Culture strikes back

When the former Slovak Minister of Culture Marek Mad’arič (2006-2010, 2012-2018) was asked in a podcast for Slovak news daily Denník N how he assessed new culture chief Martina Šimkovičová’s first year in the post, his answer was rather diplomatic. ‘It’s an unpleasant surprise’, he said (referring to a quote by Prime Minister Robert Fico, who previously described her tenure as ‘a pleasant surprise’). But if you were to ask most members of Slovakia’s cultural community about the recent actions of the Ministry of Culture, you would probably get a much sharper and less tactful answer.

In fact, it would not have surprised anyone if Mad’arič had adopted a harsher tone, because it is the cultural reforms introduced during his long tenure in the ministry that are now under greatest assault. During his time in office, he helped establish the Arts Council and the Audiovisual Fund, cultural funds which have contributed significantly to the development of independent culture in Slovakia. He also consolidated the key institutions of established culture, raising the prestige of public television and radio and building public trust. Within a year of Šimkovičová’s arrival, however, all this was history. How did this happen?

From disinformation mouthpiece to culture tsar

Šimkovičová, a nominee of the nationalist party SNS (Slovak National Party), raised concerns among Slovakia’s cultural community immediately after her appointment as minister of culture. She was picked for the post by Prime Minister Robert Fico following his return to power in September 2023 at the head of a coalition with the social democratic party Hlas and the SNS, which only narrowly made it into parliament (the quorum of 5 per cent was exceeded by only 0.6 per cent).

Professionally, Šimkovičová’s only relationship to culture was through her work as a host on private television; she had no experience in managing independent or state cultural organizations.

Šimkovičová affirmed her far-right nationalist credentials in her very first public appearance as culture minister, declaring that ‘Culture should be Slovak and no other’. She then cancelled a subsidy scheme to support the fight against misinformation.

Martina Šimkovičova, 2024. Image by Matica slovenská (Slovak national, cultural and scientific organization) via Wikimedia Commons

She also sparked outrage with an interview in which she declared that ‘the white race is dying out because of LGBTQ’, and threatened to prevent people from the queer community from receiving state support. ‘LGBTQ+ NGOs will not get a single cent from the state budget,’ she said. In November 2024, she made good on that promise: the published results of the Ministry of Culture’s subsidy programme for disadvantaged groups show that the ministry has excluded projects by LGBTQIA+ organizations altogether. None of their projects or long-running events – such as the Drama Queer Festival, Rainbow Pride or the Otherness Film Festival – received a grant, despite receiving sufficient points from the expert committee that assessed the projects.

Šimkovičová was joined at the ministry by Lukáš Machala, the director-general of the ministry’s service (also an SNS nominee), who is known for his antisemitic statements and his inclination towards conspiracy theories (he has earned public ridicule by claiming that the Earth is flat). Machala has become the de facto head of the Ministry of Culture and is the engine behind most of its strategic decisions.

Institutions as ideological tools

While observers frequently describe the actions of the Ministry of Culture as unsystematic, there is a certain logic apparent in its behaviour. The ministry’s first target was cultural institutions, especially the funds that distribute financial resources for cultural production. In the course of 2024, the National Council of the Slovak Republic has adopted new laws on the Arts Council and on the Audiovisual Fund, both of which were drafted by the Ministry of Culture. These laws regulate the activity of the funds in such a way that the decisive power in the matter of whether or not individual applicants or projects are granted financial support is now vested in the boards of the funds.

Both laws also stipulate that no support can be granted without the approval of the members of the boards elected by the culture minister. In short: independent funds, in which expert committees used to decide on the allocation of subsidies, are being transformed into an instrument through which to enforce ‘ideological compatibility’, i.e. ensuring that projects align with the government’s right-wing and conservative views. At the time of writing, the board of the Arts Council is removing experts from commissions, rendering them dysfunctional, and the redistribution of funding for cultural projects is under threat.

In July, public television and radio came into the firing line. Here the ministry also took control through legal trickery by changing the institution’s name from RTVS (Radio and Television of Slovakia) to STVR (Slovak Television and Radio). It thus de facto became a new institution, which meant that its director automatically became redundant (to date, he has not been replaced; Slovak television has been operating in crisis mode for more than half a year).

