How Svätopluk Sold His Land for a White Horse...: Different Images of Slovaks and Hungarians in Slovak and Hungarian Textbooks Published in the Years 1918 - 1989

This article deals with the mutual images and stereotypes of Slovaks and Hungarians presented in Czechoslovak, Slovak and Hungarian history textbooks published between 1918 – 1989. The textbooks employed the same principles while creating the image of the Self and the Other. In all cases the authors of the textbooks opted for creating a positive image of their own nation by employing images of its cultural and moral superiority, while the Others were characterized as immoral traitors on a lower degree of civilisational development. Narratives presented in official history textbooks reflect the political agenda, desirable values and the efforts the political elites made in order to create a collective identity of the citizens of the state and to develop the loyalty of subjects to the country they live in. Thus, every change of political regime brings with it the necessity to reinterpret the past and to reconstruct the national history – as such, in which the current state, or the current ambitions and political programs of the elites would be seen as the natural, legitimate and most desirable result of historical development.