Greater than 1 / 4 century has handed since america referred to as Slovakia a “black gap within the middle of Europe” — an island of autocratic malaise surrounded by spry new democracies. The insult, leveled in 1997 by Secretary of State Madeline Albright towards a rustic that has since joined NATO and the European Union, nonetheless stings.
However some within the Central European nation, appalled by an try final week to assassinate their prime minister, Robert Fico, and the frenzy of political finger-pointing that ensued, including warnings of civil conflict, are questioning whether or not Ms. Albright was on to one thing.
“We’re again in a black gap; I’m undecided we ever received out of it,” stated Roman Kvasnica, a outstanding Slovak lawyer who denounces a political tradition wherein threats and private insults are routine. In his personal authorized work he has confronted quite a few threats, together with a warning that he would get a “bullet within the head” from a tycoon charged with ordering the 2018 homicide of an investigative journalist digging into authorities corruption.
Exasperated by his nation’s divisive struggles to ascertain the rule of regulation and resist the temptations of strongman management, the lawyer shows a portrait of Vaclav Havel, an icon of democratic idealism, on the wall of his nation home in western Slovakia. Mr. Havel served as the primary president of post-communist Czechoslovakia, the state that in 1993 break up amicably into the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia.
Mr. Havel, a former playwright whose writing helped carry down the Berlin Wall and who later was president of the Czech Republic, is a reminder, Mr. Kvasnica stated, of the highway not taken by Slovakia, which spent a lot of the identical interval underneath the rule of Vladimir Meciar, an early pioneer of nationalist-tinged populism and a grasp of stoking polarization.
Hopes that Slovak politicians would possibly overcome their venomous feuds pale on Sunday when President-elect Peter Pellegrini introduced that efforts to get opposing events to sit down down collectively and agree on “fundamental guidelines for respectable political battles” had collapsed. Latest days, he stated, confirmed that “some politicians merely will not be in a position to show a fundamental self-reflection, even within the aftermath of such an immense tragedy.”
Peter Kalinak, the deputy prime minister, who’s operating the federal government within the absence of the critically wounded Mr. Fico, added to the unease by backing away from officers’ earlier insistence that the gunman was a “lone wolf.”
“The scenario appears even worse,” Mr. Kalinak stated Sunday at a information convention in Bratislava, the capital. New proof, he stated, signifies “there was some type of help when it comes to concealing the clues and {that a} third individual acted in favor of the perpetrator.”
“All of that is stunning, and for many people it could be a lot simpler if we might discuss just one individual,” he added.
The one individual thus far charged within the case is a 71-year-old novice poet, former coal mine employee, stone mason and grocery store safety guard. Individuals who knew him in his hometown, Levice, in central Slovakia, say the person, named solely as Juraj C. by officers, jumped between typically contradictory causes and had no sturdy affiliation with both of the 2 principal political camps.
However he nursed intense grievances towards the entire system, in keeping with individuals who knew him, which isn’t uncommon in Slovakia.
Of all of the international locations in Central and Jap Europe that shook off communist rule in 1989, Slovakia has the very best proportion of residents who view liberal democracy as a menace to their id and values — 43 p.c in contrast with 15 p.c within the neighboring Czech Republic — in keeping with a regional opinion survey launched this month by Globsec, a analysis group based mostly in Bratislava. Help for Russia has declined sharply for the reason that begin of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however 27 p.c of Slovaks see it as key strategic accomplice, the very best degree within the area.
Grigorij Meseznikov, president of the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava, stated such views highlighted a deep paradox for Slovakia, which is by many standards a profitable mannequin of transition from communism. It has develop into a producing hub for German carmakers, developed a vibrant and numerous media panorama and develop into so effectively built-in within the European Union that it’s the solely nation within the area to make use of its widespread foreign money, the euro.
However lots of its folks — notably these dwelling outdoors huge cities — really feel left behind and resentful, Mr. Meseznikov stated, and are “extra weak than elsewhere to conspiracy theories and narratives that liberal democracy is a menace.”
The image is way the identical in lots of different previously communist international locations and has allowed Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary to ascertain an more and more authoritarian system. However Slovakia’s politics are notably toxic, swamped by wild conspiracy theories and bile.
The foundations of this had been laid within the Nineties when Mr. Meciar fashioned what remains to be one of many nation’s two principal political blocs: an alliance of right-wing nationalists, enterprise cronies and anti-establishment leftists. All thrived on denouncing their centrist and liberal opponents as enemies prepared to promote out the nation’s pursuits to the West, Mr. Meseznikov stated.
“Meciar was a pioneer,” he stated. “He was a typical consultant of nationwide populism with an authoritarian method, and so is Fico.”
On the day Mr. Fico was shot, Parliament was assembly to endorse an overhaul of public tv to purge what his governing occasion views as unfair bias in favor of political opponents, a reprise of efforts within the Nineties by Mr. Meciar to mute media critics.
The laws was a part of a raft of measures that the European Fee in February stated risked doing “irreparable harm” to the rule of regulation. These embody measures to restrict corruption investigations and impose what critics denounced as Russian-style restrictions on nongovernmental organizations. The federal government opposes army support to Ukraine and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, is commonly at odds with the European Union and, like Mr. Orban, favors pleasant relations with Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.
Within the run-up to the election final September that returned Mr. Fico, a fixture of Slovak politics for greater than 20 years, to energy, he and his allies took an more and more hostile stance towards america and Ukraine, mixed with sympathetic phrases for Russia.
Their statements typically recalled a comment by Mr. Meciar, who, resisting calls for within the Nineties that he should change his methods if Slovakia needed to affix the European Union, held up Russia as a substitute haven: “in the event that they don’t need us within the West, we’ll go East.”
Dominik Zelinsky, a researcher on the Slovak Academy of Science’s Institute for Sociology, stated that, regardless of the depth of the present political battle, there was no danger at this time of Slovakia once more “changing into an entire outsider” adrift from the European Union and NATO.
However, he added, “the frames that the society and its elites use to interpret the battle stay the identical: a alternative between a Western path and being one thing of a bridge between the East and the West, in addition to a alternative between liberal democracy and intolerant, authoritarian authorities.”
When Mr. Fico first grew to become prime minister in 2006, he stood on the left however, needing assist to type a secure authorities, turned to the Slovak Nationwide Social gathering, a nationalist grouping that had earlier been allied with Mr. Meciar.
Andrej Danko, the chief of the occasion, which is now a part of the brand new coalition authorities fashioned by Mr. Fico after the September election, stated that the try and assassinate Mr. Fico represented the “begin of a political conflict” between the nation’s two opposing camps.
Accused by its critics of stoking harmful tensions and animosity towards the media, the federal government has responded by asserting that the opposite facet began the struggle by blaming Mr. Fico and his allies for the 2018 homicide of the investigative journalist.
“Not solely Robert Fico, however all of us had been labeled murderers,” the deputy prime minister, Mr. Kalinak, informed a Czech newspaper on Saturday, referring to the case. “If I used the identical yardstick now as they did then, I might say that they’re murderers.”
Iveta Radicova, a sociologist against Mr. Fico who’s a former prime minister, stated Slovakia’s woes had been a part of a wider disaster with roots that reach far past its early stumbles underneath Mr. Meciar.
“Many democracies are headed towards the black gap,” as international locations from Hungary within the East to the Netherlands within the West succumb to the attraction of nationwide populism, she stated. “This shift is going on in every single place.”
Sara Cincurova and Marek Janiga contributed reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia.
