Teleki László Foundation Institute for Central European Studies

Budapest 1996

In association with

International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka

The PEW Charitable Trust, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Tulane Institute for International Development, Arlington, VA, USA

*

At the end of World War I, in October 1918 not only the two successor states (Austria and Hungary) were founded on the ruins of the Habsburg Monarchy, but also two mosaic states of Slav national majority: the Serbo-Croat-Sloven Kingdom as well as Czechoslovak Republic comprising the historical Czech lands (including Moravia, Silesia), and parts of Hungarian Kingdoms, the Slovak and Ruthenian ethnic regions. Although the largest single national community of Czechoslovakia was that of the Czechs, in 1921 hardly 50 % of the country’s total population professed to be Czech. The territorial claims to the historical Czech provinces (Bohemia, Moravia, Silezia) formerly belonging to the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy were laid on grounds of the Czech historical right, those to Slovakia and Subcarpathia carved out of historical Hungary were based on so-called natural right and on the right of the Slovaks and Ruthenians to self-determination.1

The starting point for the foundation of the Czechoslovak state unprecedented in terms of political law was the fiction of the united Czechoslovak political nation, or Czechoslovakism, postulated as the ideal of the national Czechoslovak statehood. Although for foreign policy reasons the Slovak politicians defined the Slovak nation as “part of the Czechoslovak nation united by language and culture” at the statutory meeting of short-lived Slovak National Council on 30 October 1918, but the great majority of Slovak political representation urged for a federative relationship on equal terms between the Czech and the Slovak nations from the beginning. Still in emigration Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, undertook the obligation, setting the goal of arranging the Czech–Slovak relations on a federative basis. This obligation, howewer, was no longer included in the peace treaties signed by Czechoslovakia in Versailles, Saint Germain and Trianon. The only source from which the peace conference has learnt about the Slovak autonomy aspirations was the memorandum of secret Slovak delegation led by Anton Hlinka in Paris in August 1919. 2

When the Czechoslovak state was founded, Czechoslovakism – similarly to Yugoslavism – undoubtedly had real domestic and foreign policy functions (e.g. presenting the majority will towards the non-Slav minorities attached to the new state by the peace conference in 1919, and in terms of internal politics, the ideologization of the selfless help by the largest national community, the Czech society, etc.). However, it soon became the main obstacle in the way of settling the Czech and Slovak relationship, since Czechoslovakism increasingly emerged as the doctrine of the united centralized national state.

During the interwar period of Czechoslovak Republic between 1919–1938, the autonomy proposals of the Slovak People’s Party led by Anton Hlinka did not pass through the parliament in Prague, so apart from the minority of three million Germans in Czechoslovakia and the unrealized autonomy of Subcarpathia, the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks pending a solution was the gravest structural problem for twenty years.

Thus it was mainly the Czechs who could identify themselves with the Czechoslovak Republic. There was a growing number of Slovaks who criticized the Czech dominance and demanded the autonomist representation of the Slovak national interests. Added to that was the overwhelming predominance of the Czech industry to which the Slovak industry was no rival. As a result, at the end of the 1930s the industrial production of Slovakia fell below 80 % of the pre-war level. Under the raison d’état based on the unity of the Czechoslovak nation, the central cultural policy supported a peculiar alloy of the two nations’ histories and encouraged the school system and the social sciences to verify the ideology of Czechoslovakism. All this elicited negative reactions among the Slovak national intellectuals irrespective of party affiliations.

It is not accidental that in October 1938, when upon the four-power agreement of Munich and the Vienna Award the German-majority areas separated, followed by those mostly peopled by Poles and Hungarians, the Slovak People’s Party also declared autonomy. In the Second Czecho-Slovak Republic that only lived five months the Czech and Slovak conflicts were further strained, which led to the declaration of the independent Slovak Republic when on 14 March 1939 the Germans occupied the Czech part.3

The existence of the pro-nazi Slovak Republic during the Second World War and the pro-Russian and Slav-centric policies of the emigrant Czechoslovak government in London led by Benes in wartime made the network of 20th century relations between the two nations even more entangled. The Czechs regarded the declaration of the independent Slovak state as treason echoed also by the emigration in London. Benes even suggested to Stalin that after the war the Slovaks should be punished. In the area of Slovakia joining the war as a German ally an anti-German national uprising broke out in 1944.

This fax offered a chance to partially realize the Slovak national aspirations after World War II under the political reconsideration of the Czech and Slovak relationship. In terms of political law, an asymmetric scheme was adopted by setting up the Slovak national government of limited jurisdiction in Bratislava, besides the Czechoslovak state agencies based in Prague. Its head was Gustav Hus k who was later between 1969 and 1989 the supreme lord of the country as the leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.4

After the communist seized power in 1948, the autonomy drives of the Slovaks were gradually pushed into the background. Accusedd of “bourgeois nationalism” the leading Slovak communists, including G. Hus k were subjected to frame-up law-suits and withdrawn from politics by severe sentences. When in 1960 the new communist constitution entered into force, the Slovak regional government was wound up. The most vigorous of the Czechoslovak political movements paving the way for the “Prague spring” of 1968 were precisely the manifestations of Slovak national discontent, the overt actions against the Prague centralism.

