The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on 31 December 1992, was the self-determined partition of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These mirrored the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, which had been created in 1969 as the constituent states of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic until the end of 1989.
It is sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce, a reference to the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989, which had led to the end of the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia is closely linked to the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of other Eastern Bloc countries such as the Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Unlike Yugoslavia, which was also created in 1918 and disappeared in 1992, Czechoslovakia did not experience violent clashes due to nationalism, which in the case of Yugoslavia led to the Yugoslav Wars. Its dissolution was also viewed as unpopular especially at the time, with criticism as to why no referendum was held.
Though peaceful, a similar earlier attempt that dissolved Czechoslovakia took place in 1939 when Nazi Germany partitioned the country into two client states, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and First Slovak Republic. The easternmost region of Carpathia, historically called Transcarpathia, Transcarpathian Ruthenia, or Subcarpathian Ruthenia, became Carpatho-Ukraine, before being annexed into Hungary, and later the Soviet Union in 1946, where it exists today as part of Ukraine as Zakarpattia Oblast.
Background
Czechoslovakia was created with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. In 1918, at a meeting in the American city of Pittsburgh, the future Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other Czech and Slovak representatives signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, which promised a common state consisting of two equal nations: Slovaks and Czechs. However, the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 specified a single "Czechoslovak nation".
In subsequent years, there were political tensions in the new country between Czechoslovakists and those seeking greater autonomy for the Slovaks in particular.
In March 1939, with pressure from Adolf Hitler, the First Slovak Republic was created as a satellite state of Germany with limited sovereignty. The alignment with the Soviet Union after World War II oversaw the reunification into the Third Czechoslovak Republic.
In 1968, the Constitutional Law of Federation reinstated an official federal structure of the 1917 type, but during the Normalization Period in the 1970s, Gustáv Husák, despite being a Slovak himself, returned most control to Prague. That approach encouraged a regrowth of Slovak separatism after the fall of communism.
Partition into two entities
By 1991, the Czech Republic's GDP per capita was some 20% higher than Slovakia's. Transfer payments from the Czech budget to Slovakia, which had been the rule in the past, were stopped in January 1991.
Many Czechs and Slovaks desired the continued existence of a federal Czechoslovakia. However, the politicians of leading Slovak parties in Parliament, notably the Slovak National Party, would stand to benefit politically if the country were split in two, and advocated a looser form of complete independence and sovereignty. For a few years, political parties re-emerged, but Czech parties had little or no presence in Slovakia and vice versa. To have a functioning state, the government demanded continued control from Prague, but Slovaks continued to ask for decentralisation.
In 1992, the Czech Republic elected Václav Klaus and others, who demanded either a tighter federation ("viable federation") or two independent states. Vladimír Mečiar and other leading Slovak politicians wanted a kind of confederation. Both sides opened frequent and intense negotiations in June. On 17 July, the Slovak parliament adopted the declaration of independence of the Slovak nation. Six days later, Klaus and Mečiar agreed to partition Czechoslovakia into two separate states at a meeting in Bratislava. Czechoslovak President Václav Havel resigned, rather than oversee the partition, which he had opposed.
In a September 1992 opinion poll, only 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs favoured dissolution.
The goal of negotiations switched to achieving a peaceful division. Peaceful division was prioritized as the process ran in parallel with the violent breakup of Yugoslavia (another formerly socialist, Slavic federal state created in 1918 after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary).
On 13 November 1992, the Federal Assembly passed Constitution Act 541, which settled the division of property between the Czech lands and Slovakia. With Constitution Act 542, passed on 25 November, they agreed to the secession of Czechoslovakia into two entities as of 31 December 1992.
The partition occurred without violence and so was thus said to be "velvet", much like the "Velvet Revolution", which had preceded it and had been accomplished by massive peaceful demonstrations and actions. In contrast, other post-communist breakups (such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) involved violent conflict. Czechoslovakia is the only former Eastern Bloc state that had an entirely peaceful breakup. At the beginning of 1993, as Slovakia's economy struggled, Slovaks said the dissolution was a "sandpaper divorce".
Causes
A number of reasons have been given for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, with the main debates focusing on whether dissolution was inevitable or whether dissolution occurred in conjunction with or even in contrast to the events that occurred between the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the end of the joined state in 1992.
Those who argue from the inevitability stance tend to point to the differences between the two nations, which date back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to other issues. There are differences between the Czechs and Slovaks, such as problems with the shared state during communism, the success of the state in the Czech lands, its failure in the Slovak lands that still resulted in the adoption of communism since the Czechs were more influential in the running of the state than Slovaks, and the 1968 constitution with its minority veto.
Those who argue that events between 1989 and 1992 led to the dissolution point to international factors such as the breakaway of the Soviet satellite nations, the lack of unified media between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and most importantly the actions of the political leaders of both nations like the disagreements between Prime Ministers Klaus and Mečiar.
