Fighting on all Fronts (37 page)

There was a sense of impending hard times when the Slovak leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia met in Zilina on 6 October 1938, as the Ludaks, their old opponent, consolidated their power. Nonetheless, it was seemingly unprepared for how quickly the autonomous Slovak organs would move against it. Within a few days KSC
activity
in Slovakia was officially banned, while the party itself technically remained legal.
²⁹

The Communists already had experience of working under attack from the state. The Czechoslovak police had a special team dedicated to monitoring the KSC from 1933 because of its working class agitation and allegations of Russian espionage. The party also had some experience of effective illegality between 1934 and 35. Despite this experience, although illegality was discussed at the Zilina meeting, no actual steps, such as establishing an underground leadership, were taken.
³⁰
Steps were only taken after it could no longer work openly. It was paralysed during the initial period of illegality, which forced it to focus on holding the organisation together rather than on anti-fascist resistance.

Tiso’s police raided and shut down its party offices, documents that had not been hidden or destroyed were confiscated and party
functionaries’ and activists’ houses were also searched. In this context, leading Slovak Communists met in Vilian Siroky’s house in Prague in late October 1938 to discuss the transition to illegality. It was necessary to establish a new leadership with cadres who would not attract so much attention from the police. So the first illegal Slovak leadership was set up with the lesser known Koloman Mosko as its political head, Karol Bacilek in charge of organisational matters, and Julius Duris responsible for ideological work. The leadership moved to Brno in Moravia to escape the reach of the Slovak authorities. Duris, who still resided in Prague, was also charged with maintaining contact with the national party through Emanuel Klima, a member of the KSC’s first illegal central committee.
³¹

However, it faced insurmountable problems and wasn’t active politically apart from propaganda work. During the rigged Slovak autonomous elections it put out a flyer urging people to boycott or “vote negatively” against the single HSLS candidate. The leaflet was addressed “To Slovak voters and the Slovak People” and presented its readers with a simple choice: “Those who want war, vote Yes. Those who want order and peace, vote No!” Following KSC’s seizure of power in 1948 it was claimed that this leaflet was responsible for the low turnout, although while it contributed to it, its impact was most likely wildly exaggerated. The Communists didn’t actually claim responsibility for the leaflet, which was signed off “From Friends of the People”, so as not to alert the police to it organising illegally.
³²
Nonetheless, the police found out that it was written by Mosko and Duris and began an unsuccessful hunt for the culprits, which led to the official banning of the Communist Party and the losing of all its elected representatives. The actual production and distribution of the flyer point to the difficulties the illegal party faced. The flyer itself was written in Prague. Jozef Valo, Karol Smidke, Stefan Kosik and Ferdinand Zupka then transported copies to Slovakia, while others were taken to Hodin in Moravia to a contact and then picked up by Slovak Communists.
³³

Duris explains what the party’s situation meant for its anti-fascist activity:

During the first sitting, district heads were already referring to great difficulties in Slovakia. Above all that the organisation had collapsed, the membership disintegrated, many full time workers had gone abroad, and many, mainly older ones, didn’t want to work any more. They [the district heads] reported that they had difficulties making contact, finding flats, taking subscriptions, and holding the old membership
together. Similarly all the district heads reported that it’s not possible to count in the longer term on more substantial activity, when the old membership is demoralised, waiting to see how developments unfold, and is sometimes surprised by international events. We [the Slovak party] had great difficulty with collecting subscriptions, which severely held back the district heads, meaning we were reliant on a contribution from Prague. In this state, we met around twice in the run up to 14 March 1939 [the independence declaration].
In this period of uncertainty, we didn’t intervene, because we were only concentrating on securing our membership
[my emphasis].
³⁴

Its focus was on building an illegal organisation capable of surviving Tiso’s repression, so it turned its energies to building “cell structures” of three to five loyal cadre capable of carrying out clandestine party work. However, it did still try to capitalise when there was discontent with the regime, for instance when the Tiso regime made it compulsory to join the Hlinka Guard, it was able to tap into discontent among workers.

