Slovakia’s memory of 1968 and the paradox of Russian influence today

21 August, the anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, remains an important reminder of how nations deal with their past. For Slovakia, it is also an occasion to reflect on a paradox: how a country whose freedom was crushed by thousands of Russian tanks and lived under Russian occupation for 21 years has become one of Russia’s most reliable fifth columns inside the European Union.

To begin with, it is important to clarify terms. In 1968, it was not an abstract “Soviet” force that invaded Czechoslovakia. It was Russia. The language of occupation was Russian, not some hybrid “Soviet” tongue, and the order to invade came from Moscow, not from Almaty or Minsk. Those who lived through the invasion remember well: graffiti on the walls of Czech and Slovak cities did not call for “Soviets out”, but demanded that Russians, “Ivan”, go home. Those who opened fire on unarmed civilians in the streets were called Russians, not Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Georgians or members of other nations trapped in the empire branded in the 20th century as the Soviet Union.

Today, only people over 65 remember the Russian invasion clearly. Those over 50 recall schools where teachers were addressed as “comrades”, red flags hanging in classrooms and offices, portraits of Lenin, slogans promising “eternal unity with the Soviet Union”, and Russian military barracks in Slovak towns. But for Slovaks under 40 – more than half the population, the occupation exists only in parental stories or films.

Here, memory begins to blur. Some of what younger generations hear about life under occupation differs sharply from reality. This is not merely fading memory. Many Slovaks who were communist officials, secret police officers or beneficiaries of the regime profited from the occupation. Their descendants may see those times as a “golden age”. For others who lost out during the transformation after 1989, occupation years can appear almost like a lost paradise.

Czechs, Poles and others in the region also struggle with selective memory. They, too, had collaborators and profiteers under Moscow’s rule, and many were disappointed by the failures of democracy after 1989. Yet Slovakia alongside Hungary stands out today as a platform for Russian influence in the EU. Why?

Some roots are recent, others go back to the 19th century. A key factor is the collapse of Slovakia’s education system. Post-1989 reforms left schools unable to transmit historical awareness or civic culture. The problem is not limited to centralised state schools: autonomous universities and even the Slovak Academy of Sciences maintain close partnerships with Russian institutions still controlled by the security services.

Another failure is symbolic: Slovakia never carried out a full “de-Russification” of its public space. Even in the capital, long seen as the most Western and democratic part of the country, Russian traces remain. Decades after the occupiers left, one can still be born on Moscow Street in Bratislava, attend school on Tupolev Street, work on Baikal Street, and end life on Lomonosov Street. The city counts 36 “Russian” streets in total – a legacy of the occupiers’ careful marking of their “Russkiy mir” on the Danube. Local authorities often say renaming would be expensive. But culture always has a price, and the absence of cultural awareness is ultimately costlier.

The deeper roots, however, stretch back to the 19th century. Every Slovak pupil can recite Jan Kollár’s lines from his 1824 pan-Slavic poem The Daughter of Sláva, which praises the “old oak” standing firm against stormy times. That oak symbolised Tsarist Russia – a country Kollár himself never visited. His vision of Russia as protector was later reinforced by Ľudovít Štúr, the “father of the Slovak nation”. Although almost no Slovak today has read his 1852 text Slavdom and the World of the Future, everyone knows it as Štúr’s “political testament”, expressing admiration for Russia – another country he never set foot in.

The book’s origins are shrouded in suspicion. Allegedly written in German, it remained unknown until 1867, when it was published in Moscow in Russian. According to one legend, a close friend of Štúr delivered the manuscript years after his death in 1856. Another version claims Štúr himself personally submitted it to the Russian embassy in Vienna. Both stories cast a long shadow over the authenticity of the text.

If genuine, it would mean Štúr, a Lutheran and graduate of a German university, hated Western Christianity, republican ideas, democracy, free markets and even his own language so much that he imagined Slovakia’s future in serfdom, conversion to Orthodoxy and adoption of Russian as its literary language. That vision seems improbable, which is why sceptics often suggest that the text was a fabrication by Russian secret services – in today’s terms, a hybrid warfare operation against Austria.

It would hardly be unique. The 19th and early 20th centuries are full of notorious forgeries, from the fabricated Czech manuscripts to the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Against that background, it is entirely plausible that all trails of Slavdom and the World of the Future lead back to Russia.

What is more remarkable is how propaganda dating back two centuries continues to shape Slovak perceptions. The romanticised image of Russia as protector, nurtured since the 19th century and reinforced by the silence of post-1989 elites, still clouds the Slovak political landscape. On the anniversary of 1968, this contradiction is particularly striking: a nation once crushed under Russian tanks is today among the EU’s most vulnerable to Moscow’s influence.

Juraj Mesik is expert of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. The original article in Ukrainian can be found here.

Caption: Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (R) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, 09 May 2025. Russia marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in World War II over Nazi Germany and its allies. EPA/ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP POOL

Updated: August 25, 2025 - 05:29