Slovakia in History

by Mikulás Teich (Editor), Dušan Kováč (Editor), Martin D. Brown (Editor)

Until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia's identity seemed inextricably linked with that of the former state. This book explores the key moments and themes in the history of Slovakia from the Duchy of Nitra's ninth-century origins to the establishment of independent Slovakia at midnight 1992–1993. Leading scholars chart the gradual ethnic awakening of the Slovaks during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and examine how Slovak national identity took shape with the codification of standard literary Slovak in 1843 and the subsequent development of the Slovak national movement. They show how, after a thousand years of Magyar-Slovak coexistence, Slovakia became part of the new Czechoslovak Republic from 1918–1939 and shed new light on its role as a Nazi client state as well as on the postwar developments leading up to full statehood in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism in 1989. There is no comparable book in English on the subject.

Genres: History

434 pages, Hardcover

First published February 3, 2011

Reviews

[andrej_reads7878]

Well researched, so far as it goes, but as a complete work it feels like it’s trying to do too much and in so doing makes exclusions that feel significant. It’s trying to tell the story of the Slovak people, the Slovak nation (not always related, as Slovakia has long been an appendage of one occupying power after another), and even the minority Hungarian population, but it’s too short to do enough justice to any of these topics and in so doing feels largely unsatisfying.

Significant events like the Mongol / Tatar invasion of 1241 or the Czechoslovak-Hungarian War of 1918-1919 are mentioned only in passing, rather than having even a paragraph devoted to explaining what happened and what the significance was of those events, and even the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968 is discussed more in terms of its consequences on the political development of Czechoslovakia after the fact, with very little mentioned about what happened during the course of the event itself.

[Viltarė Platzner]

Perfect summary of history of Slovakia for English speakers.

[Elias]

Paráda