Slovaks

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Slovaks

ETHNONYMS: Slováci, Slovák

Orientation

Identification. The Slovaks are Western Slavs who speak Slovak and live in Slovakia, the easternmost third of Czechoslovakia, in 1992 renamed the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. Slovaks are most closely related to two other Slavic peoples located to their west: Moravians and Czechs.

Location. Slovakia is located between 47° and 50° N and 17° and 23° E. Slovakia occupies an area of approximately 49,995 square kilometers and is bounded on the north by Poland, on the east by Ukraine, on the south by Hungary, on the southwest by Austria, and on the west by the Czech Republic of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. The topography of Slovakia is extremely varied, ranging from the Carpathian Mountains in the north to the Danube Basin and fertile plains in the south and west. The climate is typical of continental Europe with hot summers and cold, snowy winters.

Demography. The 1986 estimated population of Slovakia was 5,200,000 with Slovaks constituting 88 percent of that number. About 1,000,000 live outside Slovakia, with approximately 750,000 residing in the United States and others scattered throughout Europe, Canada, and South America. The population density in Slovakia averages 106 persons per square kilometer, and the population is growing at an estimated rate of 0.3 percent per year. Hungarians, Ukrainians (Rusins), Poles, Romany peoples, and Germans account for the remaining 12 percent of Slovakia's population.

Linguistic Affiliation. Slovak is a Western Slavic language (along with Czech and Polish) of the Indo-European Language Family. It is most closely related to, but distinct from, Czech. Slovak is an inflected language, and stress is fixed on the first syllable of a word; words of more than three syllables also have a secondary accent. Generally, Slovak words have as many syllables as they have vowels. Some words appear composed entirely or mostly of consonants: smrt' (death); slnko (sun); srdce (heart); and yrt (bore, drill boring). There are three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and forty-three letters. The three main dialects represent western, Central, and eastern subareas of Slovakia. The dialect spoken in central Slovakia was the one adopted by Slovak scholars as the norm.

History and Cultural Relations

Slavs who became known as the Slovaks settled between the Danube River and the Carpathian Mountains of east-central Europe by the fifth or sixth centuries a.d. and have occupied that territory continuously. Evidence of growing cultural complexity, from tribe to prefeudal alliances to feudal state, is found in their permanent settlements in the Váh, Nitra, Torysa, Ipel, and Morava river valleys. The settlement of Nitra became the home of the Slovak princes and the location of the first Christian church in east-central Europe. During the reign of King Svatopluk (a.d. 870-894), the Great Moravian Empire of the Slovaks reached its greatest development and size, consisting of some one million inhabitants and 350,000 square kilometers, including Polish and Czech subjects. After Svatopluk's death and the defections of Czech and Polish peoples, the Magyars (Hungarians) began to invade Slovak lands. The Magyars controlled Slovakia from the time of the battle of Bratislava in a.d. 907 to the end of World War I. About midway into the millennium of Hungarian rule, the Turkish invasion of 1526-1683 reduced the Magyar Kingdom to the size of modern-day Slovakia.

The first half of the nineteenth century marked the Beginning of a Slovak national renaissance and desire for ethnic independence as a minority in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but in 1868 the Hungarians initiated a formal program of assimilation or "Magyarization." Hungarian was declared the official language in Slovakia, the last three Slovak secondary schools were closed, and in 1869, the Matica Slovenská (the Slovak Institute of Sciences and Arts founded in 1863) was suppressed. As World War I got under way, Slovaks in the United States urged Czech-Americans to join in efforts to promote a joint nation and by 1919, the federated state of Czecho-Slovakia was established and recognized to be a union of two ethnic groups.

The Czechs, who were more numerous and powerful, soon insisted on Czechoslovak unitarism in an effort to eliminate the national individuality of Slovakia. Slovak relations with the Czechs worsened until Czecho-Slovakia disintegrated in 1938-1939. The Slovak Republic (1939-1945) was established as the result of growing international pressures and became dependent on Hitler's Germany. In 1944, anti-Nazi Slovak partisans mounted an armed rebellion, but they were quickly crushed by German forces who reportedly killed 30,000 Slovaks while Soviet troops waited in the nearby Carpathian Mountains. The nation of Czechoslovakia was reconstituted at the end of World War II; by 1949 Communists had gained total control of the country and Slovaks were once again placed in a subordinate position by the Prague government.

