This study, the first of its kind in English, presents an overview of Slovak intellectual history in the 19th century, including the debates surrounding the memorandum of 1861, the political stagnation of the 1880s, characterized by an increasingly Russophile orientation, and, finally, Czechoslovakism as the way to common independence with the Czechs. The selected portraits of six intellectuals and politicians should be seen as a prism through which Slovak intellectual history appears in its various facets. The 'narodovci' (the pioneers of national awakening) tried to strengthen the Slovak nation in its attempts to secure the autonomy of its language and culture, and prevent assimilation by the Hungarians-which was a political issue. Some took part in the 1848 revolution, pursuing the goal of an autonomous Slovak district within the Habsburg Empire, while others opted for a modus vivendi with the ruling Hungarians. A third possibility was sovereignty, a common independent state with the Czechs. An introductory chapter deals with the political problem of assimilation and group rights in 19th-century Slovakia. The analytical chapters focus on the intellectual discourse of the time, specifically on the influence of Western political ideas such as liberalism, constitutionalism, cultural rights, and nationalism. A further focus is on Slavic political ideas, such as the Slavic Renaissance, Slavic mutuality, and Panslavism. The volume is addressed to students of history, politics, and political theory and offers a unique insight into the political past of a young EU state whose recent language laws have drawn repeated international criticism. The author hopes that her analysis will help improve understanding of current Slovak politics.

To the older generations in her native Slovakia, Hana Ponicka is well-known for her successful children's books and courageous fight against the communist regime. Her psychological ordeal began in February 1977 when the elderly lady refused to sign the so-called anticharta, a condemnation of the human rights group Charter 77, which had published its first manifesto in the West on 1 January 1977. All Slovak and Czech artists had to sign the anticharta; they were forced by the regime to condemn the dissidents, the most prominent among them being Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), who were standing up against the violation of basic human rights enshrined in the Czechoslovak constitution following the conclusion of the CSCE treaty of Helsinki. Ponicka, like most of her fellow artists, had neither read the Charter 77 manifesto nor the text of the anticharta; she thus refused to sign. Her courage prompted the regime to terrorize her psychologically. This political biography is the first ever written about Ponicka, despite her being a household name in Slovakia. Josette Baer's analysis is based on Ponicka's memoirs of that cruel year of 1977, newspaper articles she published prior to 1971, when the regime effectively banned any critical voice from publication, and newspaper articles she published after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 to promote the establishing of a rule-of-law state and democracy. The documents of the StB, the Slovak and Czech Security Services, are analyzed for the first time; they are evidence of how the StB tried to pressure the resilient and disciplined grandmother of three into obedience. Oral history interviews with Dirk Matthias Dalberg, Vlasta Jaksicsova, and Mary Samal inform the reader about the situation of the Slovak dissidents of Charter 77, how normal citizens lived in the regime, and how the Czech and Slovak exile communities in the USA saw the dissidents in Communist Czechoslovakia.

In this stunning biography, Josette Baer re-traces the eventful life of the Slovak politician Vavro Srobar, the principal figure in the implementation of Czechoslovak democracy in Slovakia. Spanning from his student days and his fight for Slovak civil rights in Upper Hungary via his ministerial positions during the First Czechoslovak Republic to his active resistance against German fascism, Baer's research paints a most comprehensive picture. Based on rich archive material available to the English-reading public for the first time, Baer shows how Srobar's political thought and activities shaped the turbulent history of Czechoslovakia in the first half of the 20th century. Offering unique insights into the political past of a country whose history remains largely under-researched, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the region.

This book deals with the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) that was launched on 29 August 1944 in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. In the West, the uprising is an under-researched topic in the history of WWII. The Slovak state was an ally of Nazi Germany, but the uprising proved that the population did not share the regimes ideology.

This engaging and insightful book is the first historical study in English portraying the lives and fates of Slovak women. The seven life stories, ranging from the late 19th century to the present day, expose the often cruel political history of Slovakia through the eyes of prominent women whose acts and deeds on behalf of their fellow citizens remain unforgotten in the Slovak collective mind. The four chapters and three oral history interviews offer a captivating insight into how the situation of Slovak women in society has changed during a most eventful period of history. This book will be complemented by a second volume on Czech women whose lives have been of the same singular importance for the Czech lands as their Slovak counterparts were for their country. The two volumes are separate entities in their own right, but together provide the reader with a comprehensive picture of women's lives in the Czech lands and Slovakia, stressing the distinct political circumstances Czech and Slovak women have faced in recent history.

