This paper deals with the position of Slovak Studies within Slavic disciplines and draws attention to its "above-standard characteristics" in the Czech environment. Slovak studies in the Czech Republic must be directed towards bilateral study of Czech-Slovak relations and must incorporate not only mutuality but also its lack as a subject of linguistic-literary and cultural-historic research in the Central European context, which is both Slavic and non-Slavic as it encroaches, for example, on both German and Hungarian cultures. Czech specialists in Slovak Studies had to be granted a new status after 1993, in order to reflect the new geopolitical situation, so that this academic field would not be left in an institutional vacuum between Bohemian and Slavic Studies. In the new conditions, Slovak Studies in the Czech Republic must put forward issues of culture, language and literature, and find contrastive ways of studying mutual and non-mutual processes.
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