Conclusion

Abstract

Historians, as diplomats, should pour a “clean glass of wine” to their respective audience. The historian’s task is to record past deeds, whether positive or negative, in order that we should not forget them. Otherwise, we are doomed to relive them again. In examining the delimitation of the Slovak-Polish border in Orava and Spiš in 1918–47, it is clear that the problem had been an extremely complicated one. Polish historian Józef Zieliński characterized the story of Orava and Spiš in the period of 1918–45 as an “unusually difficult and complex” subject. The decision of the Conference of Ambassadors of 28 July 1920 detached from Slovakia 584 km² and 24,700 of the population and modified the border, which had served its purpose well for over 700 years, and the change disrupted old economic and cultural structures. Upper Orava and Upper Spiš incorporated into Poland became a source of disagreement between Czecho-Slovakia and Poland from 1918 onward.¹