officially Slovak Republic
Country, central Europe.
Area: 18,933 sq mi (49,035 sq km). Population (2001 prelim.): 5,379,455. Capital: Bratislava . About nine-tenths of the population are Slovak; Hungarians form the largest minority. Language: Carpathian Mountains dominate Slovakia, with lowlands in the southwestern and southeastern regions. The Morava and Danube rivers form parts of the southern border. The country grows grain, sugar beets, and vegetable crops and raises pigs, sheep, and cattle, but the economy is based on mining and manufacturing; there are substantial deposits of iron ore, copper, magnesite, lead, and zinc. Slovakia is a republic with one legislative house; its chief of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. Slovakia was inhabited in the first centuries AD by Illyrian, Celtic, and Germanic tribes. Slovaks settled there around the 6th century. It became part of Great Moravia in the 9th century but was conquered by the {{link=Magyar">Magyars с 907. It remained in the kingdom of Hungary until the end of World War I, when the Slovaks joined the Czechs to form the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1918. In 1938 Slovakia was declared an autonomous unit within Czechoslovakia; it was nominally independent under German protection from 1939 to 1945. After the expulsion of the Germans, Slovakia joined a reconstituted Czechoslovakia, which came under Soviet domination in 1948. In 1969 a partnership between the Czechs and Slovaks established the Slovak Socialist Republic. The fall of the communist regime in 1989 led to a revival of interest in autonomy, and Slovakia became an independent nation in 1993.