The so-called Slovak question asked what place Slovaks held-or
should have held-in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Formed in
1918 at the end of World War I from the remains of the Hungarian
...Empire, and reformed after ceasing to exist during World War II,
the country would eventually split into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia after the "Velvet Divorce" in 1993. In the meantime, the
minority Slovaks often clashed with the majority Czechs over their
role in the nation. The Slovak Question examines this
debate from a transatlantic perspective. Explored through the
relationship between Slovaks, Americans of Slovak heritage, and
United States and Czechoslovakian policymakers, it shows how Slovak
national activism in America helped the Slovaks establish a sense
of independent identity and national political assertion after
World War I. It also shows how Slovak American leaders influenced
US policy by conceptualizing the United States and Slovakia as
natural allies due to their connections through immigration. This
process played a critical role in undermining attempts to establish
a united Czechoslovakian identity and instead caused a divide
between the two groups, which was exploited by Nazi Germany and
then by other actors during the Cold War, and proved ultimately to
be insurmountable.
This article examines how United States officials observed the Slovak Question during the Czechoslovak Republic’s foundation from 1918 to 1921, to determine what the Slovak case exposes about the ...Wilsonian administration’s view and application of national self-determination after World War I. This article shows how conceptions of modernity were central to Wilsonian national self-determination, as the Wilson administration placed divergent views on the Czechs and Slovaks based on images of civic, economic, and cultural development, despite qualifying the two peoples as a common nationality. In doing so, the Wilson administration prioritized Czech views of a centralized state administered from Prague, over the appeals of many Slovaks who desired domestic autonomy for Slovakia within the state. This Wilsonian prioritization of civic development and modernity over national identity thus abetted a volatile national-political environment in the reorganized East Central Europe by dismissing the views of many national minorities in the region, such as the Slovaks, in their desires for national self-determination.
The failure of the Communist Party of Slovakia (CPS) after the elections of 1946 led the Czech communists to perceive Slovakia as an immediate threat and to use Slovakia as the testing grounds for ...its eventual putsch to take control of the entire state. The communists targeted the Slovak Democrats, using the Slovak question to divide the Czech and Slovak noncommunists, and to justify police action against Democratic Party (DP) members. Many Slovaks on both sides of the Atlantic reached out to Washington to expose this reality and to encourage action in Slovakia’s defense. The Czech and Slovak communists organized
The failure to implement the Pittsburgh Agreement during Czechoslovakia’s founding did not dissuade transatlantic Slovak activism. From the conclusion of the Treaty of Trianon in June 1920 to the ...Munich Agreement in September 1938, the Slovak question persisted in the First Czechoslovak Republic. The interwar period was not defined solely by opposition, as Slovak autonomists showed willingness to work with the Czechoslovak government. Nevertheless, neither the autonomists nor centralists were willing to reconcile their core position on autonomy, which kept the issue ongoing. Slovak autonomists on both sides of the Atlantic therefore became entrenched in opposition to Prague, Czech and
As the post– World War II order took shape, the Slovak question remained unsettled. The Slovaks in America persisted in their distrust of Edvard Beneš and continued to pressure the Czech leader ...regarding his treatment of the Slovaks. This pressure became more acute when the underground opposition in the Slovak Republic consolidated its support for Slovak autonomy and agreed to cooperate with Beneš’s exile government only if it acquiesced on the issue. This combined pressure forced Beneš to offer rhetorical support for Slovak autonomy, although this support waned considerably once Beneš and his government became ensconced in power.
Subsequently, the
It is easy to dismiss the one-sidedness on the Slovak question during World War II as derivative of the wartime Slovak Republic’s affiliation to Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, when one looks at the ...Slovaks in exile and the Slovak Americans, the existing biases and stereotypes of the Slovaks continued to shape the debate. A clear majority of the Slovaks abroad openly opposed Nazi Germany, but also supported Slovak autonomy. Beneš and his supporters nonetheless continued to present these Slovaks as fascists or as abetting the German war effort. Washington likewise put the Slovak autonomists in America under scrutiny. The formal political
In the late 1930s, the issue of the treatment of the Germans in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia reached fever pitch and threatened war. The story of the hastily organized Munich Agreement on ...September 29, 1938, which formally handed the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in return for a German promise to respect the integrity of the rest of Czechoslovakia, is generally well-known as part of the buildup to World War II. It set the stage for war on March 16, 1939, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. With the formal outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, the former Czech president
While Slovak and Czech national activists agreed to cooperate during the war, the Slovak question continued to ferment in the years afterward. As the formal founding of the Czechoslovak Republic ...aligned with the postwar peace process from late 1918 into 1921, the Slovak question became a component of the debates over the structure of the new government and its treatment of minorities that took place in the international arena at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles and beyond. Ultimately, the national movements on the winning side of the conflict defined the new organization of the region, although the Western powers
The process of Slovak immigration to the United States, the national political organizing that followed, and the retransmission of national ideas, organizations, and money to Slovakia culminated ...during World War I. The war shifted the direction of the movement from one based on national autonomy within Hungary to one linked with the Czech independence campaign led by Tomáš Masaryk. The Slovak Americans were an important part of the creation of Czechoslovakia during World War I. They nonetheless remained fixed on proving their worth as a nation and continued to assert their autonomy in any political arrangement with the Czechs. The
