From Field to Factory: The Historiography of Slovak Immigration to the United States

Abstract

Although Slovaks have lived in the United States for over a hundred years, professional American historians have only recently begun to study them. This lack of concern for the second-largest Slavic group in America cannot be attributed to a lack of sources. Pioneers among these immi? grants left us not only their published reminiscences but also led the way in reconstructing the histories of their communities. While a few mem? bers of the second generation tried to carry on the work of their fathers, their efforts paled in comparison. Historians in Slovakia, meanwhile, began to write about their countrymen in the United States and, whether as political emigres or as devoted Marxists, they initiated the first professional studies of these people. Native Americans, on the other hand, originally discussed Slovaks as either a threat to the American way of life or else as potential converts to the Social Gospel movement. For genera? tions native historians ignored these and other Eastern Europeans in the naive belief that they would disappear in the melting pot. Only with the ethnic revival of the 1960's did some American professionals of varying backgrounds begin to study these peoples. The everyday life of Slovaks in the United States has been portrayed at various levels, ranging from simple memoirs to complicated mobility studies. Some of the pioneers contented themselves with describing life in the New World as they remembered it. Others analyzed the growing ethnic neighborhoods while others still began to collect materials and describe three major institutions of American-Slovak communities?the parishes, lodges and newspapers. Such activities eventually led to fullscale community studies and attempts at an overall history of all Slovak groups in America. Even though the first two generations failed in the latter effort, they did provide the groundwork for later historians. By the