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This year, in the month of October, 20 years will have passed since Paul Hacker, the first American diplomat to be stationed in Slovakia in over 40 years, arrived in Bratislava to take up his duties as U.S. consul. The building was shut down at the height of Stalinist oppression in 1950, a little more than two years after Claiborne Pell, then a young American vice consul and later to become chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opened the official U.S. representation at Hviezdoslav Square in Bratislava. After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War in 1989, a new stage of exceptionally rich relationships commenced between the transatlantic power and the small country in the heart of Europe, one whose inhabitants share numerous historical and human ties with the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States claim to be descendants of Slovaks, and it was in the United States where the foundations of the common state of the Czechs and Slovaks were laid, a state that emerged in 1918 under the leadership of T. G. Masaryk and M. R. Štefánik. After 1948, for the next four decades, the official communist ideology viewed the United States as its biggest enemy. This did not just complicate traveling significantly, but it was also very dangerous to even listen to the “seditious” radio broadcasting of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, or to communicate with relatives and friends who immigrated to the United States, not to mention with any American officials or representatives.

Everything changed after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and within a very short period of time Slovakia established a multilayered relationship with the USA, much more intensive than with any other country. The United States has significantly helped us in overcoming the communist legacy and in becoming a modern state and part of the Euro-Atlantic democratic family. Today, both Slovakia and the United States are partners cooperating in many areas, from politics, economy and military, through science, culture and education all the way to sports. For example, since the end of 2008, Slovak nationals do not even need a visa to travel to the United States.