The SSA 2025 Slovak Studies Association prize competition for Best Article or Book Chapter was a big success in attracting a range of high-quality submissions. All the entries demonstrated the importance of the Slovak experience to the diverse fields of political science, history and cultural studies. The committee consisted of Edward Snajdr (Chair), Susan Mikula, Greg Ference and Mark Stolarik. We found merit in all the submissions, and it wasn’t easy to select just one winner.
This year’s submissions were:
- Ľubomír Zvada. The State of Social Democracy in Slovakia: The Twilight (or Rebirth) of Social Democracy?In Ania Skyrzpek and András Bíró-Nagy (eds.) The Social Democratic Parties in the Visegrad Countries: Predicaments and Prospects for Progressivism. [Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 177-224. 2023]
- Veronika Szeghy-Gayer. Former Hungarian civil servants on the territory of Slovakia amid the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1919-24: a case study on the status regulation of teachers and postal employees. European Review of History, 31(5):739-758(2024)
- Martin Pácha. Between Repression, Chaos and Uncertainty: Religious Minorities in Early Communist Czechoslovakia. Contemporary European History, 1-17. (2025)
- Tim Haughton, Marek Rybář, and Kevin Deegan-Krause. Corruption, Campaigning, and Novelty: The 2020 Parliamentary Elections and the Evolving Patterns of Party Politics in Slovakia. East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, 36 (3):728-752.(2022)
- Martin Hochel. Tracing nation branding in Slovakia. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 1-11. (2024)
Two pieces stood out among the rest in their overall quality and innovative use of source material to make unique contributions to Slovak Studies. One uncovered a historical mystery. The other drew on employment surveys to solve a mystery.
The former is this year’s honorable mention.
Honorable Mention
Martin Pácha. Between Repression, Chaos and Uncertainty: Religious Minorities in Early Communist Czechoslovakia. Contemporary European History, 1-17. (2025)
Pacha’s study draws on secret police files to suggest that the Czechoslovak communist party did not have any clear plan of action towards religious minorities such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Pentecostal movement and the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It’s an important piece of research that demonstrates the regime’s deeply decentralized approach to creating religious policy during the early Cold War period.
While Pacha’s article is notable, the committee had consensus to select Veronika Szeghy-Gayer as this year’s prize winner for Best Article.
Winner
Veronika Szeghy-Gayer. Former Hungarian civil servants on the territory of Slovakia amid the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1919-24: a case study on the status regulation of teachers and postal employees. European Review of History, 31(5):739-758(2024)
Szeghy-Gayer’s study of former Hungarian Civil servants in the first year of the Czechoslovak Republic was well-researched and well-written and presented a new argument to Slovak history that not only were Czechs willing to adapt to political transition for job security after the establishment of Czechoslovakia, but Hungarians were as well. In her article, Szeghy-Gayer puts a human face on big transitions in the Slovak experience. And her examination of employment survey archives answers key questions about the fate of individuals during sweeping political transformations. She argues that such transitions are not that simple – including in some ways the implementation of a de facto form of lustration. But while seeds of opposition were certainly sown after 1918 among new minorities, it was also the case that many of the same people serving as teachers and postal workers were reinstated and reintegrated into Slovakia’s civil service sector in the new democracy. This reintegration after a period of upheaval occurs where one might least look – in the classroom, and in the very street on which people lived.
We also would like to thank all the authors for submitting their work for this competition!
Ed Snajdr – Chair SSA Prize Committee 2025 (November 21, 2025)