Alexander Dubcek, the symbolic figure of the reform communist attempt attacked the old Czechoslovak communist leadership as the leader of the Slovak communist party at thet time for neglecting the Slovak issue. Returning to politics after a 10-year imprisonment, Gust v Hus k also rose to be a nationally acknowledged politician by virtue of his position on the Slovak question. 5

Most unluckily, the history of the Chechoslovak federation between 1969 and 1989 coincided with the neo-stalinist period of a militarily occupied and ideologically-politically homogenized Czechoslovakia as dictated by the Brezhnev doctrine. As is to be demonstrated below, this period largely contributed to the deterioration between the two majority nations: nearly all the Czech–Slovak heterostereotypes were revived. The victory over the “burgeois nationalism” of ideology of the Czechoslovakism ushered the Czech and Slovak relationship into the blind alley of proletarian internationalism. It was prohibited to tackle the conspicuously worsening relationship: the conflicts were veiled over by the unquestionable results of an economic levelling between the two federal republics.

The East-Central European political landslide of 1989 took the Czechoslovak communist elite comletely unawares, and the few followers of the opposition group hallmarked Charta 77 were no less unprepared. 6 Just as at the end of World War II, Berlin was sooner liberated in 1989 than Prague, which is an indication of the relatively considerable economic and political reserves of the Czechoslovak communist dominion. Morally, however, the communist system of the Husák–Jakes regime was just as untenable as were those of the other satellite states. 7

The representatives of Slovak oppostition immediately joined the “velvet revolution” of Prague spearheaded by V clav Havel. The living symbol of the Prague spring, Alexander Dubcek of Slovak nationality, was soon to appear in the Prague demonstrations. When setting up the government of national reconciliation, Havel and his colleagues chose the tactics the Poles had already tried out: gradually squeezing out the communists from executive power. When the first government after the turn headed by a former communist minister, Mari n CAlfa of Slovak origin, was nominated, the last communist president of the republic, Gust v Hus k resigned. To replace him, the old communist federal parlament voted unanimously for Václav Havel. 8 That launched the last three years of Czechs and Slovaks together. Apart from solving the miriads of problems entailed by the democratic transformations of the system of political institutions, the introduction of the market economy, the change in the orientation of the military policy, foreign economy, the democratic settlement of the Czech–Slovak realitonshisp ought also to have been achieved. The starting point in this regard was the Czech–Slovak federation act of 1968 as well as the revision and transformation of the practice of the Hus k period.

History did not only influence the relationship between the two nations when they were unitied in a common state. Owing to the previous divergences in the histories of the two nations, to the different historical values and ideals, the real historicity of nation and state mean different things for the two national communities. It is a typical indicator of the differences that while the Czechs regard as their most glorious historical periods the 14th-15th century Czech events of European import and the foundation of the Czechoslovak state in 1918, the same for the Slovaks is the romantic age of 19th century Slovak “national awakening” and the beginning of the federation in 1968–69.9

Another manifestation of the influence of history upon the Czech–Slovak relationship involves the historically based prejudices. The unsettled political relationship between the two nations carried and generated the following prejudices, as the relevant researches reveal: because of going back on their promise to give autonomy to the Slovaks, the latter regard the Czechs as unreliable and sly, while the Czechs often cite intolerant nationalism and peremptory behaviour as the national traits of Slovaks insisting on the transformation of the state. In the two decades between 1969 and 1989 mutual accusations concentrated in the nationwide debate over the question of WHO COSTS MORE TO THE OTHER. Both nations deemed the divergent historical experiences, demographic weights, economic performances, investments and social care levels in the two republics funded by the joint budget etc. detrimental.10

The political relationship between the two nations was settled by Act 143 passed on the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the Czechoslovak republic, 28 October 1968, two months after the military invasion on 21 August. It said that as of 1 January 1969 the Czech-Slovak Federation was to come into existence. The federation was run by the federal parliament, the president of the republic, the federal government, the federal constitutional court as well as the parliaments and governments of the two republics.

Probably upon Soviet advice, G.Hus k, who rose to the top of the communist hierarchy in April 1969, gradually re-centralized the Czech-Slovak federation out of economic and ideological considerations. The constitutional Act 125/1970 radically curbed the licences of the Czech and Slovak national governments upon the pretext of the economic unity, the requirements of unified planning and budgetary policies. The federalization of the ruling communist party, the powerful national planning office, the scientific academy and most of the state institutions was interrupted indefinitely.11

The main function of the principally propagandistic Soviet-type Czech-Slovak federation was to bring Slovakia’s economy at level with the Czech – under the economic equalization strategy. This pseudo-federation immensely increased the mistrust between the two nations. The investments and developments in Slovakia funded from money withdrawn from the advanced industrial areas of the Czech part resulted in the negative miracles of illogical and voluntaristic communist economic policy: the major investments in energetic and war industries were made in Slovakia (nuclear power plant, hydroelectric plants, weapon factories). By artificially speeding up urbanization and industrialization, the population of the republic’s capital, Bratislava, and the two district seats (Banska Bystrica and Kosice) was nearly doubled in these twenty years. A concomitant to that was an enormous construction boom. Slovakia’s share of the total Czechoslovak industrial production rose from 15.5 % in 1937 to 30 % in 1985.12

