As World War I came to a close, leaders from the Czech and Slovak ethnic nations of the dissolving Austria-Hungarian Empire met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to discuss their collective future. They signed the Pittsburgh Agreement and established a unique framework for one state consisting of two equal nations, Slovakia and Czechia. This plan was later abandoned for a more unitary state that was centered in the Czech city of Prague and which was called Czechoslovakia, seen by many Slovaks as a move to a Czech-centric state that they opposed. The unhappy marriage between the two states nonetheless lasted for three generations (more or less) until a relatively clean divorce in 1992.
Today, it’s taken for granted that Czechoslovakia split apart in a bloodless division of territory. But the story is not quite so simple. When the communist government fell (through elections), the Czech half of the country was notably richer than Slovakia, further aggravated by a stark divide in the political culture between the two. As political parties emerged, the Czech parties had no presence in Slovakia and vice versa. After elections, the victorious Czech parties declared their support for a stronger, “viable” fedaration, or failing that, two independent states. The Slovak parties pushed for greater autonomy or possibly even independence. Ultimately, two men took the premiership in both halves of the federation, with the Czech public electing Václav Klaus, and the winner in Slovakia was Vladimír Mečiar, who headed an ethnic nationalist party.
At the time, it appeared that the two sides could have hammered out a compromise that would have led to a working federation, and the two sides entered into intense talks on the future of the country. It was then with a sudden interruption on 17 July 1992 that the Slovak Council, a democratically elected house of representatives, adopted the Declaration of independence of the Slovak Nation.
Exactly how this was introduced and adopted remains unclear, but it was followed by several days of uncertainty, as some analysts thought it was grandstanding or a power play. Yet six days later, Klaus and Mečiar emerged from meetings to announce that the parties had agreed to dissolve Czechoslovakia. There are multiple views on Klaus’ motives — on the one hand he said that he opposed dissolution, and even resigned as he refused to preside over the dissolution, but on the other hand, he agreed to the dissolution without a referendum, which many believe was to preserve his political power and to avoid losing influence and leadership in a compromise. As it happens, a September 1992 poll showed that only 37% of Slovaks and 36% of Czechs favored dissolution. Even so, the division of the country went ahead and became effective January 1, 1993.
The irony of this was that many peoples across Eurasia — Kurds, the Basque, Tibetans, and many more — want an independent state but can’t get it. The Slovaks recieved independence even though many of them didn’t want it.
What are the practical spects of splitting a state? After the two respective assemblies agreed to dissolution, the hard assets of the state such as military equipment and infrastructure were divided in the ratio 2 to 1, in line with the approximate ratio between the Czech and Slovak population. Most of the minor disputes that came up during the asset split were resolved without too much trouble.
The economic impact was manageable, although there were some problems with constructing a national border between what had previously been an open trade zone. Of course, these barriers came down a little more than a decade later when both countries joined the EU. Czechs hoped that dissolution would start an era of high growth as they would no longer have to sponsor the less developed Slovakia, while many Slovaks looked forward to being independent and unexploited. Both desires came true — the Czech Republic developed quickly and Slovakia has maintained very high rates of growth, and the GDP per capita margin is shrinking.
The old Czechoslovak currency, the Czechoslovak koruna, was used in both countries initially, but two national currencies were adopted on 8 February 1993, both called the koruna, which had an equal exchange rate at first but which slowly saw the Slovak koruna drop in value. Slovakia adopted the Euro on 1 January 2009; the Czech Republic continues to use the Czech koruna.
All in all, the lesson of the Velvet Divorce is that a country that agrees to break or allow territory to secede can do so relatively peacefully — all while maintaining political stability and high rates of economic growth. This could happen in the future, and in somewhere such as Europe, as Scotland and Wales casually discuss possible referendums to consider independence.
Fascinating!! While multi-ethic societies may survive, it seems that bi-ethnic ones are doomed to fracture. At the very least, think of the increase in the number of civil ‘servants’…
“All in all, the lesson of the Velvet Divorce is that a country that agrees to break or allow territory to secede can do so relatively peacefully …”
IF and only if there are no true security concerns. Also, there was no doubt about the democratic legitimacy of the two governments that did it. That helps a lot.
