Edited by Mark Stolarik

Description

The Slovak Republic: A Decade of Independence is Slovakia's first "WHITE PAPER," a "POLITICAL PLATFORM" and its first "PROGRESS REPORT." It outlines Slovakia's remarkable progress and promising trends of the past ten years:

• its fertile ground for foreign investments
• its strategic value to the West as the geographic heart of Europe
• actions taken towards growth and development in the wake of Nazi and Communist occupation
• its support of the goals of the U.S., UN, and NATO

The book is a collaborative document: nine papers written by Slovakia's president and eight of his high level government officials, with commentaries by eight North American scholars.

Contributors:

Rudolf Schuster, Miroslav Mikolášik, Peter Brno, Ján Carnogurský,
Roman Kovác, Martin Fronc, Pál Csáky,
Milan Knazko, Eduard Kukan
and
Paul Dubois, Anton Jura, Thea Herman, George Fodor,
Piotr Dutkiewicz, Paul R. Magocsi, Martin Votruba, Ron Halpin

This document will serve well as a basic introduction to Slovakia's primary institutions, its "prime movers," and its potential in work force and resources.

Slovakia is a new political entity that evolved in the twentieth century. Its people, however, document their ethnic existence for a millennium, during which time they produced a unique syncretism in culture and weltanschauung. Their oral traditions have been written down and translated into multiple languages; their social and political philosophy is available in many volumes in Latin. Their past century under the yoke of several 'isms' has given its writers a fertile field for growing modern literature that deserves to be translated into other languages. Now, after Nazism and Communism, Slovakia looks to the world for partnership.

Slovakia's entry as an equal partner into the rest of the Western world will prove mutually beneficial, as is maintained by Steve Forbes in a recent Forbes Magazine article calling Slovakia an "Investors' Paradise" (August 11, 2003).

This book represents a commitment to a Slovak political, social, and economic platform written by President Schuster and eight of his colleagues.

Comments and Reviews

THIS volume publishes the papers from a conference, which brought together some prominent figures from Slovak public life, held in 2002 at the University of Ottawa. It reviews changes in Slovakia in the first decade of independence under different policy headings with chapters from government figures (ministers or former ministers and some ambassadors) and comments from academics.

[the chapter by] Jan Carnogursky, Slovak Minister of justice 1998-2002, provides, for instance, a useful summary of the main developments in judicial changes since the fall of Communism . . .

— Geoffrey Pridham
Department of Politics University of Bristol