At the same time, these economic steps taken to enhance political prestige led to a dicrease in the exportable Czechoslovak industrial potential in general, to the aging and competitive inferiority of the industrial structure. The economically ill-considered and voluntaristic Slovakian investments conserving the obsolete Czechoslovak industrial structure also caused a distorted economic set-up in Slovakia itself. The share of spare part production serving the Czech final products remained considerable. In this way, the revenues from sales only arrived in Slovakia in an indirect way. The redistributing mechanism of the “federal” Prague-based peak institutions of economy was always predominated by political considerations. This logically entailed increasing criticism levelled at the federative system by both the Czech and the Slovak public. From its sixth place owned in the global economy in the interwar years, the country slipped to 10th-15th place by 1960 and to near the 30th by two decades later, reaching the lowermost group of the most advanced countries.13

The communist apparatus ruling in the name of neo-stalinistic ideas for twenty years after 1969 was headed by a politician of Slovak origin, G. Hus k: in 1975 he was also elected head of the Czechoslovak state. The Czech man of the street looked upon Husak and the arch ideologue reponsible for the implementation of the orders from Moscow, Vasil Bilak of Ruthenian origin, as outsiders. For the first time in the history of the country, a politician of another language and nationality – a non-Czech – occupied the supreme post. Husak and the other leaders managed to bring about an a-national environment via the post-1969 ruthless – though bloodless – political purges and the success propaganda of the federal nationality policy in which the contradictions, antagonisms, prejudices and conflicts were all but frozen in. This anti-nationalistic and a-national practice was a common trait shared by all East-Central European countries. Not before the turn of the 1970s and 80s could one detect some modification in this regard, when the crumbling communist power became increasingly compelled to adopt the techniques of nationalistic campaigns to sway the public.14

Latently, of course, parallel with the sovietization of Czechoslovakia the feelings of national grievances were deepened in the informal public. The degree to which human rights could be exercised by the public lagged more and more behind that of other reform countries, the political situation seemed quite hopeless – and for all this the Czech and Slovak national communities, the two parts of the country, often blamed each other. The Czech thought the Husak system was a Slovak invention, while the Slovaks lived it as Czech supremacy foiling their aspirations after real equality.

The dilemmas of the Czechoslovak pseudo-federative heritage soon came to the surface after the political change in November 1989. The turnover in East-Central Europe affected the ethnic relations of the region in various ways. The drives of the national communities to be emancipated formerly suppressed became necessarily asserted in the process of East-Central European democratization, as Francis Fukuyama states. The attempts to solve the nationality or minority problems, however, inevitably led to new nationalistic conflicts in the network of immature democratic institutions and put a brake on the process of democratization itself.15 The same took place in Czechoslovakia where upon the recommendation of the president of the republic, Vaclav Havel the federal parliament passed a law on the new name of the republic and the legal jurisdiction of the institutions of the two national republics and the federation, and began to work out a new constitution.

The so-called hyphen-war of the parliament over the new designation revealed that the emancipatory ambitions of the Slovak nation gained new impetus with the turn of 1989. The main grievance named by the Slovaks was that over the seventy years of its existence Czechoslovakia failed to give the Slovak achievements their due: all the results of Czechoslovakia, all the positive facts were attributed by the world to the Czechs and the Slovaks are rarely given notice. The Slovaks condemned the pseudo-federative practice of the communist system for the minimalization of the competences of the national republics and for the Czech predominance in the federal institutions centered in Prague. The new name of the state with the hyphen – Czecho-Slovakia were both criticized by the Czechs and the Slovaks, so finally the name Czech and Slovak Federal Republic came to be codified.

Even more heated debates were generated in preparing for the so-called competence act. President Havel declared that the only way to work out an authentic federation to replace the pseudo-federation was to lay firm constitutional foundations. In elaborating the new constitution, it was an urgent job to clarify the scopes of competence assigned both the two republics and the federation. The political parties of the Czech and Slovak republics still having immature political profiles and undifferentiated social bases clashed in fierce debates both in the parliament and the public life, in which nationalistic arguments often replaced rationalistic ones.16

The nationalistic rhetoric grew particularly muscular in Slovakia. It was largely stimulated by the celebrations, mass demonstration urging for the rehabilitation of the formerly taboo events and personages of Slovak history (the leading figure of the Slovak autonomist movement and Prague centralism in the interwar years, Andrej Hlinka, and the president of the First Slovak Republic of 1939–1945 executed in 1945 for war crimes, Josef Tiso). Besides the demand to use the Slovak national symbols and to have an independent Slovak constitution, the radical and exclusive version of the language act codifying Slovak as the official language was the central problem and cause of street demos in Slovakia for weeks and months.17 >From the summer of 1990 all this tapered off into the single goal of an independent Slovakia. In the fast differentiating Slovak party politics, this resulted in the temporary strengthening of the National Party and the split between the Publicity against Violence movement, the first to emerge in Slovakia in 1989, and the Christian Democratic Party. The nadir of the “grass-roots politics” of Slovak nationalist forces losing out in the parliament was probably marked by the incident when in the central square of Bratislava youngsters demonstrating for Slovak independence assaulted president V clav Havel in April 1991.

