak's concerns (far behind issues of economics, rising criminality, etc.), and my own time in the field bears out this view. The Slovak Republic is not a dangerously nationalist hotbed at present, nor has it been for a few decades.
Nationalism is not the whole story in Slovakia, neither in the form of political nationalism, nor as cultural nationalism. Nor is nationalism even the lead story. And, while the idea of the Slovak nation is not the lead story either, it is where and why the story takes place. 36
in the Slovak national context
Coming to understand the work of Slovak radio journalists and how they negotiate the national political and ideological terrain of gathering and disseminating the news is quite a bit different from getting the opinions of the local butcher. While studying ideology and the mass media amongst butchers could be interesting, a butcher's own ideological influence has little chance of going beyond his or her immediate community. Nor will a butcher have ideological pressures as a daily part of his or her life. The possibilities of political subversion in the meat-chopping industry are rather limited. The politically powerful are not likely to feel the need to control the butcher's work for ideological content.
Radio journalists, on the other hand, are in the tape-splicing industry. They receive raw data -- tips, comments, interviews, news wire reports -- and they produce a finished product that is transmitted to a large population. In the case of Rádiozurnál, they are actually heard by over one million Slovaks on some weekdays, that is, by roughly 20 percent of the nation. The journalistic product is the stuff of ideology and nation-building. The control that journalists have over their product and who controls the means of production can be demonstrative of the power in the national template.
37Rádiozurnáljournalists work in Slovak Public Radio. They are supposed to be accountable to the public. Who, however, controls the purse strings? Who controls the means of production? The state. Or the state parliament. Or more precisely, the party in control of the parliament. Currently in Slovakia, that party is the Vladimír Meciar-led HZDS, which is, arguably, wielding undue influence in the sphere of the electronic mass media and was doing so increasingly during my seven months of 1995 fieldwork. The HZDS is thus an entity creating news itself, a political message, and an entity that is trying to control the sending of the message (including the contextualization of that message), in the hope of influencing the receivers to support the party. Journalists, however, are the senders, and, at Rádiozurnál, not all of these journalists were willing to be controlled.
In classic mass communications theory the model of communication has three parts: first, the source; second, the channel, third, the receiver. This is a limited linear model that falls far short of explaining the actual effect of mass media -- epistemologically, we should look at how meaning is constructed and knowledge is produced in the feedback between the elements in a communication cycle. 38 In working with Rádiozurnáljournalists, we can ask: are they the source of a political or ideological message, that is, part one, or are they mere messengers, that need to be lumped in with part two, in the analysis of the message itself? Our answer is more complex than the 1-2-3 construction, because the answer appears to be both. Additionally, these journalists are media consumers themselves. My fieldwork demonstrates that political or ideological agency vary from individual to individual and vary from time to time within the individual.
Socio-economic factors account for variation, as do age, class, gender, and ethnicity, but overall, power politics are the prime source of motivation or restraint in the pursuit of any agenda in news production. At Rádiozurnál, for example, Anna, a single mother of twin boys, unofficially covers the social services niche, but very much by design. She has needed her job for survival and has indeed survived at radio since the mid-1980s by generating "safe" stories outside the political realm. Her work is gendered -- social services like education and health care would be considered the stereotypical "woman's realm" particularly in the patriarchal Slovak society 39 -- but it is also a way to avoid direct political conflict in her stories.
Michal also is particularly concerned with "surviving" and "getting ahead." He is from northern Slovakia, where his wife and two children still live, and had quit his poorly-paying academic career directing the Museum of Russian Literature before joining Rádiozurnálin spring 1995. His forte was clearly literature and he quickly carved out his niche in reporting on cultural events. He did not want to limit himself to "arts" and "culture," he said, but he deemed it prudent to keep away from controversial stories. After all, he was new and needed to hold onto his job.
Ivan, on the other hand, is single and has been the unconfirmed "leak" to the opposition newspapers about internal radio politics. He is relatively "safe" because he works in the international section of Rádiozurnálwhere he rarely has the chance to speak on the air about domestic politics. He is active and outspoken in his anti-Meciarist politics within the radio structure. Ján and Alena, likewise, are a dynamic young couple without children (yet), who worked in Rádiozurnál's political beat. They often pursued stories that shed bad light on Meciar and the governing coalition. They left Rádiozrnál under pressure in early spring, having received a number of demerits that added up to their days "being numbered." Ján went to an opposition daily newspaper, and Alena, to a private sector secretarial job that earns three times Ivan's salary. Thus, he fights Meciar's governing coalition in print while she earns the money for a flat large enough to raise children.
