Komunistická očista vysokých škôl na Slovensku
Communist "Cleansings" of Slovak Universities

Summary/Abstract: In her monograph "„Nespôsobilý na vysokoškolské štúdium“: Previerky a vylučovanie študentov slovenských vysokých škôl v rokoch 1948–1960" [“Unfit for University Studies”: Vetting and Exclusion of Slovak University Students, 1948–1960], the Slovak historian Marta Glossová is the first to systematically deal with the persecution of students in Slovak universities. Her examination spans from the onset of the communist regime to the end of the 1950s as well as discussing their later rehabilitation. According to the reviewer, Glossová has used the original archival sources to significantly expand on our existing knowledge of this persecution and has successfully pointed to the different developments in Slovak and Czech universities, leaving aside the Central European context. Although her focus is on the victims of the purges from the student body, paying less attention to the initiators and executors, she refutes the established stereotypes and proves that the local actors in Slovak faculties did not simply carry out orders “from above”, but pursued their own goals. In total, Glossová identifies eight waves of student vetting processes between 1948 and 1960. The largest was the so-called “democratization action” in 1949, during which more than a thousand students were expelled. The two following waves took place in the years 1949 and 1950 and were related to the campaign against socalled Slovak bourgeois nationalists. Both resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of students, as did two milder waves in 1956 – these being a result of the spring protests of Slovak university students.

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