The History of Slovakia: Timeline

April 10, 2021

I’ve decided to create timelines first to cover the most important points of a country’s history. Then if I’m interested and have the time, I will expand on a particular part of the country’s history.

This is timeline of the history of Slovakia. I used the book Slovakia in Pictures by Francesca Davis DiPiazza, Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica as sources.

BCE. 6000 Farming Groups begin to settle permanently in the Danubian lowland.

500 Slavs arrive in Slovakia. They are the ancestors of modern Slovaks, Czechs, Poles and others.

CE. 833 Slavic prince Mojmir founds a niew state in Western Slovakia and Moravia called the Great Moravian Empire.

863 Cyril and Methodius, cleric brothers arrived from Constantinople (now Istanbul) and are Cyril is attributed the creation of the first Slavic alphabet; its final form, Cyrillic, is named for him.

906 The Magyars, ancestors of modern Hungarians, defeat the Great Moravian Empire and establish the Kingdom of Hungary.

1241 Mongols invade Slovakia, inspiring Hungarian landowners to begin to build castles for defense.

1526 Ottoman Turks conquer Buda, the Hungarian capital, and kill the Hungarian king in battle. The Austrian king, Ferdinand, a member of the powerful Habsburg dynasty, becomes the king of Hungarian lands.

1618 The Thirty Years war (1618-1648) It was a war between Europe’s Catholic and Protestant states. It ends the monopoly of the Roman Catholic empire in Europe and the essential structure of modern Europe as a community of sovereign states is established.

1848 Slovak nationalists hold a Slavic Congress in Prague to demand self-rule.

1867. The Austro-Hungarian Empire is formed. Their leaders make Hungarian the official language in Slovakia.

1918 Slovak leader Milan Stefanik and members of the Czechoslovak National Council establish the new nation of Czechoslovakia.

1921 Slovakia becomes the tenth country in the world to make feature-length films.

1939 Josef Tiso declares Slovakia’s independence from Czechoslovakia, but the country takes orders from Germany during World War II.

1948 Czech Communists, with Soviet support , take over the government of reunited Czechoslovakia.

1989 On 17 November 1989, a series of public protests known as the “Velvet Revolution” began and led to the downfall of Communist Party rule in Czechoslovakia. A transition government formed in December 1989.

1993 On January 1, Slovakia becomes a free independent country.

2004 Slovakia officially joins the European Union and NATO. Ivan Gasparovic becomes president.

2010 President Gasparovic wins reelection. Slovakia adopts the euro, the common currency of the European Union.

2019 In March 2019, Zuzana Caputova was elected as the first female President of Slovakia. She was a member of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party, which had no seats in parliament.