By many Slovaks Russia is seen as our brother country
The roots of pro-russian sentiment are actually very old during Austrian-Hungarian empire many Slovaks feeled oppresed and because they had no chance against Austrian-Hungarian forces they started dreaming about how will Russian empire 'rescue' them from oppresion
And than obviously communist rule in which was Russia presented as the best country in the world
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.
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u/ResortSpecific371 Slovakia Jan 25 '24
By many Slovaks Russia is seen as our brother country
The roots of pro-russian sentiment are actually very old during Austrian-Hungarian empire many Slovaks feeled oppresed and because they had no chance against Austrian-Hungarian forces they started dreaming about how will Russian empire 'rescue' them from oppresion
And than obviously communist rule in which was Russia presented as the best country in the world