Similarly extremist trends in the Czech republic were only present in the eastern parts of the country. The radical Moravian movements wanting provincial autonomy for Moravia and Silezia, and the transformation of the Czech-Slovak federation into a tripartite federal system remain, however, the concern of Czech administrative division only.18

3.3. In the tempestuous constitutional debates, however, the preparation of the new Czechoslovak (federal, Czech and Slovak) constitutions boggled down. The constitutional bill tabled by president Havel in February-March 1991 was unanimously declared to be untenable by the Slovak parties. It proposed to set down the competences of the member republics by decentralizing the scope of authority of the federation. Undoubtedly, this proposal was slightly irrealistic, since post-1989 party politics basically evolved within the frames of the two republics. Apart from the social democrats, the Coexistence Movement of national minorities and the environmentalists, no other party extended its territory of action to the whole state.

In no time, alternatives to Havel’s proposed constitution appeared: on the Slovak side, at the beginning an “interstate contract” as proposed by the christian democrats was seen tenable, while the ex prime minister Vladimir Meciar, who founded a party of his own called Movement for a Democratic Slovakia began to tend toward a confederative solution. On the Czech side, Vaclav Klaus, who became known as the finance minister of the federal government and the president of the Civil Democratic Party (CDP) separated from the Civil Forum, the decisive political support of the turn in 1989, declared it to be imperative to maintain the strong federative competences and excluded the possibility of a confederation. As an alternative to, and increasingly the negation of the federation, the idea of a Czech-Slovak union, and the free association of the two states was voiced more and more loudly on the Slovak side.19

The political debates also expressing doubts about the need to maintain a joint state generated extremely vehement reactions in the entire population via the Czech and Slovak mass media enjoying the boundless possibilities of the freedom of the press after a long pause and via the nationalistic penny press. A considerable segment of the Czech and Slovak public was inclined to restore the inner calm in the country at any cost. This who-cares climate matured the assumption in some of the pace-setting Czech thinkers that more advantage than disadvantage or loss could be expected of the country’s split. The noted Czech political writer Vaclav Vaculik regarded the splitting up of the country as the simplest solution to the Slovak question, as proposed in his essay “Our Slovak issue”. The essay was unexpectedly well received by a greater part of the Czech public.20

In Slovakia, the resolution of the 1992 spring conference of the Slovak Intellectuals found the time ripe for a separation on grounds of natural right, for they claimed that in the post-1989 Czechoslovak politics Slovakia remained “the object to alien interests and ruled by another nation”.21

Amidst the extremely fast changing party political power relations the Czech government under Petr Pithard and the Slovak cabinet headed by Jan Carnogursky no longer had political and social support that would have made the outcomes of the frequent Czech-Slovak talks liable to constitutional stabilization.22 The last major constitutional attempt to maintain the federation was Havel’s proposal to hold a plebsicite submitted in October 1991, supported by the then pro-federation majority and devised to prevent the parties of the opposite trend from gaining ground. Although the federal parliament passed the bill on the referendum, Havel was not granted to right to take the necessary emergency measures. Though the popular movement designated “For the joint state!” demanded the isolation of the forces working for separation in impressive mass meetings, the process that was already begun could not be blocked by popular grass-roots initiatives. The causes were highly complex. Society was divided in judging whether it was worth facing the increasingly painful political confrontations entailed by the unity, if on the Slovak side the majority of politicians regarded the joint state as transitory.

In this extremely critical constitutional situation no change of any sort could be hoped for, unless some was brought about by the parliamentary elections called for March 1992 but actually held in June.

The winners of the parliamentary elections in June 1992 – the CDP led by Klaus in the Czech country and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (MDS) headed by Meciar professed most diverse political goals. For Klaus, the most urgent task was the radical elimination of the former communist economic model and the implementation of a rapid economic reform based on extensive privatizations and the involvement of foreign capital, while Meciar and his following advocated the alleviation of the difficulties and shocks caused by the transition in Slovakia, and the reinforcement of the state’s economic and social roles. The difference between the political ideals of the two winning parties all but decided the outcome of the negotiations between parties and governments on the future of the federation.

The election winners carrying on the talks before the watchful eyes of the entire country as if playing a sort of political chess game very quickly realized that in the given situation it was politically a nonsense to maintain the federation. Klaus rejected off the cuff, as it were, all Slovak proposals that might have endangered the success of the country’s economic reform. Neither did he find the cardinal Slovak demand for Slovakia’s all-round sovereignty in terms of international law, independent UNO membership, etc. acceptable. He was thus increasingly inclined to prepare the split and carry it out quickly and as planned. Regarding a respectable retreat benath his aims, Meciar also pressed more and more strongly for separation and the creation of the independent Slovak Republic.23

3.5.1. The key recognition in the process of Czech-Slovak separation was made at the fourth and fifth rounds of the Klaus-Meciar talks following the June elections, on 19 and 22–23 July 1992, in Bratislava. It was realized that both countries would gain more by getting finally rid of the threat of a Yugoslav type internal conflict. On the other side, the inevitable losses of the split would have to be reduced by maximal governmental and parliamentary control and legal regulation of the process, and by determining the post-split positions. The most reassuring outcome of the latter efforts was the mutual intention to bring about a monetary and customs union.