The Czechs and Slovaks are embedded in the postmodern Eurozone of peace, where national sovereignty is not a matter of survival as it is in many places. Neither country was going to form an alliance with a military enemy.
My point is simply this: Just because these two countries were able to do this successfully does not mean that any other country could necessarily divide itself without a lot more trouble or even bloodshed.
This would not work so smoothly in most places, or at most times.
Each situation requires a fact-bound analysis, and a fact-specific local deal, to pull it off.
The closest example I can think of to this is the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_union_between_Norway_and_Sweden_in_1905
Both cases show remarkable political maturity by the leadership and the populations of the separating countries. Not something that is commonplace in the world.
Czechoslovakia was actually a multi-ethnic society before WWII, with a sizable German minority (bigger than the Slovak), and Hungarians, Jews, Ruthenians etc. and it was quite well working before the emerging of the German autonomy movement which was used by the Nazis.
Nevertheless, it is more interesting that the split of Slovakia and the political agenda of strengthening Slovak identity is partially responsible for the current Hungarian-Slovakian debate concerning minority rights. This question was rarely that important in the Czechoslovak era for the two respective countries.
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Lex: “Also, there was no doubt about the democratic legitimacy of the two governments that did it. That helps a lot. ”
True — but the bitter irony about the Velvet Divorce is that the first truly democratic government ever elected in that country made the monumental decision to go against the public will and split the country in two!
Peter: True, but of course, that was pre-WWII. The Nazi occupation brought the eradication of the Jews, the German minority and many Hungarians were expelled after the War, and the Soviets annexed the Rus portion of the country to Ukraine, leaving the region relatively bi-ethnic.
But do the two successor states benefit from that today? It’s worth noting that the relatively ethnically homogeneous states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia are the most peaceful parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was a diverse collection of diverse people poorly geographically situated for modern nationhood. Austria and Hungary are led by right-wing nationalist governments with occasional ethnic violence against gypsies and other minorities, and all corners of the Balkans save tiny Slovenia saw a decade of savage war.
In War Economy and Society 1939-1945 by Alan S. Milward, there is a discussion of the ethnic reorganization — I think the author says “ethnic rationalization” — of Europe by the Nazi wars of conquest and the concomitant extermination programs. His assertion was that postwar civic peace broke out because the intermixing of ethnic groups no longer existed across the center of Europe. The place where the Nazi regime had not succeeded in destroying or removing minorities were still subject to ethnically-based civil disorder. It is a grim but plausible theory.
The farther we get from the Austro-Hungarian empire, with its many official languages, its large free trade zone, its legality and order, its officer corps and bureaucratic elite dedicated to maintaining a multi-ethnic and heterogeneous empire in one piece — the better it looks. The defects that made people hate it at the time look trivially small compared to the bloodbaths and tyranny which happened afterwards. Eastern Europe has never had it so good, before or since.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 12/13/2009, at The Unreligious Right
Curzon: That’s true, I just wanted to reply to the comment about the surviving on multi-ethnic societies. In the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the historical way to stability was to get rid of the minorities (either by losing territory or expelling minority).
I do not understand your argument about the stability of the ethnically homogeneous Czech Republic and Slovakia, though. Austria and Hungary are as homogeneous in that respect as the former two. In fact, Slovakia has the most sizable minority groups from that list. As for the existence of right-wing nationalist governments in Austria and Hungary, I once again do not see what you are referring to. Both are actually lead by leftist governments (or a grand coalition with a left-wing Chancellor in the former) at the moment, and if you are thinking in historical terms, Slovakia’s Meciar government was certainly not better than the short reign of the Schussel-Haider coalition. Same applies to the minority question, where Slovakia’s record is not that shiny at all.
