6



Contending Views of Czechoslovakia’s Demise

Michael Kraus and Allison Stanger


If 1989 will go down in history as the annus mirabilis, marking the peaceful demise of communism in
Eastern Europe, the 1990s will be remembered as ”the springtime of ethnicity.” In the wake of the
collapse of the Cold War order, conflicts and not only have tensions between ethnic groups brought
about the disintegration of the multinational federations of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and
Czechoslovakia, but many of the new successor states also face the prospect of further territorial
divisions. At the time of this writing, the Czech and Slovak republics are in their seventh year as
independent states. The Czech Republic has received the honor of NATO membership, while Slovakia
remains at the margins of international life, despite the ouster of its authoritarian prime
minister, Vladimír Mečiar, in November 1998 (after his electoral defeat in September of that year).
The divergent paths that each took over the course of the past seven years only serve to confer an
additional aura of inevitability upon Czechoslovakia’s extinction.

As scholars, however, we need to be wary of declaring historical events inevitable, particularly
since the former Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Soviet Union each disintegrated in very different
fashion. The most striking feature of Czechoslovakia’s demise was the peaceful resolution of ethnic
conflict. If Czechs and Slovaks were able to part ways in civil fashion, the question arises of why
they were unable to work out their differences within the framework of a common state. In this
sense, the presumption of inevitability can potentially obscure more than it reveals. To advance
our understanding of the sources of state cohesion, the key question should instead be: At what
point in time did Czechoslovakia’s disintegration become inevitable, and what steps, if any, might
political elites have  taken to preempt the country’s arrival at this point of no return?

Cataloging the most salient forces, the collapse of the Czechoslovak federation might be seen as
the product of (1) the legacies of the communist and precommunist eras (the inevitability thesis),
(2) the rational or erratic actions of postcommunist political elites, (3) constitutional deadlock,
(4) the absence of political parties as well as other associations and groupings that unite people
across ethnic lines, (5) the role of the mass media, (6) regional economic disparities, and (7)
demonstration effects (international factors fostering separatism). Obviously, these factors are
often overlapping and interrelated, but approaching the question of Czechoslovakia’s breakup from
each vantage point yields valuable insights. Although they are largely applied to the Czecho-Slovak
case in this volume, each of these categories of explanation might also be used to shed light on
disintegration processes in other countries and contexts.



HISTORICAL LEGACIES

The first analytical framework emphasizes those factors that rendered national division a potent
political force in the precommunist and communist phases of development. They include the
ideological character and the institutional structure of the new state created in 1918; the bipolar
imbalance of power pitting the less numerous Slovaks against the more numerous Czechs; the cultural
and economic disparities between the two societies during 1918-1989; the nature of Leninist
politics as a source of ethnonational identification; and the impact of external factors upon
Prague’s policies of centralism.^1 In short, the tortured history of Czech-Slovak relations is the
obvious point of departure for examining Czechoslovakia’s fate.

Carol Skalnik Leff’s opening essay builds on the work of her successful 1987 book on the
Czech-Slovak relationship, which remains one of the best available in the English language. Leff
puts the events of the 1990s in their appropriate historical context, demonstrating that
Czechoslovakia suffered from what Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan have termed a ”stateness” problem
since its very inception. Since Czechoslovakia was forged in an atmosphere of crisis largely
generated beyond its immediate borders, the institutional solutions that were successively embraced
during both the interwar republic and the communist era were products of that context.
Consequently, Czechoslovakia’s internal political stability or lack thereof was strongly influenced
by external factors.

Leff’s chapter also highlights the elements of continuity in Czech-Slovak relations before and
after 1989. In three important areas – quarreling over the constitutional form of the common state,
the relationships between Czech and Slovak elites, and the attempts to forge a Czechoslovak
national identity-she finds that history repeated itself. Mutual suspicion and institutional
failure were historical constants throughout Czechoslovakia’s relatively short lifetime. Do these
historical patterns suggest that Czechoslovakia’s dissolution was inevitable? Leff answers in the
negative, concluding that the Velvet Divorce was ”a probabilistic outcome . . . the historical deck
was stacked, not definitively, but still substantially, against” the survival of the common state.

    In exploring the possibilities for Czech-Slovak compromise that existed in 1989-1992, Jan
Rychlík’s contribution complements that of Leff, assessing the weight of history through a
different lens. The first part of his chapter provides a retrospective look at Czecho-Slovak
relations and institutions in the postnormalization period. Rychlík points out that while the
normalization reforms never succeeded in fulfilling Slovak expectations, they did create a strong
managerial class in Bratislava where one had never previously existed, which turned out to be
useful for the newly independent Slovakia after the dissolution of the common state. Rychlík then
surveys the subsequent negotiations over Czechoslovakia’s constitutional future, emphasizing the
further divergence of Czech and Slovak perceptions as the conflict unfolded. In his view, the Czech
side believed that ”Slovak negotiators were bent on squaring a circle, aspiring to have a Slovak
state while at the same time resisting the same. From the Slovak perspective, however, it seemed
that the Czechs did not want to accept legitimate Slovak demands.”

Despite these differences, a compromise agreement was forged at Milovy in February 1992, which was
then passed on to the Czech and Slovak national councils for ratification. A ratification vote
would never take place, as the Milovy accord was killed by the Presidium of the Slovak National
Council, which could not obtain a majority in favor of bringing it to a vote. After the failure of
the Milovy compromise, both sides agreed that further negotiation should be left to the victors of
the June 1992 elections. As Rychlík concludes, the outcome of the June 1992 elections rendered
further compromise impossible. The negotiations between the victorious parties focused on how the
existing federation was to be undone, with the most significant point of disagreement taking place
over the optimal tempo. If the common state had no future, Václav Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party
(ODS), triumphant in the Czech lands, wanted to move as quickly as possible toward independence; in
contrast, Vladimír Mečiar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) was interested in slowing
things down in order to negotiate the most favorable separation agreement. Opposition parties tried
to save the state but were ultimately unsuccessful, for any talk of a renewed political union was a
”project without a future.”



