* ESC - close the search window
interview
A choice we need to make: Michal Hvorecký on opposition culture and Slovak authorities
28.01.2025
Once Slovak politician and current prime minister of Slovakia Robert Fico and his team came to power, the atmosphere in Slovakia changed dramatically. Purges in the cultural sphere are now prompting country-wide protests and rallies. The present administration is using methods of intimidation and pressure to spread fear and hatred. Anyone with an active position who disapproves of the government’s actions can be targeted for persecution by law enforcement. This happened to Slovak author Michal Hvorecký. In a conversation with Chytomo, Hvorecký discussed confrontations between the current government and the cultural community, the history behind it, and Slovak society’s future.
Photo by @Šimon Lupták
Chytomo: We know you were interrogated on Dec. 16. Why was a renowned Slovak author put through this procedure — who filed the lawsuit against you and why?
Michal Hvorecký: Slovak Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová is the reason. An ultra-nationalistic political party within the ruling coalition has been in power for more than a year. Minister of Culture, Šimkovičová, and Slovak politician, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Environment, Tomáš Taraba, are representatives of the far right.
The cultural community has been protesting for over a year now, organizing demonstrations and signing petitions to force the minister to resign. I have written, spoken, and criticized her activity.
Over the summer, in her public speeches, Šimkovičová began mentioning my name, so to speak, using intimidation tactics to imply that she would sue me for my comments and articles in the media. I sensed that something was going to happen. I did not stop criticizing her actions as Minister of Culture. In October, I received a call from the police and found out that I was being sued for defamation and that Šimkovičová wanted me to be sentenced to five years. On Monday, Dec. 16, I testified in front of the police.
Chytomo: Can you tell us how the interrogation went?
Michal Hvorecký: Sure. The interrogator explained to me and my lawyer why I was called upon. We found out that Šimkovičová had sued me as a private person, not as a minister. We also found out the subject of her complaint. I gave my testimony, and now I want to believe that the police will dismiss the complaint.
It must be noted that last year was marked by huge changes in Slovak’s justice system. Robert Fico and his party made changes that only benefited the oligarchs close to him. Almost all who were under criminal investigation are now free. There are serious fears that Slovakia is no longer a rule-of-law state.
When I went to the interrogation with my lawyer — who is very good — we agreed to use this occasion as an opportunity to try and help others in a similar situation. You see, there’s an increasing number of these kinds of lawsuits in Slovakia. Almost every week, a journalist, an artist, or an author is sued, intimidated, or threatened.
Chytomo: Were you worried? Did you have any concerns when you went to testify?
Michal Hvorecký: Yes, I was worried to some extent. My lawyer was pretty sure the police should dismiss the complaint since it had no legal basis, but when he started following Robert Fico’s steps in the justice system, he became more cautious. To help ordinary people protect themselves from unjustified harassment and intimidation, we decided to create a guide: “Self-Defense for Citizens.” That’s why we organized a public discussion with a provocative title “Is Martina Šimkovičová a neo-fascist?” We invited two historians of fascism and two of the best lawyers to speak. We contemplated when it is and is not possible to talk about neo-fascism, and what is freedom of speech in the EU.
The investigator working with my case admitted that during the entire existence of the defamation clause since 2011, only three out of a thousand complaints have been brought to court. All those cases concerned European journalists — people who write. There were examples from Austria, Germany, France, and Iceland. To be able to write freely, journalists in the EU have special protection. In Iceland and Austria, for example, only four similar cases have been brought to court and were won in favor of journalists. I must say these examples help me remain optimistic.
RELATED: Jan Kravčík: When you lose the cultural war, then the nation is totally lost
I am waiting for the next interrogation. The investigator will hand in his opinion on whether the case will be closed or have further development. It should come in January or February.
Chytomo: How does your family cope with this?
Michal Hvorecký: My parents are worried, especially my mother. The power coalition controls all disinformation channels, which spreads untrue information to humiliate, slander, and attack people. These are pro-Russian web portals and websites. Online media InfoVojna informed their audience that I am, and I quote: “a radicalized militaristic progressive liberal who spreads hatred in Slovak society.” This is one example of what they write about me. Šimkovičová is pretending to be a victim; that is her strategy. Since the outbreak of protests, Šimkovičová has been complaining that the cultural community is “attacking” her. In reality, the victims are the people who lost their jobs as a result of her activity. For example, the SNS (the Slovak National Party) party has plastered all the billboards by the roadside with slogans that humiliate LGBTQ+ people. They are proud to discredit them.
