Ondrej and Katarína first met in 2008, greater than a decade after their nations divorced.
He, a Czech, and she or he, a Slovak, see their cross-national marriage as the rest however odd.
“My uncle is Slovak and has a Czech wife. My sister is getting married to a Czech man,” Katarína stated. Her husband chimed in: “Many of us don’t think of Slovakia as a foreign country in the true sense of the word.”
January 1st marked the thirtieth anniversary of the breakup of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, two separate states. The “Velvet Divorce”, because it’s identified in another country, is remembered as Europe’s maximum non violent and a hit breakup in contemporary historical past.
It used to be agreed with out warfare or acrimony, albeit with out the general public’s opinion being requested, and politicians from all sides hammered it out in over simply six days.
This 12 months’s anniversary has added gravitas. Vladimir Putin introduced his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 on account of an abhorrent trust that Ukrainians, who broke clear of the Soviet Union in 1991, aren’t a real nationality and that their territory must be a part of the Russian Federation.
Tensions are boiling between Serbia and Kosovo, two former compatriots, whilst the aspirations of independence from the United Kingdom of round part the citizens in Scotland rumble on — as do separatist claims in Catalonia and Belgium.
Slovaks at the moment are via a long way the most important overseas nationwide crew residing within the Czech Republic. Differences of their languages are cigarette-paper skinny. Even sooner than each joined the European Union in 2004, travelling between each nations used to be fairly easy and a customs union from 1993 onwards supposed industry used to be seamless.
And it has led to a couple oddities.
Andrej Babiš used to be the Czech high minister till 2021. Next week, he’s going to most probably pressure a run-off election within the race to transform the following Czech president. But he used to be born and raised in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava and best relocated to the Czech Republic after 1993, in his past due thirties.
Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová used to be ranked as the most well liked baby-kisser among Czechs in a survey via CVVM, a pollster, in past due 2021.
“Even though many of us were born in one country, and now we live in two, we still have excellent relations and are able to work together. I personally have a Slovak husband,” the speaker of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, joked at an anniversary rite ultimate weekend.
Although nobody questions the fraternity between all sides, the breakup stays a sore level for some.
Median, every other pollster, present in a contemporary survey that 47% of Czechs and 62% of Slovaks now suppose the separation used to be the correct determination. But 48% % of Czechs and 33% % of Slovaks nonetheless say it used to be a nasty transfer.
“Nostalgia for Czechoslovakia is strong in the Czech Republic among the older generation; the younger generation does not care and usually has no opinion on it. In Slovakia, the situation is more or less similar,” Lubomír Kopeček, a political science professor at Masaryk University, advised Euronews.
Many folks adverse it on the time. Czechoslovakia’s hero of anti-communist resistance resigned as president the day after separation used to be made up our minds.
The riddle of the Velvet Divorce is that an match so non violent and, a long time later, seen as a luck, will have been carried out regardless of such opposition on the time.
A brief historical past lesson
In some ways, the breakup of Czechoslovakia used to be more uncomplicated than its formation.
By the early twentieth century, neither Czechs nor Slovaks had loved their very own state for hundreds of years, nor had they a lot historical past in cooperating bureaucratically. The Slovak lands (or “Northern Hungary” as they had been identified on the time) had been dominated from Budapest underneath the Habsburg twin Austro-Hungarian empire. The Czech lands, in the meantime, got here underneath Vienna’s purview.
Whereas the Czech lands had been the commercial powerhouse of the Habsburg empire, Slovak territory used to be way more agricultural and undeveloped.
Protestantism used to be sturdy in Bohemia, the western heartland of the Czechs, whilst Catholicism reigned among Slovaks. (Today, Czechs are the least non secular of Europeans whilst Slovaks are among essentially the most God-fearing, in step with common polls.)
However, Czech and Slovak nationalism evolved round the similar time within the past due nineteenth century and each had been centred on their mutually-intelligible languages. Both believed that they’d stand a greater probability of gaining statehood after the First World War in the event that they partnered in combination.
Many different nationwide teams who remained remoted had been absorbed into different nations amid the nation-building experiment after 1918.