The KSS was also politically disorientated as it somersaulted in sync with Moscow’s shifting foreign policy line. The party published material giving the party line on all major domestic and international developments.
³⁵
However, in the initial stages of the break-up of the Czechoslovak state Moscow’s foreign policy was shifting to an accommodation with Nazi imperialism, and on 23 August 1939 the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany formally signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop “non-aggression pact”. This led the Soviet Union to formally recognise the fascist “Slovak State” the following month—and to also break off diplomatic contact with the leadership of the Czechoslovak resistance abroad. While the Soviet Union recognised Slovakia as part of the Nazi “sphere of influence”, it went further than just formal recognition and included promises of economic cooperation with the Tiso regime.
³⁶
In an attempt to respond to these “shocking” international developments, the KSS raised the slogan “For free and independent Slovakia” but later changed it to “For a Soviet Slovakia”. It would not officially change the “Soviet Slovakia” slogan until 1943, and some local organisations continued to use it until 1944 because of political differences and organisational disconnect with the leadership. Following the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, which the “Slovak State” participated in, Communist agitation swung towards agitating against the war.
³⁷
Its propaganda included appeals to “Slavic unity” as well as anti-fascism and its leaflets were signed off with “Long Live the USSR”.
³⁸

The KSS, like the party in the Czech lands, remained a resistance organisation in its own right, However, there is still evidence that it tried to relate to instances of mass resistance, including workers’ struggle, while on the whole it did not initiate them. There is further evidence that the majority of the population in Slovakia didn’t accept the Tiso lies in instances of social unrest, including workers’ struggles, that took place during the years of the “Slovak State”.

The Soviet delegation in the “Slovak State” reported a “worsening economic situation in Slovakia, which has caused many strikes of an economic character”. Many historians report that strikes were a “regular occurrence” from the beginning of 1940 in the “Slovak State”.
³⁹
For instance, the police detail of the USB reported that during the construction of the Bratislava to Leopoldov railway 300 workers downed tools. Among their main demands were higher wages. In a meeting between the ministry of transport officials and workers’ representatives the government was forced to concede to their wage demands.
⁴⁰
This was typical of one of the responses of the Tiso regime, which tried to both suppress and contain working class resistance. If strikes were around “economic demands” it would make some concessions but take precautions to stop them happening again. However, if there was a potential that these could spill over to become political, or if there were political elements involved from the beginning, then it would begin the “legal process” and put the strike leaders into the notorious Ilava prison as “communist provocateurs”.

There is substantial controversy about the biggest instance of workers’ struggle during the years of the “Slovak State”. In the Handlova district in western Slovakia a militant miners’ strike involving some 3,000 workers, both Slovak and ethnic German, broke out on 30 October 1940 around wage demands. It would only end on 4 November after being brutally suppressed. During the period of Communist Party rule the party claimed that its cadres were at the heart of initiating and running the dispute. The dominant narrative today is that it was primarily a strike by ethnic German workers for pay parity with workers in the Greater Reich—and certainly without any Communist input.

The USB arrested the ringleaders and following the strike tried to find out what caused it, in line with the Tiso regime’s twin strategy of suppressing and containing workers’ struggle. USB agent Jozef Glinda was sent into Ilava prison, posing as a prisoner, to get to the root cause.
According to his testimony to the National Court, “The origin of the strike lies in the fact that workers were convinced to strike. Members of the German minority in Handlova did it…they wanted the whole mine complex to be put under the control of the Herman Goring Works”.
⁴¹
This argument, then, rests on the fascist interior minister Alexander Mach and Koloman Skacani, the USB agent who led the operation, both “confirming” it in their testimonies.
⁴²

