Slovak Soviet Republic of 1919

a dictatorship of the proletariat that existed in Slovakia in 1919. The state was formed during the revolutionary upsurge that intensified under the influence of the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the creation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919.

The republic was proclaimed on June 16 in Prešov, a town on Slovak territory that had been liberated by the Hungarian Red Army during its counterattack against the interventionist forces sent by the bourgeois governments of Rumania and Czechoslovakia. Formed on June 16 as the supreme organ of Soviet power in Slovakia, the Revolutionary Executive Committee appointed the members of the Slovak Revolutionary Governmental Council in Košice on June 20. The Council resolved to nationalize large industrial and commercial enterprises, banks, and means of transportation and to expropriate, without compensation, landlords’ and church estates exceeding 50 hectares. It also issued decrees providing for an eight-hour workday, higher wages, pensions, and the exemption of peasants from taxes. The Soviet government of Slovakia ordered a mobilization and formed the Slovak Red Army, numbering 50,000 men by late June. On July 7, after the forced withdrawal of the Hungarian Red Army behind the Czechoslovak line of demarcation, the Slovak Soviet Republic fell owing to the intervention organized by the bourgeois government of Czechoslovakia with the aid of foreign imperialists.