Slovakia 1939-1945 Slovakia 1948-1968






Slovakia within Czechoslovakia, 1945-1948



This chapter will only deal with events, developments affecting Slovakia; for a description of the history of Czechoslovakia click here.

Slovak Participation in Czecho-Slovak Democracy . In April 1945, a National Front Czechoslovak coalition government was established at Kosice, consisting of the Communist (split in a Czechoslovak and a Slovak party), the Social Democrat, the National Socialist parties, and, among others the Slovak Democratic Party. The HSLS, regarded an organization of collaborators, was banned, a reorganization of the Agrarian Party prevented. The government would move to Prague after the German unconditional surrender on May 8th/9th 1945.
In the 1946 elections, the Slovak Democratic Party gained 62 % of the votes in Slovakia, while the Communists emerged as the strongest party nationwide. The Communists held the ministry of the interior and abused this office in order to prepare the takeover of the state; the non-Communist cabinet members, including those belonging to the Slovak Democratic Party, resigned in February 1948 in protest. With the resignation of president Edvard Benes on February 20th 1948, the Czechoslovak Third Republic ended.

The Slovak Economy . By comparison with Czechia, Slovakia had experienced more significant wartime damage, as the iberation of Slovakia had been a slow and painful process (Oct. 1944 - April 1945). In addition, Slovakia (as well as Czechia) over the last six years had undergone a complex (and by May 1945 not yet completed) process altering her demographic structure, the complete or partial expulsion of her ethnic German, ethnic Hungarian, ethnic Czech, and her Jewish population (of which c. 70,000 had been deported to Auschwitz, where they had been subjected to genocide).
On February 27th the (insurgent) Slovak National Council decreed the confiscation of the land of the Slovak Germans and Hungarians, collectively regarded traitors to the Slovak state, and of collaborators (the HSLS); this was confirmed by a decree by President Benes of June 21st. The majority of Slovakia's ethnic German minority had been evacuated by German authorities in Sept. 1944 - March 1945; the remainder was expelled, a process completed by August 1945. On October 19th the new Czechoslovak currency was introduced; banks, mining and smelting companies, insurances and fod processing businesses were nationalized on October 24th. Hungary and Slovakia agreed on exchanging their mutual ethnic minorities, an exchange which was only partially implemented as over 360,000 Slovak Hungarians accepted Slovak nationality. In 1947 a two-year plan aiming at the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia's economy was introduced.
In Slovakia, the land reform implemented in 1945-1948 by the Communist administration was more effective than the land reform of 1920; this may have contributed to the comparatively strong showing of the Communists at the poll in 1946. The two-year-plan of 1947 also foresaw the reconstruction/establishment of industries in Bratislava and Kosice.

Slovak Culture . On February 22nd, the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Arts was reconstituted.






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		From Democracy to Communism, From Gottwald to Dubcek, Chapter 11 of the History of Slovakia by Prof. Jozef Komornik, Univ. Bratislava
History, from Eastern Slovakia Genealogy
Andrej Kopok, The Slovak Nation and Communist Totalitarianism (1945-1949), in : Tibor Pichler, Jana Gaparkova (ed.), Language, Values and the Slovak Nation, posted by CRVP
Article Slovakia, Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia 1945-1948, Edvard Benes, Klement Gottwald, National Front (Czechoslovakia), Czechoslovak Parliamentary Election, 1946, Communist Party of Slovakia, from Wikipedia
Ygael Gluckstein, Changes in Property. the Land Reform : Czechoslovakia, Ygael Gluckstein, Nationalization in Russia's Satellites : Czechoslovakia, Ygael Gluckstein, The Economic Plans of the Satellites, in : Ygael Gluckstein, Stalin's Satellites in Europe. Part One : The Economy of the Russian Satelites
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Julius Bartl et al., Slovak History, Chronology & Lexicon, Wauconda, Illinois : Bolchazy-Carducci 2002
Peter A. Toma, The Slovak Question in Postwar Czechoslovakia, pp.151-176, in : Peter A. Toma, Dusan Kovac, Slovakia from Samo to Dzurinda, Stanford : Hoover Institution Press 2001 [G]
Ehemaliges Bundesministerium für Vertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Kriegsgeschädigte (ed.), Die Vertreibung der Deutschen Bevölkerung aus der Tschechoslowakei (The Expulsion of the German population from Czechoslovakia), München : Weltbild 1994 [G]
Zoltan Brady, Nobody cares about you, introducing a documentary video on the massacre of Dobsina, June 18th 1945; (2002) posted by Hungarian History
Zoltan Balassa, Czechoslovakia, the Land of Lawlessness. On the Benes Decrees (2002) posted by Hungarian History, online book
Human Rights for Minorities in Central Europe, Vancouver Society : Ethnic Cleansing in Post-World War II Czechoslovakia : The Presidential Decrees of Edward Benes, 1945-1948 (n.d.), posted by Hungarian History, online book (contains documents translated into English)
Kalman Janics, Czechoslovak Policy and the Hungarian Minority, 1945-1948 (1982), posted by Hungarian History, online book


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted on April 16th 2006

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