The Slavic Congress in Slovak Historical Memory

Abstract

The Slavic Congress of May 1848 was one of the significant milestones in the revolutionary year of 1848. In Slovak historical and journalistic writing, there is a surprising contrast between the evaluation of the congress as the first occasion for the presentation of Slovak demands in an international forum on the one hand, and the modest treatment of the issue in the form of source editions and in-depth analyses on the other. This was due to the fact that great expectations were replaced by disappointment, and the quality of the returns associated with the event and its place in historical memory corresponded to this. The Slavic Congress was the subject of extensive ideological instrumentalization and remained subject to considerable manipulation, obfuscation, and distorted interpretations by contemporaries and later publicists, politicians, and historians (after 1948 in the service of communist politics). This is what this article is about. Numerous inter-Slavic conflicts after the fall of communism leave virtually no room for the revival of Slavic ideas.