Slovakia on the road to independence : an American diplomat's eyewitness account
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Bibliographic Information
Slovakia on the road to independence : an American diplomat's eyewitness account
（ADST-DACOR diplomats and diplomacy series）
Pennsylvania State University Press, c2010
- : cloth
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliography: p. [227]-233
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
During the breakup of the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe underwent transitions to democracy that involved varying degrees of struggle and turmoil. Czechoslovakia eventually split in two with the establishment of separate Czech and Slovak republics in 1993. Paul Hacker witnessed this transition firsthand from his vantage point as head of the U.S. Consulate in Bratislava. This is his story of U.S. diplomacy during this period, from the time the consulate was reestablished there in 1990 (after a forty-year hiatus during the Cold War) through the opening of the U.S. Embassy in 1993 after Slovakia had gained its independence. The memoir covers the volatile political intrigues and changes of the era, the administrative challenges of operating a small diplomatic outpost that was dependent on the embassy based in Prague (headed for much of this period by the high-profile U.S. ambassador Shirley Temple Black), tensions between Slovaks and Czechs and between the Slovak majority and its ethnic Hungarian minority population, the legacy of the Holocaust, and the developments that finally led to independence for Slovakia. In a final chapter, Hacker brings the story of Slovak postindependence political history up to the present, including Slovakia's accession to both NATO and the European Union.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Claiborne de Borda Pell
Political Party and Organizational Acronyms
Introduction
1. By Way of Prelude
2. Getting Organized in Slovakia
3. Na Slovensku Po Slovensky: Crisis over the Language Law
4. The Gulf War and Slovakia
5. The VPN Implodes
6. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black: The Person and the Flower
7. More Hungarian Problems: Gabcikovo, the Constitution, and the Road Signs
8. Czech-Slovak Relations
9. Countdown to the 1992 Elections
10. Slovakia's Second Revolution: Meciar's Triumphant Return
11. Aftermath of the 1992 Elections: The Breakup of the Federation
12. Human Rights in Slovakia
13. The Slovak State and the Jewish Question
14. Trnava University: Assault on Academic Freedom or Dialogue of the Deaf?
15. The Microphone Episode
16. Vladimir Meciar
17. Other Slovak Personalities
18. U.S. Policy and Czechoslovakia
19. Independence and Its Aftermath: The Domestic Angle
20. Independence and Its Aftermath: The Foreign Angle
21. Do Videnia, Slovensko
Postscript: Sixteen Years of Independence
Glossary of Slovak Political Organizations
Glossary of Czech and Slovak Personalities
Appendixes
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