THE ROLE OF POLITICAL ELITES

The second potential explanation focuses exclusively on the role of postcommunist political elites
in the development of ethnic conflict. Research on ”constitutional nationalism” in the former
Yugoslavia and on ”the politics of national identity” identifies political elites as critical
agents in the rise of postcommunist nationalist ideologies.^2 The political dynamic whereby the
quest for national self-determination serves as a vehicle for enhancing the political power of
certain leaders and elites was a factor in both the Czech and Slovak contexts. Individual leaders
such as Vladimír Mečiar and Václav Klaus, whose parties and coalitions emerged dominant from the
June 1992 elections in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, respectively, increased their personal
power through the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.^3 Repeated promises of a referendum on the
country’s fate were never fulfilled; the narrative chronology found in the appendix to this volume
highlights the critical role of political elites in Czechoslovakia’s demise.

Given that the supporters of Slovak independence never counted more than a third of those polled
(and the champions of Czech independence were even fewer) during 1990 to 1992, the fact that Czech
and Slovak voters gave the largest electoral support to leaders who swiftly negotiated the
separation merits investigation. In an effort to probe this seeming paradox, Petr Kopecký’s chapter
interprets the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia through the consociational lens first developed
by Arend Lijphart. Lijphart argued that democratic stability could be maintained in a segmented
society if political rule was based on power sharing – i.e., the inclusion of representatives of
each group in decision-making structures so as to facilitate compromise. Kopecký argues that the
pre-1989 institutional structure, largely retained until the end of the common state some three
years later, should be viewed as a consociational system that failed.

To demonstrate that the newly democratic Czechoslovakia’s inherited institutions and practices were
consociational, Kopecký begins by reviewing the main tenets of consociational theory. Having
surveyed the relevant literature, he then accounts for the failure of consociational democracy in
Czechoslovakia. Put simply, consociational institutions alone are never enough to sustain
democratic stability; as Lijphart emphasizes, the requisite groundwork must be in place for
consociational democracy to flourish. In postcommunist Czechoslovakia, where there was no strong
tradition of elite accommodation and compromise, the volatile, uncertain, and competitive nature of
postcommunist politics mitigated the otherwise stabilizing factors of consociational arrangements.
Kopecký points out that six out of Lijphart’s nine preconditions for consociational democracy did
not pertain in democratizing Czechoslovakia. In this soil, not surprisingly, consociational
democracy did not take root.

While consociational institutions alone cannot ensure democratic stability in a divided society,
they can potentially play a positive role when the common state fails to hold. Kopecký maintains
that the same consociational institutions that proved incapable of holding Czechoslovakia together
eventually fostered its peaceful partition. As he puts it, ”Indeed, the impressively legalistic
manner in which the dissolution was carried out the agreement to form a federal government to
divide the state, followed by a number of agreements to divide the assets of the state, as well as
an agreement for accomplishing the division in legal fashion-was possible, at least in part,
precisely because of the integrative and inclusive nature of existing consociational procedures.”


CONSTITUTIONAL DEADLOCK

According to the third analytical framework, the origins of the split can be traced to the
institutions that the makers of the Velvet Revolution willingly inherited from the outgoing order.
Instead of taking decisive and immediate action to institutionalize the revolution in the form of a
new federal constitution, the dissident leadership in Czechoslovakia wound up accepting the
legitimacy of the communist constitution as an interim document, one that would be amended to be
suitable until a replacement could be negotiated.^4 In this, the symbolic and substantive value of
a legal break with the communist era for the cause of democracy was perhaps squandered at a time
when there was a high degree of cooperation between Czech and Slovak political leaders.

Where Kopecký asks why bona fide consociational institutions did not produce democratic stability,
Allison Stanger seeks to explore why democratizing elites embraced communism’s institutional legacy
in the first place when they were not forced to do so and what the consequences of those early
choices were for Czechoslovakia’s subsequent political development. She argues that dissident views
of the relative importance of constitutional transformation changed after they had assumed power.
Embracing the communist constitution as a stopgap measure ”had the unfortunate byproduct of
underscoring and encouraging what divided rather than united citizens of the common state.” With
the benefit of hindsight, the decision to set a two-year deadline for the drafting and ratification
of a new federal constitution appears to have been a flawed strategy. The task of reconstructing
federalism should have been either tackled in the Velvet Revolution’s immediate aftermath or
pursued without timetables.

Taking a closer look at the inherited constitution, Stanger points out that federalism
Czecho-Slovak style had two distinctive features. First, it featured the sweeping zákaz majorizace
(minority veto), which banned majority voting for extraordinary as well as a broad range of
ordinary legislation. Given the structure of the federal parliament, the minority veto gave
extraordinary powers to the Slovak nationalist minority and fostered unfathomable gridlock. Second,
the fact that the federation was comprised of only two members meant that negotiations on any
agenda item were easily perceived by both parties to be a zero-sum game. In Stanger’s view,
Czechoslovakia’s institutional forms, especially as a backdrop to the democratic transition, were a
recipe for disaster, for they were never designed to function under democratic conditions. ”If the
potential for Czechoslovakia to survive communism’s demise indeed existed,” she concludes, ”the
negotiation and implementation of new constitutional first principles for a democratic life were a
necessary condition for the common state’s continued viability.”

