Teachers in Power: Nation-Building and Loyalty in a Czechoslovak Periphery (1918–1947)

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Czech teachers and other civil servants came to the peripheral regions of the Slovak part of the state. Their task, apart from ensuring the functioning of the newly established state institutions, was to promote the Czechoslovak national project. Some of these officials remained in their positions for many years, overcoming major macro-political upheavals. This article analyses the role of individuals, their loyalties and networks in establishing and maintaining stability across historical ruptures in a remote, linguistically heterogeneous area of Czechoslovakia. Since these actors fostered the official state ideology and played a prominent role in the lifeworld of local communities for many decades, this article shows how these figures endured numerous ruptures, bound together the state and their localities and reinforced the state’s presence on the ground. Using the case of a Czech school principal in the predominantly German- and Hungarian-speaking town of Nižný Medzev in eastern Slovakia, this article examines the role of individual actors in promoting and shaping the various forms of Czechoslovak nation-building policies on the local level.