Conversely, Xenia and Jaroslava are political survivors who have been with Slovak Public Radio since the 1970s. Both have familial ties to the governing coalition and have an interest in promoting certain parties. Their stories reflect their experience and ability to reach significant figures in the Slovak political scene. Both are sometimes criticized for their "connections," but, it seemed to me, they were fairly evenhanded in broadcasting the news. Both also could be considered the "backbone" of Rádiozurnál(and, also, of the Slovak radio news before Rádiozurnálwas begun in 1990). While neither had ever been director of Rádiozurnáland (at least Xenia) had turned down offers of the directorship, many day-to-day decisions were deferred to these two women, sometimes by virtue of their seniority, but other times for politically expedient reasons.
Vincent, a young man who had left his job teaching high school after only a year, was new with Rádiozurnálas of spring. He voted for the HZDS but was now embarrassed by that fact, he told me. His politics are undecided. He is the one Rádiozurnálstaffer who is more interested in the "scoop" than the story and was still enamored with the "romance" of electronic mass media during the course of my fieldwork. His politics are still forming and his agenda seems self-promotional, though he claims to be against Prime Minister Meciar (which, at this writing is poor short-term strategy by many accounts).
Beata covered a wide range of topics but put little of herself, if anything, in any story (her work was lackluster) and I still do not know her ideological leanings. The newspapers she had worked for before coming to Rádiozurnálwere varied in their political slants and provided little insight as well. Likewise, I could never understand L'ubica's politics, but she was flamboyant and opinionated and often contradictory. In a conversation we had in early summer 1995, she expressed mild anti-Semitism and praised certain aspects of the Slovak National Party, but in other conversations she blasted them as idiots. Only a week later she aired an interview with an often strident Hungarian oppositional politician in which he attacked Vladimír Meciar's ruling party on the air and sullied "the good name of Slovakia." This provoked controversy and won "demerits" for her direct superior for having allowed her to air the piece. Then, in early 1996, I read a news report that she had left Rádiozurnálto work as a press speaker for Meciar's ruling party. Her work and our conversations thus could be construed to reflect Slovak nationalism, Hungarian sympathies, and both pro- and anti-Meciar sentiments.
In trying to encapsulate a few characteristics of some of the many journalists with whom I worked, I have tried to illustrate their political leanings and personal motivations. This is important because these people live the ideology that makes up the Slovak national field of discourse, and can ultimately alter it as they seek their ideas of objectivity in their positions as journalists with the most listened-to radio program in Slovakia.
Political party influence in mass media has been obvious in much of Slovakia's recent history. During "actually-existing" socialism, political power was centralized in the Communist Party elite. The journalist was explicitly understood to serve as Party mouthpiece and to educate the public in Marxist-Leninist ideology. The structure was vertical, with the Central Committee's top-down decisions being disseminated by journalists. Dissent was not always explicitly forbidden, but the career-minded knew the "do's" and "don'ts." This was self-censorship, an implicit yet vital part of journalism during that time. Alfredo Gonzales likened it to a "fishbowl" -- before 1989 journalists swam around freely within certain limits, seeing, but not going past, these limits. 40 Objectivity was not questioned, and all journalistic activity stayed within approved ideological space despite the transparency through which journalists could envision other beliefs. 41
After 1989, however, freedom of expression came to the fore. Suddenly the need for strict self-censorship, the confining fishbowl, was gone. Some journalists reveled in the new possibilities; others were like fish out of water. Journalists could be "objective" not in terms of Party dogma, but in terms of what they perceived to be "real objectivity." Mass media was no longer vertically structured. Instead, various ideological tenets made plays for popular political consent within a pluralistic governing structure. The space of discourse became a horizontal plane of competing ideas. The new limits of the ideological field of discourse were permeable, but nonetheless bounded: Slovakia both contained and was defined by the discourse.
In the past six years, the institutional, political limits of discourse have not been fixed; the lines are vague and shift with the frequent changes in governments. From 1990 to 1992, there was the chaotically pluralistic Czechoslovakia, then Czecho-Slovakia, and since Slovakia's 1993 independence, there have been three governments.