Cohabitation additionally made sense to politicians on the time. Tomáš Masaryk, the founder of Czechoslovakia and its first president, used to be the son of a Slovak and a Czech. Milan Rastislav Štefánik, the Slovak chief, spent maximum of his early existence learning in Prague.
Moreover, whilst Czechs and Slovaks would possibly were majorities in their very own territories, there have been important numbers of ethnic Germans, Hungarians and Ukrainians which supposed Czechsloavkia used to be destined to be a multinational state.
But Slovakia had its first style of “independence” from Prague in 1939 when its clerical-fascist chief Jozef Tiso broke away to shape the First Slovak Republic, a Nazi puppet state. Soon after, Nazi Germany invaded the whole thing of the Czech lands, ruling over it till 1945 because the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”
After the Second World War, Czechoslovakia used to be reconstituted and, when the communist birthday party took energy in 1948, federalised the 2 areas. Autonomy used to be expansive.
The cave in of Communism
The defining second got here in 1989 when the communist regime of Czechoslovakia collapsed. Unique in Eastern Europe, it used to be most commonly a relaxed match, incomes it the moniker of a “velvet revolution.”
But socialism’s fall additionally ended in what locals known as the “hyphen war”, a debate on whether or not the brand new post-socialist state will have to be the “Czechoslovak Republic” or the “Czecho-Slovak Republic”, the latter favoured via Slovak patriots. Century-old schisms got here to a head in 1992.
English audio system know the development because the “Velvet Divorce”, a wordplay at the non violent Velvet Revolution that introduced down Czechoslovakia’s communist regime 4 years previous. It’s now not a time period in most cases utilized by Czech and Slovaks audio system, regardless that.
Some overseas observers see the separation as a continuation of the autumn of communism in 1989 and because each occasions had been non violent, the adjective “velvet” would possibly appear suitable, Filip Kostelka, a professor on the European University Institute, defined.
But for Czechs and Slovaks, the autumn of communism in 1989 and the breakup of Czechoslovakia are obviously two other occasions. “The separation was not a natural or inevitable outcome of the fall of communism,” Kostelka advised Euronews. “There was no popular support for it.”
Václav Havel, the icon of anti-communism who used to be elected president of Czechoslovakia in 1989, used to be vehemently in opposition to a divorce. He introduced his resignation the day after the Slovak parliament voted for separation.
Whereas the top of communism in 1989 used to be heralded as a democratic match, a joyous result of a long time of civil society struggles and victory for the powerless, the breakup of Czechoslovakia used to be reasonably much less egalitarian.
Post-breakup existence in neighbouring nations
In early 1992, the Czechs and Slovaks went to the polls for their very own federal territories. Czechs opted for the centre-right Civic Democratic birthday party underneath Vaclav Klaus, who sought after to centralise energy to kickstart financial liberalisation.
Slovaks, in the meantime, voted for the populist Vladimir Mečiar, who campaigned on higher sovereignty for Slovak territory.
Months later, in July 1992, the Slovak Parliament followed the Declaration of Independence. It took simply six days, after conferences in Bratislava, for Czech and Slovak negotiators to comply with dissolve their not unusual state.
But the general public used to be by no means requested their opinion. And politicians made up our minds in opposition to placing it to a referendum as a result of they idea it used to be too unhealthy.
“The worst thing that could have happened at the time was for one part of the country to say it wanted divorce and for the other to say the opposite,” the then-head of the Czech federal parliament, Jan Stránsky, mirrored years later in a media interview.
“I dare say the danger was so great it would not have stopped short of civil war,” he added.
Most Czechs and Slovaks accredited their new destiny. Very few folks lately need a real reunion. The concept of a “Czechoslovak” who’s neither best Czech or Slovak has handed into the historical past books.
Every few years or so the soccer associations of each nations meet to speak about after which reject concepts to reform a joint Czecho-Slovak league to spice up competitiveness. Most years a duet between Czech and Slovak bands, continuously a lament on their breakup, turns into a chart-topper.
But the primary lesson is that “a peaceful break-up followed by cordial and healthy neighbourly relations is possible,” Kostelka stated. However, the separation “may be difficult [for other countries] to emulate.”