Historica Olomucensia vol. 61 (2021), 104-136 | DOI: 10.5507/ho.2021.023

"Defenders of the Russian Nation": Slovak American Attitudes towards the Russian Empire, 1905-1918

Stephen O'Donnell
West College Scotland, Renfrew Road, Paisley, United Kingdom, PA3 4DR

Keywords: nationalism, Russia, Russian Revolution, Slovakia, Slovak Americans

The Russian Revolution held great significance beyond the empire's borders. As a 'Slav' state and a key member of the Entente alliance, Slav nationalists appealed to the Tsarist regime and its successors to liberate their countrymen living in Central and Eastern Europe. This article studies the relationship between Slovak migrant nationalists in the United States and the Russian Empire. Acting as a second centre of Slovak national life before 1914 and as the self-declared leaders of their political cause in wartime, Slovak American organisations adjusted their attitudes towards the Tsarist state and its successor regimes according to geopolitical calculations rather than ideological convictions.

Published: December 11, 2021  Show citation

ACS AIP APA ASA Harvard Chicago IEEE ISO690 MLA NLM Turabian Vancouver
O'Donnell, S. (2021). "Defenders of the Russian Nation": Slovak American Attitudes towards the Russian Empire, 1905-1918. Historica Olomucensia61(vol. 61), 104-136. doi: 10.5507/ho.2021.023
Download citation

References

  1. Marián M. Stolárik: Slovak Immigrants Come to Terms with Religious Diversity in North America. The Catholic Historical Review, 96:1, 2010, pp. 56-57. Go to original source...
  2. Elena Mannová, ed., A Concise History of Slovakia (Bratislava: VEDA, 2000).
  3. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 2nd Ed.
  4. Mark Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000). Go to original source...
  5. Jakub Beneš, "The Green Cadres and the Collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918," Past and Present, 236 (2017), 213-215, 222, 224-226, 234-236. Go to original source...
  6. Victor S. Mamatey, "The Union of Czech Political Parties in the Reichsrat, 1916-1918," in Robert Kann, Béla Király and Paula S. Fichtner, eds., The Habsburg Empire in World War I: Essays on the Intellectual, Military, Political and Economic Aspects of the Habsburg War Effort (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1977), 9.
  7. James R. Felak, "At the Price of the Republic": Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993).
  8. Marián Hronský, The Struggle for Slovakia and the Treaty of Trianon, 1918-1920 (Bratislava: VEDA, 2001).
  9. Vavro Šrobár, Vol. I, Oslobodené Slovensko: Pamäti z Rokov, 1918-1920 (Prague: Čin, 1928).
  10. Ján Opat, "On the Emergence of Czechoslovakia," in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1988: Seventy Years from Independence, ed. Harold Gordon Skilling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 41-42. Go to original source...
  11. Michal Dzvoník, Ohlas Veľkej októbrovej revolúcie na Slovensku (1918-1919) (Bratislava: SVPL, 1957).
  12. Ľudovít Holotík, Októbrová revolúcia a národnooslobodzovacie hnutie na Slovensku v rokoch 1917-1918, (Bratislava: SAV, 1958).
  13. Ľudovít Holotík, Štefánikovská legenda a vznik Československej republiky, (Bratislava: SAV, 1958).
  14. Ján Kvasnička, Československé légie v Rusku, 1917-1920, (Bratislava: SAV, 1963).
  15. Peter Petro, "Slovak Literature: Loyal, Dissident, Émigré," in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1988: Seventy Years from Independence, ed. Harold Gordon Skilling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 223. Go to original source...
  16. M. Peknik, 'Milan Hodža and Slovak Politics', in M. Peknik, (ed.), Milan Hodža: Statesman and Politician. Bratislava: VEDA, 2007, p. 153.
  17. Marián M. Stolarik, (1968), "The Role of the American Slovaks in the Creation of Czecho-Slovakia, 1914-1918" (MA Thesis, University of Ottawa, 1968).
  18. Gregory C. Ference, Sixteen Months of Indecision: Slovak American Viewpoints towards Compatriots and the Homeland from the 1914 to 1915 as Viewed by the Slovak Language Press in Pennsylvania (London: Associated University Press, 1995).
  19. Claude Baláž, "Účasť Amerických Slovákov na Zahraničnom Odboji v Prvej Svetovej Vojne," in Slováci v Zahraničí, ed. Daniel Zemančík and Zuzana Pavelcová, Martin: Matica Slovenská, 2013, 96-107.
  20. Peter A. Toma and Dušan Kovač: Slovakia: From Samo to Dzurinda. Stanford, CA 2001.
  21. Karol Sidor, "Zásahy Slovenskej Lígy v Amerike do politického vývinu slovenského (1914-1939)," in Slovenská Líga v Amerike, Štyridsatročná, ed. Mikuláš Šprinc (Scranton, PA: Obrana Press, 1947), 42.
  22. Dagmar Perman, The Shaping of the Czechoslovak State: Diplomatic History of the Boundaries of Czechoslovakia, 1914-1920 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962).
  23. Andrea Orzoff, The Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914-1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
  24. Betty M. Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 2000).
  25. Victor S. Mamatey, "The Slovaks and Carpatho-Rusyns", in J. P. O'Grady (ed.), The Immigrants' Influence on Wilson's Peace Policies (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), 229.
  26. Joseph M. Kirschbaum. Pan-Slavism in Slovak Literature: Jan Kollar - Slovak Poet of. Panslavism (Winnipeg, Toronto: Slovak Institute, 1966).
  27. John F. N. Bradley, "Czech Pan-Slavism before the First World War", The Slavonic and East European Review, 40: 94 (Dec. 1961), 184-205.
  28. Peter V. Rovnianek, Who Are the Slavonians? (New York: P. V. Rovnianek and Co., 1891).
  29. Francis Roy Bridge, Vol. VI, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866-1914 (London: Routledge, 2014), 2nd Ed.
  30. Roman Holec, "The Černová Tragedy and the Origin of Czechoslovakia in the Changes of Historical Memory", in Dušan Kováč (ed.), Slovak Contributions to the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Bratislava: VEDA, 2000), 9.
  31. Marián M. Stolárik, "Immigration and Urbanization: The Slovak Experience, 1870-1918" (University of Minnesota, PhD thesis, 1974).
  32. Slovenský Evanjelický Kalendár 1915, Pittsburgh: Tlačou Slovesnkého Hlasníka, 1914.
  33. Mary Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
  34. Piotr S. Wandycz, France and her Eastern Allies, 1919-1925: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from the Paris Peace Conference to Locarno (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1962).
  35. Georg M. Schild, Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1995).
  36. Brent Mueggenberg, The Czecho-Slovak Struggle for Independence, 1914-1920 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2014).
  37. Tomáš G. Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914-1918 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1927).

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.