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This section presents a selection of letters that Slovak-speaking villagers of northern Hungary sent, in the decade before the First World War, to the editors of two nationalist newspapers: Pokrok (Progress), which began to appear in 1903, and Ľudové noviny (The People’s Paper), which reached the villages in the years around 1906 to 1910. The two papers were separate ventures, linked primarily by the physician and national activist Pavol Blaho. As a key figure on the editorial side of both publications, Blaho and his circle set out to instruct and awaken a rural Slovak public. The letters gathered here are the replies sent by rural readers to the editors: reports, complaints, appeals, denunciations, and defences, written for the most part by ordinary farmers, craftsmen, and villagers, in their own hands and their own words.The letters are valuable precisely because their writers were not members of the nationalist movement drawn from the educated elite, but villagers taking up the pen, often for the first time, to make some corner of local life public. They show, from below and in unusual closeness, how the vocabulary and the causes of the nationalist movement reached the countryside, and what the people who received them did with them: how they took up some of its words, categories, and concepts, passed over others, and bent the language of the movement to the quarrels, offices, and loyalties of their own villages.
The letters presented here belong to the editorial correspondence of the two papers, preserved among the personal papers of Pavol Blaho in the Slovak National Archive in Bratislava (Slovenský národný archív, Bratislava, SNA, Osobný fond Pavol Blaho, 1867–1927). They survive in two archival boxes, one for each paper: the Pokrok correspondence, running from 1903 through the following years, and the Ľudové noviny correspondence of about 1906 to 1910. Together, the two boxes hold several hundred items.What is offered here is a selection, not the whole. The letters shown have been chosen to represent the range of the correspondence, its recurring themes, its characteristic voices, and its more striking individual cases, and to follow, loosely, the thematic order in which those themes are discussed in the scholarly study from which this collection grew. Each letter is identified by a siglum ([P##] for the Pokrok correspondence, [LN##] for the Ľudové noviny correspondence). Within the archival fond the originals can be located by their inventory number and folio number, both of which are given with each letter, so that any item can be traced back to the source.
Each letter is given in three forms. First, a photograph of the letter, so that the original may be seen. Second, a transcription in Slovak. Third, a short description in English summarising what the letter contains and why it is of interest, followed by a brief “what to notice” line pointing to its most telling feature. Where two or more letters concern a single incident, they are grouped together as a case, with a shared introduction and, where a printed newspaper item lies behind the exchange, a transcription of that item as well.The transcriptions are reading editions in modern Slovak. Rather than reproduce every dialectal and orthographic peculiarity of the original, which would make the texts hard to read and difficult to render into other languages, they present the letters in readable modern Slovak while preserving in square brackets the words and forms that carry dialectal, social, or expressive weight. In this way, the texts remain accessible to a reader of standard Slovak and can be rendered into English or another language with the aid of ordinary translation tools, while the original texture stays visible at the points where it matters. The editorial conventions are these:[word] — an editorial supply of an omitted or reconstructed word;[italic] — an editorial remark on the manuscript (e.g. [škrtnuté] struck through, [nečitateľné] illegible);[…] — an illegible or omitted passage;[orig. word] — the writer’s original form, given after a normalised reading;word [?] — an uncertain reading;[sic] — a form reproduced faithfully from the original.Manuscript page-breaks are marked [strana 1], [strana 2]. Spelling and word-forms have been lightly normalised toward modern Slovak; punctuation and the division into sentences have been modernised silently for readability.The letters are grouped below by paper, Pokrok and Ľudové noviny, and they may be read in any order.
A number of these letters contain anti-Jewish language. It is reproduced without alteration, as part of the historical record these sources constitute.
Materials on these pages are reading editions and reproductions of manuscripts held by the Slovak National Archive. When citing a letter, please cite both the original manuscript and this edition, for example:Anton Ondriszka to the editorial office of Pokrok, Kúty, 5 April 1903, SNA, Pavol Blaho Papers, box 54, inv. no. 1726, folio 276–279; quoted from [https://www.natindiff.eu/sources/pokrok-letters].
