T1 50 g responds to the rate of postage of the 1st class up to 50 g - domestic servis. © Slovak Post, 2008 The independent and sovereign Slovak Republic is one of the youngest countries in the world, although Slovaks are among the oldest European peoples. Due to unfavourable geopolitical and historical circumstances, Slovaks achieved their sovereign and independent statehood only 15 years ago, on 1 January 1993. The territory of the present Slovakia was compactly and continuously populated by the ancestors of the present Slovaks, most probably since the end of the 5th century. In the 9th century, they created a powerful early-feudal state, in which the foundations of the statehood of several Central European nations were laid along with the foundations of Slavonic culture and literature. This state ceased to exist at the beginning of the 10th century, but generations of Slovaks have acknowledged it as the fundamental element and origin of the national state-forming history. For a further near-millennium Slovaks lived in the Kingdom of Hungary, where, at the end of the 18th century, after the origination of modern nationalism, they strived for autonomy and self-government. As the central government of the Kingdom of Hungary rejected such claims and, on the contrary, aimed to create an ethnic Hungarian state, at the end of the World War I in 1918, Slovaks created a common state with the Czechs – the Czechoslovak Republic. As the Czech and Slovak Republic was not able to resolve all issues concerning their mutual relations, in 1992 Czech and Slovak politicians decided to separate the state peacefully and calmly, creating two independent states. The previous common state ceased to exist on 31 December 1992, and the independent Slovak Republic was declared on 1 January 1993. The stamp depicts the map of the Slovak Republic highlighted by the Slovak national tricolour. Inside the borders are the symbols of eight central towns of the self-governing regions into which the Slovak Republic is subdivided. In the background of the stamp is a stylised emblem of the European Union, which the Slovak Republic joined in 2004. The first day cover shows the location of the Slovak Republic in Europe. The motif on the FDC stamp is the Mount Kriváň, which is the unofficial symbol of Slovakia. Anton Hrnko