Fascists into Communists. Opportunism and Survival across Autocracies

Book project | Senior Research Fellow, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (from February 2026)

This project investigates how mid-level collaborators of the fascist Slovak state—teachers, clergy, notaries, lawyers, and local bureaucrats—successfully transitioned into positions of trust and influence under the communist regime after 1948. Rather than treating collaboration as a fixed label or purely ideological stance, the project examines how survival, ambition, and pragmatism shaped these individuals’ ability to adapt across autocratic regimes.

While fascism and communism are often seen as opposites, this research reveals unexpected continuities. Drawing on archival sources, oral histories, and personal records, it reconstructs how “former people”—compromised by their roles in the wartime state—rebranded themselves as loyal citizens of the people’s democracy. Their reinvention illuminates how autocracies rely not only on ideologues but on those who know how to navigate shifting structures of power.

By focusing on the blurred lines between complicity and survival, the project offers a new perspective on political transitions in twentieth-century Slovakia—and challenges received narratives of rupture between fascist and communist rule. It asks what it means to adapt, to conform, and to survive—and why some historical legacies remain unresolved.