Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Flyersfan232]

So this guy is an MEP and an MP simultaneously? Never heard of that combo before - I'm surprised there are no EU or Slovak rules preventing this.

france

[MRCVzla]

So this guy is an MEP and an MP simultaneously? Never heard of that combo before - I'm surprised there are no EU or Slovak rules preventing this.

Miroslav Radačovský is still (for now) a titular MEP, if he had taken his elected seat following the SNS ministerial appointments, he would have had to resign from being a MEP, but at least his party Slovak PATRIOT had another MP who passed the preferential voting threshold and got representation in the National Council after the appointments (Adam Lučanský, who got 8749 votes, Radačovský was just behind him with 8401). Just to reminder, of all the Slovak MEPs who were candidates in eligible posts at the September elections, only Michal Šimečka (PS leader) resigned as MEP to keep his seat in the National Council, due to incompatibility between positions. The other apart from Radačovský who was elected MP but remains in Brussels/Strasbourg for the remainder of the term is another PS/Renew (Michal Wiezik), There's also two Peter Pollák from OĽANO, but the father (born 1973) is the MEP and his son (born 1991) got elected and is a MP.

[DavidB.]

Thanks for that, MRCVzla.

So this guy is an MEP and an MP simultaneously? Never heard of that combo before - I'm surprised there are no EU or Slovak rules preventing this.

france

What's with France? Don't think you can be an MEP and MP there simultaneously, either.

[MaxQue]

Thanks for that, MRCVzla.

So this guy is an MEP and an MP simultaneously? Never heard of that combo before - I'm surprised there are no EU or Slovak rules preventing this.

france

What's with France? Don't think you can be an MEP and MP there simultaneously, either.

I don't think European regulations allow it, hence why the UK House of Lords had to invent some kind of wierd leave for Lords elected as MEP.

[Estrella]

Thanks MRCVzla, didn't know that.

I was also wondering, what made Korcok such a popular/powerful figure that the anti-Fico parties united behind his candidacy sort of by default after Caputova decided not to run again?

Really, it's just because he ended up as the only liberal running. I guess one of the reasons for that is that most centre-right figures are either unknown, discredited, unpopular with the wider public or seen as yesterday's men. Korčok served as minister in a relatively uncontroversial portfolio (Foreign Affairs) long enough to become known but resigned soon enough not to become embroiled in too much drama. He also has a certain gravitas and IMO comes across as serious but approachable.

Thanks for that, MRCVzla.

So this guy is an MEP and an MP simultaneously? Never heard of that combo before - I'm surprised there are no EU or Slovak rules preventing this.

france

What's with France? Don't think you can be an MEP and MP there simultaneously, either.

Yes, Mélenchon, Le Pen and a bunch of other presidential candidates or party bigwigs were MEPs at one point, but that was because they weren't MPs. I suppose people unfamiliar with the French system would be surprised that party leaders aren't necessarily in the legislature, plus France has an infamous problem with cumul des mandats with a gazillion of deputies and senators who are also mayors, councillors and what have you, though I think Macron restricted this as well.

Also, there's another presidential poll, this one a lot tighter: Pellegrini 41, Korčok 38, Harabin 8, Kubiš 3, Forró 2, Danko 2. The campaign is just starting, but I won't be surprised if Kubiš and the far-right end up being squeezed by polarization around the top two.

[MaxQue]

I suppose people unfamiliar with the French system would be surprised that party leaders aren't necessarily in the legislature, plus France has an infamous problem with cumul des mandats with a gazillion of deputies and senators who are also mayors, councillors and what have you, though I think Macron restricted this as well.

That would be Hollande.

[Storr]

"Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Tuesday that “there’s no war in Kyiv,” describing life in Ukraine’s capital as “absolutely normal.”

“Do you really think there is war in Kyiv? I hope you’re not serious … life there is absolutely normal,” Fico told a press conference when asked why he’s not meeting Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Ukraine’s largest city, where he might better grasp the impact of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war."

...

"The Slovak leader’s controversial remarks about safety in Ukraine’s capital came the same day Russia attacked the country with 41 missiles, leaving several people dead in Kyiv and Kharkiv, dozens injured, and infrastructure in ruins."

[President Johnson]

"Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Tuesday that “there’s no war in Kyiv,” describing life in Ukraine’s capital as “absolutely normal.”

“Do you really think there is war in Kyiv? I hope you’re not serious … life there is absolutely normal,” Fico told a press conference when asked why he’s not meeting Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Ukraine’s largest city, where he might better grasp the impact of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war."

...

"The Slovak leader’s controversial remarks about safety in Ukraine’s capital came the same day Russia attacked the country with 41 missiles, leaving several people dead in Kyiv and Kharkiv, dozens injured, and infrastructure in ruins."

Fico is essentially a clone of Orban.

[Storr]

"Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Tuesday that “there’s no war in Kyiv,” describing life in Ukraine’s capital as “absolutely normal.”

“Do you really think there is war in Kyiv? I hope you’re not serious … life there is absolutely normal,” Fico told a press conference when asked why he’s not meeting Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Ukraine’s largest city, where he might better grasp the impact of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war."

...

