Czechs and Slovaks
The most peaceful divorce

By

Sandra Tordova	Tomasz Rusek

It’s 6:30 AM in Slovakia. A 45-year old man, slightly bald, is preparing his lunch packet. He leaves for the everyday walk to his workplace on the opposite side of the village. On his trip he stands a queue, together with his work-mates. All he needs to leave this queue is his passport. Yes, he works in the Czech Republic.

After the 74 years of existence of Czechoslovakia, where two nations lived a life in peace in one state organism, the country split into two republics. Thus nation states were created. The main target of the separation was well-being and further development of the countries. At least so was it presented to the public.

On January 1st 1993 the border between the Czech and Slovak Republics was established. Hundreds of the borderland inhabitants suddenly lived and worked in two different countries. You needed a passport to visit your relatives living even very close, but now it was abroad.

The most important political and economical result of the split was rendering two cooperating nations competitors. Proclamations made by Slovak politicians, like Jan Slota – Chairman of the Slovak National Party – that in the Czechoslovak state ”Slovakia was a mere Czech colony, a suppressed and exploited country” and anti-Slovak statements of the Czech side, were rare but made some citizens confused. The rest of the former Czechoslovak population silently observed the changes. The only activity they took was accomodation to new conditions. Only later on people started to discover that separation is not the way modern world goes. The way is unification and cooperation between different groups. And it is irony that two nations who have shared common traditions and heritage for centuries – in this case the cooperation between Czechs and Slovaks started in the period of Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 19th century – are not willing to coexist. Where was the reason to split the countries?

After the ”Velvet Revolution” in 1989, leaders of the anti-communist movement agreed to govern the state as two autonomous republics. However, by 1992, each republic’s leaders were pushing up for a split of the state into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Premiers Klaus and Meciar agreed to divide the state without putting the issue to a referendum. Many observers felt that if the split had come to a public vote, it would not have passed and the country would have remained whole. Meciar wanted the split largerly for nationalistic reasons, and Klaus for economic ones. Citizens could only choose the more suitable explanation.

Talks over Slovakia’s demands for sovereignity within the federation failed, so the prime ministers agreed to dissolve Czechoslovakia. President Havel resigned after he had tried to avert the break. The Slovak government’s view was that Klaus touched off the separation by refusing concessions that would put Slovakia on a more equitable economic level within the federation.

In 1992 there lived 10 mln Czechs and 5 milion Slovaks in Czechoslovakia. The Czech community in Slovakia was represented by almost 60,000 people (which stood for about 1.1% of the population of Slovakia) and there were 308,000 citizens of Slovak nationality living in the Czech part of the country. One of the far-reaching consequencies of the split was the fact that these communities now gained status of national minorities. Particularly for the Slovaks living in Czech Republic the separation from their kin state made broad adaptation necessary, above all they were supposed to decide on citizenship. A great part of them chose the Czech citizenship. The conditions were found unfair, as there was no possibility of double citizenship. As a research of 1994 proves, majority of Slovaks in Czech Republic presented negative evaluation of Czechoslovakia dissolution.

The Czechoslovak case may be a phenomenon in international relations. For mutual attitudes of majority and minority could reflect the attitude of one nation towards the other. So we can suppose that if the minority-majority relations are good, there is also understanding between the nations as a whole. In Czechoslovakia, every Czech understood Slovak language and vice versa. Nowadays, people not only seem to have forgotten that the contemporary Czech and Slovak cultures were built together. It is also noticeable that more and more children don’t understand the other nation’s language. So has peaceful cooperation a reason to fail? For Czechs and Slovaks it’s hard to imagine their two nations presently living together in one country. The optimal form of coexistence could be united Europe. We are becoming further and further even if we are so close.

Answer to the question if the separation was really necessary is meaningless now. If it wasn’t, another question is if the divorced nations would admit they made a mistake. Well, to both Czechs and Slovaks, it is equally hard to admit a mistake.