Given that elite behavior was a critical variable in both the end of Czechoslovakia and the
peaceful transition to two new states, to what extent can we fault the actions and inactions of
members of the Czech, Slovak, and federal governments and the leadership of the major political
parties for generating the irreconcilable differences that led to the dissolution of the country?
Peter Rutland has argued that ”Czech politicians (such as Klaus) who pressed for a clean break were
largely motivated by economic considerations,” while their Slovak counterparts ”were motivated more
by questions of identity and pride than by worries about the economy.”^5 It is difficult to
evaluate Rutland’s proposition, for studies relying upon survey research data point in different
directions. For example, one concludes that ”the creation of an independent Slovak republic was
more an unintended outcome of the postcommunist panic and confusion exploited by ambitious
politicians than the culmination of Slovak national emancipation.”^6 Another study based on many of
the same sources suggests a more tentative finding, explaining the ”increase in the political
salience of ethnicity” on the basis of both the role of elites and the ”important differences in
the objectives and perspectives of the two groups involved.”^7

In an effort to weigh the relative role of mass and elite sentiment in Czechoslovakia’s demise,
Sharon Wolchik builds on the findings of Kopecký and Stanger to shed light on some of the less
commonly appreciated factors that contributed to the election of pro-autonomy Slovaks and the
parallel election of Czechs uninterested in making concessions to Slovak aspirations. The second
section of Wolchik’s essay traces the development of Slovak nationalism and discusses the rapid
post-1989 politicization of ethnicity-the rapidity of which was facilitated by Czechoslovakia’s
institutional structure. Wolchik concludes that ”the interaction of institutional forms and
political factors, with underlying ethnic cleavages and economic change” were responsible for
Czechoslovakia’s fate. Czeehoslovakia’s peculiar variant of federalism discouraged cross-national
interaction, which contributed to the drifting apart of the two national groups twenty years later,
when the rule of law was allowed to be restored, albeit on a less than stable institutional
foundation. In the final section of her essay, Wolchik reflects on the tumultuous state-building
process in Czechoslovakia’s two successor states. In some sense, Wolchik warns, Czechoslovakia’s
developmental trajectory may point to the limits of federalism as a device for containing ethnic
conflict.



POLITICAL PARTIES

The fourth explanatory framework highlights the critical role of the political parties and of
substate institutions and organizations that emerged in the transition period. The revolutionary
movement in Czechoslovakia, while united in its general objective to overthrow communist power, was
organized from the start along republic or regional lines (e.g., Civic Forum in the Czech lands and
the Public Against Violence in Slovakia). Political parties in Czechoslovakia were quick to form
and equally quick to splinter; twenty-three political parties participated in the 1990 federal
elections.^8 Among these, no party-with the important exception of the communists-transcended the
regional/ethnic divide; no party, that is, had strong appeal in both the Czech and Slovak
republics. Though several parties made a modest effort to overcome the national division in the
1992 elections, none succeeded in winning seats in the parliament.^9 Moreover, in the Czech lands,
Moravia-based parties, and in Slovakia, Hungarian-based groupings further fragmented the sources of
cohesion during the rapid repluralization of politics. Put another way, political parties in
postcommunist Czechoslovakia did not successfully perform the integrative function that mass
political parties typically provide, compromising the prospects for preserving state unity.^10

Relatedly, both Czech and Slovak political leaders faced the challenge of fostering the growth of
civil society in postcommunist Czechoslovakia. A robust civil society is an essential facet of
democratic consolidation. The presence of interest groups and voluntary associations plays a key
role here, inasmuch as they draw and empower citizens to participate in the political process. The
weakness of such actors on the Czechoslovak political stage, especially those seeking to organize
around the platform of the common state, can be singled out as a crucial factor in the demise of
the federation.^11

Through a rational choice analysis of the June 1992 federal elections, the outcome of which sealed
the fate of the common state, František Turnovec assesses the role of the electoral system in
Czechoslovakia’s deepening political crisis. Czechoslovakia’s last elections were conducted under
proportional representation with a relatively high threshold (5 percent for singleton political
parties, 7 percent for coalitions of two parties, and 10 percent for coalitions of greater than two
parties). Using simulation techniques, he then varies the electoral rules and assesses the impact
of these changes on political stability.

Turnovec finds that ”proportional representation with thresholds led to a significant decrease in
the number of parliamentary parties,” yet its imposition did not succeed in eliminating extremist
parties, largely due to the powerful effects of strategic voting (voting only for parties that have
a chance of actually winning, rather than for one’s top choice). The net effect of strategic voting
was to increase the gap between what the electorate preferred in absolute terms and what it
actually got representing it in parliament. ”For the Czechs and Slovaks,” he contends, ”the choice
of a high threshold may have enhanced ‘governability’ but also increased the relative power of the
common state’s enemies.”



THE ROLE OF THE MASS MEDIA

Long before the country’s dissolution. the Czechs and the Slovaks lived on separate islands of
information. Slovak newspapers, for example, were virtually unobtainable in the Czech lands,
thereby depriving any interested reader of Slovak perspectives on many issues dividing the
leadership. Conversely, Slovak political leaders routinely complained about what they perceived to
be biased coverage of Slovak issues emanating from the state-controlled Federal Czechoslovak
Television, by far the most important source of news for most citizens. What role did the Czech and
Slovak mass media-print, television, and radio play in exacerbating or ameliorating the
Czech/Slovak conflict? Contributions from Owen Johnson and Martin Vadas provide complementary
answers to this question.

Throughout Czechoslovakia’s existence, Johnson notes, the media were less likely to shape public
opinion than they were to reinforce existing political attitudes. It follows that the media in and
of themselves did not significantly increase the likelihood that the common state would break up;
their influence was more subtle than that. In postcommunist states, the media’s power did not rest
in their ability to change people’s minds but rather in their ability to reinforce the strength of
the public’s convictions. In post-1989 Czechoslovakia, the media did not so much tell people what
to think as tell them what they should and should not be thinking about; in this way, they framed
the agenda for the public. Although this meant different things in the Czech lands and in Slovakia,
in both republics the media took their cue from political elites, who nurtured and manipulated the
historical experiences of their respective nations for their own ends, just as they had in the
first republic and under communism.

