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Why the Czechs and the Slovaks Split
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20629 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1992 |
2,754 Words |
| Author
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Max Primorac
Max Primorac is a principal with Zephyr International, an
international consulting firm based in Washington D.C.
Primorac visited Slovakia earlier this year. |
As the philosopher-king left the political stage as unassumingly as he had entered it, the first chapter of the storybook drama known as the "velvet revolution" ended. A new chapter in Czechoslovakia's history would be inaugurated as new characters, diametrically opposed ideologically but uncannily alike in temperament, would take center stage in the peaceful disintegration of yet another east European country.
On July 20, Vaclav Havel stepped down as Czechoslovakia's first president following the fall of communism. His resignation followed national elections held the previous month, bringing to power in Slovakia the populist, left-to-center Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Its leader, Vladimir Meciar, a former communist, gained popularity by calling for Slovakia's national sovereignty and a halt to economic reform. The Slovaks proceeded to block Havel's candidacy for the federal presidency.
"I am sorry," said Havel. "But I don't think a single person could have stopped what is historically necessary." Indeed, since the melting away of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet empire, the emerging democracies have seen a revival of national awareness and sentiments that had been brutally repressed under communism, whose authorities attempted, but failed, to forge the socialist "new man."
This nationalist revival has been particularly acute in multinational states such as Czechoslovakia, where the junior national partner or partners saw communist authority as a cloak behind which the senior national partner could restore its traditional predominance. Slovaks seldom miss the opportunity to tell visitors that it was the Czechs, not the Slovaks, who voted for the communists following the end of World War II. Today, finding themselves far behind the West socially, politically, and economically, these historically dominated nations find that positive self identification amid a morass of seemingly insuperable problems is critical if reform is to take firm root. This need has found its expression in nationalist separation. The West's hysterical over reaction to the breakup of these various multinational constructs not withstanding, separation will actually allow reform to proceed more smoothly. As he been evidenced in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, wide discrepancies in economic potential among the various republics made unitary reform, particularly in the economic sphere, impossible. But unlike the former Yugoslavia, where Serbia has brutally unleashed its fury and the military it controls on the other republics, the breakup of Czechoslovakia will proceed with out
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