ABSTRACT
Immediately after the collapse of the communist regime, a broad, catch-all national movement emerged in Slovakia, dominating other sectors of civil society in terms of mobilisation power, collective protest, and salient presence in the public sphere. I will refer to this as the Slovak National Movement (SNM). Its roots can be derived from two subsequent projects of the Slovak political elites: the first includes attempts to build the Slovak nation under the Habsburg Empire, while the second involves efforts to protect and strengthen its position within the Czechoslovak republic. Only the sudden fall of communism, and the consequent implementation of fundamental human rights and liberties, paved the way to the more large-scale national mobilisation and to the free organisation of protest in the name of ‘Slovak national interest’.
