The Slovak diaspora refers to both historical and present emigration from Slovakia, as well as from the former Czechoslovakia. The country with the largest number of Slovaks living abroad is the United States.
Slovak diaspora in Romania
This section should include a summary of, or be summarized in, Slovaks of Romania. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text, or the main text of another article.(February 2022)
Approximately 17,000-21,000 ethnic Slovaks live in Romania. The largest Slovak communities live in the following counties:
The Slovak diaspora in Romania could be divided into two major groups:
Group 1: The Slovaks of Arad county
This group could be found in the flat Romanian county of Banat, especially around the town of Nădlac, RO (Nadlak, SK). In the sense of economy and culture, this is quite a developed society, in Nădlac, RO (Nadlak, SK), there is a Slovak school operating and Slovak books get printed there. The Slovaks in the county of Arad are descendants of the secondary colonizing generations - meaning, the Slovak communities re-settled there from Békéscsaba, HU (Békečská Čaba, SK), in Hungary in the 19th century. Today, Slovaks create in the town of Nădlac alone almost half of its population.
According to the 2011 census, the ethnic structure of Nădlac is:
Group 2: The Slovaks of Munții Plopiș highlands (Bihar & Sălaj counties)
Munții Plopiș, RO (Plopišské Vrchy, SK) are a part of the Romanian mountains located to the east of the city of Oradea, on a border of two counties - Bihor, RO (Bihar, SK) and Sălaj, RO (Salaš, SK). The Slovaks living there are the descendants of the colonials arriving in three waves between 1790 and 1838. A big part of the Plopiš highlands Slovaks took part in the Czecho-Slovak emigration after the World War 2. They settled in Czechia, along the border of Slovakia, where they create a specific society today.[1][2]
A village with the highest number of Slovaks is a part of this group - Șinteu, RO (Nová Huta, SK), located in the Bihor county, according to census in 2002, from the total number of inhabitants 1.287, the Slovaks were numbered at 1.264. There is a Slovak school or a kindergarten in almost every village. The Slovak highschool Jozef Kozáček High School is also located in Budoi. Teachers are sent to two schools by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic (in Șinteu and Făgetu), who work in the area as support for Slovak compatriots. In almost every village there are Slovak priests who are natives of this area.[3]
Religious structure of the Slovak diaspora in Romania
Political representation of the ethnic Slovaks in Romania
Since the Slovaks are officially recognised as an ethnic minority in Romania, they share together with Czechs a common representative Adrian Merka since 2008 for Democratic Union of Czechs and Slovaks in Romania.
Education
In 1995, the second Slovak lyceum in Romania was established in the Slovak locality of Budoi, RO (Bodonoš, SK) in the Bihor-Sălaj county, which was named after the important Slovak canon in Oradea, RO (Veľký Varadín, SK) Jozef Kozáček (Jozef Kozáček High School). This high school is focused on the study of languages and is studied mainly by students from the surrounding Slovak communities.
At present, there are 2 Slovak high schools in Romania (in Nădlac and in Budoi) - and there are also primary schools for the I. - VIII. year, another 3 primary schools for I. - VIII. years are in Huta Voivozi, RO (Stará Huta, SK); Făgetu, RO (Gemelčička, SK) and Șerani, RO (Šarany, SK), and in addition, there are also 12 other primary schools in Slovakia for Slovaks for years I. - IV. and 14 nurseries as well. On top of that, Slovak as a mother tongue is taught in several other schools as well.[5]
Significant localities with Slovak population in Romania
This section should include a summary of, or be summarized in, Slovaks in Serbia. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text, or the main text of another article.(February 2022)
The majority of the Slovak diaspora in Serbia is concentrated in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, with the capital Novi Sad.
