Slovakia's declaration of independence in January 1993 marked the reemergence of a state about which remarkably little is known. Slovakia has struggled throughout most of its history to establish a separate identity, from the time of the Great Moravian Empire in which St. Cyril and St. Methodius initiated the Christianization of the Slavs, to its rule first by the Hungarians and then by the Czechs. When the first Slovak Republic emerged in 1939, Europe...