Chytomo: How did Šimkovičová get into politics?
Michal Hvorecký: The current Minister of Culture Šimkovičová worked as a TV presenter at Slovan TV channel for 8 years spreading pro-Russian propaganda. Šimkovičová built her career on spreading Russian disinformation. She was successful but was fired for making racist comments back in 2015. Šimkovičová continued her career on a disinformation website. She did it for money and her career. She became very popular in these circles.
Boris Kollár (former speaker of the National Council) invited Šimkovičová into politics, but Kollár did not make it to the parliament. Later Šimkovičová became a member of the SNS, and this time managed to get into parliament with this political force.
The comment in which I called her a neo-fascist was written back in 2023, but she has only sued me over it now.
Chytomo: Do you know if Šimkovićová has allies or followers in the cultural community?
Michal Hvorecký: The Slovak cultural community is against Šimkovićová as Minister of Culture. Šimkovićová has no allies in culture. Her political party SNS (Slovenská národná strana — Slovak National Party) received 6% in the elections. Now, the party has only 2%. SNS is losing in all public opinion polls, and few artists support it. We are the opposition to the government. Both Robert Fico and Martina Šimkovićová are suing their opponents.
Chytomo: Once Šimkovičová became the Minister of Culture, she immediately began staff purges. Without serious reasons, she fired the heads of the Slovak National Theater and Slovak National Gallery. Why? What is your opinion?
Michal Hvorecký: Šimkovićová has no plan — the only thing she can do is fire people. She has no strategy for what she wants to do with the national theater or gallery. Šimkovićová just wants to control them. She wants to change how the cultural sphere is managed because these institutions are free and open-minded. They have their own legal subjectivity and shape the repertoire they show.
Šimkovićová wants the ministry to control the theater repertoire. Šimkovićová tries to appoint her people to the highest positions, but the problem is that they don’t have competent people. These positions are held by amateurs.
Chytomo: Can’t they appoint someone like her instead?
Michal Hvorecký: It is not about replacing her with someone else. The pro-government coalition in the parliament is weak. This gives us hope. After Fico met with Putin, this issue became even more acute and important.
Chytomo: Does this look like normalization — the repressive measures in Czechoslovak society that began with the seizure of power by politicians loyal to the Soviet Union after the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968?
Michal Hvorecký: I would not use the word “normalization.” In the 1980s, we were a dictatorship. Our country was not democratic, we were not members of the EU, and we were not free. That said, some of the steps the current Slovak government is making do resemble normalization tactics: the way they “throw out” people and appoint people who are loyal. They want to control and censor culture by creating a specialized body. In other words, they want to use censorship. They want to control what one can publish and what one cannot. They want to penalize, punish, and control. I don’t think this is impossible in the Internet era.
RELATED: Publisher from Georgia David Kakabadze: The most important thing is to get rid of Russian influence
Chytomo: The current Slovak government is arrogant. They act as if they are going to remain in power forever. Why are Šimkovičová and Fico giving so much attention to their “war” against the cultural community and the media?
Michal Hvorecký: This war is important for them. Šimkovićová is a smokescreen: She takes on all the criticism and protests, while Fico does his business. Fico’s team is robbing the state and releasing oligarchs. The former prosecutor Dušan Kováčik, an extremely corrupt person sentenced to 8 years for corruption, has already been freed. In my opinion, he is very beneficial to Fico. Slovak society is distracted by the Minister of Culture while Fico minds his business, which includes meeting with Putin.
On the other hand, I don’t think they expected the resistance to be so strong. Slovakia has had a history of incompetent cultural ministers before. When protests were organized and 200-500 protesters came, it was considered a great success. Current protests involve 5,000 Slovaks. Now, it feels like not enough people came — that someday soon upwards of 50,000 could show up.
People understand what is going on. Citizens love the Slovak National Theater, they take it as their own. This surprised both Fico and Šimkovičová, because they did not expect society to be in solidarity with culture.
Chytomo: What do you think is the future for Slovak society?
Michal Hvorecký: A great deal of resistance. What we need is to decide what kind of country we want to be. Do we belong to the EU? Are we stupid enough to be influenced by Russia? Fico is pulling us closer to the Kremlin. Slovak society is sharply divided. The truth is that half of the population tends to believe conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda. This is what Fico, Šimkovičová, and their followers managed to accomplish in the previous years. They are the “victims” of the fifteen-year hybrid war in Slovakia. Those lies have deeply seeped into Slovak society, and even more so: Fico is very good at manipulating.