Vojvodina Slovaks
Slovaks are the third most numerous nationality in the province of Vojvodina. According to the 2011 census, they form an absolute majority in the Bački PetrovacSRB, Báčsky Petrovec SK district (65.37%) and they are the most numerous nationality in the Kovačica district (41.85%).[8][9]
The Vojvodina Slovaks are descendants of mostly Lutheran emigrants from the 18th and 19th centuries, who settled in the Vojvodina fertile territory, sparsely inhabited after its devastation by the Ottoman Turks. The main causes of Slovak emigration were difficult economic and social conditions, considerable overcrowding and a lack of existential opportunities in their native regions.[10]
According to the 2020 census, the largest Slovak communities are in:
This section should include a summary of, or be summarized in, Slovaks of Croatia. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text, or the main text of another article.(February 2022)
This section should include a summary of, or be summarized in, Slovaks in Hungary. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text, or the main text of another article.(February 2022)
Slovaks are the third largest ethnic minority in Hungary. According to the official census, their number ranges from 17.693 to 110.000, which is an estimate of the Slovak organizations with seat in Hungary.[14]
History of the Slovak diaspora in Hungary
Slovaks lived in what is today's modern Hungary, especially northern Hungary, in many villages at least until the late Middle Ages as a remnant of Slavic settlement living there already before the arrival of the Hungarians.[15] Developments in the coming period remain unexplored due to lack of objective interest from the Hungarian authorities for the time being, with the exception of Hungarian biased nationalist circles spreading inaccurate information. Most Slovaks came to the territory of today's Hungary as part of the settlement of the so-called Lower Lands (Serbia, Romania, Croatia) after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, more precisely from the end of the 17th to the 19th century. In addition to the traditional Slovak-language islands in Hungarian territory, the former Pest County in 1790 was 52% Slovak.,[16] in Pest in 1829 there were just as many Slovaks as there were Hungarians and in 1900 there were about 100,000 Slovaks living in Budapest, the capital of Hungary (Budapest was the city with the largest number of Slovaks in Europe, hence the negative perception from the Hungarians today). In the area between Budapest and today's Slovak border, Slovaks still lived in about half of the villages in 1880s and 1890s, in several areas they even made up more than 50% or 100%. In Nyíregyháza (founded in 1749 as a Slovak settlement) in the 1980s, 8,600 Slovaks lived in addition to more than 13,000 Hungarians, and these Slovaks were called Tirpák. Szeged also had a large Slovak population at the beginning of the 19th century.[17][18]
in the whole of Kingdom of Hungary including both present day Slovakia and present-day Hungary: 1,855,000 Slovaks + 219,404 Hungarians fluent in Slovak (a total of 2,074,404 people)
in the whole of Kingdom of Hungary except present day Slovakia territory: 365.293 Slovaks + unknown number of Hungarians fluent in Slovak.
in the whole of Kingdom of Hungary including both present day Slovakia and present day Hungary: 1,946,000 * Slovaks + 547,802 Hungarians fluent in Slovak (a total of 2,493,802 people)
in the whole of Kingdom of Hungary except present day Slovakia territory: 261,319* Slovaks + unknown number of Hungarians fluent in Slovak.
Data up to 1920 are from,[22][23][24] later data are generally available in several sources.
According to contemporary Czech-Slovak sources, 630,000 lived in present-day Hungary at the time of the disintegration of Hungarian Kingdom,[25] 350 000 – 450 000,[26] 450,000 / 500,000 – 550,000 [27] of Slovaks. The above-mentioned sums of Slovaks and Hungarians speaking Slovaks also speak in favor of a number between 400,000 and 500,000 in 1918 (this number has been growing steadily in recent Hungarian censuses, although the teaching of Slovak has been declining - in the end it was practically non-existent) and thus Hungarians had no reason to learn the language) according to the Hungarian censuses, as well as the fact that in 1946 the Czech-Slovak commission preparing for the exchange of the population directly in Hungary counted 473,556 Slovaks applying for the exchange. As of 1990 and 2001, it is stated that the actual number of Slovaks in Hungary is 70,000 [28] or respectively 110,000.[29]
In summary, according to statistics, the number of Slovaks in Hungary decreased, depending on the source, from 400,000 - 500,000 / over 300,000 / 145,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to today's official 18,000 people, a decrease in the number of nationalities by 95.5% / 94.2% / 87.5% in only 80 years [without deducting population change. at a height of approx. 70,000 people]. Today, the number of Slovaks is paradoxically higher in distant Serbia or Romania, although there were significantly fewer Slovaks in these countries than in Hungary at the time of the disintegration of Hungarian Kingdom.
