Creation and Activities of the Interstate Bilateral Ukrainian-Slovak Commission on National Minorities, Education and Culture in the First Half of the 1990s

Abstract

The article is devoted to comprehensive research on establishing bilateral Ukrainian-Slovak ethno-political cooperation in the first half of the 1990-s. It is noted that the dismantling of the communist regime and multi-level democratisation in the early 1990-s testified to Slovakia’s implementation of the model of “catch-up modernisation”, which was accompanied by national and political transformation. It is revealed that the contradictory and conflicting content of the socio-political model of Slovakia under the hybrid political regime of V. Mečiar’s premiership was due to the country’s declarative search for its national path between democracy and authoritarianism, between the consolidation of the Slovak nation and the escalation of interethnic tensions, between the implementation of a pro-Western course and intensification of cooperation with Russia, between the development of a market economy and strengthening of the government regulation.

It is mentioned that this was preceded by the transformational processes at the end of 1989 and the beginning of the 1990s in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, where there was a confrontation between the Ukrainian national-democratic and communist party nomenklatura elites. The ethno-political development of Transcarpathia (especially in the first half of the 1990s) was marked by the problem of political Ruthenism, which underwent a significant transformation and was discredited under the conditions of an independent Ukrainian state.

At the same time, it is stated that for the purpose of a tolerant, balanced, diplomatic solution to issues related to the security situation inside the Ukrainian state and around it, the Interstate Ukrainian-Slovak Commission on the Issues of Ensuring the Rights of National Minorities, Education and Culture was called to decide, whose primary task was to contribute to creating the necessary socio-economic and other conditions for preserving and developing the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of the Slovak national minorities in Ukraine and the Ukrainian national minority in the Slovak Republic.

The article determines that Ukraine and Slovakia, the second after Hungary among the Eastern European post-communist countries, initiated and continued interstate cooperation on mutual protection of the national minorities’ rights, which was an example of an effective common solution to complex ethnopolitical relations, aimed at eliminating inter-ethnic disputes, realising the rights of national minorities, developing good neighbourly relations with all bordering states and preventing the threat of ethnic conflicts, which was one of the main prerequisites for the Central and Eastern European states to accede to the European Union and NATO.