Caricatures of Revolution: Slovak Political Cartoons in the Czechoslovak Spring

This paper probes Slovak cartoons of the 1960s for insight into Slovak attitudes toward national rights and democratic reforms during the Czechoslovak Spring, an upheaval in the spring and summer of 1968, when Slovakia experienced a rapid growth in the number of published cartoons and a new generation of Slovak cartoonists emerged. Slovak cartoonists in 1968 exhibited a sincere desire to see democratization come to fruition, yet they feared democratic reforms would come to naught, due either to internal resistance or external intervention. Moreover, Slovak cartoonists devoted considerable attention to Slovaks’ demands for national rights and autonomy, including contemporary demands for the federalization of the Czechoslovak state into Slovak and Czech national republics. Their cartoons belie the stereotype of Slovaks in 1968 as narrowly focused on national issues such as democratization, showing instead how Slovak cartoonists regarded federalization as a democratic arrangement of Czech-Slovak relations and thus as an integral part of democratization in Czechoslovakia while also using humor and satire to remind their fellow Slovaks that federal reform was not tantamount to democratization.