Caesarisms and Republicanisms in Slovak Romanticism: Male Identity, the Polish Question, and the Wave of Democratization of 1830

Abstract

Abstract

The study analyses Slovak Romanticism as a space of competition between several models of male political subjectivity, which we refer to here as caesarism and republicanism. The starting point is the assumption that Romantic (Pan)Slavism did not form an ideologically homogeneous system, but represented a field of mutually competing concepts organized around different ideas about authority, freedom, political action and masculine virtues. Special attention is paid to the contemporary Slovak reflection on the Polish November Uprising (1830-1831), which represented a significant impulse for the transnational spread of political ideas in Central Europe. Using Gunitsky's concept of democratization waves, specifically the specific democratization wave of national ro-manticism from 1830, we interpret the „Polish question“ through the mechanism of cultural „contagion“ and political translation, through which republican and democratic ideas and images originally formed in the French and Polish revolutionary tradition were transferred to the Slovak environment (Slovak semiosphere). Using the example of the works and correspondence of Ján Kollár, Pavol Jozef Šafárik, Sam Chalupka, and Ľudovít Štúr, we show that the conflict between Caesarist and republican ideas, which also has its contemporary continuations and broader social relevance, was not only a dispute over the contemporary political (Polish or Russian) orientation of Slovaks, but also a struggle over the form of an ideal Slavic or Slovak male identity. While the Caesarist model favored hierarchy, discipline, obedience, and protection provided by the imperial center, the republican model emphasized civic equality, collective sovereignty, and active participa-tion in history.