The book is a comparative analysis of the events in Slovakia and Croatia in the 1990s and describes the rise of nationalist movements in both countries, the maintaining of national mobilisation, and the fall of the two movements, as well as the countries' post-nationalist orientation towards the European Union.
The author analyses the role of nationalism in the establishment of independence, the development of state institutions and civil society, and reforms seen through the prism of polarisation and conflicts between nationalist forces and 'Europe-oriented' forces on the ideological, political, economic and cultural fronts, trying to avoid a black-and-white approach or interpreting the phenomenon only through inter-ethnic relations.