So did the media contribute to Czechoslovakia’s demise? The media’s lack of objectivity and balance
reminds Johnson of the sort of ”schizophrenic” journalism that was practiced in the United States
in the nineteenth century. In both cases, the media wanted to be independent and professional while
at the same time wanting to support particular political positions. With these conflicting
aspirations, truly objective coverage was an unattainable goal. In serving as the political elite’s
megaphone in post-1989 Czechoslovakia, especially in Slovakia, the media inadvertently became a
”transmission belt” for the voices of dissolution. Had a referendum actually been held, it would
have been easier for the media to play ”an informational and organizational role,” in turn sparking
genuine public debate on critical issues facing the besieged federation. For that to happen,
however, journalists would have had to relinquish their long-standing leadership position, thereby
bringing the public more directly into the political process. This they did not do, and as a
result, the media were unable to play an independent role. Johnson concludes, therefore, that
journalists ”largely did not seek to serve the public” but rather the political elites-thus
unintentionally and indirectly contributing to the breakup of Czechoslovakia.

While Johnson’s chapter focuses on the print media, the contribution from Martin Vadas assesses the
role of broadcast media, especially television, in the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Having served as
Czechoslovak Television’s last news director, Vadas provides unique insight into the challenges of
reporting the news objectively as the drive for Slovak autonomy intensified. Vadas argues that the
mass media ”played an important, if subsidiary, role in the unraveling of the federation.” At a
time when Czechoslovakia was gearing up for its most important elections in June 1992, Czechoslovak
Television, which might have served as a unifying force, was in its death throes.

For coverage of the run up to the June 1992 elections, both republics had at least three sources of
television news: Czechoslovak Television, Czech Television, and Slovak Television. During his
tenure as news director, Vadas assigned top priority to providing quality coverage from Slovakia,
yet both organizational and personnel problems rendered this task quite difficult. After over forty
years of communist rule, professional journalists were virtually nonexistent. The choice was often
between an individual with experience and hence a tainted past or a person of character with no
experience whatsoever. Since many television employees, both federal and national, were culpable
for their service to the old regime, they were equally eager to assist the new regime. The result
was a continuation of the unfortunate tradition of mass media servility to political power. The new
political elites, acting out of self interest, did not object to this subservient relationship.

After the official creation of an independent Slovak Television (ST) in 1991, federal television
had to rely almost entirely on the work of ST for its Slovakia coverage. Since Slovak Television
needed to justify its independent existence, it was unlikely to provide federal television with
wholly objective coverage of the Czech-Slovak conflict; friction was built into this relationship
from the start. In this context, Vadas admits that he was relieved that the matter of
Czechoslovakia’s future was never actually put to a referendum. He feared that the referendum
campaign would only have further exacerbated existing tensions. As for the ofFicial position of
Czechoslovak Television, Vadas tells us that it endeavored to present the full array of views on
the referendum issue, while never advocating that one take place.

As Vadas’s account amply illustrates, federal television faced extraordinarily difficult obstacles,
which account ”for the very superficial and inadequate way in which radio and television covered
political events and developments during 1990-1991.” Like Johnson, Vadas believes that ”this
coverage almost always failed to serve the public interest.” Yet Vadas sees a silver lining in this
lackluster tale. Unlike its Yugoslav counterpart, federal television in Czechoslovakia ”contributed
to a peaceful parting of the ways.”


REGIONAL ECONOMIC DISPARITIES

With respect to the sixth working hypothesis, theories that focus on economic factors postulate
that ethnic separatism is likely to emerge when one substate is discriminated against economically
by the state.^12 Put another way, ethnic conflict is likely to develop as the product of growing
regional economic disparities. At first glance, such explanations would seem to be of little
relevance to the Czechoslovak case, since the Slovaks received a disproportionately larger share of
state investment during the communist era. While the status of Czechs and Slovaks was markedly
different at the beginning of the communist period, because of a higher level of capital investment
per capita in Slovakia than in the Czech lands, the communist regime in Czechoslovakia had largely
eliminated gaps in the living standards and levels of economic development by the end of the
1980s.^13 However, those funds were disproportionately devoted to the development of heavy
industry, especially the weapons industry, for which markets largely dried up after the collapse of
Soviet power.

   The economic inequalities thesis also pertains to the differential impact of economic reforms
enacted by the postcommunist government, which hit the Slovak economy harder than that of the Czech
lands. Slovakia’s experience with high rates of unemployment during 1991 and 1992 vis-á-vis the
Czech lands (the ratio was about 3:1) was readily translated into the conviction that the
Czech-dominated economic ministries of the federation failed to serve Slovak interests. Side by
side with Slovak grievances, the Czech public grew increasingly weary of the proposition that Czech
revenues should continue to pour into Slovakia, where they seemed to meet with little or no
appreciation. By the fall of 1991, both Czech and Slovak government leaders engaged in mutual
recriminations over who subsidized whom and issued their respective projections concerning the
economy in the event of dissolution.^14 In this sense, actual or perceived regional economic
differences played a role in fueling the forces of separation.

