Slovakia

Slovakia (Slovak. Slovensko), the official name is the Slovak Republic (Slovak. Slovenská republika) - a state in Central Europe. The population is 5,443,120 people (December 2017), the territory is 48,845 km². It occupies 112th place in the world in terms of population and 127th in territory.

The capital is Bratislava. The state language is Slovak.

Unitary state, parliamentary republic. As of June 2019, Zuzan Chaputov is the president, and Peter Pellegrini is the prime minister. Divided into 8 edges.

Located in the center of Europe. A landlocked continental state. It has a land border with the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine.

Most believers (about 70% of the population) profess Catholicism.

Slovakia is a member of NATO and the EU. An industrial country with a dynamically developing economy. The volume of GDP in 2011 amounted to 127.111 billion US dollars (about 23 384 dollars per capita). The monetary unit is the euro.

The independence of the country was proclaimed on January 1, 1993. Throughout history, the territory of the country was part of many powers and state entities, ranging from the State of Samo in the 7th century to Czechoslovakia in the 20th century. During the Second World War, there was a Slovak state dependent on the Third Reich, which in 1945 again became part of Czechoslovakia.

The first written mention of Slovakia dates back to 1586. The name comes from the Czech word Slováky; previous German forms were Windischen landen and Windenland (15th century). The self-name Slovensko (1791) comes from the older ethno-buried Slovaks - Sloven, which may indicate its origin until the 15th century. The original meaning was geographical (and not political), since Slovakia was part of the multinational Kingdom of Hungary and did not create a separate administrative unit during this period.

Travel Destinations in Slovakia

The Slavs settled the territory of Slovakia in the VI century, during the Great Migration of Peoples. Slovakia was part of the center of the Samo Power in the 7th century, later the Principality of Nitran was located on its territory. The Slavic state, known as Great Moravia, reached its highest development in the 9th century with the advent of Cyril and Methodius and expansion under the leadership of Prince Svyatopolk I. Ultimately, Slovakia became part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the XI-XIV centuries, and then later was part of Austria-Hungary until its collapse in 1918. In the same year, Slovakia merged with the Czech Republic and Subcarpathian Russia and the state of Czechoslovakia was formed.

In 1919, during the campaign to the north of the Hungarian Red Army for some time, the Slovak Soviet Republic was formed on part of the territory of Slovakia.

Due to the collapse of Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement of 1938, Slovakia became a separate republic, which was controlled by Nazi Germany.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia was restored and came under the influence of the Soviet Union since 1945.

At the same time, Slovakia's national self-government bodies - the Slovak National Council and local local committees - which arose during the war, were preserved in Slovakia, while the Czechs did not have such bodies (the so-called asymmetric national state structure). Then, in October 1968, the Constitutional Law on the Federation was adopted, which entered into force on January 1, 1969, according to which Czechoslovakia (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic - Czechoslovakia was officially called Czechoslovakia since 1960) was divided, like the USSR and the SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) , into two constituent republics - the Czech and Slovak socialist republics.

The end of socialist Czechoslovakia in 1989 during the peaceful Velvet Revolution also signified the end of Czechoslovakia as a whole state and led to the creation in March 1990 of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, and then, from January 1, 1993, two separate states - Slovakia and the Czech Republic (" velvet divorce "). Slovakia became a member of NATO on March 29, 2004, the European Union May 1, 2004, December 21, 2007 entered the Schengen zone, and January 1, 2009 entered the Euro zone.