The earliest letters, above all those to Pokrok in 1903 and 1904, show villagers discovering the newspaper as a place in which their own village might appear. A recurring opening is the remark that no one has written about the writer’s village for a long time, so that he must take up the pen himself, lest it be forgotten: less a complaint than an expression of the wish to see one’s own village, and one’s own community, made publicly visible ([P21], [P23], [LN22]). The paper is treated as an arena of local publicity, in which misconduct can be exposed and set right; and, strikingly, the correspondents answer and correct one another in print, so that a single village affair may be told in several competing versions ([P21] and [P23]; the case of [P25]–[P27]; the case of [P82] and [P33]). Some writers reflect, from within, on the ethics of this new publicity, warning that the paper must not become a vehicle of private revenge, or a gossip-sheet that discredits the cause ([P25], [P82]).
Many letters speak in a didactic, self-improving voice that the papers actively cultivated: they urge the reading of good books and papers over the tavern, praise thrift and learning, and condemn drunkenness as the ruin of the nation ([P21], [P23], [P47], [LN22], [LN138]). Closely related is a concern with the moral life of the village and its young people, whose conduct at dances, processions, and taverns is held up for censure or, at times, for praise ([P47], [LN12]). Village theatricals and reading circles appear as signs that a village is “awakening” from its sleep ([LN12], [P44]).
A large group of letters turns on the offices of the village, the village head (richtár) and the committee, and on the elections to them. Here, the correspondents draw, again and again, a contrast between the good leader and the bad. The good village head appears in the letters as honest, capable, brave, and literate; he cares for the village rather than for his own “dry throat,” and does not let himself be commanded by the lords and gentlemen or drilled by the notary ([P69], [P101], [LN33], [LN78], [LN100]). The bad one is drawn as drunken, incapable, or self-serving, sometimes illiterate, and often in league with the notary ([P72], [P81], [P92], [LN48], [LN108]). A recurring villain is the administrative official who stands above the village and its elected men, most notably the notary, the literate officer who “carries the village head about in his pocket” ([P81], [LN71], [LN108], [LN109]). Elections are watched closely, and their manipulation, the bribe, the packed slate, the drink stood for votes, is reported with a keen eye for procedure and its abuse ([P43], [LN65], [LN88], [LN130]). Officials are not only condemned: where a magistrate or notary conducts an election fairly, he is thanked, warmly and by name ([LN38], [LN95]).
Across the correspondence, and more insistently in the later Ľudové noviny letters, the writers reach for a language of national belonging, of being “our own,” of standing “for this Slovak tongue of ours.” With it comes a vocabulary for those held to have gone over to the other side. The chief such term is čvach, a locally coined word of abuse for a Slovak thought to have defected; it appears first, and only in passing, in 1903 ([P31]), and becomes common in the later letters ([LN3], [LN38], [LN73], [LN93], [LN104], [LN116]). The letters show this category being used, stretched, and argued over: a man may be said to have been a čvach and to have become “ours” ([LN3]); the term may be sharpened into kabátoš, the “coat-wearer,” welding a social distinction to a national one ([LN104]); and office and ambition may themselves be said to turn a good Slovak into a čvach ([LN116]). Against the good Slovak the correspondents set his opposite, the renegade or odrodilec, the man who has turned away from what they hold him to be ([LN12]).
A further group of letters concerns the economic life of the village: the founding of consumer cooperatives and credit societies, meant to free the villagers from dependence on the local traders and money-lenders, and gathered under the slogan “each to his own” (svoj k svojmu) ([P40], [P44], [P48], [LN86]). This economic appeal is very often bound up with anti-Jewish rhetoric, in which the Jewish trader or tavern-keeper is cast as the community’s malign other, and “Christian” self-help is set against him. The figure recurs across the collection, from passing epithets to sustained invective, and in several of the letters it is the organising idea of the whole ([P33], [P40], [P44], [P48], [P81], [LN32], [LN65]). It is treated here as one significant strand among the letters’ recurring themes; the letters that carry it are reproduced, like all the rest, without alteration.
Finally, a number of letters show what it meant, in practice, to be a reader and correspondent of these papers. Subscribers write of being summoned before officials, denounced, or persecuted for reading or promoting the paper ([LN3], [LN6]); a correspondent orders a hundred handbills of his own election appeal, turning the paper into a supply of local propaganda ([LN119]); and writers apologise, again and again, for their rough hands and uncertain spelling, conscious of the gap between what they wish to say and what they can yet write ([P26], [LN109]). In these letters, more than anywhere, one sees the newspaper reaching people at the very edge of the written word, and those people reaching back.