To assess the role of economic factors in Czechoslovakia’s disintegration, Jan Svejnar compares the
economic performance of the Czech and Slovak republics before and after the dissolution of the
common state. Svejnar presents a time series analysis of key performance indicators in both the
Czech and Slovak republics and by drawing comparisons with the economic performance of other
postcommunist states, places those figures into a broader context. The chapter begins by surveying
the relative economic performance of the two republics from 1918 to 1989. By 1989, Slovakia had for
all practical purposes caught up to the Czech lands, so there were surprisingly similar initial
economic conditions at the onset of the transition to a market economy. The chapter then evaluates
seven economic indicators from the period 1989-1998 (the rate of inflation, unit labor cost,
budgetary policies, income distribution, foreign trade rates, gross domestic product numbers, and
unemployment). Contrary to the prevailing conventional wisdom, which emphasized Slovakia’s relative
economic failure in the immediate post-November 1989 years, Svejnar concludes that the recorded
economic performance of the two republics was more similar than different in all examined areas,
save that of the unemployment rate, especially when compared with the performance of other
East-Central European economies. Though they went largely unrecognized at the time, these shared
economic realities prevailed in both the predissolution 1989-92 period as well as in the
postpartition 1993-98 epoch. While some of these similarities were not fully known to the decision
makers at the time, Svejnar maintains that even had ”full knowledge of the economic similarities
between the two countries and the growth potential of Slovakia” been attainable, it probably would
not have been enough to prevent the breakup. Politics and perceptions largely trumped economic
realities. ”The struggle,” Svejnar concludes, ”was elsewhere.”


DEMONSTRATION EFFECTS

The demise of Czechoslovakia cannot be viewed in isolation from the larger international context.
By demonstration effects, we simply mean the influence of international developments on domestic
political developments.^15 The debate preceding the separation took place at a time when the
successful negotiation of the Maastricht treaty had captured the imagination of European
politicians. Concurrently, subnational units in Western Europe, such as the Scots, demanded greater
autonomy within the larger European Union context. Drawing their own conclusions about what was
possible, Slovak leaders repeatedly insisted that what they wanted was a ”Czechoslovak Maastricht,”
which for them meant Slovak sovereignty, international recognition, and preservation of a loose
union with the Czechs.

Another source of external influence working in the same direction stemmed from the successful
quest for sovereignty and independence by some of the republics comprising the former Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia, which received a stamp of Western approval in the form of international
recognition. These developments, though they reflected forces and factors working at
cross-purposes, provided grist for the mill of Slovak advocates of independence. Moreover, they
fueled demands for a greater expression of the Slovak national interest in foreign affairs than
that provided under the auspices of the federal ministry.

Like most studies of ethnic conflict, the majority of contributions to this volume focus on the
domestic factors that spawned the demise of Czechoslovakia. Michael Kraus’s chapter fills an
important gap by emphasizing the critical role of the international context in determining whether
states succeed or fail. History shows that regime change in Central and Eastern Europe in general
and Czechoslovakia in particular was typically shaped by outside powers or by changes in the
international environment. As Kraus’s contribution highlights, disintegrative forces in
Czechoslovakia were similarly a product of an international system in transition; ”domestic
conflict was ultimately inseparable from the international context.” He makes this point by
analyzing the influence of external factors from three distinctive perspectives: (1) the impact of
a transformed international system on the shared Czech and Slovak sense of vulnerability; (2) the
legacies of federalized totalitarianism, an import from Moscow, for Czechoslovak political
development; and (3) the influence of integrative forces at work in the West on the manner in which
Czech and Slovak individual actors perceived the realm of the possible for their own futures.

Kraus begins by reminding the reader that states form in response to ”external dangers that unify
people across class and ethnic boundaries.” For Czechoslovakia, fear of German and Hungarian
domination forged an uneasy alliance between the Czech and the Slovak peoples and continued to
reinforce state cohesion in the First Republic. Hitler’s rise destroyed this bond, which was
replaced by Soviet imperialism. The end of the Cold War further diminished a long-standing shared
sense of Czech and Slovak vulnerability. In 1989, the threat from Hungary and Germany seemed
minimal, and the imploding Soviet Union’s attention was focused inward. In these circumstances, a
vital link between Czechs and Slovaks was severed.

The legacy of what Havel called ”federalized totalitarianism,” a constitutional import from the
former Soviet Union, is another factor that played its part in Czechoslovakia’s demise. It is
important to note the extent to which CzechSlovak agreements from the communist era were shaped by
Moscow’s self interested designs. The asymmetrical constitutional model, whereby Slovaks had party
and government institutions in a federal structure with no Czech counterparts, was very much
tailored to Soviet specifications. The Soviet experience also shaped patterns of resource
allocation in communist Czechoslovakia. In this way, the international balance of power was
embedded in Czechoslovakia’s political institutions.

What might be labeled the Maastricht phenomenon played a profound role in the divergence of Czech
and Slovak attitudes after November 1989. Calls for a Czechoslovak Maastricht accompanied the birth
and institutionalization of Slovak foreign policy as an entity distinct from the foreign policy of
Czechoslovakia. By 1991, Czechoslovakia’s foreign policy wore two faces: federal and Slovak. As
Kraus puts it, ”Clearly, Maastricht encouraged the illusion in the Slovak ranks that the hard
choices between national sovereignty and supranational institutions were fast losing their
salience.”


THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND: CZECH AND SLOVAK PERSPECTIVES

The fourth section of the book presents the views of prominent Czechs and Slovaks who were actually
firsthand witnesses to and participants in the process of dissolution. Ján Čarnogurský, prime
minister of the Slovak Republic at the time of the split, leads off by arguing that the reasons for
the Czech-Slovak breakup have an interesting and paradoxical intellectual kinship with Francis
Fukuyama’s end-of history hypothesis. In Čarnogurský’s view, Europe’s multinational states first
had to dissolve for rationalism to triumph in Europe. The dominant Czech theme in the early 1990s,
Čarnogurský tells us, was economic autonomy, with each republic living on the basis of its own
means. In contrast, the predominant Slovak theme was the demand for equal treatment and autonomy
both within the common state and on the international stage. These two animating aims became
irreconcilable over time, making divorce the only feasible option. That is the reason why
Čarnogurský insists that even had the common state held together, it still would have been very
difficult, if not impossible, to put together a federal budget for 1993.

