GOVERNMENT
Slovakia's head of state, the president, is elected by the Slovak National Council, which has 150 members directly elected by universal suffrage using secret ballots. The prime minister is head of government. Court judges are chosen by the National Council. The voting age is 18. Slovakia has 8 regions and is subdivided into 72 districts.

RECENT HISTORY
When the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled in 1918 after World War I, Slovaks joined with Czechs, under the leadership of Tomáš Masaryk and Milan Štefánik, in founding the Czecho-Slovak republic.

Czechoslovakia (the name by which the country was known after 1920) became the most democratic of the Habsburg successor states, although some Slovaks wished for more autonomy within the union. In 1938, however, in order to appease the Nazis, the Czech region of Sudetenland was ceded to Germany. On 14 March 1939 Slovakia declared independence and allied itself with Germany. The following day, German forces invaded the Czech lands. In 1944 central and eastern anti-Nazi Slovaks staged a revolt, but this was quickly crushed by German armed forces. At the end of World War II, Slovakia rejoined Czechoslovakia, and a new national government was formed. In the 1946 elections the Communist party emerged as the strongest political group in a coalition government. By early 1948 the Communists had seized complete control of government.

During the early 1950s there were extensive political purges. In 1960 a new constitution, modelled on that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was introduced that restricted Slovak autonomy. Pressure for reform was resisted by Antonin Novotný's regime, but in 1967 considerable economic liberalization was conceded. In early 1968 Alexander Dubąek, a reformist, took over leadership from Novotný. He set about creating “ socialism with a human face”, and during the next eight months, known as the “Prague Spring”, radical reforms were introduced, including the abolition of censorship, and autonomy for Slovakia. In August, however, troops from the USSR and four other Warsaw Pact countries invaded, putting an end to the democratic reforms. Dubąek was replaced by another Slovak, Gustáv Husák, who became president of Czechoslovakia in 1975.