BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Born in 1990, Zuzana Hlavkova never knew the struggles of her parent’s generation who lived under Communism. Nor of the generation before that, witness to a world gone mad during World War II.

She was born free. Hers was a world bonded to the West and the values of democratic societies.

Now she is worried that those freedoms are at risk, and has taken to the streets along with tens of thousands across the country in the largest mass gatherings here since the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

The outpouring was initially spurred by the killing of an investigative journalist and his fiancée, both just 27 and of the same generation. But it has since turned on a government whose corruption is seen by Ms. Hlavkova and other young people as a threat to their very future.

This past week the protests forced the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico, but they have shown little sign of abating as the demonstrators, many of them young people, appear determined to safeguard hard-won freedoms.