When the "Czech Spring" movement emerged in 1968 under the leadership of a Slovak, Alexander Dubcek, it was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion of Warsaw Pact troops who occupied the entire Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, including Slovakia. In November 1989, the Czech dissident playwright, Vaclav Havel, led the Civic Forum party in the "Velvet Revolution," a peaceful overthrow of the republic's Communist government. Public against Violence was the Slovak counterpart of Civic Forum. National elections were held in 1990, and the name of the country was changed to the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. In 1991, a vocal Slovak nationalistic party called Movement for a Democratic Slovakia began to demand independence for Slovakia. Its showing in the June 1992 elections further widened the rift between the Czech and Slovak republics.

Settlements

Slovaks live in small hamlets or colonies, villages, towns, and cities. The hamlet or colony (osada ) typically contains less than ten households of closely related people, usually with a common surname, which may also be the name of the Community. The village (dedina ) can have upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 people, frequently including the inhabitants of the surrounding hamlets. A town (mesto ) commonly has a population in excess of 5,000 and a city (velkomesto ) many thousands more. The largest cities of Slovakia are Bratislava, the capital (417,100), and Kosice (222,200). Traditional Slovak homes in hamlets and villages were constructed of plastered-over mud bricks in western Slovakia or wood in the heavily forested regions of central and eastern Slovakia. Roofs were thatched or shingled. Typical peasant homes built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contain one room, or at most, two rooms: a kitchen that would also double as a bedroom, and a separate room that would serve as a bedroom by night and a room to entertain guests by day. A large oven would be accessed from the kitchen, while the body of the oven would extend into the second room where it would provide a warm surface for children to sleep on. Sometimes additional rooms were added linearly to this basic design to accommodate families of married sons or daughters and/or provide for the sheltering of livestock. Many hamlets still exhibit this traditional Slovak house, though most now have tile roofs. Villages in present-day Slovakia usually contain a jumble of varied house types, from the basic two-room plan of a detached home to the newer four- or six-unit two-story apartment houses. Cinder blocks and fired bricks have replaced mud bricks and wood as building materials, and indoor plumbing has been the norm for three decades even in rural areas. Stepwise migration, with people leaving hamlets and villages for larger communities (cities), is ongoing throughout Slovakia. In some regions, nearly 10 percent of the hamlets have been abandoned over the past fifteen years.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. During the many centuries of Magyar rule when nearly all the land of Slovakia was owned by Hungarian nobility, most Slovaks were peasants (actually landless serfs). They cultivated the land, growing and harvesting crops for the manor. Initially, the fertile plains in the west and south were heavily populated, but by the twelfth century AD., Slovaks began moving into the central region, which was more suited to animal husbandry. Other Slovaks were court servants and their villages were named for their trades or occupations. They worked at making metal pots, being forest wardens, fishing, goldsmithing, etc. The years of Magyar rule resulted in a mostly peasant Slovak population. Agriculture is still extremely important in late-twentieth-century Slovakia, with key crops such as rye, wheat, corn, clover, potatoes, and sugar beets being grown since the 1950s on large collective farms. Vineyards and wine making are important in the region surrounding Bratislava, while the spas of Piešt'any, Trenčianski, Teplice, and Bardejov still attract foreign visitors. Many rural families keep gardens, fruit trees, and livestock and thus do not experience the frequent shortages in urban stores. Barter is still active in Slovak villages, with families that keep chickens trading eggs for milk with neighbors who have cows. For several decades there also has been an active black market for all sorts of commodities, such as building materials, parts for motor scooters, and currency. In recent decades Slovakia received an Economic boost during the tenure of Gustav Husak, a Slovak who took national office in 1968 and served as president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1975 until 1989. However, the steelworks, chemicals industry, and aluminum works established in Slovakia during the Husak years are experiencing difficulties as the economy languishes in the post-cold war era.

Industrial Arts. Slovakia has a long tradition of ceramic manufacturing, lace making and embroidery, linen and wool garment making, wood carving, metalworking, and the sewing of traditional costumes.

