Slovakia, left reeling Wednesday after an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, is a relatively young country whose history is closely intertwined with that of its central European neighbors.
Slovakia is one of two nations born from the former Czechoslovakia amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the final years of the 20th century.
Czechoslovakia was a multiethnic nation established at the end of World War I that endured dismemberment by the Nazis and more than four decades of communist rule. But during the fall of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as independence movements gained strength across the Soviet Union, a series of largely peaceful protests called the Velvet Revolution led Czechoslovakia first to independence. and then to a split, often referred to as the Velvet Divorce, which left two nations: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
After several years of economic and political turmoil following independence, Slovakia joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, and adopted the euro in 2009. As the country moved toward establishing its national identity, some tensions persisted with the Czech Republic, its richest country. and largest neighbor, which has about twice the population of Slovakia (five million).
Like much of Europe, Slovakia has been deeply polarized over the past decade. Fico, who has been a prominent politician in the country since its independence, was forced to resign from office in 2018 amid widespread protests over the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption.
He was re-elected last fall, after adopting a pro-Russian campaign stance that took advantage of Slovakia’s historic Russian sympathies.