Budovanie kultu Jozefa Tisa

Hruboň, Anton, 1989-

Budovanie kultu Jozefa Tisa = Building up the cult of Jozef Tiso / Anton Hruboň. -- A politician and the first Slovak president, Jozef Tiso, is among the most discussed figures in the Slovak national history and the views of his political activities vary. The wide variability of the reflection of Tiso's political activities oscillates from uncritical demonization through professionally balanced views to the eulogizing and apologetic perception of his career and the steps he took in the position of a professional politician between 1938 and 1945. The paper deals with the latter interpretation, analysing the process of building up the cult of Jozef Tiso in the Slovak political culture, from its origin up to the present. In the chronological order, it pays attention to the individual aspects of the image of the national genius" and the first-class statesman" with the noble human qualities created by the propaganda apparatus of the Ludak regime, and subsequently, after Tiso's execution in April 1947, to the image of a martyr created and formed by the pro-Ludak émigrés and the adherents of this ideological line in Slovakia after 1989. The study analyzes the issue in a wider European context against the background of the concept of sacralised policy, using Tiso's example to point to its similarities with other New Europe" leaders as well as to Slovak specifics. The paper also describes the current forms of practising Tiso's cult, framed by some old-Timers' nostalgia for the wartime Slovak State and the deliberate legendizing Tiso's person for the purposes of political instrumentalization.

In Kultúrne dejiny. -- Ružomberok : Verbum - vydavateľstvo KU, 2017. -- ISSN 1338-2209. -- Roč. 8, č. 2 (2017), s. 213-239