At the same time, Slovakia has a fairly strong civil society, which for example, quickly mobilized and protested against Fico’s trip to the Kremlin. These demonstrations were organized in half a day and swept across major cities in Slovakia. I gave a speech there, as did former Foreign Minister Ivan Korčok, who supports Ukraine. Korčok is one of the leaders of the opposition. We need a strong, united pro-European coalition to defeat Fico.
At the same time, in my subjective opinion, Slovak society has not experienced anything like the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 or what Georgia is going through now. It hasn’t become a mass movement yet. We have to understand that we belong to Europe.
Chytomo: Do you fear that Slovakia might leave the EU?
Michal Hvorecký: I don’t want to think or talk about it — it is too absurd, dangerous, and risky. I believe the SNS party and those who would like to leave are the minority. If you look at the statistics, only 10-12% of people in Slovakia want Putin’s system here.
The problem is that quite a large group of people still say that Slovakia is neither West nor East, that it is somewhere “in between.” Where is it? What does that mean? There is no “in between.” In times of global crises and wars, you need to understand where you stand and know where you belong. You are either on the side of the aggressor or you are on the side of the victim. You are either on the side of freedom or you are on the side of tyranny.
In my opinion, some Slovaks have not yet decided for themselves. It is painful to comprehend. It hurts.
Chytomo: We know that you support Ukraine and even established a Slovak-Ukrainian book club in Bratislava. Could you tell us which authors you’ve introduced to Slovak readers?
Michal Hvorecký: Establishing a book club was a spontaneous idea that we realized with the poet Anna Siedykh. In 2023, it became clear that Fico, with his pro-Russian views, could return to power. I was wondering what we could do. I then realized even more clearly that Slovaks know little about Ukrainian history, culture, and cinema. Unfortunately, Slovak public television and the rest of the media cover very few topics related to Ukrainian culture. I was very disappointed. After all, it is important to explain what Ukrainian identity and culture are, what is happening in Ukraine, what is Donbas, and what is Galicia and Bukovyna, but nothing of the sort has been done. I have been reading Ukrainian literature in Czech and German translations for many years.
More and more Ukrainian books are being published in Czech and Slovak languages. With Anna Siedykh, we decided to organize a reading club, hoping that at least five people would come. More people came than we expected. Sometimes it’s 25 people, sometimes 60 — it depends. Every month we read one book by a Ukrainian author and discuss it. We have read works by Serhiy Zhadan, Yuri Andrukhovych, and Artem Chekh. We are planning to read Artem Chapeye. We have read Oleksandr Mykhed before. Sofia Andrukhovych personally visited our club. We even discussed “The City” by Valerian Pidmohylnyi.
Our book club is becoming quite famous because, unfortunately, there are few Ukrainian cultural programs in Slovakia. I would like to see more such clubs and have them in other cities, not just in Bratislava. Both Slovaks and Ukrainians who are currently living in Slovakia come to our club. We had a professor of literature from Crimea who was robbed of everything by the Russians. He first fled to Kyiv, then to Slovakia. The members of our club are women from Mariupol, Donbas, and all over Ukraine. Such clubs are a good way to get to know each other.
Michal Hvorecký (born 1976) graduated in aesthetics from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra. From 2000-2003, Hvorecký was a co-organizer of the Wilsonic music festival. He writes short stories, novels, and journalism. He is a regular contributor to various newspapers and magazines, such as DennikN, SME, and the online portal Salon. He has received several literary prizes and author’s scholarships for his texts: MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Goethe Institute in Munich, and International Writing Program in the United States. His novel “Plyš” has been adapted for the stage by the Na zábradlí Theater in Prague, the Aréna Theater in Bratislava, and the Schauspielhaus Theater in Hannover. In 2009, the Theater Forum in Schwechat, Austria, premiered his first play written in German, “The Slovak Institute: One Comedy.”
Michal Hvorecký’s works have been translated into German, Polish, Czech, Italian, and Ukrainian.
Translation: Iryna Savyuk
Copy editing: Terra Friedman King
This publication is sponsored by the Chytomo’s Patreon community
the more you read, the greater the possibilities

336
Cultural Oppression
The Slovak Literary Center demands reinstatement of its director and calls for global solidarity
18.01.2025 -
970
Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize
Setting Ukrainians and Jews against each other. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern on the Soviet “friendship of peoples”
16.12.2024 - Oleksandr Mymruk