Notes
* The "mother tongue" was officially mentioned here, but this mother tongue was de facto defined in the official instructions for the census commissioners as the most frequently used language, the language the person spoke "most willingly". (It was not possible to determine whether this also applies to the 1930 census and later)
** Census data from 1910 (similarly from 1900) are skewed to the detriment of non-Hungarians mainly due to a specially defined issue implemented by Hungarian census commissioners (see *), further distortion proves the discrepancy of numbers with the development of birth rates and mortality of individual nationalities[30] and demographically impossible increases of the Hungarian population in individual municipalities compared to previous censuses (so-called statistical Hungarianization) [31]
*** If we compare this number with the data from 1941 and the numbers of the population exchange, we will also get a "deficit" of 22,037 Slovaks at the level of official statistics.
Famous Slovaks from the present-day Hungary territory before 1918
Eugene Cernan, a United States Navy officer and NASA astronaut and the last astronaut on the Moon. His father was Slovak, his mother was Czech. He kept visiting Slovakia until he was 70 years old.
Renée Geyer, an Australian singer who has long been regarded as one of the finest exponents of jazz, soul and R&B idioms.
Lukáš Hrádecký, a Slovak-born Finnish football goalkeeper.
Tim Hudak, a politician in Ontario, Canada, and the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC Party).
Stan Mikita, a Slovak-born Canadian retired professional ice hockey player. Originally named Stanislav Guoth, born in Sokolče, Banská Bystrica
Paul Newman, an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and professional racing driver. His mother Terézia Fecková born in Pitičie, Humenné.
Pola Negri, first female-European Hollywood star, birthname Barbara Apolónia Chalupcová, born in Poland to a Polish mother and Slovak father from Kysuce
Joe Baksi, a professional heavy weight US box player, a child of Slovak immigrants from Krásna nad Hornádom, today known as Krásna - a city district of Košice
^Sčítanie obyvateľstva, domácností a bytov z roku 2011 v Srbskej republike (Popis stanovništva, domaćinstava i stanova 2011. u Republici Srbiji — 2011 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Serbia) [online]. Belgrade: Štatistický úrad srbskej republiky (Republika Srbija, Republički zavod za statistiku — Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia), 2012, [cit. 2020-05-25]. Available online. ISBN 978-86-6161-025-7. (in Serbian and English).
^BOTÍK, Ján. Slováci vo Vojvodine — Premeny svojbytnosti enklávneho spoločenstva. Nový Sad: Ústav pre kultúru vojvodinských Slovákov, 2016. ISBN 978-86-87947-34-4.
^HOMIŠINOVÁ, Mária a kolektív. Spoločenskovedné súvislosti hovorenej slovenčiny mladej generácie Slovákov žijúcej v krajinách na Dolnej zemi [online]. Košice: Centrum spoločenských a psychologických vied SAV — Spoločenskovedný ústav, 2018, [cit. 2020-02-12]. Available online. ISBN 978-80-89524-25-9.
^Národnostní menšiny v Evropě, Leoš Šatava, Praha, 1994
^Sčítanie obyvateľstva Chorvátskej republiky z roku 2011
^Slovenská základná škola, materská škola a kolégium, Sarvaš
^STANISLAV, Ján. Slovenský juh v stredoveku I. 2. vyd. Bratislava: Národné literárne centrum-Dom slovenskej literatúry, 1999. 485 pp. (Svedectvá; zv. 15.) ISBN 80-88878-49-7, STANISLAV, Ján. Slovenský juh v stredoveku II. 2nd ed. Bratislava: Literárne informačné centrum, 2004. 533 pp. ISBN 80-88878-89-6.
^Marko A., Martinický P. Slovensko-maďarské vzťahy – história a súčasnosť vo faktoch. [s.l.]: [s.n.].
^Marko A., Martinický P. Slovensko-maďarské vzťahy – história a súčasnosť vo faktoch. [s.l.]: [s.n.].
^Beksics G. Maďarizácia a pomaďarčovanie s osobitným zreteľom na naše mestá. [s.l.]: [s.n.].
^Slováci v Maďarsku. Slovenský náučný slovník III., 1932.