However, this strike did involve both Slovak and ethnic German workers, showing the possibility for working class unity, and was a sign of the social discontent brewing at the base of society. It is clear that the Handlova miners’ strike posed a serious threat to the Tiso regime, and caused serious embarrassment to the minority German Party (DP) that claimed to have ethnic German workers under control. To suppress the unrest, the interior minister Mach and the Ministry of National Defence were forced to dispatch 250 police officers, 50 regular troops, four tanks, four armoured cars and 22 secret USB agents to hunt down the main militants.
⁴³
News of the unrest spread throughout the local area and farther afield despite tight press regulation. “The whole mine is on strike, there are 400 gendarmes here, and the army and two tanks as well. Well, there’s talk that there’s going to be revolution—all won’t be well,” wrote one local resident to their relative.
⁴⁴
There were also signs that it was developing into more than just an “economic” dispute and spilled into a demonstration against the Ludaks regime.

Jan Osoha, one of the leaders of the illegal KSS, said in custody that the strike had come as a complete surprise to the party leadership.
⁴⁵
This would not be surprising considering the fragmented nature of the party; nonetheless, around 100 illegal party workers were arrested after the strike and the party did put out agitational material during the walkout.
⁴⁶
The KSS published a leaflet entitled “The Truth about Handlova” in Slovak and “In Handlova: the Strike and the State of Emergency” in German to inform wider layers about what had taken place. These flyers got to almost every district in Slovakia.
⁴⁷
The Handlova revolt was no doubt contradictory in its content and was typical of workers’ struggles during the period. The social situation meant that workers did fight back after Handlova, but were brutally suppressed by the regime. Three years later textile workers in Zilina and Rajec walked out over the payment of living allowances on 13 June, but security forces successfully suppressed it the following day.
⁴⁸
The strikes began on “economic” demands, but were suppressed before they could generalise and spill into full-on protests against the regime.
⁴⁹

Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the Communist Party of Slovakia was politically able to step up its efforts. It carried on with its work of building its clandestine organisation—and rebuilding it after repeatedly getting smashed—and putting out propaganda. Its main organ was the national
People’s Voice
(
Hlas Ludu
) newspaper, but it also published regional newspapers, such as
Spark
(
Iskra
),
The Hammer
(
Kladivo
) and a German language version (
Der Hammer
).
⁵⁰

However, it also undertook acts of sabotage to disrupt the regime’s transport and communications infrastructure and began trying to set up actual partisan groups. Partisan groups were set up across Slovakia—in western Slovakia the J Kral group, in central Slovakia the Sitno and Vtacnik groups and in eastern Slovakia the P Borosa group, and later in Turec under Viliam Zingor and in Slanske Vrychy under Kukorelli.
⁵¹

However, there was also a battle taking place inside the Communist Party about the direction the resistance ought to take. Repression meant that, as in the Czech lands, there was pressure for the different resistance organisations to forge some kind of unity. Yet while there had already been cooperation between different organisations, the movement was split on whether or not to work with the Communists.

The turning point began in 1941 and came to a head in 1942, and this would cause friction with the Benes leadership and its allies inside Slovakia. With the KSS’s initiative, the Central Revolutionary National Committee (URNV) was formed in March 1942. Its political leadership was made up of P Stahl and M Hrusovsky representing the KSS, M Polak who had been a member of the Agrarian Party and the writer F Kral. The USB secret police swiftly arrested all of them and shut it down. However, it was renewed in the autumn of 1942, with the Communists M Faltn and J Pall, the Social Democrat F Komzal and I Doxner representing the “civic resistance”. It released two new declarations, namely “Response to the Slovak Nation” (
Ohlas Slovenskemu Nardu
) and the Directive for the Organisation of National Revolutionary Committees (
Smernice pre organizaciu narodno-revolucnich vyborou
). This second publication was met with some success, with the setting up of the first local Revolutionary National Committee, including in larger cities such as the capital Bratislava, and in Zilina and Zvolen.
⁵²
Their main role was to unify and coordinate the resistance groups that already existed. But the Communist Party still had a sectarian attitude, which reinforced its focus on conspiratorial activity seen in opposition to building mass resistance. It also
insisted, much like the other resistance organisations, that unity would be on the basis of the party’s “leading role”.