"The Slovak leader’s controversial remarks about safety in Ukraine’s capital came the same day Russia attacked the country with 41 missiles, leaving several people dead in Kyiv and Kharkiv, dozens injured, and infrastructure in ruins."

Fico is essentially a clone of Orban.

Or maybe he's bipolar?

"Fico, just days after questioning Ukraine's sovereignty, claimed there were only “minor” political differences with Kyiv, which were part of “political life”, adding: “We really want to assist you, we really want to help you.”""

To be serious, I'd guess his anti-Ukrainian/Russian propaganda statements are for his domestic audience and political base. While his more warm and fuzzy "we want to help you" comments are aimed at western/NATO countries. Fico doesn't want to end up in a position where the EU is withholding money, as happened for Hungary and Poland. Slovakia is small enough where it would be difficult to go without those EU funds.

https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1750165961427079573?s=20

[Estrella]

Yeah, I think a better comparison than Orbán would be Erdoğan. Orbán seems to genuinely think Putin is in the right, Erdoğan and Fico play on both sides and do whatever gets them the most popularity and money. He's actually shockingly open about it.

He also said that the EU sends 1.5 billion euros to Ukraine every month. "How long is this sustainable?" he asked. At the same time, he wants to confirm to the Ukrainian prime minister that Ukraine will not receive any weapons from Slovakia. [...] As he further stated on the RTVS programme, he sees no obstacle in the case of commercial arms supplies. "Let whoever wants to make money from arms do what he wants. If Slovak companies don't make money, American companies will," Fico concluded.

[Estrella]

surprise bitch

Spoiler alert: a bit about the hellish process of making this

Show

As far as I know, there's only one detailed map of results of any First Republic election anywhere on the internet. It's 1929 here, along with some background on the circumstances of the election and making of the map... drawing and coloring 3500-ish municipalities in Paint by hand? Ew.

You can get a monstrous spreadsheet from the Slovak Archive of Social Data containing the results of every parliamentary election since 1929 and every census since 1930 (obviously skipping the commie-era farces), along with a 32-page guide on how to make heads and tails of the data. It's indexed by all levels of local government in their million different incarnations over the last century. The author of the 1929 map used 1929 municipalities, of which there isn't any usable map, hence fxcking around in Paint for weeks. In the end I just decided to use municipalities and districts as they are today. It took me a few months of opening up Excel and QGIS, closing them in frustration and going for it again like two weeks later, but once I worked out the system it was a breeze (some advice to the folks at SASD: don't put a century's worth of data into one sheet). I had to redraw the maps a little to account for some minor boundary changes. Jarovce, Rusovce and Čunovo, today boroughs of Bratislava, belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary at the time. The southern part of what is today the Slovakia-Ukraine border was much more squiggly: Lekárovce belonged to Carpathian Ruthenia while thirteen Ukrainian villages now within Chop and Syurte hromadas (in the municipal maps) or Uzhhorod raion (in the district maps) belonged to Slovakia.

Let's go back a few years, to the first Czechoslovak election in 1920. Socialist parties did spectacularly well and won 48% of the vote, but they were anything but united. The largest party on the left was the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party, a big tent ranging from so-called statebuilding moderates to communist revolutionaries and every shade in between, including nationalist syndicalists who split to form the Socialist Party of the Czechoslovak Working People. Social Democrats' success since their founding in 1878 was helped by a strong network of affiliated trade unions and social organizations, the largest among them being Včela, a network of consumer cooperatives with hundreds of thousands of customers that financed everything from members' welfare to strike funds. While their electoral results were stagnant, they retained a strong organization and in 1935 the party had more than 200,000 members.

In 1921, the Marxist-Leninist wing of the social democrats split and formed the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. KSČ immediately took over a significant share of socdems' politicians and voters to become one of the strongest communist parties in Europe. Even by the standards of highly organized Czechoslovak parties, KSČ was on another level: they took over Včela, founded countless affiliated organizations (Spartacist Labour Scouts, Federation of Proletarian Physical Education, Union of Proletarian Atheists, summer camps, Workers' Amateur Theatre etc) and a paramilitary group, Proletarian Self-Defence. In 1929 the party was taken over by "the boys from Karlín", a group of hardline Stalinists led by Klement Gottwald. The turn towards mindlessly following Moscow's orders resulted in mass resignations/purges of members: the membership declined to "only" 40,000 by the 1930s, less than a third of its peak when KSČ was, after CPSU, the second largest communist party in the world.

In Slovakia, socdems and communists were generally strongest in industrialized areas: mining and smelting in the centre of the country, heavy industry (mostly armaments, I think) in the northwest. They also did very well with agricultural workers in the southwest, IIRC especially with those in sugar production which was huge there at the time (fun fact: Stephen Fry's grandparents were from Šurany and moved to England to help start a sugar refinery there). There are actually quite a lot of differences in their patterns of support, but I assume this is mostly down to where the parties were best organized.

