ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, Slovaks embodied the experience of much of Central and Eastern Europe: they witnessed frequent and radical changes not only of their system of government but also of their state. Imperial rule by the Hungarians ended in 1918, to be replaced by representative government from Prague upon the foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic. This endured until the eve of the Second World War, which saw the creation of the ‘Slovak state’, and authoritarian one-party rule under German tutelage. The restoration of Czechoslovakia in 1945 brought the brief return of a democratic form of government, before the communist takeover in Prague in 1948 plunged Slovakia into forty years of communist one-party rule. 1989 saw another short interlude of Czechoslovak democracy, until in January 1993 the people of Slovakia at last found themselves in a position to build a democracy of their own. As a result of all these changes, the proverbial villager who had never moved from their place of birth had watched the capital city move from Budapest to Prague to Bratislava, then to Prague again and finally back to Bratislava.