The Velvet Divorce was possible only because of the heightened rationalism that now characterizes
the majority of European relations (the situation in the former Yugoslavia being a prominent
exception). The relative stability in the relations of post-Cold War Europe had rid the Czechs and
the Slovaks of their longstanding historical suspicion of their neighbors. The common state,
Čarnoguský suggests, was never really more than a pragmatic solution and was therefore rendered
obsolete by post-Cold War events. He describes the futile negotiation effort to save
Czechoslovakia, in which he was an important participant; it lacked any sort of overarching idea or
aspiration that might have united both parties to the conflict. The national mood in Slovakia was
unprepared to accept a continuation of status quo constitutional arrangements. For all of these
reasons, Čarnogurský’s political party, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), believed that the
Slovak ”process of emancipation” was best accomplished ”in the framework of European integration.”
In his view, the June 1992 elections, which resulted in the almost complete defeat of the former
dissident parties, severed one of the last remaining bonds of solidarity between Czech and Slovak
political elites. Čarnogurský concludes by suggesting that the subsequent deterioration in
relations between the Czech and Slovak republics proves ex post facto that ”we were peoples too
different to comprise one state.”

In a provocatively titled chapter, ”The Division/Dissolution of Czechoslovakia: Old Sins and New
Forms of Selfishness,” Petr Pithart, the prime minister of the Czech Republic at the time of the
split, provides an alternative perspective. While it might have been possible to preserve the
common state, the costs of completing this agenda were far too high. Pithart was an opponent of
partitioning Czechoslovakia until the bitter end, which was a politically suicidal stance to take
at the time.^16 For Pithart, those who advocated that each republic go its own way took the easy
way out. In so doing, they compromised liberal principles and in some sense still do so, since
legitimacy had to be bestowed on the division after the fact. Not surprisingly, relations between
the Czech and Slovak republics are today less than neighborly. The split established unfortunate
incentives for continued ill will between the Czech and Slovak governments; contemporary
flashpoints of conflict only appear to prove that it would have been impossible for Czech and
Slovak political elites to cohabitate in democratic times.

Urging us to let the Slovaks speak for themselves, Pithart goes on to consider the principal causes
of the dissolution on the Czech side. First, Czech chauvinism and Pragocentrism vis-á-vis Slovakia
is a long-standing phenomenon, one that made it easy for Czechs to misgauge the seriousness of
Slovak strivings for autonomy. Second, over forty years of ”real socialism” destroyed any sense of
civic community that had once existed. The absence of civic community made shortterm material
arguments for dividing Czechoslovakia only all the more appealing. Third, it is surprising how
little Czechs actually knew about their Slovak sisters and brothers. ”Czech haughtiness was
sky-high-not only did they know nothing about the Slovaks, but they didn’t even know that they knew
nothing. As a result, the Slovaks were in a state of permanent alert.” Finally, Czechs and Slovaks
interpreted and recollected the forty years of communist rule in wholly different ways. The
Slovaks, who, according to Pithart, were ”initially less enamored of communism, experienced the
normalization years favorably, while the Czechs lived through the same period as the most repulsive
of times. After November 1989, the Czechs imagined that they were reawakening into freedom as right
wingers, while the Slovaks were concurrently the most receptive to socialism.” Obviously, this gave
rise to ”a host of misconceptions and misunderstandings.”

     From Pithart’s perspective, therefore, the processes that ultimately culminated in
Czechoslovakia’s end had been under way, even though many did not realize or refused to acknowledge
that this was indeed the case. There was no decisive moment in the process of division” but rather
an ”unending series of . . . misunderstandings, conflicts, and embarrassments.” Pithart cites only
one post-November 1989 error as fundamental, concurring with Stanger’s assessment: the two-year
deadline for drafting a new constitution was a mistake. He goes on to tell us that the two-year
deadline was primarily a product of Havel’s initial hesitation to assume the presidency. A two-year
deadline for constitutional renovations meant that Havel would have to be president for a maximum
of only two years, which was important to Civic Forum’s leader, who, interestingly enough, could
not at that time contemplate serving any longer. ”In the final analysis,” Pithart concludes, ”the
state fell apart, above all, because neither the Czechs nor the Slovaks showed at any time enough
political will to create a common political nation.”

Responding to the first two contributions in this section of the book, Daniel Kroupa criticizes
Čarnogurský and Pithart for conflating sociological (deterministic) and subjective (free will)
factors in their accounts. In Kroupa’s view, sociological analysis is a legitimate approach, but it
does not get one very far in explaining post-1989 events in the former Czechoslovakia, nor does the
attempt to identify whether the Czech or the Slovak side is most to blame. As Kroupa puts it, ”The
differences between the Czechs and the Slovaks are far smaller than the proponents of the theory
that Czechoslovakia broke up because of these differences would allow. Such disparities did not
prevent the existence of a common state, and such differences are often far greater within each
individual republic than between them.”

Instead, Kroupa points a finger at a very small group of elite political figures and the choices
they made as bearing much of the responsibility for the breakup. For those who would identify
Slovak nationalism as the source of the common state’s disintegration, Kroupa responds that the
more important question is why nationalist forces acquired such great political influence, since
survey research indicates that their platforms were initially embraced only by marginalized social
groups. In Kroupa’s view, nonnationalist political parties in Slovakia, such as the Public Against
Violence, made a tactical error when they decided to co-opt the nationalist agenda-thereby
legitimizing it-in an effort to court additional voters rather than continuing to take a firm stand
against the nationalist orientation. Echoing a point emphasized by Pithart and Stanger in earlier
chapters, Kroupa insists that ”the main cause of the dissolution was the inherited constitutional
framework, which narrowed considerably the range of options after the 1992 elections.”
Czechoslovakia’s centrifugal forces ”could not have brought on the dissolution of the state without
the federal constitution’s minority veto.”