The Czechoslovak Socialist Party, renamed in 1926 to Czechoslovak National Socialist Party was founded in the 1890s as a splinter of Social Democrats that viewed the fight for Czech(oslovak) independence as equally important as class struggle. ČSNS was a broadly left of centre but very incoherent alliance of workers, progressive and/or nationalist intellectuals, urban middle class types and even a fairly strong anarcho-communist wing that went on to form the Independent Socialist Workers' Party. ČSNS had negligible ethnic Slovak support and it was stereotypically seen as the party of Czech civil servants in Bratislava/Košice, plus some random local machines and the centre-left Rusyn interest parties it allied with on occasion, in particular the agrarian socialist Carpatho-Russian Labour Party of Small Peasants and Landless (why do all these parties have to have mile-long names?).

The German Social Democratic Workers' Party, based in the mountainous, isolated yet heavily industrialized Sudetenland, represented a curious combination of fire-breathing Marxism and equally radical German nationalism. DSDAP moderated on both counts by the 1920s and entered government, but they suffered from a serious loss of voters and members: first like the social democrats towards the communists, then to more hardline nationalist and openly Nazi groups. In the late 1930s the party turned towards Volkssozialismus, a form of left-nationalism inspired by Strasserism as a reaction to the radicalization of the German minority in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler.

Nazism had some support among Czechoslovak Germans ever since WWI, represented by the German National Socialist Workers' Party and their paramilitary organization Volkssport. However, in 1935, the country was swept by the Sudeten German Party which won around 60% in German-majority regions and 15.2% nationwide, narrowly becoming the largest party in parliament. SdP, led by Konrad Henlein, was basically a copy-paste of NSDAP, with their own paramilitary organization, the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps, and generally the sort of rhetoric you'd expect from a party funded and armed by Nazi Germany.

The much smaller and geographically separated German minority in Slovakia generally supported the Carpathian German Party (KdP), a branch of SdP with identical ideology (swastika flags and all that) led by Franz Karmasin. Many Germans around Kežmarok/Käsmark voted for the Zipser German Party (ZdP) due to their pan-Hungarian rather than pan-German identity, identifying as belonging to (Greater) Hungary more than the German nation. This is probably a good time to bring up that in Slovak, there's a difference between the words Maďarsko, referring to the various incarnations of the post-1918 Hungarian state, and Uhorsko, referring to the pre-1918 multiethnic Kingdom of Hungary.

The largest ethnic minority party in Slovakia was the Provincial Christian-Socialist Party, at the time led by the deeply controversial János Eszterházy. OKSZP was, despite its name, a right-wing Catholic conservative party which mostly concerned itself with Hungarian ethnic nationalism and later on outright separatism. It was also supported by the so-called Slovjaci, a small group of ethnic Slovaks in the east of the country who considered their dialect a separate language and like Zipser Germans identified more with (Greater) Hungary than the Slovak nation. They got their wish for three weeks in 1918 with the Slovak People's Republic and then for three more weeks in 1919 with the Slovak Soviet Republic, a ramshackle attempt at a revolutionary communist regime in eastern Slovakia created by the Hungarian army and led by a Czech journalist that only existed because far-right irredentists deluded themselves into thinking that a communist revolution would lead to the restoration of Greater Hungary (seriously). This, by the way, all happened during that absolutely mad period in 1918–1920 when Hungary went through a social democratic revolution, a communist revolution, Red Terror, a civil war, White Terror, fought a war with Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and France all at once, ended up occupied by Romania, followed by restoration of monarchy under a regent who had to fend off two coup attempts by the king he was theoretically holding the throne for.

The largest party on the centre-right was the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, usually known simply as Agrarians. As their names suggest, they were the party of farmers and rural people, conservative but more concerned with protecting the interests of their voters than with ideology and hence quite economically interventionist. They possessed an organization that put even KSČ to shame: something like 5% of Czechoslovak population were direct members of the party, just their youth wing was 130,000 strong, they ran over a thousand credit unions and the Agrarian Bank, plus an associated trade union, teachers' union, civil servants' union, business union, livestock breeders' union, hunters' union and so on, each of these with tens of thousands of members. They even decided to found an organization to rival the Socialist International and Communist International, and so came about the Green International. In Slovakia, they were generally supported by ethnically Slovak rural Lutherans and Greek Catholics who thought that HSĽS was too Roman Catholic for their tastes, thought this certainly wasn't some Northern Ireland kind of divide and a significant part (perhaps even a majority) of the Agrarian electorate was Roman Catholic.

Their German counterpart was the Bund der Landwirte, or Farmers' League – moderate conservatives who peacefully advocated for German interests within Czechoslovakia and regularly participated in governments, albeit they too were swept up by the 1930s tide of radicalization of the Sudeten. Agrarians' chief competitor for Czech and Slovak voters was the Czechoslovak People's Party, a religious conservative party whose aim was to represent religious Catholics of all classes and increase the influence of the Catholic Church in public life. Czechia wasn't particularly religious, Slovakia had the Catholic nationalist HSĽS and Ruthenia was Greek Catholic or Orthodox, and so the main stronghold of ČSĽ was Moravia, where the party regularly topped the poll. They too had a German counterpart, the German Christian Social People's Party – like BdL moderate on the national issue but radicalized towards the end.

