Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

esult of the hope of concluding endless debates. These efforts are
equally guided by the inspirational effect that ‘a history we have
lived through together’ – and which we therefore hope we can write
together – can have on a wider audience. Thirdly, while the conflictbased,
nationalist approach to history continues to have a significant
mass impact in both countries, it is being pushed to the
margins of the field.
While highlighting the ongoing debates, we are also looking for an
answer to the question why our common history is still a source of
national conflicts rather than something which underlines the need
for rapprochement. In spite of the indisputable historical fact of multilayered
co-existence, the common Hungarian-Slovak history is an
ambivalent inheritance. For nearly a thousand years, the traditions
and values of our common statehood have been the subject of
polemics and debates. To a large extent they still are: there is no
teachable, comprehensive historical interpretation of the nature of
our common history.
The picture has changed only very slowly, after 1989. When treating
our common past, the acknowledgement, recognition and promotion
of public awareness of our common inheritance, co-exist
with the alienation from everything that is Hungarian and the denial
of everything that was demonstrably not Hungarian within historical
Hungary. Accepting or rejecting, teaching or misconstruing our
common history, or using it for political goals in a blinkered approach
to history – based on linguistic and cultural differences – are
central to the survival of national prejudice and stereotypes.
Mutual minorities
The difficulties of dealing with their history in a framework of nation
states are paralleled in the complications of managing national
minority issues. Building exclusive nation-states in this region could
only have been possible by accepting ethnic cleansing and
homogenisation. During periods of dictatorship in the 20 th century
actual opportunities for such practices arose. Both states applied
the principle of collective punishment of communities of non-
Slovaks and non-Hungarians respectively, along with non-
Christians. The result was the destruction of many hundreds of
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