The Velvet Divorce — Czechoslovakia Splits in Two
Czechoslovakia ceased to exist at midnight on 31 December 1992, dividing into the Czech Republic and Slovakia without violence, a referendum, or any great popular demand for it. The state had been created in 1918 from Habsburg territories, and the relationship between its two halves was unequal from the start — Czech industry, Czech administration and a doctrine of Czechoslovakism that treated Slovaks as a branch of a single nation. Federalisation in 1968 was the one reform of the Prague Spring that survived the Soviet invasion. After 1989 the argument reopened immediately, starting with the hyphen: whether the country was Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia, a dispute that consumed months of parliamentary time in 1990 and signalled everything that followed. Economic transition sharpened it. Shock therapy hit Slovakia harder, since its economy was built on heavy industry and arms manufacture for a Warsaw Pact market that had disappeared. The June 1992 elections returned Václav Klaus in the Czech lands, committed to rapid market reform, and Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia, committed to a slower transition and a much looser confederation. The two met and concluded within weeks that no workable common government could be formed. They agreed to dissolve the state instead. Polling at the time showed a majority in both republics opposed to separation, and neither leader put it to a vote. The federal assembly passed the dissolution law in November 1992 by a narrow margin. Assets were divided roughly two to one by population. Both states joined NATO and the European Union.
- Year: 1992 CE
- Category: Political
