What’s it like to be the political ray of hope for an entire region of the world? Depending on who is writing, the forty-six-year-old Zuzana Čaputová, the President of Slovakia, may be called upon to save Slovakia, Central Europe, or Central and Eastern Europe. Or all of Europe—Čaputová, who took office in June, is a lone political voice in a sea of demagoguery.

The commentators who anointed Čaputová the savior of regional democracy celebrated her surprise victory in last spring’s Presidential election as a triumph of liberalism in a region that seems to have abandoned liberalism’s ideals. But it’s not liberalism that Čaputová personifies—it’s politics, if one defines politics as an earnest, complicated conversation about values and shared goals. At the start of her campaign, Čaputová told me, she made two decisions: she would accept no professional “marketing” advice, and she would disengage emotionally from the outcome of the election. “People have the right to know who I am. I made an offer, and they can decide whether they accept this offer or not,” she said.

Everyone I talked to about Čaputová, and Čaputová herself, recounted a single, pivotal incident from early in the campaign, when she was asked publicly about her position on the adoption of childen by same-sex couples. The issue, she told me, had recently taken hold of the Slovak imagination. Most other candidates, as far as she could observe, tried to dodge the question. Slovakia is a member of the European Union, but it is one of a half-dozen countries that do not allow same-sex marriage or adoption by same-sex couples, in contravention of European court decisions. As in many Eastern and Central European countries, L.G.B.T. rights are often described in Slovakia as an agenda item foisted on a socially conservative population by meddlesome Western Europeans. Faced with the question, Čaputová responded that, while being raised by biological parents is ideal, any two loving parents, whatever their sexual orientation, are better than an orphanage. A campaign consultant might have told her that this answer would be political suicide, or so Čaputová assumed. Instead, it appeared to be the start of a meteoric rise—not, it seems, because a critical mass of voters agreed with all of her positions but because her honesty and openness, and perhaps her willingness to reason in public, appealed to them.

Čaputová, who used to work as an environmental lawyer, entered electoral politics during a particularly painful crisis in Slovakia. In February, 2018, a twenty-seven-year-old investigative journalist, Ján Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, were assassinated in their house. Within a few months, investigators concluded that they were murdered because Kuciak had been digging into the business dealings of a powerful businessman, Marián Kočner. The gunman confessed, and so did an intermediary. In October of this year, Kočner and two other men were charged with plotting the assassination; they pled not guilty. The investigation has been accompanied by a steady stream of revelations about Kočner’s use of political connections; publicly released evidence has included recordings of his conversations with highly placed judicial officials. The effect has been demoralizing for the public, but it has also been mobilizing: mass protests that began spontaneously in reaction to the murder have continued, turning into a sustained anti-corruption movement.

“We really are at a crossroads, where we will see whether the frustration will prevail or the demands for change,” Čaputová told me when I interviewed her at the Presidential palace, in Bratislava, last month. (She is confident enough in English to understand my questions, but, for the sake of precision, she responded in Slovak, and a member of her staff interpreted.) She used the word “frustration” (frustrácie in Slovak) a lot, and she views this prevailing sentiment as part of a longer process, a reaction to broken promises that have accumulated in the thirty years since the Velvet Revolution ended the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. (The Czech and Slovak republics parted peacefully four years later.) “You can feel a sense of frustration from people who do not feel they have had a dignified life in the thirty years since November, 1989.” The Slovak economy has done well after a slump in the late nineteen-nineties, but, on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Better Life Index, Slovakia ranks “below average” in health, wealth, and, most important, subjective well-being. By these measures, Slovakia lags behind the Czech Republic but ranks comparably to neighbors Hungary and Poland, countries that have ditched politics in favor of demagoguery.

On the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution last month, Čaputová spoke at the public square where thousands had gathered thirty years earlier. “Nobody can say with all seriousness that significant positive changes did not happen thirty years ago,” she said, but immediately went on to acknowledge that “a significant part of Slovak society is frustrated.” She offered a hypothesis for the reasons behind this frustration. “Although as citizens we are equal, the basic experience of too large a number of people is that their dignity and their rights are not fully respected. People who live on a subsistence level, and who experience a hard-to-cope situation with every unexpected cost, know this. Small farmers who could not enforce their rights against the machinery of big land owners aided by the state office know it. All those who demanded their rights as guaranteed by law, but learned that court rulings can sometimes be bought, know it. People who are different and belong to marginalized groups know it very well. All these mentioned and many others are waiting for what we as a society are obliged to do: help them attain the respect of their dignity and their rights.”

There are few other political leaders, if any, in post-Communist countries who can articulate the tension between opportunities gained and dreams broken with such empathy. I talked to Čaputová two days after the speech, and she told me that empathy is a key element of how she views herself, as is the experience of growing up under Soviet Communism and coming of age in a democratic Slovakia. “I remember it as a time of schizophrenia and two-facedness,” she said. “You had your private reality and then you had the public reality, and what you said privately couldn’t be discussed publicly—or it could, but with consequences.” She was sixteen at the time of the Velvet Revolution, and remembers it as a “moment of truthfulness.” The two-facedness ended.

As a university student, Čaputová worked in the local government in the town of Pezinok, where she grew up and continues to live now. After graduation, she became an activist lawyer, bringing what she calls “strategic litigation for citizens who faced problems with state institutions.” She is particularly well known for her work on environmental issues, which earned her the nickname Erin Brockovich of Slovakia. She told me that this work gave her an understanding of how power functions, and an appreciation for the sense of agency that activism can create.

The Presidency in Slovakia is a largely ceremonial post, though Čaputová is her country’s commander-in-chief. She cannot influence legislation, and she certainly cannot have the kind of direct impact that she could have as a litigator. But she has an extraordinary pulpit, in her small country and on the continent. She has used it to demand transparency and justice in the assassination case. She has also used it to create hope.

Personifying the political hopes of hundreds of millions of people is a peculiarly awesome responsibility. “I must be the carrier of hope,” Čaputová said—at least for Slovakia. “But that hope must be rooted in reality. That means that, if I see negative things happening in this society, I need to name them and spell them out, while offering solutions or potential pathways to solutions.” The process, she suggested, can be “cleansing.”

As for the burden of embodying the last hope in a sea of frustration, she said, “You are a bearer of the minority opinion, and you are trying to stick to it.” It’s a strange position for an elected leader. It helps that her staff and loved ones share her values. And, she said, “Being independent and free is a form of solitude.” I asked if she meant “solitude” or “loneliness.” We discussed this for a few minutes, involving Čaputová’s media and foreign-policy advisers, and settled on “solitude.”