Czechoslovak National Democracy, upon merger with minor nationalist groups renamed National Unification was a conservative, secular, centralist and nationalist party. The traditional party of Prague bourgeoisie, it shifted a mile to the right in the 1930s (which caused much of their urban middle class base to bolt to National Socialists), started to cooperate with the violent antisemitic movement Vlajka and became worryingly enthusiastic about authoritarianism. They had negligible support in Slovakia (we have our own fascists, thank you very much), but in this election they ran with two antisemitic and pretty much openly fascist Rusyn parties, the Russian National Party and Russian National Autonomous Party.  

There was one more significant right-wing party, the Czechoslovak Self-Employed Traders' Party of the Middle Class (I'm deliberately using the literal translation rather than English wiki's Czechoslovak Traders' Party, just to drive it home how pointlessly long the name is) – pretty much what it says on the tin, a liberal conservative small businessmen's party with a very populist economic programme (nationalization of big business, lower taxes for everyone else). Rather surprisingly they didn't shift towards fascism even as everyone else was doing so, but they did form their own nationalist paramilitary group, the Purple Legion.

The largest party on the Slovak side was the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, running in this election under the name Autonomist Block in coalition with the Slovak National Party (identical to HSĽS but Lutheran rather than Catholic), Autonomous Agrarian Union (pro-Hungarian Rusyn Nationalists) and Polish Social Democratic Party, a nationalist splinter of the Polish Socialist Workers' Party. HSĽS was founded in 1913 by Catholic priest and nationalist activist Andrej Hlinka. They had very close relations with Catholic clergy, who made up a significant share of the party's top brass, including Hlinka and Jozef Tiso. In the 1920s the party was more or less the Slovak version of ČSĽ – Catholic conservatives with a focus on national interests, supported by rural and religious voters, but they already had some disturbing tendencies. Rodobrana, their 60,000 strong paramilitary organization was banned in 1929 after outbreaks of violence at HSĽS rallies. They participated in cabinets but quit in 1929 when their bigwig Vojtech Tuka was sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage on behalf of Hungary. Afterwards they shifted radically to the right, embracing separatism, antisemitism and clerical fascism. In 1936 they adopted the slogan One nation, one party, one leader and became virtually indistinguishable from Henlein's SdP. For centralist rather than separatist fascists, there was the National Fascist Community, a nationalist, antisemitic and anti-German movement led by general Radola Gajda. I have no idea why they did so well around Malacky and Senica.

The cornerstone of many governments was the same – Pětka, or The Five – agrarians, social democrats, national socialists, national democrats and People's Party. There were some departures from the pattern, like the 1919-1920 "red-green coalition" of socdems, socialists and agrarians or the 1926-1929 purely right-wing "coalition of the lords". After the 1935 elections, incumbent Agrarian PM Jan Malypetr continued his Agrarian–Socdem–National Socialist–People's–Traders–German Socdem–Farmers' coalition, which had won comfortable majorities in the lower (166/300) and upper (82/150) house. He was replaced by his fellow Agrarian Milan Hodža, the only Slovak PM of the First Republic. Hodža kept Malypetr's seven-party coalition but after a while added the German Christian Social People's Party to the mix, leading two more cabinets with this composition.

Hodža did what he could, but it was not enough. As the economy failed to recover from the Great Depression, political and ethnic extremism had reached boiling point. In the 1938 local elections, Henlein's SdP won an estimated 88% (really) of German vote. In January of that year, the party had some 540,000 members; by March 760,000; and by May 1.3 million. Rule of law had broken down in Sudetenland as Czechs, Jews and anti-fascists were being attacked and torch-lit marches of Freikorps became the norm. In May, German military manoeuvres prompted fears of an invasion; by summer, everyone knew that war was only a matter of time.

On 12 September 1938, an armed rebellion broke out in Sudetenland and the country descended into what was effectively a civil war. On 22 September, Hodža resigned and was replaced by an emergency technocratic government headed by general Jan Syrový. The next day, amid a wave of patriotic fervour, Syrový declared a general mobilization. Within a few days over one million men joined the army, but it didn't matter in the end. On 30 September Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich and decided to immortalize himself as an example of what George Orwell meant when he wrote "pacifism is objectively pro-fascism". On 1 October, Wehrmacht entered Sudetenland to a hero's welcome.

On 5 October, president Edvard Beneš resigned and left the country. On 6 October, the so-called Žilina Agreement was signed, unilaterally proclaiming Slovakia an "autonomous land" of Czechoslovakia. On 9 October, the paramilitary organization Hlinka Guard was founded and popular HSĽS politician Karol Sidor was proclaimed its "commander for life". On 22 November, Agrarians, National Socialists, People's Party, National Unification, Traders' Party, National Fascist Community and various minor groups were more-or-less forcibly merged into a single party, the Party of National Unity. HSĽS added Party of Slovak National Unity to their name, while German parties in Slovakia were forced to merge into one Deutsche Partei. Three weeks later, Social Democrats and a minority of National Socialists merged into the National Labour Party as a last-ditch move to unify the opposition and stop the slide towards authoritarianism.

On 18 December 1938, farcical parliamentary elections took place in the newly autonomous Slovakia. Voters had a choice of voting yes or no to a list of HSĽS and its hangers-on. All other parties were banned, including rival nationalist parties like SNS. According to the official results, 97.5% voted yes. Monsignor Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest and leader of HSĽS was proclaimed Prime Minister. In the rest of Czechoslovakia, strict censorship was instituted, political and social organizations were being banned left and right, an enabling act was passed and the parliament was dissolved. When rumours arose that many Lutherans voted no, the official HSĽS newspaper called for them to be sent to concentration camps.

