Slovakia


  • Main
  • Wikipedia
  • All Subpages
  • Create New
    /wiki/Slovakiawork

    The other half of the former Czechoslovakia. Less famous, formerly poorer and with less people (it has a rather low birth rate too), the Slovenská republika (Slovak Republic) became independent in 1993 in the Velvet Divorce. Linguistically and culturally, it is a western Slavic and central European country, just like Poland and The Czech Republic. It has a lot of mountains, with the Carpathians taking up much of the country. The Gerlach Peak in the alpine-like High Tatras (in the northern part of country) is the highest mountain of the entire Carpathians. The southern portions have three lowlands of varying size (all of them a northern extension of the Danubian/Pannonian lowlands). They're Slovakia's main breadbasket.

    The ethnic minorities mostly correspond to the nationalities of the surrounding countries, the biggest being the 8.5% of ethnic Hungarians in the south. Considering the fact that during the glory days of Austria-Hungary, a lot of Hungarians tried their best to pretend there was no such thing as a Slovak nation (or any Slavic nation for that matter) within their territory, a lot of Slovaks don't consider this all too thrilling. The historical bad blood between the two countries that started in the 19th century has led to various culture-clashes over the years, with a recent highly publicized law about the usage of the national language getting eventually skewered by the EU. Thankfully, most of the population of modern day Hungary and Slovakia aren't and never were a bunch of militaristic nationalists like in former Yugoslavia.

    The country's history in the 20. century

    A collection of a number of different ethnicities (Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, and Ukrainians), Czechoslovakia was first formed shortly before the end of World War I, on October 28th-30th 1918, at a time when Austria-Hungary was already falling apart into a collection of new nation states. Czechoslovakia's independent status was solidified in the Treaty of Versailles and the hard to define Slovak-Hungarian border was settled according to then existing statistics about the ethnicity of the local populations. During the inter-war years, Czechoslovakia prospered and was perhaps the most consistently democratic of the new central European countries, but its diversity also made it unstable. The government didn't mistreate the ethnic minorities, but was suspicious of them because Czechs and Slovaks only had a relatively narrow ethnic majority for their nation state (the Czech Germans being the third biggest group back then, even larger than the entire Slovak population).

    In an attempt to justify the Czech and Slovak majority and the country's independence, the inter-war government had to resort to the invention of an odd political idea known as Czechoslovakism: The cultural and political oneness of Czechs and Slovaks. Unfortunately, this caused several problems, especially in the later years, because the country wasn't federalised as was promised back in the days of World War I and Slovaks and Czechs still weren't fully equal in managing domestic politics and the economy. Many Slovaks also felt cheated by the misuse of Czechoslovakism as a cheap excuse for glossing over the unique issues and economic situation endemic to their part of the republic, and for not fullfilling the promise to give Slovakia more decentralised local rule, as opposed to the then standard government approach, which basically centralised every important institution in Prague. As if this wasn't enough, the ethnic Germans and Hungarians also wanted a bit more autonomy, also formerly promised at Versailles, but similarly not delivered. As the First World War entered history, people in other European countries (like the UK) started to feel sorry for the Czech Germans - who weren't maltreated but didn't have any political autonomy - but this sentiment was ultimately hijacked by Those Wacky Nazis and used as an excuse to gradually take control of the country.

    Prague was pretty untouched. The Czechoslovak people were not. Hundreds of thousands went to the death camps and the Lidice massacre, one of the most notorious war crimes of the war, took place. As Slavs, the Nazis considered the Czechs sub-human and useful only for labour. As the remaining Czech lands were made into a protectorate of the Third Reich, Slovakia itself became an independent country for the first time in history - but it was actually nothing more than a puppet state and lackey of Germany, very similar to Vichy France. And even though they often acted like a laughable example of the Fascist but Inefficient trope, the local nazi symphatizers sitting in the war-time government still managed to eagerly send nearly all of Slovakia's Jewish population into concentration camps. Thankfully, the Czech and Slovak anti-Nazi La Résistance later got their act together and proved absolutely vital in the assasination of Reinhard Heidrich, the head honcho of the Czech and Moravian Protectorate. As if that wasn't Badass enough, after much careful planning, they managed to launch one of the largest and most determined anti-Nazi uprisings of World War Two on the 29th of August 1944. Though the uprising was eventually crushed by the invading German army, it certainly helped a lot in quelling the presence of the Third reich in central Europe, helping pave the way to an Allied victory. The event is known today as the Slovak National Uprising and is one of the historical national holidays, much like Rememberance Day in Britain.