With the new Slovakia, a new Slovak national template has emerged. The template lays out a dynamic ideological field of discourse, and is created by culturally nationalistic "structures of feelings." Rádiozurnálstaff are both players and pawns in a process of institutionalizing laws, establishing unwritten rules, promoting and undermining political nationalism, and, all the while, reinforcing cultural nationalism.
Before 1989, a journalist knew that "to be objective" was to follow the Party line. Following the 1989 revolution, "objective" became something else. It became "objectivity" as in evenhandedness, with the goal of speaking from a perceived place of journalistic truth. This sense of objectivity is part of a process occurring in Slovakia. Many Western news sources hold high the ideal of objectivity and non-alignment and are often accepted as indeed being objective. In 1990, dozens of Slovaks told me Saddam Hussein was the "new Hitler" -- everyone seemed to use this exact phrase. This was Western propaganda being taken at face value. It was considered the norm and was treated as an objective idea.
Rádiozurnáljournalists have often shown similar naivete: I attended the press conference of an American congressman, Tom Lantos, with Pavol from Rádiozurnál. Lantos, a true believer in the American dream, lectured us on how Slovakia should behave. Lantos seemed to me to be "over-the-top" in his pro-American bias. Pavol, however, a young man excited by prospects of working in the West, saw no bias in Lantos. Pavol found Lantos' presentation to be objective because, first, he believed objectivity was possible, and second, he accepted the dominant Western, or U.S., perspective. Representative Lantos, true believer that he was, presented this as being the standard by which all others should be measured. 42
The Gabciákovo Dam project on the Danube River between Hungary and Slovakia provides a good example of national objectivity. The unfinished construction was part of the unwieldy and environmentally unsound "actually-existing socialist" legacy that, in the 1990s, found Hungarian opinion and other international groups strongly against its completion. The Slovak government and powerful investors, however, had put many resources into the half-completed project and they refused to give up the project. Slovak public opinion overwhelmingly supported the dam, largely because of mass media influence. 43 Gabciákovoillustrates both how a "politically nationalistic" so-called "objective stance" subtly enforced a pro-Gabciákovo story in Rádiozurnálnews-production, and how cultural nationalistic doxa predisposed journalists towards pro-Gabciákovo news items.
Among broadcast journalists at Slovak Public Radio, news stories would lean toward support of the dam for two reasons: first, there would be political pressure within radio. This disinclined broadcasters from presenting the dam in anything but a positive light. This pressure was not overt -- department directors did not expressively forbid the topic, but would instead frown on the subject, be extra "picky," and claim that the story would "not be of interest to the listeners." They would also ask that an anti-Gabciákovo feature be counterbalanced with a pro-Gabciákovo piece (read: pro-government) "in order to be objective." This would be a hindrance because, while searching for "pro-Gabcíkovo," the journalist would have to put the "anti-Gabcíkovo" on hold and it would lose its "freshness." And then, a story gone stale would be more likely to be killed. A pro-Gabciákovo story presented on its own, however, would not be subject to this "extra attention."
The second reason that journalists would be less likely to present anti-Gabciákovo stories illustrates the idea of culturally nationalistic "structures of feeling" developing within and defining the space of Slovak national ideological discourse. This would happen because Gabciákovo would be equated not just with being "anti-government," but also "anti-Slovakia" within the world-view of Slovak Public Radio journalists. Political nationalism would be a tool here, certainly, but individual journalists (some of whom bristled at the suggestion of political or nationalistic pressure) were less likely to pursue such a so-called "anti-Slovakia" piece, because their internalized cultural nationalistic feelings helped preclude their notice of the subject matter. Gabciákovo was and is, within Slovakia, a national symbol that can be equated with pride, aspirations, and confidence in Slovakia, and thus the idea of Slovakia creates a field of discourse which works to perpetuate its interests, to support the doxa. This unspoken cultural nationalistic sentiment serves to foster the journalist's acceptance of the pro-Gabciákovoargument as being an objective position on the issue. In the Gabciákovo example, we can thus see the interplay of overt political nationalism (with its political and economic pressures) and culturally nationalistic "structures of feeling."
