Fascism

This study explores a range of shifts in the understanding of “nation” by Štefan Polakovič, a Catholic intellectual, in the period of the wartime Slovak Republic, focusing on the root causes of Polakovič’s adoption of Volksgemeinschaft—the racial concept of “nation” that drew upon the ideology of German National Socialism. The current paper examines the genesis of the Slovak adaptation in Polakovič’s interpretation and his coming to terms with the Catholic critique of racism.

This article addresses the issue of Italian penetration in Central-Eastern Europe in the interwar period, paying particular attention to the case of Czechoslovakia and covering primarily the tools used by Italy to assert its influence among the “heir countries” of the Habsburg Empire. Among these instruments, the article aims to highlight the importance of culture and propaganda, which alongside politics and economics, allowed Italy to compete with the other great powers for hegemony in Central-Eastern Europe.

This article examines the effects of anti-Semitism on the journalism of Karol Körper. Karol Körper was a Catholic priest and a politician within Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party from about 1935 to the early 1940s. Specifically, the article follows the formation of anti-Semitism conspiracies provoked by campaigns against “Judeo-Bolshevism” that resulted in proposal for the resolution of the so-called Jewish question from 1936–1938.

The paper deals with early 20th-century phenomenon of European conservatism and fascism as vague and frequently overlapping categories with very strong cultural and local colouring. Aiming at clarification of vague and hardly distinguishable concepts and ideas resulting from so-called nazi-fascist Zeitgeist, the author assumes radically pluralist perspective where fascism and conservatism are viewed as elastic and mutually overlapping categories depending on local "tradition-modernity" relation.

Attitude of Slovak National Party (SNS) to fascism during the interwar period was determined by its basic political principle – nationalism, as well as by its political and ideological construct, through which the party interpreted situation at home and abroad. The view of SNS was that after WW I the political shift to the left together with internationalism led to increased preferences of class interests and less accent to the needs of the whole nation.