Študentské protesty na Slovensku v roku 1956
Student Protests in Slovakia in 1956

Summary/Abstract: The Slovak historian and political scientist Juraj Marušiak’s monograph "Príliš skoré predjarie... Slovenskí študenti v roku 1956" [Too Early Spring... Slovak Studentsin 1956] is a pioneering effort to comprehensively treat the student events in Slovakia, or the so-called pyjama revolution, as the series of protests by Slovak university students in the spring of 1956 – the most famous of which was the Bratislava "majáles" May Day – is usually referred to. The reviewer appreciates Marušiak’s thorough recounting of these events, as well as of the retaliatory persecutions not only in the context of the political and social conditions in Slovakia, but also within the overall Czechoslovak framework and in comparison with the activities of students in the Czech lands. What is missing, by contrast, is the setting of these events in a broader Central European context of the incipient de-Stalinization. The reviewer agrees with Marušiak’s assessment that this was not an attack on the communist regime or a conflict between a section of the youth and the ruling party, but rather a movement of a “club of politically committed conformists” who accepted the changes after 1948 but expressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of them. Although the protests did not have a significant impact on the political development of the country, they marked an important milestone and a formative experience for their actors and, to some extent, for an entire generation.

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