At the end of the first world war, the country of Austria-Hungary disintegrated into countless smaller countries. Among the chaos, one country briefly appeared in the eastern region of Slovakia. It was called both the Slovak People’s Republic and the East Slovak Republic. It claimed that Eastern Slovaks’ dialect and culture was far too detached for them to be considered Slovaks and that they had more in common with the Hungarians than with the new Czechoslovakia. It only existed for a couple of weeks, from December 11 through 29, 1918…