Every Rádiozurnál journalist that I have interviewed has held to an ideal of "objectivity" -- producing information free of ideological constraints. This ideal is accepted as a realistic journalistic attribute possible in the pluralistic, free democracy that Slovakia is supposed to be. This is, of course, problematic if we consider the Foucaultian idea that knowledge can never be neutral -- power and knowledge are two sides of the same process. But this is theory and not something I readily discussed with informants while waiting for the lift. On the ground, however, knowledge production and information dissemination is considered a means to power in Slovakia. As indicated by the above examples, Rádiozurnálhas been a contested space, because the Slovak parliament, the controller of the means of production, has been the site of power struggles and Rádiozurnális seen as a crucial information producer. This is practice. This we did discuss.
As of this writing, the Slovak parliament is controlled by a party led by Prime Minister Vladimír Meciar. He has a solid cult-of-personality base of support and has been Prime Minister twice before, but was ousted by parliament both times, amid accusations of undemocratic political maneuvering and a secret police record in his past. 44 Now, his party having won the autumn 1994 elections, Mr. Meciar is Prime Minister a third time and is consolidating his power in order to prevent another removal from office. He has shown intolerance towards opposition voices in the mass-media and has sought, in many instances, to control the press. His party's major complaint has been that the opposition press have damaged the good name of Slovakia in their attacks on his government, which is largely his party and is equated with Slovakia. Meciar's government denies taking more control of the electronic mass media, but does demand that steps be taken to ensure "objectivity" so that "Slovakia" will not be presented in a bad light. 45
Soon after the 1994 elections, Vladimír Stefko, Slovak Public Radio's director, was fired and the parliament named a parliamentary MP of Meciar's party, Jozef Tuzinsky as the new director. In February, he recalled Rádiozurnál's Washington correspondent, Peter Susko, citing budgetary reasons. When I interviewed Tuzinsky he said it was a budgetary decision, not a political one. Slovak Radio could not afford to keep anyone in Washington despite the importance of the posting. However, some of Susko's colleagues claimed the recall was retribution for his critical coverage of a Slovak trade delegation's much-touted visit to Cleveland two months before -- he had made "Slovakia" (read: the Meciar government) look bad. They put together a petition on his behalf and opposition newspapers made it a front page story -- Susko's opinion, Tuzinsky 's rebuttal; it became part of the on-going mass media battle. It was to no avail. When I talked to Susko after his return to Slovakia, he confirmed his criticism of the Cleveland delegation and bitterly added that he had been objective: the delegation members had been embarrassingly ill-prepared and had not been able to communicate in English with their hosts. This left them isolated and ineffectual, and he had simply let Rádiozurnállisteners know, he said. Importantly, we can see that Susko was not equating Meciar's government with the idea of Slovakia. But on another issue, did Susko support the GabciákovoDam project? Yes, he did. 46
Meciar's firing of Stefko, then Tuzinsky's firing of Susko, served as warnings. A vertical command structure was being implemented, but it was difficult to determine the transgressable boundaries. A "new/old" idea of "objective" was being formed. Ján, of the wife/husband team mentioned previously, received "demerits" in late winter for an anti-government piece. Knowing "it would be a matter of time," he and Anna left before they could be fired. Rádiozurnál's director, Michal Tvarozek, a long-time veteran of Slovak Public Radio, told me throughout the spring of 1995 that he would hold to his principles of objectivity despite pressure from above. I could see him bending, however, as spring became summer. He sometimes deferred decisions on "touchy" stories to other journalists like Xenia and Jaroslava who tended to sympathize with the government. He did not bend far enough, however, and was then demoted in July. His replacement, Martin Doboö, was another radio veteran. He had been placed outside of radio, however, because of lustracia laws, whereby people with secret police and militia records had lost their positions of authority in public institutions. Now he had been hired back into Slovak Public Radio as director of its most important program, Rádiozurnál. 47
By the time I had left the field in August, all those who had held positions of authority in Rádiozurnálwhen I arrived in January had either been moved up or removed from their positions, depending on their so-called objectivity. A new correspondent, Ivo Kuncs, had been sent to Washington, D.C. -- Tuzinsky 's "budgetary decision" had changed. 48 I interviewed Kuncs just before he left. He ducked my pointed questions -- "the recall of his predecessor would not affect his work." He would "work hard" and be "objective."
