Essays of respondents written on the topic ''national identity'' were
analysed in the framework of broader research project. The students we
re asked to think about the following questions: (I) What does create
the content of national identity in Slovakia today? (2) What does it m
ean for them to be Slovak? (3) What did the independence of the countr
y bring to Slovakia? Essays were written by students three times durin
g different political contexts. The content analysis of three sets of
essays revealed that the style of thinking about national identity was
influenced mainly by conceptualization of national identity as obliga
tion or as free choice. Obligatory-collectivistic understanding of nat
ional identity is connected with ethnic nationalism (the state and nat
ion should be the same) and ethnic understanding of nation. Further an
alysis indicated that those respondents who considered national identi
ty as free decision, did not estimate their national identity as the m
ost important. They did not evaluate own nation without any criticism.
individualistic understanding of national identity was connected with
active involvement, whereas collectivistic understanding was related
to its passive acceptance. Interesting was that in spite of the fact,
that majority of respondents preferred liberal principles in the domai
n of economics and politics, a nation and national identity was unders
tood by majority in ethnic sense. Respondents were not successful in s
olving the controversy between positive understanding of national iden
tity in general and observed negative phenomena of nationalism in Slov
akia. They solved this problem by separation of nationalism from natio
nal identity.