Slovak Republic

Abstract

The Slovak Republic became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federation (Czechoslovakia). Slovakia had been part of Czechoslovakia since 1918. Previously, it had belonged to the historical Hungary and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Slavs descended from tribes that lived in Great Morava (830–908). This was home to the community of Nitra, one of the most significant cultural centers of the age where schools were also founded. Following the disintegration of Great Morava, the territory of present-day Slovakia became part of the Hungarian empire. The Slovaks became an ethnic minority: a political, economic, and cultural periphery. The Slovakian people gradually developed into a modern political, economic, and cultural unity that only came to the fore within Czechoslovakia. In 1843, a group of Slovakian intellectuals ensured that Slovakian was established as a standard language. Although this facilitated cultural development, it did meet with resistance from the authoritarian politics of the Hungarian rulers. During the Hungarian regime, the Slovak language was suppressed in the education system, nearly only being used in primary schools. A Slovakian system of primary, secondary, and higher education was only established after Czechoslovakia was established. Although the first university – the Academia Istropolitana – was established in Bratislava in 1465, during the rule of Matthias Corvinus, it closed down in 1491, and the first Slovakian university in the new state – the Comenius University in Bratislava – was opened in 1919.