The source
The letters presented here belong to the editorial correspondence of the two papers, preserved among the personal papers of Pavol Blaho in the Slovak National Archive in Bratislava (Slovenský národný archív, Bratislava, SNA, Osobný fond Pavol Blaho, 1867–1927). They survive in two archival boxes, one for each paper: the Pokrok correspondence, running from 1903 through the following years, and the Ľudové noviny correspondence of about 1906 to 1910. Together, the two boxes hold several hundred items.What is offered here is a selection, not the whole. The letters shown have been chosen to represent the range of the correspondence, its recurring themes, its characteristic voices, and its more striking individual cases, and to follow, loosely, the thematic order in which those themes are discussed in the scholarly study from which this collection grew. Each letter is identified by a siglum ([P##] for the Pokrok correspondence, [LN##] for the Ľudové noviny correspondence). Within the archival fond the originals can be located by their inventory number and folio number, both of which are given with each letter, so that any item can be traced back to the source.The source
How the letters are presented
Each letter is given in three forms. First, a photograph of the letter, so that the original may be seen. Second, a transcription in Slovak. Third, a short description in English summarising what the letter contains and why it is of interest, followed by a brief “what to notice” line pointing to its most telling feature. Where two or more letters concern a single incident, they are grouped together as a case, with a shared introduction and, where a printed newspaper item lies behind the exchange, a transcription of that item as well.The transcriptions are reading editions in modern Slovak. Rather than reproduce every dialectal and orthographic peculiarity of the original, which would make the texts hard to read and difficult to render into other languages, they present the letters in readable modern Slovak while preserving in square brackets the words and forms that carry dialectal, social, or expressive weight. In this way, the texts remain accessible to a reader of standard Slovak and can be rendered into English or another language with the aid of ordinary translation tools, while the original texture stays visible at the points where it matters. The editorial conventions are these:[word] — an editorial supply of an omitted or reconstructed word;[italic] — an editorial remark on the manuscript (e.g. [škrtnuté] struck through, [nečitateľné] illegible);[…] — an illegible or omitted passage;[orig. word] — the writer’s original form, given after a normalised reading;word [?] — an uncertain reading;[sic] — a form reproduced faithfully from the original.Manuscript page-breaks are marked [strana 1], [strana 2]. Spelling and word-forms have been lightly normalised toward modern Slovak; punctuation and the division into sentences have been modernised silently for readability.The letters are grouped below by paper, Pokrok and Ľudové noviny, and they may be read in any order.How the letters are presented
A note on the content
A number of these letters contain anti-Jewish language. It is reproduced without alteration, as part of the historical record these sources constitute.A note on the content
How to cite
Materials on these pages are reading editions and reproductions of manuscripts held by the Slovak National Archive. When citing a letter, please cite both the original manuscript and this edition, for example:Anton Ondriszka to the editorial office of Pokrok, Kúty, 5 April 1903, SNA, Pavol Blaho Papers, box 54, inv. no. 1726, folio 276–279; quoted from [https://www.natindiff.eu/sources/pokrok-letters].How to cite
The newspaper as a village’s window on itself
The earliest letters, above all those to Pokrok in 1903 and 1904, show villagers discovering the newspaper as a place in which their own village might appear. A recurring opening is the remark that no one has written about the writer’s village for a long time, so that he must take up the pen himself, lest it be forgotten: less a complaint than an expression of the wish to see one’s own village, and one’s own community, made publicly visible ([P21], [P23], [LN22]). The paper is treated as an arena of local publicity, in which misconduct can be exposed and set right; and, strikingly, the correspondents answer and correct one another in print, so that a single village affair may be told in several competing versions ([P21] and [P23]; the case of [P25]–[P27]; the case of [P82] and [P33]). Some writers reflect, from within, on the ethics of this new publicity, warning that the paper must not become a vehicle of private revenge, or a gossip-sheet that discredits the cause ([P25], [P82]).The newspaper as a village’s window on itself
Self-improvement, temperance, and the moral community