While in the past, members of the STVR Council were nominated by professional organizations, the new law on STVR allows the Ministry of Culture to appoint three members of the council directly. As the number of council members has now been reduced from nine to seven, the government controls almost 50 per cent of its composition. This raises concerns of undue political influence over the council’s decision-making and its loss of independence. The new law also establishes an external ethics commission, which is to include representatives of the nationalist organization Matica Slovenská, churches and local governments. The unprofessional nature of this commission, with only one member having a media background, raises fears of ideological control and censorship.

This has already been reflected in the form of the programmes broadcast. The country’s main political talk show O 5 minút 12 (‘5 Minutes to 12’) replaced three presenters after government politicians branded them unsuitable. Then there was the case of news journalist Barbora Šišoláková, who left STVR after the channel’s management tried to influence the content of a critical report she had prepared on Minister of the Environment Tomáš Taraba for Správy, the network’s flagship news show.  The author of this article, who worked on the content production team of a current affairs TV discussion show, also experienced these changes in management: the programme was rebranded as a travel show, leading him to end his cooperation with STVR.

Director? Dismissed!

These radical changes to the functioning of institutions have taken place not only at legislative and structural levels but have also been accompanied by purges of ‘unsuitable’ personnel, especially those at the head of flagship cultural institutions. As early as January 2024, Jen Kratochvíl, the director of the Kunsthalle Bratislava art gallery, was forced to resign by the Ministry of Culture (the entire institution was subsequently transferred to the administration of the Slovak National Gallery but has had its funding revoked, effectively shutting it down). In March, Zuzana Liptáková was dismissed from her position as director of BIBIANA, the international house of art for children, and Katarína Krištofová was dismissed from her position as director of the Slovak National Library.

Larger, more emblematic institutions followed in August and September. The director of the Slovak National Theatre Matej Drlička, the director of the Slovak National Gallery Alexandra Kusá and the director of the Slovak National Museum Branislav Pánis were successively removed from their posts. All of these dismissals took place without transparent justification and were often accompanied by an unprofessional and humiliating approach on the part of the ministry (an official accompanied by security guards delivered the notice to Drlička’s home early in the morning, while he was still in his pyjamas). People lacking the necessary qualifications and without the support of the institutions’ staff or the cultural community were then appointed to the posts of the dismissed directors, without a transparent selection procedure.

Dirty tactics

The personnel changes were accompanied by numerous verbal attacks, bullying and intimidation of cultural workers by the Ministry of Culture. These practices are also taking place inside the Ministry itself, where, as Jana Močková writes for Denník N,  there is ‘permanent fear, paralysis, threats, chaos, impulsive decisions, no arguments’. Šimkovičová and Machala have adopted an unacceptable method of communication that is based on threats, insults, attacks and intimidation. Employees are bullied for holding ‘incorrect’ political views, are forced to keep their office doors open and are even threatened with the deployment of the SIS (the Slovak intelligence service) to monitor them.

The deteriorating working conditions and targeted dismissals at the Ministry of Culture have also been highlighted by trade unionists. In a letter to Machala, they describe the job cuts as deliberate. They also mention workplace bullying and violations of the principles of the civil service. According to statements by staff, almost half of the ministry’s officials have already lost their jobs.

The ministry’s leadership is also engaging in widespread attacks on members of the broader cultural community, as well as projects that it is trying to portray in the eyes of the public as corrupt, worthless and unworthy of support. The queer artist Andrej Dúbravský, whose works were hanging in the lobby of the Slovak Radio building, and renowned dancer Soňa Ferienčíková (the partner of the leader of the country’s political opposition) have both been subjected to vulgar insults from Šimkovičová. In some cases these attacks have even taken a legal character: in September, Šimkovičová filed a criminal complaint against the writer Michal Hvorecký, accusing him of defamation for describing her as a fascist in an opinion piece in Denník N in October , while the artist Ilona Németh was called in for questioning by the police for her participation in the creation of a petition calling for Šimkovičová’s dismissal.

