A Life Dedicated to the Republic: Vavro Srobár's Slovak Czechoslovakism

by Josette Baer, Milan Zemko (Foreword by)

Overview

In this stunning biography, Josette Baer re-traces the eventful life of the Slovak politician Vavro Srobár, the principal figure in the implementation of Czechoslovak democracy in Slovakia. Spanning from his student days and his fight for Slovak civil rights in Upper Hungary via his ministerial positions during the First Czechoslovak Republic to his active resistance against German fascism, Baer’s research paints a most comprehensive picture. Based on rich archive material available to the English-reading public for the first time, Baer shows how Srobár’s political thought and activities shaped the turbulent history of Czechoslovakia in the first half of the 20th century. Offering unique insights into the political past of a country whose history remains largely under-researched, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783838263465
Publisher:	ibidem
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Sold by:	Libreka GmbH
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

The author Josette Baer, PhD, is adjunct professor of political theory with a focus on Central and Eastern European political thought at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Zurich UZH, Switzerland. The foreword author PhDr. Milan Zemko, CSc., was a historian at the Department of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovakia (HÚ SAV). He was a renowned expert on Czechoslovak and Slovak history.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
I. The idea of Czecho-Slovak solidarity and the Czechoslovak state
(1898–1918)
II. The making of Czechoslovakia in Slovakia (1918–1938)
III. The Slovak State and the post-war years (1939–1950)
Conclusion
Vavro Šrobár—data
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

In her book, the historian Josette Baer focusses on the analysis of Vavro Šrobár's political ideas and activities in Slovak domestic affairs, dominated by the prevailing zeitgeist that also reflects the intellectual currents of the time. In the first half of the 20th century, these ideas were changing and, in the years between the wars, in a way that was not always conducive to democracy and civil rights. Baer therefore also investigates the social environment and the political conditions V. Šrobár and those intellectually close to him had to face. Thanks to Baer's fundamental knowledge of the historical material, her book is not only an outstanding contribution to the research on Slovak political thought of the first half of the 20th century, but also on wider political developments which in those years reached beyond the borders of Slovakia, since they were dependent on the development of the entire region of Central and Eastern Europe.

Milan Zemko