What is want to say is that despite the peaceful moment of the dissolution of the Czechoslovak state, there is nothing special in the two countries which would make them more peaceful than other countries of the region. In fact, they are suffering from the very same political problems Austria and Hungary do and their history shows the impossibility of the long-term maintaining of multi-ethnic societies in the region.
What ethnic distinction is there between Czechs and Slovaks? How are they more different than Canadians and Americans?
Speaking to my comment from a few posts back about the dangers of marrying ethnic nationalism with the borders and government of a state, I grant that this seems to be a strong counter example.
However, as you point out, most of the population of Czechoslovakia favored continued unity. Moreover, the two parties involved didn’t have a recent history of tension.
The obvious counter example is Yugoslavia, a polyglot state that, when allowed ethnic determinism, didn’t fare so well.
People forget how much anger there was towards Slovakia for seceding from a state run by the saintly Vaclav Havel. How they predicted doom and gloom and economic destruction for Slovakia. How Slovakia shocked those who bothered to look by outpacing the Czechs in growth under Vladimir Meciar. How Meciar was still subject of a Western campaign to oust him, and Madeleine Albright dubbed Slovakia a “black hole in the heart of Europe”. How the Americans successfully engineered a coalition to oust Meciar despite his being the most popular politician there. How the new regime’s rule was one of economic pain for a long time. How when that regime was eventually ousted when the anti-Meciar front collapsed, the Western states put pressure on the new Prime Minister Fico through punishments for daring to end the “reformist” alliance and making a deal with Meciar.
Meciar’s Slovakia was really an inconvenient fact staring people in the face – a state that did not carry out the mandated “reforms” – in fact a major reason for the secession was that Czech policy was very costly to Slovakia’s heavy industry and weapons industries – they wanted to preserve these things, the Slovaks did, and the West wanted to destroy them. So the Slovaks proved that best results are obtained by not carrying out the suicidal reforms and so they became the “black hole in the heart of Europe” and war was effectively declared on its prime minister Vladimir Meciar.
Slovakia, I dare say, was born out of resistance to the “reforms” that the West so volubly demanded… why in 1999 NATO declared on its 50th birthday that “insufficient efforts at reform” is an offence punishable by bombing and other military action.
Lex,
Highly interesting theory. “Rationalization” sems a strange term for the Nazi ideas on the subject, though. The Nazis exacerbated ethnic tensions for their own ends (Serb and Croat p.ex.). They also created new ones by resettling people according to their theories. After the war the Pax Sovietica froze ethnic conflicts without resolving them. Same goes for Tito`s dicatorship. Thus I can t find M`s theory as described by you plausible. The Balkans / Mitteleuropa used to be on my doorstep for most of my life and there was and is a lot of “intermixing”.
Fully concur in re Austro-Hungary. The Austrian poet / dramatist Grillparzer once said: The nation I prefer is the resignation. A pun which, for once, doesn`t suffer in translation. The same author said: Mankind progressses from humanity to nationality and then on to bestiality (Humanität – Nationalität – Bestialität in the German original).
I can certainly see Scotland breaking away from England, and then perhaps forming a separate entity with Northern Ireland? Oh, that wouldn’t do. I don’t see the same possibility for Wales.
Is there a better chance Switzerland might come apart in a very similar way? My money would be on that.
Excellent piece. Got me thinking of other things…
Lex, fascinating and disturbing, I will have to check that book out.
Peter, that’s also true. Not sure where I was going with my comment, expect to vaguely express the sentiments more clearly expressed by Lex.
Fabius, don’t interpret “ethnic rationalization” as a title for Nazi racial policy to somehow justify it, but seeks to learn if modern civil society may have benefited from neater borders between nation states. We should be wary of the logic that, because the Nazis did it, it was inherently evil. The Nazis were the first to conjecture that smoking was harmful to your health, and that logic/talking point gave the tabacco industry years real mileage to operate witout further scrutiny for years. If there were indeed benefits to peace and stability through more “rational” ethnic states, that may be a useful reference for us in understanding how to peacably move forward with regional policy Iraq, for example.
“We should be wary of the logic that, because the Nazis did it, it was inherently evil.”