In early 1939 HSĽS began openly plotting for independence. Prime Minister and by now effectively dictator Rudolf Beran reached for a last desperate attempt to hold the country together. On the night from 9 to 10 March 1939 Czechoslovak Army under general Bedřich Homola seized government buildings throughout Slovakia, declared martial law and launched mass arrests of members of HSĽS and Hlinka Guard. The so-called Homola's coup was a complete failure: Tiso himself was abroad and most of the important figures managed to escape to Germany. On 13 March, Tiso went to Berlin for a personal meeting with Adolf Hitler and was presented with an ultimatum: invasion and annexation of Bohemia and Moravia were imminent, and Slovakia could either declare independence right now or be divided between Hungary and Poland.

Tiso did what Hitler asked.


Since politics in this era revolved so much about ethnicity and to an extent religion, I guess it would be a good idea to take a look at how things were back then.




You probably noticed I used the terms as they appeared on the census. As you might guess from how much time I spent discussing German parties above, Germans comprised a significant part of Czechoslovak population. So significant in fact that if you hadn't pretended that "Czechoslovak people" and "Czechoslovak language" actually exist, Germans would have been the second largest ethnic group, ahead of Slovaks. In Slovakia, they were mostly concentrated in and around Bratislava/Pressburg, the Spiš/Zips region in the east and Hauerland in the west. After the war, these areas were ethnically cleansed just like Sudetenland and almost none are left now.

Who are the people living in northeastern Slovakia, southeastern Poland and Zakarpattia? Rusyns? Russians? Lemkos? Ukrainians? Depends on who you ask. The concept of Rusyn ethnicity doesn't seem to have been widespread at the time and because the language they spoke was not the same as Ukrainian (but again, depends on who you ask) they saw themselves as Russian. Never mind that their language was also completely unintelligible with Russian. National identity is complicated. No Rusyn would identify themselves as Russian today, but as a relic there are still plenty of villages in the northeast called Russian Something (Ruská Bystrá, Ruská Nová Ves, Ruská Poruba, Ruská Voľa...).

As for other ethnicities, aside from the near-complete disappearance of Jews for obvious reasons (side note: people who claim that Tiso and Tuka genuinely didn't know what was going to happen to the people they sent to Auschwitz need to [redacted]), the only notable change is the fall in the percentage of Hungarians, some of whom were deported to Hungary or to depopulated Sudetenland. Otherwise the patterns are pretty much the same.




The Holocaust, secularization and some confusion about where to draw the line between Greek Catholic and Orthodox. Plus ça change.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

As far as I know, there's only one detailed map of results of any First Republic election anywhere on the internet. It's 1929 here, along with some background on the circumstances of the election and making of the map... drawing and coloring 3500-ish municipalities in Paint by hand? Ew.

Interwar Slovak politics be like (Agrarians get no silver , William Jennings Bryan in shambles)

As for other ethnicities, aside from the near-complete disappearance of Jews for obvious reasons (side note: people who claim that Tiso and Tuka genuinely didn't know what was going to happen to the people they sent to Auschwitz need to [redacted]), the only notable change is the fall in the percentage of Hungarians, some of whom were deported to Hungary or to depopulated Sudetenland. Otherwise the patterns are pretty much the same.

[crals]

This is fascinating, thank you for the maps and info.

I have 2 questions:
1) were the Roma counted as "foreigners"?
2) the Rusyns/"Russians" are split between Orthodox and Greek Catholics?

[Estrella]

This is fascinating, thank you for the maps and info.

I have 2 questions:
1) were the Roma counted as "foreigners"?

Some were, by the looks of the map. There was also an "Other" category with like 1%, and some may have ended up there. Back then most Roma were still itinerant and they were only forced to settle by the communist regime, so it's possible they didn't have papers or weren't counted at all. Some may have also declared themselves as Slovak or Hungarian, which happens even today: the actual Roma population is thought to be something like 8%.

2) the Rusyns/"Russians" are split between Orthodox and Greek Catholics?

Yes, although both churches are majority Slovak. There's some complicated history that I don't really understand behind it: the Slovak and Ruthenian GC churches are a product of the Union of Uzhhorod when the Orthodox eparchy of Mukachevo put itself under the authority of Rome as a particular church, but it seems both sides had people who weren't entirely happy with this and a small Orthodox population remained. The Orthodox church was suppressed by the Habsburg monarchy because of its closeness to Russia and Serbia, and even though the restrictions were lifted during the First Republic, only a tiny proportion of population declared themselves as Orthodox. For ordinary people the only difference was whether their church was under Rome or Moscow; after all, the reason why the Union went ahead was that they could keep the Orthodox lithurgy.

In 1950, after the communist coup, it was the Greek Catholic Church that was suppressed: it was forced to sever its ties with Vatican, put itself under the Moscow Patriarchate and then merge into the much smaller Orthodox Church (which did however receive autocephaly in 1951). In 1968 Alexander Dubček allowed the GC church to separate again, but there was a lot of wrangling about church property between them and the Orthodox Church + pre-1950 GC parishes that chose to stay Orthodox that only got resolved after the fall of the regime.

