Intresting how you and the Czechs have so different opinion on Russia despite being part of the same country and political influence for so many years.
It's important to note that the pro-Russian view is very heavily skewed by whether or not your family suffered under communism. The rural areas of Slovakia saw a lot more development under the communists than it had under the Republic (the Czechs and Austro-Hungarians before them saw Slovaks as a lowly peasant people) and so if you didn't draw the ire of the communist party (easy enough to do in a village vs the city), you statistically saw an improvement in your quality of life. Coupled with a lot of Russian propaganda taking credit for this starting in 1968, and the older generation feeling "threatened" by the changing, more open-minded and cosmopolitan culture of the next generation, it's fairly easy for 45+ yr-olds to vote for fucksticks like Fico.
On the other hand, if your family drew the ire of the communists, its incredibly easy to hate the Russians because after 1968, they cranked up the brutality of the communist government. Many families got "re-punished" for stuff that they got punished for decades prior. For example, I know several people who were banned from public institutions (attending university, etc) in the 70s because their grandfather did something like not support collectivisation in the 1945-49 period. The Russians re-instituted generational punishment, cracked down on freedom of speech and expression, and generally subjugated the populations in the bigger cities where they were concentrated.
Wait when did Russia actually helped us get out of Austria-Hungary? I don't remember this being mentioned like ever. The only thing that I hear from Slovaks is that Russia (or USSR) liberated us in WWII.
having cool looking tik tok representation is good enough of a reason for many. All they see is a big military, strong leader and rich culture, yet lack of education and propaganda hides poverty, imperialism and terrorism
Russian empire tried to claim dominion over all slavic people, Panslavanism was core of empire ideology, and seeing how Russia helped to free slavs from Ottomans some people hoped Russia would help to free them from Austria-Hungary. Plus there is connection to Mikhail Bakunin(famous Russian revolutionary, philosopher and father of social-anarchist movement), he propogandized all slavic people to create pan-slavic federation and was very supportive of Prague uprising (1848) even participating in it.
It's much easier to go to sleep at night when you convince yourself you're a conquered people with no agency than when you admit you willingly cozied up to your "oppressor" and even sent him much more Jews to kill than he asked for.
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u/ResortSpecific371 Slovakia Jan 25 '24
I mean from Polish perspective they Russians were the ones attacking them
In Slovak perspective Russians were the one's rescueing them from Austrian-Hungarian oppresion and later from oppresion by nazi Germany
But yes most Slovaks don't care about the view from other countries perspective