Solidarity strikes

Of course, representatives of culture have not remained silent in the face of these barbaric measures. In February, the Open Culture! civic platform was formed, with the intention of uniting the cultural community in Slovakia and pushing for professional management of the culture department, better working conditions and the creation of a modern cultural policy. It is a nationwide initiative, which at the time of writing brings together almost 400 institutions and almost 2,000 artists across Slovakia. The initiative is a direct follow-up to the ‘Open Call for the Resignation of the Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová’, a petition published on 17 January 2024 and closed on 26 January 2024, which was signed by more than 180,000 people (another similar petition, this time organized by civil society, collected almost 200,000 signatures in August this year).

Open Culture! has organized a number of public protest events this year, with thousands of people taking part. The largest of these, in August 2024, saw almost 10,000 people gather in Bratislava – an indication that protests for free and independent culture are of interest not only to the professional cultural community but also to the general public.

The initiative is also coming up with various innovative forms of protest – for example, in the summer it organized the so-called Slovak Cultural Uprising (a reference to the Slovak National Uprising, in which Slovakia fought against fascism during World War II), a relay protest in which pairs of people from the cultural scene stood in front of the Ministry of Culture with a protest banner and took turns in one-hour intervals for ten days without a break.

However, the biggest protest action to be organized by Open Culture! was the declaration of the Cultural Strike in September. The initiative currently has three basic demands: 1) a halt to all deliberate and destructive changes in the Ministry of Culture and manage it in a professional and competent manner; 2) cease to ‘ideological censorship with economic ’ (i.e. politically motivated funding decisions) in the cultural sector; 3) the immediate financial stabilization of the sector, with an emphasis on improving workers’ pay and their social security.

In their first public appearance, the representatives of the movement outlined that the initial phase of the Cultural Strike involves putting the cultural sector on a general alert, in which work will continue uninterrupted. If, however, the employees in a given organization feel that their economic, social and cultural rights are being infringed to such a degree that there are legitimate grounds for going on full strike, the Cultural Strike Committee will encourage the staff of that institution to take action. The rest of the cultural community will embark on a solidarity strike, manifested by various gestures of support and fundraising for those staff on full strike. In just over a month since the announcement of the Cultural Strike, nearly 4,000 people working in over 400 state-funded and independent organizations across the country have joined the movement.

It should also be noted that the Open Culture! initiative does not focus only on protest actions but also provides legal assistance, expert consultations and, most importantly, monitors and publicizes all incompetent actions taken by the Ministry of Culture. In October, it also published an extensive 80-page report on the ministry’s failures, which maps the events of the past year in great detail.

In search of optimism

When writing about the situation facing culture in Slovakia, it is impossible – and this article is proof of that – to avoid a certain, perhaps lengthy, enumeration of all the blunders of the current government. There have been so many authoritarian and undemocratic measures taken by the Ministry of Culture (but also many other representatives of the government, especially the nationalist SNS party) that it is only when they are added together that the horrifying and often absurd nature of what the cultural scene in Slovakia is experiencing becomes apparent. Every day there is news of someone in the cultural sector losing their job, of someone being sued, of someone being denied state support, of an artist being brutally attacked.

The atmosphere in the cultural sphere is, euphemistically speaking, tense. People are beginning to fear, not only for their jobs but also for their safety – which is not surprising, given that we live in a country where in recent years two people from the LGBTQIA+ community have been murdered and a journalist and his fiancée have been assassinated. I myself see the foundations for self-censorship beginning to form in people, the debates about whether it is legitimate to even ask for support for cultural production from a state that treats its citizens in this way. The prevailing view is that this is, unfortunately, only the beginning, and the government’s actions in the cultural sphere will only become more aggressive.

In this gloomy mood, however, the positive aspects of the whole situation also come to the surface. The most striking is the emergence of the said Open Culture! initiative, which represents solidarity between artists and institutions across generations, regions and different forms of art. However, solidarity is not limited to this initiative; it is also visible at a lower, interpersonal level between individual artists, journalists, media and institutions. Building this network of solidarity, although difficult and often tedious, is a prerequisite for building a stronger civil society which, one day, when the authoritarian regime of the current government is gone, will be a good building block for establishing a more democratic and open society. For Slovakia’s cultural sphere, it is essential to hold on to this hope.