tur’s notions came to fruition simultaneously with the revolution in Hungary. The following issues were involved: 1. Liberation of peasants from serfdom. Bondage to the soil prevented economic development and evoked wide discontent and resistance of the peasants. A peasant uprising in Eastern Slovakia in 1831, was an expression of this resistance. 2. National and ethnic issues. Hungarian revolutionaries called for Hungary’s separation from Vienna, but at the same time they wanted to see Hungary one nation with one language and one educational system. But the desires of the Magyars for a centralized Hungarian state ran contrary to the wishes of ethnic groups in Hungary, including Slovaks. Slovak and Hungarian revolutionary claims ran contradictory to each other.

 

 

Ludovit Stur in the Hungarian Assembly

In the spring of 1848, Slovak leaders spread their ideas throughout Slovakia. Slovak nationalists, mainly in progressive western and central parts, joined them. In May, 1848, a huge public meeting gathered in Liptovsky Mikulas, where a pan-Slovak program, known as the Petition of the Slovak Nation was proclaimed and accepted. Slovaks demanded autonomy within the Hungary. They also demanded proportional representation in the Hungarian Assembly. They pressed for a Slovak Diet to administer their own region, where Slovak would become the official language and educational institutes from elementary schools to universities would use Slovak. They called for universal suffrage and democratic rights, e.g. freedom of the press and public assembly. They requested that peasants be released from serfdom and that their lands be returned to them. Ethnic Slovaks sought to back this revolutionary manifesto by force of arms. The provisional Hungarian revolutionary government was not willing to accept the Slovaks’ petition and the situation developed into open hostility between Hungarian and Slovak revolutionaries. In September 1848, the Slovak National Council was established in Vienna and it forthwith proclaimed the secession of Slovakian territory from Hungary. The Slovak armed uprising was only partially successful. Slovak demands remained unfulfilled, though the ruling army had, in 1849, with Russian help, managed to defeat the Hungarian revolutionaries. The new emperor of Austria, Francis Joseph, who had initially lent some support to the Slovak revolutionary cause, in December 1851 abolished the last vestiges of constitutionalism and began to rule as absolute master. Francis Joseph continued his centralistic policies. This came to be known as the period of neo-absolutism.