There are many examples of the tension and new coercion in Rádiozurnál, but it will suffice to say that with Mr. Meciar's party directing Tuzinsky directing Doboö, the field of publicly broadcast discourse is being delimited in Slovak Public Radio. A new vertical command structure has been put in place and a new era of self-censorship has dawned. For example, I am sure Ivo Kuncs, the new Washington correspondent, knows what is expected of him -- he will not present his nation (i.e., his government) in a bad light. Some journalists at Rádiozurnálare rebelling, others are quietly resisting, while some are happily complying -- some accept the government's attempt to equate itself with the idea of Slovakia, others resist it. The question is how far the vertical restructuring of Slovak Public Radio and of Rádiozurnálwill go in the future. And, if enough anti-Meciar government journalists leave, are pressured out, or are simply fired by new radio management, how will this affect news and knowledge production within one of the most influential news sources in Slovakia?
In interpreting my fieldwork, however, I find each person shares a national identity, which I define more specifically as culturally nationalistic "structures of feeling." All Rádiozurnáljournalists claim that striving for "objectivity" and "truth" is their first and foremost duty. Looking at this elite and influential journalistic unit with a "view from below," as individuals, one cannot see anything resembling the consistent program of the virulent nationalism sometimes attributed to Slovakia. Political nationalism, an overt form of agents' consensus-building based on national identity, exists and the Meciar-led government tries to use this, but only as one part of a populist, "cult of personality" type of leadership. Rádiozurnáljournalists, however, have largely been resistant to this sometimes crass grandstanding.
Instead we see that these journalists believe in Slovakia as a nation. This fact creates unconscious parameters, general consent, and pro-Slovakia predispositions that are at once the cause and effect of established culturally nationalistic "structures of feeling." Rádiozurnáljournalists also believe in objectivity. It is within this context and relative to this context, the nascent Slovak nation-state of the 1990s and the "primordial" idea of Slovakia, that the fixity of an "objective place" is contested.
NOTES
Note 1: William G. Lockwood, European Muslims: Economy and Ethnicity in Western Bosnia (New York: Academic Press, 1977). Back.
Note 2: Fredrik Barth, Introduction in Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969). Back.
Note 3: Lockwood cites Raoul Narroll, "On Ethnic Classification," Current Anthropology 5 (1964), 283-312. The three general characteristics of an ethnic unit are described as follows:
1.The ethnic unit is largely self-perpetuating biologically,
2. is sharing fundamental cultural values realized in overt unity in cultural forms, and
3. has membership which identifies itself and is identified by others as contributing a category distinguishable from other categories of the same order. Back.
Note 4: Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). Back.
Note 5: Cf.: Jennifer Turpin, Reinventing the Soviet Self: Media and Social Change in the Former Soviet Union (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 1995), 9-10. Back.
Note 6: John Borneman's work is an example of this approach. It is an anthropological study of two parallel-developing forms of German subjectivity -- this work takes place within this "gap" to which I am referring. Borneman comprehensively examines dual (and dueling) structures of thinking in the day-to-day Berliners' understanding of political life. John Borneman, Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 7: Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth and Reality (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 9. Back.
Note 9: Anthropology has another advantage worth noting in looking at the nation as an "invented tradition." According to Robert Foster, a fairly recent shift in the way that anthropologists formulate their central concept of culture can further inform anthropological studies of modern day nationalism because, in the past two decades, many anthropologists have reoriented the discipline towards the questioning of
social agents and social agencies, rather than ... the structural logic or functional coherence of normative and symbolic systems. Anthropologists have begun to scrutinize the active production of culture beyond the actual product itself. Culture in the making is not taken for granted, but instead considered to be a vital problem worth investigating.In other words, we have been studying the inventions all along, but now we also study the inventors and the process of invention. This shift in perspective is perhaps dialectically related to problems like those of nations and nationalism, but, in any case, it puts anthropology in good stead with the issues of "nation" as an artificial construction. Robert J. Foster, "Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene,"Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991), 235-60. Back.
Note 10: Being "excited" about nationalist reports? This is a Catch-22 of good fieldwork. On the one hand, the good, empathizing ethnographer grieves over worrisome turns of events as he or she can see how they hurt people he or she has come to know. At the same time, however, the ethnographer feels satisfaction that, with every calamity, the research seems all the more timely and relevant. Back.
Note 11: Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and the Spread of Nationalism (revised edition, London: Verso, 1991). Back.
Note 12: A. D. Smith, "Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations," Nations and Nationalism 1, part 1 (1995), 3-23. Back.
