Elite in Slovakia in the 19th and 20th centuries

The traditional view of regime change departs from the assumption that profound political ruptures brought about vast changes in the distribution of power. According to this view regime change is in general defined by personal, cultural and social discontinuities that dramatically impact the development of societies. In 1990, the historian, Ľubomír Lipták, published an inspiring account where he looked for an answer to the question of whether Slovakia was indeed a county in which each generation had its "hands severed" by drastic changes in the political, economic, social and cultural realities. He proposed that Slovak history in the 19th and 20th centuries was defined by deep ruptures and discontinuities: each new generation had arrived and worked, developed, assumed positions, built careers, but before the elite could mature and fully develop its potential, they were swept away and replaced by new elite as a result of political, economic or social changes. The present issue of Forum Historiae is one of the outputs of the project "Continuity and Discontinuity of Political and Social Elites in Slovakia in the 19th and 20th Centuries" supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency. One of the principal research objectives of the project was the validation or rejection of the "severed hands" thesis, as well as other long-accepted beliefs concerning the functional and power elites in 19th and 20th century Slovakia that have not yet been supported by empirical research and analyses.