In contrast, the contribution from Miroslav Macek provides evidence for Pithart’s assessment of the
Czech contribution to the split. A flamboyant leader of the now-fragmented Civic Democratic Party
(ODS), Macek was one of the earliest and most outspoken advocates of Czechoslovakia’s
dissolution.^17 Macek begins by laying out the two fundamental reasons why he subscribed to this
view. First, the Czechs and Slovaks had had wholly different historical experiences, which accounts
for the unbridgeable differences that developed following the November 1989 revolution. Second,
Czechoslovakia’s two-member federation was by nature institutionally dysfunctional and unstable.
Without external or internal coercion, it was incapable of independent existence.

Macek proceeds to support his argument with five eyewitness anecdotes from 1989 through 1992.
Macek’s vignettes provide insight into previously undocumented incidents of Czech-Slovak friction
as well as into some of the major political personalities of the time. They also demonstrate how
the stance of key members of ODS accelerated the formal dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

Macek’s fifth illustrative story is a firsthand account of the post-June 1992 election negotiations
between ODS and HZDS on preserving the union. Macek recounts how he engaged the Slovak Republic’s
future president, Michal Kováč, in conversation just before the formal negotiation session began.
In that corridor exchange, Macek claims that Kováč committed a negotiating blunder: he prematurely
revealed that HZDS planned to resurrect the 1968 notion of an economic and defense union, a loose
Czech-Slovak administrative arrangement that involved a common currency defended by two separate
armies and treasuries. Macek coined the phrase for this arrangement as ”Slovak independence with
Czech insurance.” Mečiar’s negotiating style, however, where ”yesterday’s concession is presented
as today’s starting point,” required that HZDS’s extremist positions only be revealed gradually
over time. Of course, Macek immediately informed Klaus (in Mečiar’s presence) of HZDS intentions,
and this new piece of information only confirmed the Czech side’s preexistent opinions about
Mečiar’s lack of good faith. Mečiar turned ashen, Macek reports, at the realization that one of his
deputies had revealed his ultimate goals.^18 In Macek’s view, this critical incident sealed the
fate of the common state: ”The battle was over before it had begun. It was time to haggle and to
sign a peace treaty.” For Macek, that such an event could determine the outcome of this most
serious of questions proves that the ties that had connected the Czech lands with Slovakia were
uncommonly weak.

The chapter by Milan Zemko, historian and presently (1999) chief of staff of the president’s office
in the Slovak Republic, draws comparisons between the 1939 and 1989 demises of Czechoslovakia. In
each instance, external factors played an important role, yet in 1939, totalitarianism was
ascendant and in 1989, democracy. The latter international circumstances made independence an
easier step for a small state to take. This changed environment was a necessary although not
sufficient condition for the split. Zemko argues that the entire trajectory of the Czech-Slovak
conflict after 1989 was very much a product of unacknowledged nationalism on both sides. That
neither party recognized its own nationalist orientation generated the most difficult obstacle to
overcome: a lack of empathy for the other. In this way, the revival of nationalist sentiments
discouraged feelings of a shared future. Without some degree of empathy, no negotiation process can
move forward.

Like many Slovaks, Zemko sees the March 1990 quarrel over what name the newly democratic country
should wear-the so-called hyphen war-as symbolic of larger problems inherent in the Czech-Slovak
relationship. In this dispute, Czechs displayed limited sensitivity to long-denied Slovak
aspirations. Slovaks demonstrated an equally limited understanding of the significance for Czechs
both of tradition and of their preferred hyphenated name, which reminded Czechs of the post-Munich
republic.

In subsequent sections, Zemko provides the reader with an account of the illfated efforts to
maintain unity. Zemko usually refrains from blaming one side more than the other, although he does
criticize Czech hockey-style ”power plays”- i.e., Czech attempts to preserve the common state by
controlling both federal- and republic-level institutions-more than he does Slovak threats of
unilateral action in such areas as foreign policy and economic development. While there were
numerous searches for solutions to the federation’s structural problems, no proposal was ever
agreeable to the elites of both sides at the same time. Interestingly, Zemko touches on the failed
Milovy accord, for which he cast the fateful ”no” vote, yet he does not present it as a turning
point. Zemko reports that he voted against the Milovy compromise simply because he felt it had no
chance of ever being approved by the Slovak National Council. In general, throughout the
constitutional discussions, Czechs were inclined to endorse the notion of a functioning federation,
while Slovaks proposed a range of alternatives to federalism. The problem, in Zemko’s view, was
that the Slovak elite was highly divided on the question of optimal future constitutional
arrangements, so any sort of forward momentum was difficult to generate. Despite these trends, as
constitutional deliberations ground to a halt and the support for dissolution increased among the
political elites of both nations, it did not for the public at large. In this way, peaceful
partition became the ”second-best solution,” and hence one that the public in neither the Czech
lands nor Slovakia openly protested.

A contribution from a former leader of the Public Against Violence rounds out the final section of
the volume. Peter Zajac seeks to understand why Czechoslovakia dissolved in the absence of
significant public pressure to do so. He notes that, paradoxically, ”at precisely the time when a
petition supporting the common state had secured more than a million signatures, the Czech and
Slovak national councils were incapable of agreeing on practically anything.” Surveying the
competing explanations, Zajac points out that many of them

are interrelated. This fact needs to be acknowledged if students of state disintegration hope to
get to the heart of the matter.

In the course of elaborating on his thesis, Zajac provides many important details about the
gridlock that surrounded the numerous constitutional negotiating sessions from 1989 to 1992. He
concludes that one can view the dissolution of Czechoslovakia from two perspectives: ”The first is
a historical-teleological one, where the event is seen as a historical inevitability. The second
argues that Czechoslovakia might have been preserved as a common state only if it had been capable
of changing, to quote Tomáš Masaryk, `the ideas that gave rise to it,’ and for that, after 1989,
there was neither opportunity nor time.” Zajac faults the ”arrogance of nomenklatura capitalism,” a
characteristic shared by all postcommunist elites, for eventually leading to the loss of public
support for new and hence fragile democratic arrangements.