Note 13: This semester of fieldwork was funded in part by the University of Massachusetts' Anthropology Department's European Seminar Program. Back.
Note 14: Sona Jesenská, Rádiozurnálslovenského rozhlasu: Medzník vo vyvoji rozhlasového spravodajstva (Diplomová praca, Katedra audiovisuálnych médií, Filozofická fakulta univerzity Komenského v Bratislave, 1992). Back.
Note 15: Jiri Pehe, "Changes in Slovak State Media," RFE/RL Daily Report, December 19, 1994. Back.
Note 16: This rumored appointee was Erika Vincoureková, who currently writes for the pro-government and often nationalistic newspaper Slovenská Republika. I interviewed her at length in July 1995. She found this rumor amusing, claiming that it was based on a joke she and I had made at a social event with many journalists present. A few people were uninformed enough to take it seriously. Additionally, I found Vincoureková to be a dynamic and complex woman that defies labels attributed to her. RFE/RL never corrected the story in subsequent reports. Back.
Note 17: Interestingly, the formula has shifted somewhat since the autumn 1994 elections wherein Vladimír Meciar, leader of the "Movement for a Democratic Slovakia" (Hnutie za demokratického Slovenska, HZDS), became Prime Minister for the third time since 1990. For example, Mr. Meciar had always had the word "nationalist" associated with his name in the Western press in previous years. In 1995, we began to see other unpleasant qualities attributed his person such as "cronyism," "corrupt," "former communist," etc., sometimes supplementing, but sometimes in place of the label "nationalist." Back.
Note 18: A clear example of this filtering process: From March 15 to 19, the Prague-based Open Media Research Institute offered four brief stories in English on two different themes. Two were about commemorations of Jozef Tiso's Nazi puppet state during the Second World War and two were about the controversial penal code meant to "protect the Slovak Republic." These four stories, read with no other information about Slovakia, most certainly would predispose the reader to believe Slovakia has become a fascist state. A reading of both pro-government and oppositional Slovak newspapers (for this example, I perused Práca, Pravda, Sme, Slovenská Republika, and Národná Obroda) over the same time period reveals these stories mixed in with dozens and dozens of other stories and commentaries. These themes are not buried in the Slovak newspapers, but are instead put into an actual living Slovak context: they are worrisome undoubtedly, but, considered in context, they are only two worries among many other causes for concern and for optimism. Western news sources often problematize issues and there are dangers in Western scholarship relying too heavily on these "easier" trans-nationalizing English language source materials. One can well imagine that a Western scholar or policy maker would overreact to the problems of nationalism in Eastern Europe by working with pre-formulated opinion and policy that could thereby exacerbate what could otherwise remain relatively minor problems. (Sharon Fisher, "Slovaks Commemorate Anniversary of War-time State" and "Slovak Opposition Criticizes penal Code" OMRI-L Daily Digest, March 15, 1996; Fisher, "Slovak Prime Minister Defends Penal Code Agreement" OMRI-L Daily Digest, March 18, 1996; and Fisher, "More Slovak Celebrations of War-time State," OMRI-L Daily Digest, March 19, 1996; cf., Liana Giorgi, The Post-Socialist Media: What Power the West? (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1995), x, 4. Back.
Note 19: A. D. Smith, "Gastronomy or Geology?, 13-16; Johann Gottfried Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1968, 1791), 34, 58; Miroslav Hroch, "National Self-determination from a Historical Perspective," Sukumar Periwal, ed., Notions of Nationalism (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 20: A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). Back.
Note 21: Slovakia's political forms would include its being a northern part of Hungarian territory until 1918, then part of the Czechoslovak Republic until 1938, then the "independent" though Nazi- controlled wartime Slovak state until 1945, then a return to the Czechoslovak Republic until the communist takeover in February 1948 establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic until 1989's Gentle Revolution (as it was known in Slovakia) brought about the Czechoslovak Federal Republic. Back.