Both parties tried to persuade their respective public about the further advantages the split would bring. This was to be borne out by additional, supplementary argumentation to validate the independent state. Let us see the main arguments. As interpreted by the Czechs, a surplus gain from the split would be a growing distance from the instable South-East and East European region and hence a surer integration in Western Europe, as well as the further acceleration of the successful economic transition. On the Slovak side, the power vacuum created in East-Central Europe by the demise of the Soviet Union was considered to be a unique opportunity for creating an independent Slovak state, the crowing of a political struggle lasting for some hundred and fifty years. All Slovak political parties regarded the independent state as a sine qua non of joining the process of European integration. In this respect, all other solutions, confederative or else, were seen as an injurious political set-up. In economic terms, the advantages of the independence were also considered by most Slovak parties to be greater than those of “semi-dependence” or “Prague centralism”.24

The split was eventually made inevitable by the unilateral decisions of the Slovak National Council, or Slovak parliament: on 17 July 1992 the Slovak legislation passed a resolution on the sovereignty of the Slovak Republic, proclaiming the self-determination of the Slovak nation with reference to the millennial aspirations of the Slovak nation and to valid documents of international law. The declaration said “the sovereignty of the Slovak Republic is the basis of the sovereign state of the Slovak nation”. In the hour after the passing of the declaration Vaclav Havel resigned from presidency. That marks the beginning of the half-year agony of the Czechoslovak federation.25

The political opinion polls becoming regular after 1990 unanimously showed that the number of those who placed greater confidence in their respective national government than in the federal institutions increased in both parts of the country. Confidence in the federal government and parliament sank below 50 % in both republics by spring 1992.26

The negotiating parties led by Klaus and Meciar respectively agreed in late July that the basic principles, schedule, economic and political decisions implied by the winding up of the federation and the contents of the post-split relationship would be clarified until 30 September. The summer of the split passed amidst extreme political excitements: Meciar regarded the regulation and fixing of the post-split conditions as of paramount importance. The Czech prime minister tried to speed up the division, as he evaluated the transitory state as unbearable burden for both sides. Paradoxically enough, the divergent bargaining strategies and tactics of the two sides further increased the advocates of the split. In Slovakia, Klaus’s pressure on speed was seen as a desire to get rid of the Slovaks, while the Czechs took Meciar’s post-divorce plans of a union for the continued “parasitims” of the Slovaks – and all were fed up with that, they claimed. The opposition emerging enfeebled by the elections was unable to work out any valuable mutual counter-alternative in the national and federal parliaments; what is more, the criticism levelled at their former governing practices mostly blamed them for the situation that ended in the split.

At the sixth meetings of the two prime ministers on 26 August 1992 Meciar announced that Czechoslovakia as the joint state of Czechs and Slovaks was to cease to exist as of 1 January 1993. The central moot point in the analytic literature highlighting the six meetings is whether the procedure adopted by Klaus and Meciar was legal or not. It is pointed out that before the elections none of the political parties included the abolition of the mutual state in their platforms. Neither the Czech nor the Slovak parliaments authorized the leaders of the two winning parties, or the heads of the republics, to carry out talks to this end. True, by the declaration of sovereignty the Slovak National Council committed itself to independence, but its constitutional means were not created by the parliaments, but by the negotiations of the two prime ministers.

In retrospect, weighing the dangers inherent in the entire process of the split-up, one has to agree with the two politicians who realized with acumen the incompetence of the cumbersome parliamentary decision-making mechanism in handling the acute constitutional crisis. From this angle, the much-disputed plebiscite-issue is not so clear-cut either: had the referendum taken place to decide on the separation, the nationalistic forces would inevitably have been further radicalized, and that, in turn, would have shifted the debates from the plane of constitutional law to that of street politics. All the stock of economic-historical-political prejudices could have been mobilized during the plebiscite campaign, which would have jeopardized the regulated process of splitting up down to its roots. To the question as to what if the referendum had decided for the maintenance of the federal state, possibly the only answer is what Klaus and Meciar often voiced during the talks. In this case the plebiscite would not have replotted the political geography of the two countries, would not have staked out the course of further action. Contemporary Czechoslovak opinion polls revealed that the referendum would have come out with a levelled result, which reflected a highly contradictory evaluation of the split.