Trade. Prior to the twentieth century, Slovak trade was controlled by the Magyars. Routes leading into Slovakia from the west were popular entryways for enemies of the Hungarians, so these roads were frequently gated and guarded. On numerous occasions, the Slovak lands were devastated by invading armies. Therefore, growth of trade with neighboring groups was difficult. During the era of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, Slovakia was an active trade participant, but remained primarily agricultural. Light industry (underwear manufacturing) and the growing importance of the amount of electricity being generated by Slovakia' s nuclear power facility in the village of Jaslovské-Bohunice have been emerging as significant economic factors in recent years, along with the development of some heavy industry. Now with the demise of COMECON, new trade problems have appeared and old ones have grown worse. Some Slovak collective farms are moving toward a farm-co-op type of arrangement, which will entail local control of production and the ability to enter directly into an assortment of economic relationships.

Division oí Labor.

The traditional division of labor was by age and sex. In peasant agricultural life, adult males tended to the draft animals and performed the heavier tasks in the fields, such as plowing. Adult females would plant, weed, and help with the harvest. Children of both sexes could be placed in charge of the family's geese, cows, or other livestock to take to pasture. In addition, girls would be expected to help their mothers and boys would be sent to work alongside their Fathers. In the home, the bulk of child-rearing responsibility fell to the females of the household. Women cooked, tended the household gardens, stripped the geese of feathers to make the featherbeds, cleaned the house and immediate yard areas, washed the clothes, wove, and performed all the other sorts of handiwork, such as lace making and embroidery.

Formal schooling for peasant children even in the first quarter of the twentieth century rarely went beyond the third grade. Learning a trade, such as tailoring, enabled boys to live in a village or town and not be locked into agricultural activities. Some men worked at trades in addition to cultivating crops and keeping livestock. Some girls might learn to be midwives or traditional curers from their mothers or grandmothers.

Land Tenure. Prior to the onset of Magyar rule, property was probably held and used in common by related Individuals, as is reported for many Slavic groups. Feudalism resulted in vast numbers of landless peasants, so that by the twentieth century, Slovaks were emigrating at a rate second only to the Irish. With the establishment of Czechoslovakia after World War II, land reform brought some degree of prosperity to those who held plots. In the 1950s, land was once again confiscated as large collective farms were established. There are now measures to repatriate land taken by the Communists, but few individuals expect to return to the agricultural pursuits of their fathers or grandfathers and will probably sell the land for cash.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Modern Slovak kinship is bilateral, resulting in large numbers of relatives. In many regions, Slovaks can travel to village after village and continue to find individuals with whom they share some kin relationship. In the past, Slovaks were patrilineal, organized in male-headed units termed rod (sing.), and were virilocal. The term for a small village, dedina, is derived from a kin term for elderly male relative or grandfather, dedo. Several families, closely related through males, formed residence colonies. This pattern survives today in the tiny hamlets that surround Slovak Villages. The modern term for family in Slovak is rodina.

Kinship Terminology. Although Slovaks now exhibit bilateral kinship and are moving toward an essentially Eskimo terminology, they retain a Hawaiian-type terminology for Ego's generation: terms for brother and sister are, respectively, brat and sestra, while male cousins are called bratanec and female cousins sesternica. In many parts of Slovakia and especially in rural areas, portions of what was once a descriptive kinship system is still in use. For example, there are Different terms for father, mother, father's brother, mother's brother, father's brother's wife, mother's brother's wife, brother's son, sister's son, brother's daughter, and sister's daughter.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Slovaks practice monogamy, with divorce and remarriage becoming a frequent occurrence in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the past, there was a high degree of village endogamy or, at least, local endogamy (marriage within a group of villages representing a particular regional enclave). Religious endogamy is still prevalent, but is growing less important. In the past, everyone married and staying single was not possible, save for those unable to secure a spouse because of disability. Dowry was important, with cash being the preferred item. A daughter ordinarily could not marry until her female relatives had completed a set of featherbeds for her, her prospective husband, and their first offspring. There was a strong emphasis on virilocal residence. On the day of the wedding, the groom and his entourage would arrive at the bride's home and, after her attendants had sent several imposters outside to "trick" him, they would finally send the bride out. She would then bid a ritual farewell to her parents and be carried off with her possessions in a wagon to the groom's home. At some point following the ceremony, her wedding headdress would be removed and the distinctive, folded cap of a married woman would be placed on her head, accompanied by the singing of another ritual song. Once she was in her husband's home, her mother-in-law would call her nevesta (bride) for several months, and she would be assigned many of the heavy household chores. Today postmarital Residence is ambilocal and even neolocal when financial circumstances permit or when employment cannot be secured near relatives.