Many letters speak in a didactic, self-improving voice that the papers actively cultivated: they urge the reading of good books and papers over the tavern, praise thrift and learning, and condemn drunkenness as the ruin of the nation ([P21], [P23], [P47], [LN22], [LN138]). Closely related is a concern with the moral life of the village and its young people, whose conduct at dances, processions, and taverns is held up for censure or, at times, for praise ([P47], [LN12]). Village theatricals and reading circles appear as signs that a village is “awakening” from its sleep ([LN12], [P44]).Self-improvement, temperance, and the moral community
Office, election, and the good and bad village head and leadership
A large group of letters turns on the offices of the village, the village head (richtár) and the committee, and on the elections to them. Here, the correspondents draw, again and again, a contrast between the good leader and the bad. The good village head appears in the letters as honest, capable, brave, and literate; he cares for the village rather than for his own “dry throat,” and does not let himself be commanded by the lords and gentlemen or drilled by the notary ([P69], [P101], [LN33], [LN78], [LN100]). The bad one is drawn as drunken, incapable, or self-serving, sometimes illiterate, and often in league with the notary ([P72], [P81], [P92], [LN48], [LN108]). A recurring villain is the administrative official who stands above the village and its elected men, most notably the notary, the literate officer who “carries the village head about in his pocket” ([P81], [LN71], [LN108], [LN109]). Elections are watched closely, and their manipulation, the bribe, the packed slate, the drink stood for votes, is reported with a keen eye for procedure and its abuse ([P43], [LN65], [LN88], [LN130]). Officials are not only condemned: where a magistrate or notary conducts an election fairly, he is thanked, warmly and by name ([LN38], [LN95]).Office, election, and the good and bad village head and leadership
The vocabulary of national belonging and its opposites
Across the correspondence, and more insistently in the later Ľudové noviny letters, the writers reach for a language of national belonging, of being “our own,” of standing “for this Slovak tongue of ours.” With it comes a vocabulary for those held to have gone over to the other side. The chief such term is čvach, a locally coined word of abuse for a Slovak thought to have defected; it appears first, and only in passing, in 1903 ([P31]), and becomes common in the later letters ([LN3], [LN38], [LN73], [LN93], [LN104], [LN116]). The letters show this category being used, stretched, and argued over: a man may be said to have been a čvach and to have become “ours” ([LN3]); the term may be sharpened into kabátoš, the “coat-wearer,” welding a social distinction to a national one ([LN104]); and office and ambition may themselves be said to turn a good Slovak into a čvach ([LN116]). Against the good Slovak the correspondents set his opposite, the renegade or odrodilec, the man who has turned away from what they hold him to be ([LN12]).The vocabulary of national belonging and its opposites
The cooperative, the “Christian” economy, and the Jew as the village’s other
A further group of letters concerns the economic life of the village: the founding of consumer cooperatives and credit societies, meant to free the villagers from dependence on the local traders and money-lenders, and gathered under the slogan “each to his own” (svoj k svojmu) ([P40], [P44], [P48], [LN86]). This economic appeal is very often bound up with anti-Jewish rhetoric, in which the Jewish trader or tavern-keeper is cast as the community’s malign other, and “Christian” self-help is set against him. The figure recurs across the collection, from passing epithets to sustained invective, and in several of the letters it is the organising idea of the whole ([P33], [P40], [P44], [P48], [P81], [LN32], [LN65]). It is treated here as one significant strand among the letters’ recurring themes; the letters that carry it are reproduced, like all the rest, without alteration.The cooperative, the “Christian” economy, and the Jew as the village’s other
The reach of the paper, and the price of writing to it
Finally, a number of letters show what it meant, in practice, to be a reader and correspondent of these papers. Subscribers write of being summoned before officials, denounced, or persecuted for reading or promoting the paper ([LN3], [LN6]); a correspondent orders a hundred handbills of his own election appeal, turning the paper into a supply of local propaganda ([LN119]); and writers apologise, again and again, for their rough hands and uncertain spelling, conscious of the gap between what they wish to say and what they can yet write ([P26], [LN109]). In these letters, more than anywhere, one sees the newspaper reaching people at the very edge of the written word, and those people reaching back.The reach of the paper, and the price of writing to it
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