The Slovak Question

A Transatlantic Perspective, 1914-1948

This book examines the Slovak Question in former Czechoslovakia from an international perspective. Explored through the relationship between Slovaks, Slovak-Americans (many of them in Pittsburgh), and United States and Czechoslovak policymakers, it shows how Slovak national activism in America helped establish among the Slovaks a sense of independent identity and national political assertion, which troubled Czechoslovakian and European politics for seventy years. This divide had significant consequences when exploited by Nazi Germany and then by Cold War protagonists, and eventually led to the 'Velvet Divorce' between the two nations in 1993.