Domestic Unit. Increasingly, the domestic unit is the Nuclear family. However, the extended family, three generations deep, was once the norm and can still be found in villages and hamlets. Some homes have an additional room or two at the end of a house to provide a separate kitchen or bedroom for a son's wife and children.

Inheritance. Inheritance is partible. In the past, if a Peasant family had some land, the brother or brothers might attempt to buy out the sister's share and thereby provide her with some dowry while keeping enough land to farm. Partible inheritance reduced landholdings in some areas to small ribbons of land that were ultimately too small to support a Family. Today, grown children of deceased parents feud over shares in houses. The married offspring who occupies the Parents' home is forced either to sell it and divide the proceeds or to come up with the cash to pay off the claims of siblings.

Socialization. Babies remained under the care of their mothers, who would take them into the fields. Young children were placed in the care of their grandmothers, most Commonly their father's mother. When they reached about the age of 7, children would be assigned chores usually specific to their gender; both boys and girls would be sent off with geese, cows, or sheep to tend. The Communist government established preschools throughout Slovakia by the 1970s, thus changing the old pattern of socialization. Liberal maternal leaves permitted new mothers to stay home with pay. These factors have combined to lessen the degree of cultural continuity across the generations. Today formal education is compulsory, but in the past it was common for Slovak peasant children to leave school in the early grades with many dropping out after the third grade to go to work.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. In hamlets the basis of social Organization is a loose grouping of related families and in villages, one or more groups of households. This local organization takes responsibility for villagewide events such as facilitating weddings and funerals. The leadership of the collective farms in the rural sector took over some of these activities and Certainly was responsible for directing the work force in the Villages. Informal, voluntary associations of amateur musicians exist on the village level and play for various events, including the end-of-the-school-year procession and the end-of-theharvest celebration. Males, related and unrelated, congregate nightly in the village bar to play cards, drink, and visit. Females, related and unrelated, visit in the evenings and do a considerable amount of the planning for communal events.

Political Organization. Prior to 1990, the Slovak Socialist Republic of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was divided into eighteen administrative districts (okres ), each with a large town or city serving as a district seat. The boundaries of the districts were drawn in 1949 and correspond somewhat to yet older political divisions, župa, that were in place from 1886. The Slovak Republic of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic instituted a local government system of elected mayors and councils in 1990 several months after holding elections for national representatives, republic representatives, and national and republic leaders. Therefore, at least on the community level, the prospect is for more flexibility in local decision making.

Social Control. Widely accepted expectations and obligations among the peasants who lived in virtual daily contact with one another resulted in broad compliance within the parameters of acceptable behavior. Antisocial behavior would ordinarily be dealt with directly by the offender's and victim's relatives in order to maintain harmony in the community. As communities grow larger and more diverse, disputes more frequently are settled in the courts.

Conflict. Today there is still conflict over inheritance and, with the changes since 1990, renewed conflict over land occurs as the government attempts to repatriate plots confiscated by the Communist government since the 1950s. Theft from the collective farms and from village construction may be overlooked if the offender is a local person, but intruders from other villages (operating at night) are confronted outright by local men, who may beat the thief, relieve him of his loot, and then telephone the police the next morning when the post office opens. Villages do not have police in residence.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to the Slovaks in the ninth century, but there are Numerous examples of an earlier, widespread, traditional religion characterized by a pantheon of supernatural beings. Among them is Morena, the goddess of death who, represented by a straw doll, is still ritually "drowned" in the first meltwater of the spring by a group of young girls in some mountain villages. Some Christian Slovaks, even those Educated beyond high school and holding professional positions in villages, still believe in the existence of witches, ghosts, and the evil eye. The vast majority of Slovaks are Roman Catholic, but there is a strong minority presence of Protestants (Evangelical Lutherans), especially in western Slovakia, where many villages have churches of both faiths and some have only a Lutheran one. Jewish Slovaks, once numerous in some villages, towns, and cities, lost their lives in the Holocaust; businesses and farm plots were confiscated and sold off to Christian Slovaks by banks and other agencies during the years of the independent Slovak Republic. Few synagogues remain and Jewish Slovak cemeteries in the villages are abandoned and in ruin.

