Machine generated contents note: 1. Preface: Slovakia, Slovaks and their history / Dušan Kováč; 2. The Duchy of Nitra / Ján Steinhübel; 3. The beginnings of the nobility in Slovakia / Ján Lukačka; 4. Medieval towns / Vladimir Segeš; 5. Renaissance and humanist tendencies in Slovakia / Eva Frimmová; 6. The period of religious disturbances / Viliam Čičaj; 7. The Enlightenment and beginnings of the modern Slovak nation / Eva Kowalská; 8. Slovak Slavism and Pan-Slavism / Ľudovit Haraksim; 9. The Slovak political programme

from Hungarian patriotism to the Czech-Slovak state / Dušan Kováč; 10. Slovakia in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938) / Natália Krajčovičová; 11. Slovakia from the Munich conference to the declaration of independence / Valerián Bystrický; 12. The Slovak state of 1939-1945 / Ivan Kamenec; 13. The Slovak question and the resistance movement during the Second World War / Jan Rychli;k; 14. The Slovak National Uprising in 1944 / Vilem Prečan; 15. The Slovak question after the Second World War / Michal Barnovský; 16. Czechoslovakism in Slovak history / Elisabeth Bakke; 17. Magyar minority in Slovakia before and after the Second World War / Štefan Šutaj; 18. The establishment of totalitarianism in Slovakia after the February coup of 1948 and the culmination of mass persecution (1948-1953) / Jan Pešek; 19. Slovakia and the attempt to reform socialism in Czechoslovakia 1963-1969 / Stanislav Sikora; 20. The position of Slovakia in the Czech-Slovak Federation / Jozef Žatkuliak; 21. Slovakia under the communist dictatorship 1948-1989 : controversial development in the economic, social, and cultural fields / Miroslav Londák and Elena Londáková; 22. The fall of communism and independent Slovakia / Michal Štefanský; 23. Afterword / Mikuláš Teich.