Stur, a Lutheran, was aware of the fact that Czech, the language of educated Lutherans, was not enough to carry out a national campaign, and that Slovaks, if they were ever to become autonomous and be an effective force against Magyarization, needed a language they could call their own. The central Slovak dialect was chosen as the basis of a literary language. Stur’s codification work was disapproved by Kollar and the Czechs who saw it as an act of Slovak withdrawal from the idea of a common Czecho-Slovak nation and a weakening of solidarity. But the majority of Slovak scholars, including the Catholics, welcomed the notion of codification. The standard language thus became an important political tool. In 1845, Stur started printing his political newspaper Slovenske narodne noviny (Slovak National News) in the ew language. In this paper he gradually shaped a Slovak political program. He based this on the precept that the Slovaks were one nation and that they had therefore a right to their own language, culture, schools, and particularly political autonomy within the Hungary. The projected expression of this autonomy was to have been a Slovak Diet.

Stefan Marko Daxner