ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the process that resulted in 1992 in the remarkably peaceful disintegration of Czechoslovakia1 – the joint state of two neighbouring Slavic nations, the Czechs and the Slovaks, into independent states. Czechoslovakia was established in 1918, immediately after the end of the First World War, on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian empire to which both Czechs and Slovaks had belonged. The new state was a union of unequal partners because its Czech part was more developed than Slovakia, which was still a pre-modern country that had never enjoyed statehood. During the next 20 years, as part of Czechoslovakia, the Slovak society made remarkable political, social and cultural advancements, as well as economic progress, partly due to Czech support. Tension between the Slovak and Czech political establishments built up during the 1930s due to insensitive paternalism and centralism applied by Czechs to the Slovaks and to the nationalism and clero-fascist tendencies of some influential Slovak politicians. The tension resulted in 1939, shortly before the German occupation of the Czech Lands2 in March 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War, in the secession of Slovakia and declaration of a Slovak state under the protection of Nazi Germany.