The federal government confirmed in late July set it as its main goal, in the spirit of the agreements between the Czech and Slovak prime ministers, to prepare the legal and political conditions for the gradual separation of the republics. Similarly, the work of the federal parliament also concentrated on this issue. Partly making up for the unrealized referendum, the split was legitimated by the federal parliament’s resolution of 25 November 1992. After several tries, on that day the federal assembly in Prague passed the Constitutional Act no.542, 1992, on the End of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic.27

In addition to that, the federal parliament and the two national governments stipulated in several mutual agreements and contracts the legal, financial and technical details of the separation. Oddly enough, what put the most obstacles in the way of a functional, authentic working of the federation – namely the 2:1 proportion of the two republics’ populations – proved most well-suited to the definition of the basic quotas. Relying on the territorial principle, they managed to regulate relatively unambiguously the process of splitting up predicted by many to be a serious source of conflicts. It is another question that some symbolic moot questions were subsequently instrumentalized several times by the political leaders of the two countries. These included, for instance, the property rights of the gold reserves of the one-time Slovak state located in the Czech republic and those of the altarpiece from Bojnice (Slovakia) that was in possession of Czech national museum.28

The politically well-based process of separation is best exemplified by the split of the Czechoslovak army without any conflicts. Although earlier the mainstay of the Czechoslovak army, in keeping with the former Czechoslovak military doctrine, was concentrated on the West German border and the western part of the Czech republic, the separation strictly adjusted to the 2:1 proportion and in case of the immovable military installations, the territorial principle was observed. In this way, the dislocation of the Czech and Slovak armies took place within a short time and was completed in 1993.

The straining of the Czech–Slovak conflict threatening with a protracted constitutional and political crisis actually lasted but a short time. The conflict was successfully controlled by the political forces that emerged victorious from the elections on both sides. They managed to do so primarily because they were able to persuade the public that a split under regulated circumstances would not only entail disadvantages. In addition to that, the Czech society experiencing the split as a greater loss politically, historically and emotionally alike, was soon to be consoled by the positive vision of a nationally almost completeley homogeneous state without conflicts, developing much faster than the joint state in an economically, foreign politically, geopolitically more favourable situation.

As for the independence of the Slovak republic, the hesitants were persuaded of its justification by the transformation of the entire East-Central and South-Eastern European region into national states as well as by the fact that only states with independent international political subjectivity could expect to be included in the process of European integration. Consequently, the peaceful solution to the Czech-Slovak conflicts presented the optimal option for both societies – even if the emphases, justifications, emotional backgrounds and the images of the future were different on the two sides.

That this peaceful separation could come about at all was in part thanks to the deterring example of the Yugoslav ethnic war. Nevertheless, almost none of the conditions of a Yugoslav-type conflict could be identified in Czechoslovakia. The Czech-Slovak ethnic and political frontiers were fixed between the historical Czech and Hungarian Kingdoms for nearly one thousand years, and they also survived in the Habsburg Monarchy. Unlike in Yugoslavia, the separation was not initiated by the more advanced member of the federation, but by less developed Slovakia which further promoted the Czech positions in the political decisions. When preparing for the split, the Czech government and parliament saw to it that no novel sources of conflict could later arise in future economic and political cooperation. The minorities in the two countries are mutually an insignificant problem, since they are immigrants who do not live in compact areas of settlement and usually get assimilated within a generation since the two languages are close. During the split-up, czechslovakism as a form of identity only caused more profound demonstrable emotional traumas and identity disturbances among Czech and Slovak intellectuals, and paradoxically enough, in the Hungarian minority of Slovakia.29

All things considered, however, there are many irrational moments in the Czech-Slovak split. In terms of economy, defence policy, geopolitics, culture, the joint state of the two kindred nations was in theory an optimal framework as proved by their several achievements over the 74 years. Besides, in a Europe on the course of integration, the demarcation of new state borders is undoubtedly a paradoxical phenomenon, especially if this new border transformed into “standard European border” for tourism and international trade within a very short time. Thus, with more or less justification, the peaceful management of the split can be seen as a rational management of a process not lacking in irrational elements. The bulk of critical analyses tends to detect personal ambitions, exclusive state, economic and diplomatic functions created by the split, career opportunities expected from assignments as the decisive motivation underlying the relatively easily taken political decisions for the split. All this must unquestionably have contributed to the peaceful management of the process, but we are of the opinion that the reluctance of the Czech and Slovak public, the lack or isolated manifestations of national fanatism are at least just as weighty factors.

Considering the causes that led to the abolition of the joint Czech-Slovak state, one would mention in the first place the fundamental contradiction in the Czechoslovak raison d’etat, the constitutionally unclarified Czech-Slovak relationship. Only those Czechs could identify with the unitied Czechoslovak nation who did not regard the Slovaks as a separate nation. The concept of the Czechoslovak political nation could not be filled with a federative meaning and imposed on the German minority that was larger between the two World Wars with 3 million members than the Slovak nation, and on the Hungarians, a minority of half a million. In every situation of crisis, the Slovaks set their emancipatory ambitions against the unified Czechoslovak state. The turn of 1989 also pushed to the surface other profound contradictions: the two nations lived through the entire history of the 20th century differently – the period of World War II, 1968 and the neo-stalinist era of the Husak-regime all meant different things to them. As regards attempts at modernization, the 1969–1989 period of the Soviet-type Czechoslovak federation caused the Czech part to gradually fall behind, and the Slovak part to take strides forward, the two parts of the country being almost levelled out in economic and social welfare terms. True, in the meantime the country as a whole lost its leading place in the economy of East-Central Europe.