Note 22: This assertion is definitely an oversimplification of 19th century national movements, and it runs somewhat counter to Miroslav Hroch's three stages of nationalism or Mazzini's risorgimento nationalism. They would argue that nationalism comes "from below" in that it is based on folk culture. It becomes politicized, however, through elites ("from above") fostering peasant culture into a national ethos. For the sake of brevity, I am not arguing with Hroch, for example, but skipping to his third stage and stressing the nationalism's political determinants in my quick summary of 19th century Slovak culture and politics. Cf.: Miroslav Hroch, The Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); John A. Hall, Coercion and Consent. Studies on the Modern State (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), 134-35; Tomas Hofer, "The Creation of Ethnic Symbols from the Element of Peasant Culture," in Peter Sugar, ed., Ethnic Diversity and Conflict in Eastern Europe (Oxford: ABC & Clio, 1980); and Louis Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 208. Back.
Note 23: Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 112, 128; Michael Kennedy, "An Introduction to East European Ideology and Identity in Transformation," Michael Kennedy, ed., Envisioning Eastern Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1994). Back.
Note 24: 24. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 132. Back.
Note 25: 25. Terence Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 1991), 49. Back.
Note 26: Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures, Habitus, Power," Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, & Sherry B. Orther, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). Back.
Note 27: I write "Slovak person" advisedly here in order to differentiate from other national/ethnic groups within the Slovak Republic. I would expect that Hungarian, Rusyn, or Romany citizens of Slovakia might be more likely to question this reality. My assertion is based on my experience primarily with Slovaks and have not concentrated on the "shatter zone" of the largely Hungarian ethnic areas of southern Slovakia. ( John W. Cole, "Ethnicity and the Rise of Nationalism," in John W. Cole and Sam Beck, eds., Ethnicity and Nationalism in Southeastern Europe (Amsterdam: Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1981), 105-144. Back.
Note 28: Johann Gottfried Herder, while not a philosopher generally ranked high in the Western pantheon of great thinkers, has been consistently read in Slovakia. None of my informants ever spontaneously mentioned his name or his writings, but, when I asked about Herder, all knew who he was, most had read him, and some could talk about his work fairly knowledgeably. Back.
Note 29: Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Back.
Note 30: Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative. Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), 1-2. Back.
Note 31: I have altered the names of my fieldwork informants and some of the details surrounding their work. All references to informants reflect everything from the most casual of conversations while queuing in Slovak Public Radio's canteen to formal, recorded interviews. Back.
Note 32: Cyril and Metod are better known to the West by their Latin names, Constantine and Methodius. Back.
Note 33: John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Nation State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987). Back.
Note 34: The modern SNS has never pulled in much of the popular vote. Before the 1990 parliamentary elections (while still part of Czechoslovakia -- the name would change to Czecho-Slovakia soon thereafter), the SNS was high in the survey polls, but when the time came to vote, the party polled 13.9% in Slovakia, which remains its high water mark; in 1992 the SNS garnered 7.9% of the vote, and in 1994, 5.4%.: "Slovak National Party," in M. & D. Daniel Strhan, eds., Slovakia and the Slovaks. A Concise Encyclopedia. ( Bratislava: Goldpress, 1994), 568; and Vladimír Krivy, "The Parliamentary Elections of 1994: The Profile of Supporters, of the Political Parties, the Profile of Regions," in Sona Szomolányi and Grigorij Meseznikov, eds, Slovakia Parliamentary Elections 1994 (Bratislava: Interlingua, 1995), 115-26. Back.
Note 35: The HZDS and the SNS are by no means exclusive purveyors of political nationalist sentiment. The current opposition parties (i.e., the Christian Democrats and the Democratic Union), while never failing to attack the politically nationalistic tendencies of the governing coalition, will always posture themselves as defenders of Slovak interests and will wave the flag with equal vigor. It is important to note, however, that most of the opposition has been more reticent to support the Slovak language law and, in 1996, has opposed the Slovak penal code (dubiously) intended to protect the Slovak Republic (See footnote 18, above). Back.
Note 36: Good questions at this point might be: "What about patriotism? Is this 'unreflective' cultural nationalism?" (cf.: Morris Janowitz, The Reconstruction of Patriotism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 8-9. The answer is yes, possibly. I wish to avoid semantics, however, and use the idea of a "culturally nationalist 'structures of feeling'" in order to demonstrate the ties to "political nationalism" as well as to retain the potentially pejorative tone, or at least "loaded" meaning, of the word "nationalism." Back.
Note 37: My favoring of radio journalists over butchers as informants is not meant to indicate that there is anything wrong with exploring national identity and ideology amongst butchers. Indeed, I intend to do audience research in Slovakia during my next fieldwork opportunity. Back.
