Editing History of Slovakia (section)

====Czechoslovakia after World War II====
{{Main|History of Czechoslovakia}}

The victorious Powers restored Czechoslovakia in 1945 in the wake of [[World War II]], albeit without [[Carpathian Ruthenia]], which Prague ceded to the [[Soviet Union]]. The [[Beneš decrees]], adopted as a result of the events of the war, led to disenfranchisement and persecution of the Hungarian minority in southern Slovakia. The local [[Carpathian Germans|German minority]] was [[Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)|expelled]], with only the population of some villages such as [[Chmeľnica]] evading expulsion but suffering discrimination against use of their language.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}}
<!-- Unsourced image removed: [[File:Dubcek.jpg|thumb|left|Alexander Dubček.]] -->
The Czechs and Slovaks held elections in 1946. In Slovakia, the Democratic Party won the elections (62%), but the [[Czechoslovak Communist Party]] won in the Czech part of the republic, thus winning 38% of the total vote in Czechoslovakia, and eventually seized power in February 1948, making the country effectively a [[satellite state]] of the Soviet Union.

Strict [[Communist]] control characterized the next four decades, interrupted only briefly in the so-called [[Prague Spring]] of 1968 after [[Alexander Dubček]] (a Slovak) became First Secretary of the Central Committee of the [[Communist Party of Czechoslovakia]]. Dubček proposed political, social, and economic reforms in his effort to make "[[socialism with a human face]]" a reality. Concern among other [[Warsaw Pact]] governments that Dubček had gone too far led to the [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia]] on 21 August 1968, by Soviet, Hungarian, Bulgarian, East German, and Polish troops. Another Slovak, [[Gustáv Husák]], replaced Dubček as Communist Party leader in April 1969.

[[File:Czechoslovakia.png|thumb|right|210px|Czechoslovakia 1969–1990.]]
The 1970s and 1980s became known as the period of "[[Normalization (Czechoslovakia)|normalization]]", in which the apologists for the 1968 Soviet invasion prevented as best they could any opposition to their conservative régime. Political, social, and economic life stagnated. Because the reform movement had had its center in Prague, Slovakia experienced "normalization" less harshly than the Czech lands. In fact, the Slovak Republic saw comparatively high economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s relative to the Czech Republic (and mostly from 1994 till {{As of|2005|alt=today}}).

The 1970s also saw the development of a dissident movement, especially in the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1977, more than 250 [[human rights]] activists signed a manifesto called [[Charter 77]], which criticized the Czechoslovak government for failing to meet its human rights obligations.