I honestly don't know what makes the difference between which areas are GC and which are Orthodox today. I wouldn't be surprised if in many cases the reason is something like "three hundred years ago and/or in 1968 the village priest said we belong to [insert church], so now we all belong to [insert church]." On the 2021 map on the previous page, you can spot places where there's an 80% Greek Catholic village next to an 80% Orthodox one. You can actually go further with this: near Bardejov there are majority Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic and Lutheran villages right next to each other along a like ten kilometre stretch of road

[Estrella]

oh for fxck's sake

The party of Igor Matovič will have its own candidate for president. The name was delivered at the last minute. This happened on Tuesday at 23:55, just five minutes before the legal deadline for submitting candidates for the presidential elections. The party plans to announce who exactly will run with the support of the Slovakia Party (before that OĽaNO) on Wednesday at a press conference at 9:30.

[Estrella]

We now have the final list of the 11 candidates – all men – running for president.

Peter Pellegrini (Hlas-Smer), speaker of the parliament and the main government candidate, a rather bland centrist (centre-left if you squint) moderate hero, pro-Western
Ivan Korčok (SaS-PS), former foreign minister and the main opposition candidate, a rather bland centre-right liberal, pro-Western
Štefan Harabin (independent), minister of justice and chief justice in Fico's first government, likely the main far-right candidate, conspiracy theorist, kinda nuts in general, pro-Russia, Alex Jones-esque far-right
Andrej Danko (SNS), despite sitting in the same government as Pelle he spends more time attacking him and Hlas than anyone else to the point he stopped attending meetings of the coalition council, pro-Russia, Orbánesque far-right
Marian Kotleba (ĽSNS), somehow managed to get the signatures despite his party getting all of 0.8% last year, actual neo-Nazi
Igor Matovič (Slovensko), former PM and current clown, turbopopulist conservative, says he isn't actually running because he knows he has no chance and he's just trying to fix politics, will endorse Korčok in the runoff but for a price
Patrik Dubovský (Za ľudí-Kresťanská únia), a historian, conservative, anti-communist and anti-Mečiarist human rights activist, going after KDH voters and "democratically and conservatively oriented people"
Ján Kubiš (independent), ex-Smer moderate hero career diplomat
Krisztián Forró (Szövetség), the Hungarian candidate, a seemingly quite pro-government conservative – he's met with Fico to talk about "southern issues" and I expect him to endorse Pelle in the runoff in return for €€€ for Hungarian regions
Róbert Švec (Slovenské hnutie obrody), far-right, admirer of Jozef Tiso
Milan Náhlik (Hlas ľudu), a self-proclaimed "patriot", a quote from his Facebook: "...there is no salvation for the degenerate Western civilisation, the cancer of decay and absurdity is so evident that it is too late for a cure."

Something I just noticed, after looking at Korčok's wikipedia page, is that both he and Pellegrini are from Banská Bystrica.

You can add Kotleba to that list. More small world things: Korčok's brother is married to the sister of 2019 Smer candidate Maroš Šefčovič and Krisztián Forró lives in the same village as the murdered journalist Ján Kuciak. I remember that in 2019 the only Šefčovič supporter I knew was a classmate of mine because Šefčovič was some kind of relative of her godmother

[Storr]

We now have the final list of the 11 candidates – all men – running for president.

[snip]

Štefan Harabin (independent), minister of justice and chief justice in Fico's first government, likely the main far-right candidate, conspiracy theorist, kinda nuts in general, pro-Russia, Alex Jones-esque far-right

[snip]

There's nothing more representative of traditional conservative pan-slavic values than being best buds with an Albanian drug lord:

"In 2008, a transcript of a telephone conversation from 1994 between Štefan Harabin and the Albanian drug lord Baki Sadiki  was published."

"Transcript of interview from September 17, 1994:

Sadiki: Stefan Harabin?

Harabin: Yes.

Sadiki: I didn't recognize you at all by your voice, you know.

Harabin: Well, the phone changes its voice a little. What's new?

Sadiki: Nothing, I'm just calling to see how you are.

Harabin: Where are you calling from? Out?

Sadiki: Hey, from Smokovec.

Harabin: Well, did you arrive well?

Sadiki: Hey, okay, okay.

Harabin: Well, thank God.

Sadiki: How are you at home? Son, ok, is he holding on?

Harabin: Okay, hey.

Sadiki: What time do you work today?

Harabin: I do that until about four.

Sadiki: When will you come? You do not know?

Harabin: Well, listen, it looks like we probably wouldn't be the first to come now, because there are elections. Coincidentally, the president of the court from Poprad was also here on Wednesday, that friend of mine, I told you, well, we canceled the soccer game, that it won't be on the thirty-first, but the first, because there are elections, and there is an emergency at the district court because of that title, because people can object, voter lists, etc. and the court has to hold on Saturdays and Sundays, you know. So we can't go, so maybe next week, a week later. But I, I don't know if I won't come that week anyway.

Sadiki: Come on, I'd love to.

Harabin: I still have to take care of my things there and I want to go see my daughter.

Sadiki: Come, I'm at home, you can come anytime.