CZECHOSLOVAKIA’S DISSOLUTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The concluding section has two components. In the first, Stanley Hoffmann provides a distinguished
and incisive survey of the international context in which Czechoslovakia’s peaceful partition took
place. In inimitable style, Hoffmann begins by comparing the Cold War international system with
that of the present to assess the key factors underlying the increased prevalence of ethnic
conflict. Through numerous illuminating examples, he demonstrates not only that ethnic conflict has
”multiple faces” but also that it has ”multiple parents.” Having established the importance and the
consequences of the problem, Hoffmann then turns to an examination of potential solutions, from
international intervention to prevention. Placing it in comparative perspective, he characterizes
Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce as an unusual case of voluntary secession, where political elites
decided the country’s fate over the heads of the people. Hoffmann points out that most political
philosophers insist on indisputable popular support if a secession effort is to be considered
legitimate.

Looking to the future, Hoffmann ends with ”three sets of exhortations.” First, the tasks of
prevention and settlement ”cannot be left to often questionable, fragile, and selňsh states”; the
distinction between interstate and intrastate conflict is no longer viable and should cease to be
treated as such. Second, the tension between the norm of state sovereignty and the principle of
self determination is best addressed through ”strict limitations on both.” International and
regional organizations can combat the excesses of the former. As for the latter, despite the Czech
and Slovak example, secession should always be a last resort and ”endorsed by a qualified majority
of the people who claim independence.” Finally, efforts to reduce the significance of ethnicity in
international relations, as represented by the European Union, must be encouraged. While this task
may at times seem impossible, Hoffmann concludes by reminding us ”that it is not necessary to hope
in order to undertake, or to succeed in order to persevere.”

In the second component of the concluding section, Michael Kraus and Allison Stanger reflect on the
larger implications of this collaborative project. To accomplish this task, we begin by comparing
the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia to shed light on the question of
why the Czechs and the Slovaks were able to part ways without violence. We then survey the general
findings of this volume and end by reflecting on the lessons of the Czecho-Slovak case for other
states torn by ethnic conflict.


NOTES

1.Carol Skalnik Leff’s National Conflict in Czechoslovalakia: The Making and Remaking of a State,
1918-1987 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), identifies several similar
”conflict-intensifying” factors as determinants of Czechoslovak national conflict. See esp. ch. 9.

2.See Robert Hayden, ”Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic
Review, 51, no. 4, Winter 1992, pp. 654-673; Julie Mostov, ”Democracy and the Politics of National
Identity,” paper presented at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, Ill., September 1992.

3.      Noting the different levels of economic development, Ellen Comisso writes: ”Czechs may have
needed the Slovak hinterland in 1918 but in 1992 it was Václav Klaus, not the Slovak nationalists,
who forced the separation.” See her ”Prediction versus Diagnosis: Comments on a Ken Jowitt
Retrospective” (review article), Slavic Review, 53, no. 1, Spring 1994, p. 191.

4.      This is a decision that merits explanation, given that the dissidents around Václav Havel
had worked on constitution drafting prior to November 1989 and had actually prepared a draft of a
new federal constitution. Interview with Rudolf Battěk, Prague, July 1994.

5.      Peter Rutland, ”Thatcherism, Czech-style: Transition to Capitalism in the Czech Republic,”
Telos, no. 94, Winter 1993-94, p. 104.

6.      Martin Bútora and Zora Bútorová, ”Slovakia: The Identity Challenges of the Newly Born
State,” Social Research, 10, no. 2, Winter 1993, p. 720.

7.      Sharon L. Wolchik, ”The Politics of Ethnicity in Post-Communist Czechoslovakia,” East
European Politics and Societies, 8, no. 1, Winter 1994, p. 187.

8.      On the role of political parties in national integration, see William N. Chambers, ”Parties
and Nation-Building,” in Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political
Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 98-104.

9.        On this point, see David Olson, ”Dissolution of the State: Political Parties and the 1992
Election in Czechoslovakia,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 26, no. 3, September 1993, pp.
301-314; and Sharon Wolchik, ”The Repluralization of Politics in Czechoslovakia,” Communist and
Post-Communist Studies, 26, no. 4, December 1993, pp. 412-431.

10.   Otto Kirchheimer, ”The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems,” in LaPalombara
and Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development, pp. 188-189.

11.    Martin Bútora and Zora Bútorová, ”Slovakia: The Identity Challenges of the Newly Born
State,” Social Research, 10, no. 2, Winter 1993, p. 721.

12.    For a list of social scientists who have ascribed great significance to economic forces in
explaining nationalism, see Walter Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 161-162, note 1.

13.    For evidence, see Sharon L. Wolchik, Czechoslovakia in Transition: Politics, Economics and
Society (London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1991), pp. 186-195.

14.    See, for example, the December 1991 report of the Slovak government on this subject, ”Správa
o ekonomických dosledkoch pripadného rozdelenia ČSFR na dve samostatné republiky,” Hospodárské
noviny, 12 December 1991, pp. 7-10.

15.     The ”demonstration effect” is Arend Lijphart’s concept. See Arend Lijphart, ”Political
Theories and the Explanation of Ethnic Conflict in the Western World: Falsified Predictions and
Plausible Postdictions,” in Milton J. Esman, ed., Ethnic Conflict in the Western World (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 63-64.

16.     His views initially cost him a position in the newborn Czech Republic’s political
leadership, although he has subsequently returned to political prominence, in no small part because
he is seen as a man of principle.

17.     Macek served as Klaus’s campaign manager during the 1996 elections.

18.     This story is consistent with the public animosity that existed between Kováč and Mečiar
after Kováč had become president.



In: Kraus, Michael, Stanger, Allison (eds.), Irreconcilable Differences? Explaining
Czechoslovakia’s Dissolution, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2000, pp. 7-25.