ABSTRACT
Slovak writer Martin Simecka elaborates: "nationalism is similar to communism in some ways". Distortions of history of this sort by Communist rulers play into the hands of the post-Communist manipulators, the demagogues attempting to instill an idyllic nationalism. People's relationships with each other were redrawn in the attempt to create "the new socialist man". In the process, one became alienated from one's most immediate instrument of communication with one's innermost reality: language. In each of the countries of East-Central Europe, the former Communist ruling class has found ways to capitalize on the dismantling of the empire. The attitude is emerging in a newer form, having been distorted during the Communist era when cynicism of a Marxist-Leninist variety gave the concept a peculiar twist: paying lip-service to ethnicity within an ideological context that had nothing but contempt for it.
