Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War between Catholicism and Protestantism was a significant shaping process in the history of Central Europe. The concept of "Central Europe" appeared in the 19th century.
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the southwest, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's mostly mountainous territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi), with a population of over 5.4 million. The capital and largest city is Bratislava, while the second largest city is Košice.
The History of Slovakia, dates back to the findings of ancient human artifacts. This article shows the history of the country from prehistory to the present day.
The Visegrád Group is a cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The alliance aims to advance co-operation in military, economic, cultural and energy affairs, and to further their integration with the EU. All four states are also members of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia included students and older dissidents. The result was the end of 41 years of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent dismantling of the command economy and conversion to a parliamentary republic.
With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority in Slovakia. According to the 2021 Slovak census, 422,065 people declared themselves Hungarians, while 462,175 stated that Hungarian was their mother tongue.
Slovakization or Slovakisation is a form of either forced or voluntary cultural assimilation, during which non-Slovak nationals give up their culture and language in favor of the Slovak one. This process has relied most heavily on intimidation and harassment by state authorities. In the past the process has been greatly aided by deprivation of collective rights for minorities and ethnic cleansing, but in the last decades its promotion has been limited to the adoption of anti-minority policies and anti-minority hate speech.
Count János Eszterházy was a prominent ethnic Hungarian politician in inter-war Czechoslovakia and later in the First Slovak Republic. He was a member of the Czechoslovak Parliament and of the Slovak Assembly. After the Second World War, he was illegally deported to the Soviet Union, sentenced on trumped-up charges at a show trial, and imprisoned. In the meantime he was sentenced, in absentia, to death by the National Court in Bratislava on the charges of High Treason to the State, collaboration with enemy, the breaking-up of Czechoslovakia, and his participation in an anti-democratic regime as a deputy of the Slovak Assembly. The sentence was not executed as a consequence of a Presidential pardon, following his return to Czechoslovakia from the Soviet Union. He died in prison in 1957.
Iveta Radičová served as the first woman prime minister of Slovakia from 2010 to 2012. She led a coalition government, in which she also briefly held the post of Minister of Defence in the last five months of the coalition. Previously she had served as minister of Labour from 2005 to 2006 in the second Dzurinda government.
Juraj Marusiak PhD. is a Slovak political scientist, historian, journalist and translator of a mixed Slovak-Polish descent. He represents a moderate social-democratic stream in Slovak political thinking.
Hungary and Slovakia are two neighboring countries in Central Europe. There are two major periods of official foreign relations between them in contemporary history. The first period included relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and the first Slovak Republic in 1939–1945. The second period started in 1993, when the countries again established diplomatic relations, the year when Slovakia became independent of Czechoslovakia. Hungary has an embassy in Bratislava and a general consulate in Košice, and in Nitra, and Slovakia has an embassy in Budapest and a general consulate in Békéscsaba.
The Czechoslovak–Hungarian population exchange was the exchange of inhabitants between Czechoslovakia and Hungary after World War II. Between 45,000 and 120,000 Hungarians were forcibly transferred from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, and their properties confiscated, while around 72,000 Slovaks voluntarily transferred from Hungary to Czechoslovakia.
The International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS) is an independent NGO, founded in 1994 which aims to promote public policy concepts and practice and apply them to influential policy research that affects both the public and private sectors in Ukraine.
Deportations of Hungarians to the Czech lands were a series of mass deportations of Hungarian population from southern Slovakia to Czech lands by Czechoslovak authorities. Deportations took place during the period from 1945 to 1947.
Ivan Štefanec is a Slovak politician and business manager, former member of the Slovak Parliament and current member of the European Parliament for Christian Democratic Movement.
Krytyka is a Ukrainian intellectual monthly/bi-monthly magazine and publishing house dedicated to in-depth analysis of current affairs, culture and book reviews in Ukraine and the region. Krytyka was founded in 1997 by the Harvard professor of Ukrainian literature George Grabowicz. The magazine is a partner of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, University of St. Gallen, and an exclusive partner of The New York Review of Books in Ukraine. Krytyka receives support from Western and Ukrainian foundations for its various projects . Krytyka is a member of Eurozine, a network of European cultural magazines, and sees its role in mediating between Ukrainian and global intellectual elites. Since 2014, it is also available in English.
GLOBSEC is a non-partisan, non-governmental organisation based in Bratislava, Slovakia. One of its main activities is the annual GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum, in existence since 2005. Other projects include the Tatra Summit conference on European affairs or Chateau Béla Central European Strategic Forum. Its think-tank called GLOBSEC Policy Institute boasts a wide research area based on four pillars. Its main outputs are policy papers and analyses on different topics in the area of international politics and security issues. Since 2016, GLOBSEC is not only the name of one of the top forums on international security worldwide, but also of the legal entity and organiser of the Forum.
The Prague European Summit is a platform for a regular high-level strategic debate on the future of the European Union and other European issues. It is the only platform of this kind focused on the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe. It offers space for an informal dialogue among political representatives, high-ranking state officials, representatives of interest groups, businessmen, academicians and journalists.
The Sekyra Foundation is a private foundation created in 2018 by Czech entrepreneur Luděk Sekyra in support of moral universalism, liberal values, and civil society. Among many other projects the Foundation has a long-term cooperation with the University of Oxford which has also named the oldest statutory professorship in philosophy at Oxford after the foundations founder Luděk Sekyra.
