The period of swordsmanship remains not only contradictory and dark, but also an insufficiently mapped part of modern Slovak history.
While we are still waiting for a quality work that would be created as a result of a team of experts, celebratory products are appearing on the book market.
One of them is currently published by Matica slovenská, its author is Mečiar’s passionate publicist and expatriate.
Why is nostalgia for the wild 90s associated with a departure from democratic Europe and a leader who was close to autocracy? When is the time for a critical evaluation of our past and to what extent are we still influenced by the shadows of swordsmanship?
To the glory of admiration
“The publication brings the personality of the prime minister closer to the reader in a different way than they know him from the mainstream media. The motivation was a personal experience with the politics of Vladimír Mečiar and especially the scandalous and purposeful media coverage of his politics,” reads the reader in the new book The Mečiar Phenomenon by Eva Zelenayová.
Mečiar phenomenon. (source: Matica slovenská)
The book was published by Matica slovenská and was presented on April 9, 2026 in the presence of the chairman of the institution Marián Gešper, members of the parliament Roman Michelko (CIS) and Michal Bartek (Voice), as well as former Czech Prime Minister and President, co-author of the division of Czechoslovakia Václav Klaus.
The book consists of enthusiastic descriptions of the former prime minister and chairman of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), who is described in it as a wise statesman and creator of the state.
Attacks against the European Union are complemented by conspiracies about the millions that allegedly flowed to us to topple his government. Mečiar, as is his habit, deviates from historical facts and misleads in interviews. Anti-national is responsible for disparaging his government hydrathe media and the opposition worked for foreign interests, and the third sector should have stopped right from the start. Mečiar had an “unreal memory, firm attitudes, goals, devotion to his homeland”, which brought him “to the glory of admiration”.
The author Eva Zelenayová was an active journalist in the party newspaper Slovenská republika, in the period 1994 – 1998 she was a deputy of the HZDS and a member of the Government Council for the Media, she sings enthusiastically with Mečiar’s suite in the well-known clip Vivat Slovakia.
SNS MP Roman Michelko also took part in the presentation of the book. (source: Facebook/Roman Michelko)
Even later, she participated in the propaganda of her former party boss. Already in 2001, she published the book Deformations and deformators, in which she defended the chairman of the HZDS, the chapters have titles such as Za pravdivý obraz Mečiar. Allegedly, “truth was brutally distorted”.
Later, Zelenayová ran for the Kotlebov people, she also spoke at a march against migration, where right-wing extremists threw stones at people. It is not the only contact with the ultra-right environment. Her son Peter Zelenay was prosecuted for promoting fascism when he was selling materials for a neo-Nazi environment under the counter in a shop in the center of Bratislava.
Zelenayová also took part in the event “against the march of vagrants in Bratislava”, i.e. against the Rainbow Pride, during the pandemic she declared that “by vaccination we enter into God’s work”.
In addition, she produces articles for nationalist and conspiracy websites, and at the same time she is the editor-in-chief of the magazine Svedectvo of the Association of Political Prisoners – Union of Anti-Communist Resistance, in which they defend the wartime regime and Jozef Tis.
Eva Zelenayová has been supporting Mečiar for over 30 years. (source: Jozef Jakubčo)
The black hole of Europe
This is not the only such act. The Slovak book market is regularly stocked with titles that glorify Vladimír Mečiar.
They were created during his government until 1998, but also later, when HZDS was part of the coalition during the first government in 2006-2010 Robert Fitz.
There are also titles from the environment of the party and from the pen of Mečiar himself, his book Slovakia, trust yourself! it is from 1998. That is, from the time when, thanks to his government, Slovakia became the black hole of Europe.
In addition to celebratory works, critical ones were also published about swordsmanship. Several of them were written by publicists, others are expert studies, but they are scattered in scientific journals and do not reach the wider public.
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Titles filled with party propaganda, misinformation and glorification of the period when civil society was seriously threatened are repeatedly added to it.
“The public space is significantly more open to texts from the circle of the HZDS or its sympathizers, they have a simpler narrative structure,” thinks political scientist and sociologist, professor Soňa Szomolányi, who was the author of several studies on Mečiar’s rule, which were published both at home and abroad during Mečiarism.
“As a result, an asymmetry has been created: critical professional reflection does exist, but its social impact is not and cannot be as strong as the impact of apologetic or propaganda literature. Therefore, it is more accurate to speak not about the absence of critical analysis, but rather about the insufficient transfer of academic knowledge to the collective memory.”
Why do we still lack a high-quality critical work on swordsmanship and why hasn’t a team of experts been created to present to the public documents about the breakdown of the rule of law, the persecution of citizens and the cooperation of the state apparatus with organized crime?
“One of the reasons is, I think, the rather characteristic reluctance of Slovak society to deal critically with the past,” muses historian Dušan Kováč.
“And when it comes to the most recent period, from the division of Czechoslovakia to such criminal cases as the murder of Kuciak and Kušnírová, the personal interests of influential and wealthy people enter into it, making research into recent Slovak history a very risky area that no one really wants to get involved in. With regard to swordplay, let’s not forget that he was not alone in many of his grabs and frauds, he was always helped by his coalition partners, but also non-coalition helpers of the SDĽ type and later DIRECTION-u, who prevented the cancellation of Mečiar’s amnesties under the pretext that they are in order from a legal point of view.
