„Sme za demokraciu.“ Kanonik Andrej Cvinček a jeho percepcia a realizácia demokracie

Abstract

This paper focuses on the years 1945 – 1948. The Slovak historiography calls this era the “people’s democracy”. A people´s government and democracy itself were supposed to be the cornerstones of post-war Czechoslovakia. The word “democracy” had not only been used very often in public by the organiser of the Slovak people’s uprising (Slovenské národné povstanie), but it was a keyword in all important political documents. Those intellectuals who were part of the revolution were fighting for a functioning democratic system, plurality, free elections, a pluralistic party system and a government that was approved by parliament. These ideals first materialized in the foundation of the Slovenská národna rada (National Councilof the Slovak Republic) and the founding of the Demokratická strana (Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia) in Banská Bystrica. Andrej Cvinček, a canon from Nitra (Slovakia), was an active player in this process. Cvinček was not only a politician with a Christian background, he was a politician who stood up against secular tendencies within the state and was a proponent of conservative political opinions. Cvinček was a forceful advocate of the Christian weltanschauung and the axioms, principles, and interests of his church and religious bodies and organizations. This paper wants to analyze his view on and perception of democracy in post-war Czechoslovakia. Cvinček was hinting at the extreme divergence of what communists described to be a people’s democracy and the very communist reality: this was a warning of what to expect from the immanent rise of totality. Simultaneously, we need to raise the question of whether changes in the political system and society had an impact on the convictions and the career of a politician that was fighting for church interests and Christian principles. This paper is based on materials kept in archives, press articles of his time, and memoirs of his contemporaries. The aim of this paper is, to a lesser extent, to portray his political career, but the focus is being laid on the creation of a typology of how he perceived and understood democracy and how democratic ideas were implemented in the given years 1944 – 1948.