Legal aspects
National symbols
Since the coat of arms of Czechoslovakia was a composition of those of the historic geographic areas forming the country, each republic simply kept its own symbol: the Czechs the lion and the Slovaks the double cross. The same principle was applied to the two-part bilingual Czechoslovak national anthem that comprised two separate pieces of music, the Czech stanza "Kde domov můj" and the Slovak stanza "Nad Tatrou sa blýska". Disputes occurred only with respect to the Czechoslovak flag. During the 1992 negotiations on the details of dissolution of Czechoslovakia, as demanded by Vladimír Mečiar and Václav Klaus, a clause forbidding the use of the state symbols of Czechoslovakia by its successor states was inserted into the constitutional law on the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
From 1990 to 1992, the red and white flag of Bohemia (differing only slightly from the Polish flag by proportion and tone) officially served as the flag of the Czech Republic. Eventually, after a search for new symbols, the Czech Republic unilaterally decided to ignore the aforementioned law and to keep the Czechoslovak flag, with an altered meaning. Slovakia, meanwhile, adopted its traditional flag; however, just before independence, on 3 September 1992, the coat of arms was added to prevent confusion with the similar flags of Russia and of Slovenia.
Territory
The national territory was divided along the existing internal borders, but the border was not clearly defined at some points and, in some areas, the border cut across streets, access roads and communities that had coexisted for centuries. The most serious issues occurred around the following areas:
- U Sabotů or Šance – historically part of Moravia, awarded to Slovakia in 1997
- Sidonie or Sidónia – historically part of Hungary (which contained all present-day Slovak territory until 1918), awarded to the Czech Republic in 1997
- Kasárna recreational area – historically Moravian, disputed between Moravia and Hungary since the 16th century, formally part of Hungary since 1734; accessible by car only from the Czech side until early 2000s; remained in Slovakia despite heavy objections from the mostly-Czech property owners, whose real estate effectively fell into a foreign country.
The new countries were able to solve the difficulties via mutual negotiations, financial compensation and then an international treaty covering the border modifications.
People living or owning property in the border area, however, continued to experience practical problems until both new countries entered the Schengen Area in 2007, rendering the border less significant.
Division of national property
Most federal assets were divided in a ratio of two to one, the approximate ratio between the Czech and Slovak population in Czechoslovakia, including army equipment, rail and airliner infrastructure. Some minor disputes, such as gold reserves stored in Prague and federal know-how valuation, lasted for a few years after the dissolution.
Currency division
Initially, the old Czechoslovak currency, the Czechoslovak koruna, remained in use by both countries. Czech fears of an economic loss caused the adoption of two national currencies as early as 8 February 1993. On 2 February 1993 Act No. 60/1993 Coll. came in effect in the Czech Republic to create a separate currency that was already envisaged in the Czech Constitution and in Act No. 6/1993 Coll. that created the Czech National Bank which issued a new Czech currency by stamping Czechoslovak banknotes. The stamps had already been prepared in secret in 1992 after the decision about the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. In December 1992 some of the reserve banknotes started to be stamped in the selected banks in secret. From 8 February to 12 February old banknotes of 100, 500 and 1,000 Kčs (Czechoslovak crowns) were exchanged for the stamped ones in the Czech Republic and a new 200 Kč banknote was introduced. Each person over 15 could exchange banknotes up to 4,000 crowns, and minors below 15 years of age up to 1,000 crowns. Banknotes of lower denominations and coins remained until new ones were printed and minted. Banks in the Czech Republic converted all money on 8 February 1993 from Kčs to Kč. In Slovakia stamps were also applied on banknotes, and a new 10 SK coin was introduced. At the beginning, the currencies could be exchanged at par, but later the value of the Slovak koruna was usually lower than that of the Czech koruna (in 2004, around 25–27% lower). On 2 August 1993, both currencies were distinguished by different stamps that were first affixed to and then printed on old Czechoslovak koruna banknotes. New Czech and Slovak coins replaced old ones during 1993.
On 1 January 2009, Slovakia adopted the euro as its currency, with a conversion rate of 30.126 SK/€, and the €2 commemorative coin for 2009, Slovakia's first, featured the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in remembrance of the common struggle of the Czechoslovaks for democracy. By a quirk of fate, the welcoming speech on behalf of the European Union on the occasion of Slovakia's entry to the eurozone was delivered by Mirek Topolánek, the prime minister of the presiding country, the Czech Republic, naturally in his native language, but the other guest speakers used English. The Czech Republic continues to use the Czech koruna, or crown.
International law
Neither the Czech nor Slovak republics sought recognition as the sole successor state to Czechoslovakia. This can be contrasted to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the Russian Federation was recognized as successor state not only to the Russian SFSR but also to the Soviet Union itself, and also contrasts with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, where the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbia and encompassing only it and Montenegro, unsuccessfully demanded recognition as the sole successor to the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, even though the four remaining ex-Yugoslav states, now independent, collectively encompassed around three-fifths of former Yugoslavia, both in population and in territory. Therefore, Czechoslovakia's membership in the United Nations ceased upon the dissolution of the country, but on 19 January 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were admitted as new, separate states.