Although the political actors of the split made rare mention of it, the international context of the East-Central European turn in 1989 had a significant role in the whole process. The power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the region indisputably promoted the assertion of particular national interests. In a positive formulation that meant that the heterogenous, multi-nationality states created in 1918 would adjust to the European practice of nation-states, an especially important step on the way to European integration. In this process every nation wishes to be involved on an equal basis, and this opportunity was not equally given to all the nations living in the territories of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

Certainly the rapid split was also largely precipitated by the fact that, similarly to the other new democracies in East-Central Europe, the Czechoslovak political stratum also tended to grow infantile, to manage the conflict in extremist manners, to present histerical and theatrical solutions. President Havel’s well-considered, but isolated moves to save the country which often remained ineffective, prove today that through better coordinated activity among the constitutional factors the whole split could have been forestalled. The precondition, of course, would have been the definition of a political framework for the federation which could be approved by both nations. Since, however, the leading apparatus of the Czechoslovak velvet revolution had no such positive program, they failed to create consensus in the rapidly differentiating Czech and Slovak social and political life within the available three years.

In the final analysis, therefore, it seems justified to assume that the immediate cause for the split was the assertion of the interests of those groups who expected the separate national states, and not a single joint state, to promote the weight of their respective groups. It is, of course, extremely difficult to identify these groups since informal nation-oriented groups were present not only in the political parties (in nearly every Czech and Slovak party fractions or occasional groups committed to the nation-state ideal emerged), but also in nearly every field of public life. As a typical example, one could refer to the association of Slovak soldiers within the Czechoslovak army, whose radical program of independence was able to generate an atmosphere of political panic. It remains a fact, however, that before the 1992 parliamentary elections a single political party – the Slovak National Party – was only expressly committed to the split.

It is, however, also certain that the activity of nation-oriented radical groups would not have been sufficient to effect a split. The political forces that won the 1992 elections decided to settle the disputes by splitting up the country instead of protracted and aborted federative bargaining exactly because they wished to avoid the possibility of an armed conflict similar to the Yugoslav situation.30

It must be attributed to the different causes of forming the two independent states that in the past two years several conflict situations have emerged that have roots in the deficiencies of the split. They include the very short-lived monetary union, the symbolic wrangling on border modifications of a technical nature, the balance of the monetary union first being positive on the Czech, more recently on the Slovak side, the unilateral Slovak customs-technical regulations, the contradictions rooted in former joint privatizations, and the unconcealed political pressure of the admittedly stronger Czech party in this area, etc. All this notwithstanding, the relationship between the two states is sound. Despite frequent separate steps in international politics by the Czech Republic, the two diplomacies closely collaborate in the European and regional agencies, e.g. in putting the brakes on the extensive international regulation of minority rights, which clearly shows a Czech buttress to Slovak demands.

Sticking to the Czech Republic, Slovakia tries to keep pace in international politics, which it managed to do, e.g. by renewing its separate membership in the Council of Europe. This is seemingly contradicted by the fact that apart from Hungary, Slovakia has the most of its conflicts with the Czech state. Besides, Czech egoism which also had a major say in the split, coupled with a sort of Czech messianism, tries to rend Slovakia off itself to be able to proceed along its separate course more easily.

The prognoses at the time of the Czech-Slovak split of the collapse of Slovak economy in the near future have not been validated. This is due to several factors. The Slovak state fund created by distributing the resources of the Czechoslovak federation was a considerable financial asset and the restrictive financial policy continued after the split has tried to manage the resources economically and efficiently. A major political and expert help was given Slovakia by the International Monetary Fund which Slovakia sought out back in the autumn of 1992 and, realizing its extraordinary significance, it tries to remain in contact with the top brass of IFM at the highest levels. It is indicative of the flexibility of the Meciar-cabinet’s economic policy that overcoming their original political intentions, they have clarified the real potentials of the country. They also take on the risk inherent in the discontent of the strata of employees and others hit by wage cutbacks. On the other side, they insist on elaborating and trying out their own variant of the economic transformation different and socially more sensitive than the Czech model.

The agreement on the customs union concluded by the Czech and Slovak governments on 22 October 1992 was essentially to provide for the free flow of goods and labour between the two countries. Since, however, the monetary union planned for a transitory period only ended faster than expected, on 7 Feburary 1993, the customs union – apart from the wearisome administration, the increasingly stricter Czech-Slovak border control and its corollaries slowing down and encumbering the traffic of goods – must also reckon with the rate changes between the two countries’ currencies and their impact on the prices. In short, they have to count on changes in the demand for the two countries. Many already opine that the Czech demand for the relatively cheeper Slovak commodities, and the gradual squeezing of more expensive Czech products from Slovakia will endanger the existence of the customs union in the long run, especially if it is coupled with the utterly different phasing and philosophy of the economic transformation in the two countries. This is certainly not in the interest of either state, especially not of Slovakia, for the loss of the Czech markets, the lack of advantages offered by the customs union would be a heavy blow on both the Czech and the Slovak economy.

