Russia.

Or we could be in the same spot.

A lot of published "origin stories" of the Slovaks are, frankly, right-wing Slovak fascist nonsense (much of it dating to the Tiso era). It's been repeated so many times that it's everywhere even if actual historical and genetics research tell a different story.

Far from being an ancient, pure Slavic people, history shows the area was not settled until quite late for Europe. Genetics testing has shown that there is not one genetically distinct Slovak nationality, but that Slovaks are a mix of Wallachians, western Slavs, Hungarians, Jews, and Roma.

(I used to believe the "Slovaks are an ancient Slavic group" stories until I started reading the current scholarly historical research. The myths are everywhere, the knowledge isn't. I'd give you a good reference for this except my bookshelf is in chaos and I have an eclipse guest sleeping in the other room).

So while "Slovak" is a modern _political_ identity forged in the century-long fight for independence from Hungary (rather as "American" is not an ethnicity but a political identity), that does not mean that Slovaks don't have an unfortunate attraction to authoritarianism. The most obvious example of thos was the reign of the collaborationist Josef Tiso during the Second World War. Tiso is admired by Slovak nationalists to this day.

I had my own shocking (to me) confrontation with this back in my teen years (I'm in my 60s now), when I asked my (nationalist) aunt (someone who had always seemed kindly and gentle to me) to help me learn Slovak. She loaned me a stack of Slovak language books printed by Slovak presses. And in the first book, at the very beginning of the book, was an extensive section praising Tiso's fascist regime. It was so off-putting I couldn't continue. I speak several Slavic languages, but the one I never learned was my own.

So while this cuts at me almost personally -- like _my_ people are betraying the world (my grandparents were immigrants, and I grew up in a "little Slovakia", steeped in Slovak culture) -- I am not shocked at this outcome because I know the depth of the right-wing streak in Slovak politics.

It's sad. When you voluntarily surrender democracy, it is not easy to get it back.

But, the Slovaks would be wise to observe what's going to go down in Belarus over the next few years.