Religious Practitioners. Full-time religious practitioners, Roman Catholic priests and Evangelical (Lutheran) pastors, experienced diminished influence and authority between 1949 and 1989. Sermons or any departure from the prescribed liturgy were required to be tape-recorded for review by a government official. Secular authorities held full control over their activities and priests or pastors could be jailed if they held religious services during government-mandated harvest periods. In 1990, some Roman Catholic priests began taking an active role in local and national politics by promoting one candidate or one party over another to their parishioners. Slovaks also recognize part-time religious practitioners who are traditional curers and mostly female.

Ceremonies. Historically, Slovaks observed an annual round of rituals common to European agricultural peoples that were ultimately linked with and incorporated into events in the Christian calendar. On the village level, these rituals involved virtually everyone and provided settings for village cohesion and solidarity.

Arts. Wood carving, embroidery, lace making, burn etching in wood, egg painting, ceramics, and weaving were and still are the traditional arts. There are also very rich folk dance, folk music, and folk song traditions that distinguish one Slovak region from another, along with the sewing of distinctive regional costumes. The fujara, a shepherd's giant flute held vertically in front of the body when played, is a particularly Slovak instrument. Hviezdoslav (1849-1921), the pseudonym of Pavol Országh, is probably the best-known Slovak poet.

Medicine. Until fairly recent times, Slovak peasants relied on the knowledge of traditional curers to diagnose their illnesses and provide them with appropriate remedies. Rural populations also shared popular cures among themselves and had extensive information about how to make teas and poultices to relieve certain symptoms and about which plants to use to stem bleeding. Curers were still diagnosing evil eye in the 1970s through a particular divination ritual. Modern Slovak medical care on the village level revolves around the clinic, a community building where patients come to be treated by the regional dentist, pediatrician, obstetrician/gynecologist, and general practitioner who stop by at regular intervals. Usually the resident health-care delivery system consists of a midwife/paramedic and a nurse. Pharmacies in towns display colored charts bearing drawings of medicinal plants and urge people not to destroy them. Although Modern medicine is mostly relied upon and doctors with formal educations are trusted, Slovaks in some areas still believe that certain illnesses and symptoms are the work of witches or the evil eye and will seek out traditional curers.

Death and Afterlife. Christian Slovaks believe in an afterlife, and burials are primarily inhumations in conventional cemeteries. Pre-Christian Slovaks apparently cremated the dead, placed the ashes in ceramic urns, interred them with grave goods of various types, and then covered these features with clay and stone mounds. Death is not borne lightly by the surviving relatives and friends. In the recent past, the deceased was washed and prepared for burial at home, with a wooden coffin being made as soon as possible and brought to the house. The family then kept vigil with the corpse through the night and visitors paid respects the next day, at which time a religious service would be held in the church and then the coffin would be carried off for burial. Normally, a funeral procession would form and walk through the village, accompanied by the village band. Widows would adopt black skirts, aprons, vests, and sweaters as permanent attire following the death of a spouse.

Bibliography

Kirschbaum, Joseph M., ed. (1978). Slovak Culture through the Centuries. Toronto: Slovak World Congress.

Mikus, Joseph A. (1977). Slovakia and the Slovaks. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press.

Oddo, Gilbert L. (1960). Slovakia and Its People. New York: Robert Speller & Sons.

Pleuvza, Viliam, and Jozef Vladár, general eds. (1984). Slovenská Socialistická Republika: Encyklopedický prehl'ad. Priroda, dejiny, hospodárstvo, kultúra. Bratislava: Slovensky Akademie Vied.