One of the key problems in the entire East-Central European region is that the political status of the ethnic and national minorities, their individual and collective rights are unclarified and that the accumulated minority discontent is stretching the conceptions and political frames of the nation-states. In independent Slovakia, the 12 % Hungarians, nearly 10 % Romas and the 3–4 % other minorities (Czechs, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Russians, Croats, Poles, etc.) amount to nearly a quarter of Slovakia’s total population of 5.5 million. Thus, from among all the East-Central European states, Slovakia has the highest rate of minority population. The Roma minority also causes serious concern in the Czech republic who encounter a very fierce anti-Roma atmosphere especially along the border. Some estimates put the number of Roma citizens of Slovakia who applied for Czech citizenship after the split at around 2–300,000. The applications are turned down by the Czech authorities for want of the required length of stay in the country or for a police record.

In its efforts to solve its problems, Slovakia is increasingly pressed to observe the rules of the game as it is played in Europe, to take into account the real power relations in Europe and Central Europe. The overriding paradox of Slovak politics is that the most effective help with its attempts at modernization would come from the very countries (Czech republic, Austria, Hungary) towards which Slovakia administers some caution for various reasons. The spectre of falling behind the Visegrad group, the set of criteria that prevails in the rivalry for joining the West European integrations have so far kept Slovakia back from its natural allies detectable in spheres in opposition to the trends of modernization: in a dissatisfactory solution to the minority question, the conservation of the traditional military cooperation and production structure.

The question of how the Czech republic, and even more emphatically Slovakia will find its place in Europe basically depends on the success or not quite unlikely the failure of economic transformation in the region, as well as on the global consequences of the European intergrative process. At present, the domestic political peculiarities of the two new states do no constitute more than usual risk factors in this respect. At the same time, the responsibility of Hungary and the Czech republic for the behaviour of Slovakia is far greater than the rest of the European states, for via the thorough deliberation of moves and the right sequence of these steps they can considerably influence the regional politics of the Slovak government.

The foreign political doctrine of the Czech Republic, as one can judge on the basis of statements so far, is founded on the unconditional priority of drawing close to West Europe. As prime minister Vaclav Klaus and Czech foreign minister Jozef Zielenec put it at the beginning, the Czech republic wished to return to the traditional geopolitical space which had determined its development for centuries. Naturally, the mention of the geopolitical sphere predominated by Germans did not sound pleasant to many Czech ears, but after all it seemed acceptable as a synonym to joining the process of European integration. The fact, however, that the process of European integration begins – for the Czecks – with coming to grips with the Czech-German neighbourhood issue gives far more headache to Czech politicians. Accordingly, only Slovakia and Austria of the Danubian region are considered as priorities of Czech foreign policy. True, concerning Slovakia the idea of a sure economic hinterland is at the back, together with the cultivation of other joint interests developed over the seven decades of marriage.

In my paper I made an attempt at analyzing the split of the common state of the Czechs and Slovaks, the Czechoslovak Republic, in 1992. I placed in the focus of inquiry the question as to how and why sharp conflicts could be avoided in the course of separation. The main factors of preventive conflict management could be summarizedin five points:

1) The historical individuality and territorial identification of the two nations, the Czech and Slovak societies had evolved by the time the common state was formed in 1918. National history and national ideology did not play a great role in generating conflicts. The dominant ideology of the common state, Czechoslovakism which articulated Czech predominance caused relatively little demage to the relationship between the two nations.

2) Despite all the internal disputes and conflicts, the common state constitutes a positive historical tradition for both national societies.In this sense, the split of the Czechoslovak state was not a negation or liqudation but the radical realization of national emancipation. Many Czechs and Slovaks regard the split as the logical conseqence of the history of both nations in 20th century.

3) The common state had considerable economic advantages, part of which could be preserved by the custom union after the split. The post–1989 economic reforms, however, made it clear that the conditions were differenct int the Czech and Slovak REpuublics. This endowed the reform, the transformation, the privatization with ethnic dimensions.

Unemployment in Slovakia is 6–7 times higher as in the Czech Republic, 75 % of foreign investment went to the Czech part. The split also liberrated, emancipated the two national economic strategies.

4) The ambitions of the Slovak political elite within the Czechoslovak federation to get emancipated were supported by most of the Czech political parties. However, they did not consider the claim to Slovak national and political sovereignty within the common state to be a realistic political alternative. They rejected the option of a Czech–Slovak confederation. This was the point of sharpest antagonism that required the split as a solution. The Czechs won the possibility of unhidered economic development, the Slovaks earned political indepedence with the split. The political representation and the majority of the public opinion were with preventive conflict management equally satisfied.

5) The negative example of the Yugoslav ethnic war was consciously avoided by the politicians of both nations. That is why they did not allow for potential ethnic conflicts to develop. That is why they jointly rejected the call of a referendum to decided on the split. Certainly the common Czechoslovak state had been ripe for a political reform. The Soviet type federation, in fact a pseudofederation, failed. The majority of Czechs and Slovaks, however, would have liked the common state to survive even when the split was being effected. Owing to the peculiar power relations of the Czech and Slovak political parties, this sociological fact did not get articulated et the level of political decision–making. As compared to the rapid and well-planned process of the separation, an “authentic federation”, the confederation, the “free association of two states” as alternatives would have caused the accumulation of conflicts, the worsening of antagonisms that are hard to resolve. Thus the separation of Czechs and Slovaks is a major examle of preventive conflict management, which, however, liquidated some possible constructive alternatives as well.

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