    Sadly, in the aftermath of the war, the new Czechoslovak government had revanchist feelings and made sure all the ethnic Germans and Hungarians in the country were deprived of citizenship and expelled or forcefully resettled en-masse. Luckily, this sentiment quickly faded away, the ethnic Hungarians got better, but most of the German population moved to German-speaking countries. Bad business all around, and best left unmentioned aloud in some circles.

    After a brief transitional period, during which the renewed post-war Czechoslovakia definitely went under the Soviet sphere of influence, the leaders of the Czech communists seized power in 1948. Czechoslovakia soon became Commie Land via one of the "defenestrations of Prague". The 1950s saw rapid post-war industrialization overseen by the local communist governments, but also the incredibly brutal persecution of clergy, private landowners, dissenting intellectuals and the setting up of kangaroo courts for pretty much anyone who looked even vaguely suspicious to the Party. Naturally, the Propaganda Machine and People's Republic of Tyranny tropes were in full force. After 1960, the country's name was officialy changed to "The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic" (as if it hadn't been one before). In the 1960s and especially 1968, Czechoslovakia's leadership decided to liberalise and started making some first steps towards this plan... The Soviets sent in the tanks and put the thing down. The Seventies and The Eighties were the infamous era of "normalization", symbolized by resigned and bitter sentiments of the citizens, who started feeling more and more betrayed by the regime. This period was also the heyday of the ŠTB Secret Police (pretty much the local cousin of the GDR's Stasi). Tensions increased again in 1988 and 1989, with people fed up by the government's inability to enact reforms and embrace perestroika like other Warsaw Pact countries. The last straw was the adoption of the so-called "baton law" in early 1989, which gave state police ridiculous powers to crush public dissent by any means necessary. It was put into motion by riot police during the peaceful student demonstrations of November 1989. The resulting public outrage led to spontaneous country-wide strikes and gigantic protests of people of all ages. The Communist Party was overwhelmed by the protests and forced to abandon their power to a new, democratically elected government, literally overnight.

    And so, in 1989, as part of Hole in Flag, Czechoslovakia finally became a democracy again in the Velvet Revolution. Three years later, the two halves of the country separated in the "Velvet Divorce", with much of the national property (such as the Su-25 ground attack aircraft) being split 2:1 for the Czechs because of their larger population.

    After the turbulent political era of The Nineties, today's Slovakia eventually became a prosperous country with a steadily growing economy. Of course, not everything is perfect, with various corruption scandals in politics on the local and national level still being a major problem (it seems to be getting better though, and more uncompromising civic activism has been firmly on the rise). The country has been a member of both the European Union and NATO since 2004. In January 2009 it replaced its previous monetary unit, the Slovak crown, and is now using the euro, unlike the Czech Republic.

    For its modern day military, see Slovaks With Sappers.

    Some notable and famous Slovaks :

    • The late Paul Newman was half-Slovak.
      • Jon Voight and his daughter Angelina Jolie also have Slovak ancestors.
    • Michael Strank, one of the six Marines who raised the US flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and was killed in action a week later.
    • coloratura soprano singer Edita Gruberova innitially got rejected by the Slovak National Theater after auditioning right out of college. Biggest. Mistake. Ever.
    • Male and female Slovak sportsmen like Daniela Hantuchová, Dominik Hrbatý (tennis), Pavol Demitra, Miroslav Šatan (ice hockey, both for Slovakia and in the NHL), Veronika Zuzulová (downhill skiing), Pavol Hurajt (biathlon), Michal Martikán and the two Hochschorner brothers (kayaking), Peter Velits, Martin Velits and Peter Sagan (cycling), etc.
    • Several others are mentioned in the Tropes section below.

    Slovaks and Slovakia in fiction :

    Some movies (actually) filmed in Slovakia:

    • Behind Enemy Lines
    • Dragonheart : Various locations around the country double for early medieval Britain, with Spišský hrad representing the ruins of Camelot visited by Bowen and Draco late in the film.
    • Eragon: Seriously, what's with all the dragon movies being filmed here?
    • Nosferatu: Yep, one of the earliest and most famous vampire movies was filmed on Orava castle and in its vicinity in northern Slovakia in 1921.
    • The Peacemaker: That 1997 thriller starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. In a humourous inversion to The Living Daylights, scenes shot in Bratislava stand in (quite badly) for parts of Vienna... and Sarajevo !
    • Uprising : The 2001 miniseries about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

    Tropes about Slovakia:

    The Slovak flag

      This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.