What is political correctness? What is conformism? And could one say that pre-emptive obedience is a part of the increasingly prevalent climate of political correctness encountered today? The authors of "PC on Earth" take issue with a fashionable phenomenon emerging from North American campuses that is beginning to take hold in Europe, too: the dangerous consequences of identity politics and pre-emptive obedience, which they define as an essential element of political correctness. This book is a collection of satire, philosophical analysis, travel reports, political analysis, and personal experiences. The authors, all Europeans, present diverse views on a controversial topic. This collection offers readers independent and free-thinking opinions they will get nowhere else.

Alexander Dubcek is well-known, so one might think; nothing new can be written about him. Is this true? Dubcek is the symbol of the Czechoslovak attempt to reform communism that gained worldwide admiration in 1968. The invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in the night of August 21, 1968 set a brutal end to the Prague Spring. Josette Baers new biography focuses on Dubceks early years, his childhood in Soviet Kirghizia, his participation in the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 against Nazi Germany and the Slovak clerical-fascist government, and his career in the Slovak Communist Party in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It offers new insights into the political thought of the father of Socialism with a Human Face, based on archive material available to the Western reader for the first time. Who was Alexander Dubcek -- a naive apparatchik, an independent thinker, a courageous liberator, or a political dreamer?

This engaging and insightful book is the first historical study in English portraying the lives and fates of Czech women. The seven life stories, ranging from the late 19th century to the present day, expose the often cruel political history of Bohemia (19th century), the Czech lands in Czechoslovakia (20th century), and the Czech Republic (20th-21st century) through the eyes of prominent women whose acts and deeds on behalf of their fellow citizens remain unforgotten in the Czech collective mind. The three chapters and four oral history interviews offer a captivating insight into how the situation of Czech women in society has changed during a most eventful period of history. This book has been preceded by a first volume on Slovak women (ISBN 9783838206387) whose lives have been of the same singular importance for Slovakia as their Czech counterparts were for their country. The two volumes are separate entities in their own right, but together provide the reader with a comprehensive picture of women's lives in the Czech lands and Slovakia, stressing the distinct political circumstances Czech and Slovak women have faced in recent history.

The volume addresses the principal question why, given their common past under communist Soviet-type rule, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria accomplished EU membership, while Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia have not. What is political culture? Does political culture affect democratization, and if so, what method could make such analysis feasible? Research on cultural aspects of the various exit strategies of recent and prospective EU members has focused on the cultural thesis that views religion as principal factor for a successful democratization. Baer's comparative and interdisciplinary study addresses the hitherto sparsely researched aspect of political culture with a detailed analysis of the political thought of six Slavic intellectuals, who were crucially involved in nation- and state-building. The analytical portrait of the region's intellectual history, as a subfield of Eastern European history, allows drawing new conclusions about democratization that can help to explain the different paths the states chose after 1989. Baer's study provides a political culture hypothesis and a method tailored to post-communist transition and offers a new theoretical contribution to democratization studies. "The theme and especially the comparative approach are gripping." - Ivanka N. Atanasova, George Mason University. "This work is solid intellectual history and has the merit of taking on Samuel Huntington's contention that religion is the key determinant in the development (or lack thereof) of democratic political cultures in East Central Europe." -T. Mills Kelly, George Mason University.

Baers biography of the former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Vladimir Clementis (19021952) is the first historical study on the Communist politician who was executed with Rudolf Slansky and other top Communist Party members after the show trial of 1952. Born in Tisovec, Central Slovakia, Clementis studied law at Charles University in Prague in the 1920s and had his own law firm in Bratislava in the 1930s. After the Munich Agreement of 1938, he went into exile to France and Great Britain, where he worked at the Czechoslovak broadcast at the BBC for the exile government of Edvard Bene. After the Second World War, Clementis political career at the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry blossomed: In 1945, he became Assistant Secretary of State under Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. After Masaryks mysterious death in 1948, Clementis was appointed Foreign Minister. This biography offers an unprecedented insight into the mind of a Slovak leftist intellectual of the interwar generation who died at the command of the comrade he had admired since his youth: Generalissimus Stalin.