Note 38: Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory,Third edition (New York: Sage, 1994). Back.
Note 39: A brief glance at Anna's situation is the tip of the iceberg regarding feminist issues in Slovakia. Compare, for example, Helen Scott Does Socialism Liberate Women? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974); or Zuzana Kicková and Etela Farkasová. "The Emancipation of Women: The Concept that Failed," in Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism (New York: Routledge, 1993). Back.
Note 40: Alfredo Gonzales, "The Cuban Media Story," paper presented in "Brown-bag Lecture Series," October 18, 1995 at the Communication Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Miklós Haraszti writes similarly about artists under state socialism in Hungary in the early 1970s:
Consciousness replaces coercion. Consensus is shaped only by unwritten principles, voluntary prohibitions, and unconscious commitments. Under Stalinism, our plight was like that of the fish whose owner foolishly locked the aquarium in fear of escape. Since Stalinism, the owner has become wiser and the fish happier. The aquarium remains the same.Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism (New York: Noonday Press, 1987). Slavenka Drakulic (albeit within the much "softer-line" form of "actually-existing socialism" of the late 1980's Yugoslavia) in her essay, "A Chat with My Censor," writes how autocensorship is internalized for journalists and this makes the official censor's job much easier. Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: W.W. Norton. 1991), 76-81. Back.
Note 41: Journalists could envision other beliefs -- this is comparable to Václav Benda's or Václav Havel's writings of parallel structures or polis existing with socialist totalitarianism. Václav Havel, "Moc bezmocnych," in O Lidskou Identitu (Prague: Rozmluvy, 1990), 113-116. However, Slovak journalists seem to have not created structures of dissent, except in their own minds, or in negligibly small circles as compared to the mostly Czech dissident movements like Charter 77, etc. Back.
Note 42: Michael Kennedy sums up this attitude of Pavol's: East Europeans just "want to be normal;" that is, "normal,"in terms of Western liberal democratic/hegemonic standards. Kennedy, Envisioning Eastern Europe, 4. Back.
Note 43: Hungary and Czechoslovakia began the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros dam project jointly in the 1970s when both countries were under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and when governmental decrees were often grand and sweeping, but not always efficient in cost -- not in accounting for the environment, nor for people's opinions. Gabcikovo, phase one of the project and largely the Czechoslovak part of the plan, was well underway when the changes of 1989 occurred. With the dissipation of the Soviet sphere of influence in the 1990s, Hungary canceled its part of the project (Nagymaros) and insisted that the Gabciákovocomponent be scuttled for environmental reasons and an international row ensued. (See Steven Deets' article, chapter 7 in this volume, for a more complete picture). Back.
Note 44: Vladimír Meciar has been rumored to have been a significant äTB (Czechoslovak secret police) agent in the 1970s known as the "Doctor." Despite numerous accusations, certain records have been misplaced, so little has been proven. His popularity among the elderly and less-educated part of the population has remained consistent enough to keep him a regular winner in every Slovak parliamentary election since 1990. Back.
Note 45: Ivan Gasparovic, "I. gasparovic: HDZS neprevzalo kontrolu nad médiami," Sme,January 25, 1995. Back.
Note 46: Cf.: Ján Füle, "Massmediálna vojna na pokraèovanie," Národná Obroda, February 27, 1995.; Boris koren,"'Riadite Slovenského Rozhlasu mi dôvod môjho odvolania neuviedol,'" Sme, February 16, 1995.; Peter Susko, "Bumerangy sa vzdy vracajú," Sme, July 6, 1995; and Elena Sebová, "Kauza Susko - Zbytocná bublina," Slovenská Republika, February 18, 1995. Back.
Note 47: I have a major unresolved question about Martin Doboö' hiring that no one has authoritatively answered for me: technically, according to the lustracia laws still on the books, can Doboö hold his position? The political and personal sensitivity surrounding this question (along with time constraints in the field -- Doboö was hired in the last three weeks of my 1995 stay in Slovakia) made it difficult to clarify this point. Back.
Note 48: When Peter Susko was fired from the Washington posting, the "conventional wisdom" knew that it would be a matter of time before a loyal someone would be sent. After all, the financially-strapped Slovak Public Radio continued to rent the Washington flat Susko had lived in. At this writing, Ivo Kuncs lives there. Back.
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