NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

3.1.1. The most obvious difference: geopolitics The most remarkable difference between Poland and Slovakia is their population size. While Slovakia is relatively small in terms of its population, Poland, with a population of 38.5 million people, is a relatively big country. These natural denominators also influence the geopolitical position of the two countries. While Slovakia lies between the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, Poland is “sandwiched” between the two European “superpowers” of Russia and Germany. The geopolitical positions of Poland and Slovakia have had an influence on the formation of the collective identity among their populations. While the Poles recognise the Germans and the Russians to be their historical “others”, 59 in the Slovak case the most important external and internal “others” are perceived as the Hungarians. 60 What makes the Polish-Slovak relationship quite unique is that they have not suffered from any significant tensions in the past. In this context, the perception of the Poles by the Slovaks – and vice versa – can be considered as ambivalent, or even positive. 3.1.2. Historical heritage: one region, but a different experience A number of historians refer to Central Europe as to the region with a common past and shared regional characteristics, 61 while others are more sceptical in this regard. In his widely-quoted study Three Historical Region of Europe , the Hungarian historian Jenö Szűcs not only identified medieval Central Europe as a separate historical region of Europe, but divided it in three parts: the North-East, North-West and the South. Each of these subregions of “historical” Central Europe employed a different method for the development the possibility to transform the relationships among the variables to some other countries, it might also create a false sense of security in the strength of the findings. As Guy Peters rightly noted, “the findings may be generalisable to a wide range of political and social systems, but the underlying causal process assumed to exist may not, even though it may appear from Berlin to Bombay to Bogota”. See B. Guy Peters Comparative Politics: Theory and Methods. (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), pp. 40–41. Therefore, I will try to avoid far-reaching generalisations. 59 To some extent, the Ukrainians were also perceived as important “others” by the Poles, mainly because of the negative experience during both World Wars. 60 To compare, see for exampleW. Roszkowski Historia Polski 1914-2004 . (Warszawa:Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2004) and Ľ. Lipták Slovensko v 20. storočí . (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1998). 61 See e.g. P. S. Wandycz Střední Evropa v dějinách. Od středověku do současnosti. Cena svobody. (Praha: Academia, 1998) or J. Szűcs, “Three Historical Regions of Europe”, J. Keane (ed.) Civil Society and the State . (New York, London: Verso, 1998).

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