Rejecting green velvet: Transition, environment and nationalism in Slovakia

• Published in: Environmental politics Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 129 - 144
• Main Author: Podoba, Juraj
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis Group 01.04.1998; Frank Cass; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: ENVIRONMENT; Environmental Attitudes; Environmental movements; Environmental policy; Environmental Protection; Environmentalism; Governmental reform; GREEN MOVEMENT AND POLITICAL PARTY (ALL NATIONS); NATIONALISM; Pollution; POST-COLD WAR; Post-communist societies; Postcommunist Societies; PUBLIC POLICY; Slovak Republic; SLOVAKIA; Society; Transition; Transition economies; Slovakia; Slovak Republic
• ISSN: 0964-4016; 1743-8934
• DOI: 10.1080/09644019808414376

Environmental issues played an important role in bringing down the old regimes in almost all Communist countries. Slovakia (as part of the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) was a special case in this respect. In this country, the green element played such a prominent role in the 1989 'velvet revolution' that it could have been called the 'green velvet revolution'. The current marginalisation of environmental issues and low profile of environmental policies in Slovakia are in sharp contrast with the high environmental concern and dynamic development of environmental institutions and laws in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This contribution describes the changing attitudes of Slovak society to environmental issues during the post-Communist transition and identifies its causes. It also explains the process by which environmentally harmful and previously unpopular symbols of the Communist achievements have been transformed into symbols of achievement of the Slovak nation and independent Slovakia. Two case studies - the aluminium smelter in Žiar nad Hronom and the waterworks Gabčíkovo on the Danube - illustrate this transformation.