After the Second World War, the development of the central literary orientations in Slovak literature was greatly influenced by extra-literary factors. Some sweeping changes took place after the communist coup in the year 1948, which was followed by a period of socialist realism. Nevertheless, Slovak literature slowly began to change after 1956, with socialist realism gradually moving to the margins. If the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in1968 had not taken place, socialist realism would already have been over. A gentler variety of socialist realism was introduced by the communist authorities after 1970, leading to the "exile" of the leading Slovak writers of the 1960s. In the second half of the 1970s, however, the majority of the forbidden writers returned to literature with samizdat publishing arising alongside the officially recognized literature. As late as in November 1989 the Velvet Revolution effected major cultural changes, lifting censorship, thus providing a new impetus to literature, while re-dividing Slovak writers between "nationalists" and "cosmopolitans" with respect to their world view. Over the past two decades, a dispute has arisen anew between democratically-minded writers and former communist writers.
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