...

Sadiki: Okay, if you come, please call me, hey?

Harabin: I have that number, this is valid.

Sadiki: You have a number, you understand, when you arrive in Poprad or earlier, call and I will pick you up at the station, you understand. So we agreed. Milan is not there somewhere?

Harabin: It's not there, but I can go look.

Sadiki: I call him and no one answers.

Harabin: Doesn't he take? And should I leave him a message?

Sadiki: Nothing, just saying hello to him.

Harabin: It could be that he didn't come from lunch, because that's just the time for lunch, 2 o'clock, you know, I just didn't go to lunch because I'm studying the files, so I'm here and maybe he went to lunch, but it could be that he took also a vacation, because yesterday was a day off, a public holiday, so he didn't go to work today either.

Sadiki : Okay, fine, I just wanted to know when you're coming, but when you come, call me, hey.

Harabin: Good.

Sadiki: Okay, but hello Milana, hey.

Harabin: Hey. Hi.

The conversation is cut short."

[Estrella]

And it's done. After months of opposition obstruction, Fico's criminal code reform bill passed. The bill itself passed unanimously because the opposition boycotted the vote, but the parliament had to spend the whole day voting after an MP from Matovič's party (of course) proposed a hundred-something amendments.

Here's what the new law does:
– abolition of the Office of Special Prosecutor and putting local prosecutors in charge of corruption cases
– sentences for corruption cut by half, with the possibility of suspended sentences
– statute of limitations on serious crimes (including corruption) cut from 20 to 15 years
– statute of limitations on rape and child sexual abuse cut from 20 to 10 years
– increasing the monetary threshold where sentences for "significant" and "serious" corruption kick in
– halving the threshold where sentences for aggravated drug possession kick in (in fact the exact opposite of what Fico promised)

President already announced she's going to veto the law and send it to the Constitutional Court. KDH leader Milan Majerský, who has been unexpectedly based lately, described the bill as "crashing through rock bottom". Matovič also reminded me why I kind of liked him in opposition when he started screaming at deputy speaker Ľuboš Blaha (y'know, the unironic tankie guy) that "this isn't an institute for the mentally ill!""

In other cartoon villain news, the cabinet nearly doubled their own pay – Fico got gave himself a raise from €6,500 to €11,000 a month.

In "this is actually seriously worrying" news, PS MP Tomáš Hellebrandt resigned. It's being said that he failed to mention he's HIV positive on a medical form and the hospital then took the (apparently highly unusual) step of filing a police report for "suspicion of having committed the criminal offence of endangerment with the human immunodeficiency virus". The information that Hellebrandt is being prosecuted has been first released publicly by Robert Fico, who does not – should not – have any legal way to access police documents or Hellebrandt's medical records.

[RGM2609]

Perhaps an unimportant question, but I'd be curious to know how did the love story between Matovic and the remnants of ZL end? I would assume the reason is crazy?

[Estrella]

Perhaps an unimportant question, but I'd be curious to know how did the love story between Matovic and the remnants of ZL end? I would assume the reason is crazy?

In fact it didn't. Matovič and Za ľudí running separate candidates is like last year's decision to run as a coalition: it seems bizarre and self-defeating, but it's actually genius. A coalition of three parties allowed Matovič to spend three times as much on the campaign. Supporting Matovič and a religious conservative intellectual will allow them to reach not just the 5-10% of voters who are Matovič cultists but also the 5-10% of voters who vote for or could imagine voting for KDH.

[RGM2609]

Perhaps an unimportant question, but I'd be curious to know how did the love story between Matovic and the remnants of ZL end? I would assume the reason is crazy?

In fact it didn't. Matovič and Za ľudí running separate candidates is like last year's decision to run as a coalition: it seems bizarre and self-defeating, but it's actually genius. A coalition of three parties allowed Matovič to spend three times as much on the campaign. Supporting Matovič and a religious conservative intellectual will allow them to reach not just the 5-10% of voters who are Matovič cultists but also the 5-10% of voters who vote for or could imagine voting for KDH.

Oh, I guess Matovic is a pretty good politician. If only he wasn't such a horrible leader

[Estrella]

We have the first poll with the final list of candidates.

Peter Pellegrini 39.0% ➔ 53.7%
Ivan Korčok 37.2% ➔ 46.3%
Štefan Harabin 8.1%
Igor Matovič 4.8%
Ján Kubiš 3.0%
Krisztián Forró 2.4%
Andrej Danko 2.1%
Patrik Dubovský 1.9%
Marian Kotleba 0.9%
Milan Náhlik 0.6%

Most people are only starting to pay attention to the campaign, so take this with a grain of salt, but this is... not what I'd have expected. Everyone knew Danko would faceplant and I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Harabin is failing to get his 2019 numbers or that Kubiš is falling into irrelevance, but the results for Dubovský and Kotleba are just pathetic. As for the top two, if you asked me before I'd have guessed that Pellegrini will be somewhere in the low 40s (and if below 40, then because Harabin is above 10) and Korčok in the low 30s, while the runoff numbers would be something like Čaputová's 58-42 margin except in Pellegrini's favor, so... it's nice to see this, I guess? Btw Róbert Švec wasn't polled because was kicked off the ballot after some bureaucratic screwup, but he appealed the decision and he'll be able to run after all – not that he'll get more than half a percent anyway. And Danko is saying he might consider withdrawing in favour of Harabin, but his promises are about as trustworthy as his driving skills.

