Slovakia: History and Culture

Slovakia is a landlocked country in Central Europe.

It borders Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the southwest, and the Czech Republic to the northwest.

The majority of Slovakia's territory is mountainous.

The population of Slovakia is over 5.4 million.

The capital and largest city is Bratislava, while the second largest city is Košice.

The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the fifth and sixth centuries.

In the seventh century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samo's Empire.

In the ninth century, they established the Principality of Nitra, which was later conquered by the Principality of Moravia to establish Great Moravia.

In the 10th century, after the dissolution of Great Moravia, the territory was integrated into the Principality of Hungary, which then became the Kingdom of Hungary.

After a coup in 1948, Czechoslovakia came under communist administration, and became part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc.

Attempts to liberalize communism in Czechoslovakia culminated in the Prague Spring, which was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

In 1989, the Velvet Revolution peacefully ended the Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

Slovakia is a developed country with an advanced high-income economy, ranking very high in the Human Development Index.

It also performs favourably in measurements of civil liberties, press freedom, internet freedom, democratic governance, and peacefulness.

The country maintains a combination of a market economy with a comprehensive social security system, providing citizens with universal health care, free education, and one of the longest paid parental leaves in the OECD.

Slovakia is a member of the European Union, the Eurozone, the Schengen Area, the United Nations, NATO, CERN, the OECD, the WTO, the Council of Europe, the Visegrád Group, and the OSCE.

Slovakia is also home to eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Slovak people are of Indo-European descent.

The Slovak people are named after the lands they inhabit, Slovenia, and the language they speak, Slovak.

The Slovak people are descended from the ancient Celts.

The Slovak people were first mentioned in written sources in the 14th century.

The Slovak language evolved from the older form of Slovak.

The Slovak people have a long and complex history.

The Slovak people were influenced by foreign culture in the Middle Ages.

The Bronze Age was a time of significant growth and development for the Slovak people.

The Iron Age was a time of significant growth and development for the Slovak people.

The Hallstatt Period was a time of significant growth and development for the Slovak people.

The arrival of tribes from Thrace disrupted the people of the Kalenderberg culture.

The territory of modern-day Slovakia was settled by Celts, who built powerful oppida on the sites of modern-day Bratislava and Devín.

Biatecs, silver coins with inscriptions in the Latin alphabet, represent the first known use of writing in Slovakia.

At the northern regions, remnants of the local population of Lusatian origin, together with Celtic and later Dacian influence, gave rise to the unique Púchov culture, with advanced crafts and iron-working, many hill-forts and fortified settlements of central type with the coinage of the "Velkobysterecky" type (no inscriptions, with a horse on one side and a head on the other).

This culture is often connected with the Celtic tribe mentioned in Roman sources as Cotini.

From around 500 BCE, the territory of modern-day Slovakia was settled by Celts, who built powerful oppida on the sites of modern-day Bratislava and Devín.

Roman Period[edit]

From 2 AD, the expanding Roman Empire established and maintained a series of outposts around and just south of the Danube, the largest of which were known as Carnuntum (whose remains are on the main road halfway between Vienna and Bratislava) and Brigetio (present-day Szőny at the Slovak-Hungarian border).

Such Roman border settlements were built on the present area of Rusovce, currently a suburb of Bratislava.

The military fort was surrounded by a civilian vicus and several farms of the villa rustica type.

The name of this settlement was Gerulata.

The military fort had an auxiliary cavalry unit, approximately 300 horses strong, modelled after the Cananefates.

The remains of Roman buildings have also survived in Stupava, Devín Castle, Bratislava Castle Hill, and the Bratislava-Dúbravka suburb.

Near the northernmost line of the Roman hinterlands, the Limes Romanus, there existed the winter camp of Laugaricio (modern-day Trenčín) where the Auxiliary of Legion II fought and prevailed in a decisive battle over the Germanic Quadi tribe in 179 CE during the Marcomannic Wars.

The Kingdom of Vannius, a kingdom founded by the Germanic Suebi tribes of Quadi and Marcomanni, as well as several small Germanic and Celtic tribes, including the Osi and Cotini, existed in western and central Slovakia from 8–6 BCE to 179 CE.

Great invasions from the fourth to seventh centuries[edit]

In the second and third centuries AD, the Huns began to

In 830, Mojmír I united the Slavic tribes settled north of the Danube and extended the Moravian supremacy over them.

When Mojmír I endeavoured to secede from the supremacy of the king of East Francia in 846, King Louis the German deposed him and assisted Mojmír's nephew Rastislav (846–870) in acquiring the throne.

Rastislav pursued an independent policy: after stopping a Frankish attack in 855, he also sought to weaken the influence of Frankish priests preaching in his realm.

On Rastislav's request, two brothers, Byzantine officials and missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius came in 863. Cyril developed the first Slavic alphabet and translated the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic language.

Rastislav was also preoccupied with the security and administration of his state. Numerous fortified castles built throughout the country are dated to his reign and some of them (e.g., Devín Castle) are also mentioned in connection with Rastislav by Frankish chronicles.

During Rastislav's reign, the Principality of Nitra was given to his nephew Svätopluk as an appanage.

The rebellious prince allied himself with the Franks and overthrew his uncle in 870. Similarly to his predecessor, Svätopluk I (871–894) assumed the title of the king (rex).

During his reign, the Great Moravian Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, when not only present-day Moravia and Slovakia but also present-day northern and central Hungary, Lower Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Lusatia, southern Poland and northern Serbia belonged to the empire, but the exact borders of his domains are still disputed by modern authors.

Svatopluk also withstood attacks of the Magyar tribes and the Bulgarian Empire, although sometimes it was he who hired the Magyars when waging war against East Francia.

In 880, Pope John VIII set up an independent ecclesiastical province in Great Moravia with Archbishop Methodius as its head.

After the death of Prince Svatopluk in 894, his sons Mojmír II (894–906?) and Svatopluk II succeeded him as the Prince of Great Moravia and the Prince of Nitra respectively.

However, they started to quarrel for domination of the whole empire. Weakened by an internal conflict as well as by constant warfare with Eastern Francia, Great Moravia lost most of its peripheral territories.

In 907, the Magyars invaded the Carpathian Basin and started to occupy the territory gradually around 896.

It is not known what happened with both Mojmír