BY LEOS ROUSEK

SPISSKA NOVA VES, Slovakia—For one night a year, this small struggling town in eastern Slovakia becomes the country's glamour capital.

Last weekend, former prime ministers of Slovakia and the neighboring Czech Republic toasted a mostly out-of-town crowd of about 330 people, many of whom made a four-hour drive from Bratislava, for the yearly Ples Spisiakov ball. A former Miss Czechoslovakia who now runs the yearly Slovak pageant, a famous Slovak singer and actress, a leading finance and real-estate tycoon and the head of the government intelligence service SIS all rubbed shoulders—as all were brushed with glitterati status by coverage from ...