[Estrella]

Another poll, another dead heat.

Peter Pellegrini 35.8% ➔ 52.3%
Ivan Korčok 34.6% ➔ 47.7%
Štefan Harabin 10.0%
Igor Matovič 6.6%
Ján Kubiš 4.8%
Krisztián Forró 2.2%
Marian Kotleba 2.0%
Andrej Danko 1.3%
Milan Náhlik 1.2%
Patrik Dubovský 1.1%

From the crosstabs: Harabin is supported by 20% of voters who sympathize with the government, while Matovič is supported by 10% of voters who sympathize with the opposition. Harabin recently said that he'd recommend his voters to stay home in the runoff, but 60% of them said they'd vote for Pellegrini and only 50% of Matovič voters say they'd vote for Korčok. As for Captain Danko the Laughingstock, only 12% of voters of his own damn party say they'd vote for him.

[Estrella]

Turns out there are more detailed crosstabs for the poll above. All the usual caveats about crosstabs apply, and even though some numbers are weird, I think they mostly make sense when you think about them.
_{Also I switched to blue for Korčok because nearly everyone uses it, including his campaign.}

Age
18–24: Korčok 47, Pellegrini 11
25–34: Korčok 43, Pellegrini 29
45–54: Pellegrini 44, Korčok 31
55–64: Pellegrini 46, Korčok 23
65+: Korčok 40, Pellegrini 38

Education
Primary or vocational school: Pellegrini 49, Korčok 22
High school: Korčok 36, Pellegrini 33
University: Korčok 48, Pellegrini 25

Party
Pellegrini: Hlas 87, Smer 70, Republika 33, Sme rodina 33, SNS 29, KDH 15, Szövetség 12, Demokrati 7
Korčok: PS 88, SaS 88, Demokrati 76, KDH 36, Slovensko 35, Republika 20, Szövetség 11, Sme rodina 9

Settlement size
less than 1,000:  Pellegrini 38, Korčok 27
1,000–5,000: Pellegrini 36, Korčok 30
5,000–20,000: Pellegrini 33, Korčok 33
20,000–100,000: Pellegrini 40, Korčok 37
more than 100,000: Korčok 53, Pellegrini 29

I'd have thought that mid/high 30s is Korčok's ceiling, but it seems he still has room to grow. KDH officially (albeit unenthusiastically) endorsed Korčok, so he'll probably improve with their voters. He might also gain from undecideds (a third of the electorate say they know very little about him, as opposed to 8% for Pelle), although as parliamentary speaker and leader of the governing party Pellegrini has the advantage of more media exposure. This is why Pelle is refusing to participate in debates and leading a pretty low-key campaign in general: he doesn't want to give Korčok opportunities to attack him and increase his profile.

The pattern of support by age is same as usual: Smer and anyone associated with them is absolutely goddamn radioactive among young people, disliked among millenials and popular with those older than 50 or so. I'm not sure what's with the Korčok lead in the 65+ category: I suspect it's a combination of KDH electorate (which is almost as geriatric as Smer) going for Korčok and the usual caveats about crosstabs.

In terms of parties, unsurprisingly Pellegrini gets the support of nearly all Hlas voters and most Smer voters (except the quarter or so who support Harabin), Korčok wins nearly all voters for the liberal parties. Pellegrini gets decent support from far-right and little from KDH and Matovič, Korčok the other way round. I guess the one in five Republika voters who'd vote for Korčok are young people: Republika's electorate is younger than average and nearly everyone in their twenties would rather walk on broken glass than vote for someone supported by Fico, regardless of ideology.

Pellegrini does best in cities with 20k–100k people. This might seem strange (and might be exaggerated), but Smer and Hlas are strong in many towns/cities in the mostly postindustrial Považie region (Považská Bystrica, Dubnica nad Váhom...), the very postindustrial Horná Nitra region* (Prievidza, Partizánske...) and in the forgotten far east of the country (Michalovce, Trebišov, Humenné...). Villages are generally even better for Smer/Hlas, but this varies by region: the Kysuce and Zemplín regions were Titanium Fico for as long as anyone remembers, but they usually get quite poor results in Orava and Spiš, and of course next to nothing in the Hungarian areas. Other than that, it's the expected pattern of more populous = better for liberals.

_{* Horná Nitra (Upper Nitra, after the river Nitra) is kind of cursed: the main towns in the region are Partizánske (a charmless concrete jungle built from scratch around the Baťa shoe factory), Handlová (mostly known for a tragic mine disaster), Nováky (mostly known for a tragic ammunitions disaster), Topoľčany (the birthplace of a certain Robert Fico) and Prievidza (mostly known for a song about how the people from there are uncivilized yokels). Nováky was also the site of Slovakia's last operating coal mine until it closed in December last year.}

[RGM2609]

I must confess I see little reason for enthusiasm about Pellegrini's chances. Maybe at least one Eastern European country won't have a horrific 2024 electorally. Thanks for keeping us updated!