That is true. However, how can a forced resettling be anything but evil? I am afraid we have to face that evil actions may work. Secondly we need to face that much resettling was done after the war by expelling minorities, predominantly German minorities, in some cases expelling majorities.
Oliver: very well put. Of course, forced resettling is indeed truly evil. However, as I learn more about the Iraqi system of goverment, the more I think that the federal system that grants quasi-autonomy to Kurdistan would be more effective and the country more peaceful if it was a genuine federation of quasi-autonomous states based along rough ethno-religious boundaries, with only a few “mixed” states.
But won’t that be just a prelude to dissolution? Not that that would be inherently evil. But if multiethnicity and democracy tend to be incompatible, we need to know.
Oliver and Curzon,
I’m not sure I agree that forced resettling is “evil”. If it really works in limiting or reducing future conflict and killing, is it truly evil? Perhaps, in that case, it would just be the lesser of two evils…
Anyway, my main purpose in commenting was to discuss your comments regarding Scotland and Wales.
As an American who has recently moved to England, I am surprised by the English/Welsh/Scottish divisions. I had always thought of these as equivilent to the distinctions between states in the US – interesting historical divisions that divided the country into certain political districts, but that otherwise didn’t mean much (other than in terms of having some influence on where you might go to university or sport team affiliation).
Now that am in England, it is clear from my conversations with the locals that this is not the case, and at least some of the people from these areas have no real desire to be strongly affiliated with each other. The Scots and Welsh seem to want out and the English seem to not care so much. Given that England heavily subsidizes Scotland and Wales (England pays much more in UK taxes and gets less back, as compared to Scotland and Wales, this is the exact opposite of what you would expect.
Now, given that Scotland and Wales can replace the English subsidy with an EU subsidy, maybe the break will happen after all. Of course, given that Europeans have ceded much more control to the EU than they realize, other than using the Euro in Scotland and Wales, I’m not sure much would change anyway.
FM: Yugoslavia was a counter-example. The Nazis never go the nationalities all “sorted out” by deportation or mass murder. However, the Jews of central and eastern Europe were gone. The Poles had a homogeneous state. The Germans scattered around Eastern Europe were mostly gone. Romania and Hungary had few ethnic minorities left.
Any such “ethnic rationalization” was certainly an evil and destructive process. But in the sometimes paradoxical nature of things, it may have helped to lead to peace in the aftermath.
Another thing that mattered, in related fashion, was the destruction of Prussia, and the loss of the old Prussian heartlands. The political weight of Germany shifted West, to the more liberal and less militaristic parts of Germany. Konrad Adenauer said something to the effect that Germany was better off without Prussia.
Curzon,
Thanks for the lecture. You compeltely missed my point, maybe I expressed it badly.
I did not say nor did I imply “… that, because the Nazis did it, it was inherently evil. ” As a matter of fact I regard this kind of judgement as naive at best, intellectually lazy and even stupid at worst. Further, I did not imply that Milward “justified” Nazi policies.
I did say that I cannot see any sort of rational order in the Nazi settlement policies at all. The communities the nazis did resettle during their short “1000 years” had to be re – resettled shortly after as you know.
Are you aware of the sheer magnitude of the “resettlements” planned and the shall we say “reductions” in numbers planned for the supposedly racially inferior slavs over decades to come ? If you regard plans to resettle large swathes of Eastern Europe with “Aryans” as anything but irrational that is where we part company.
Again, for clarification, I am not even talking about evil here but about pratical issues like the supposed breeding rate of the German women to fulfil that sort of goal.
Sources: Both issues of Mein Kampf (period editions), Rosenberg, H.S. Chamberlain, parts of the Tischgespräche (all of it quite awful to read btw.), diverse period legal docus on racial planning and – rather better – Fest`s magisterial bio of Hitler himself Book VII Capter III fittingly called “the lost reality”. It starts with a Hitler quote: “The newly won Eastern territories must become a garden of Eden.” Rationalization indeed.
As for the the Nazi`s supposedly admirable policies against the evils of smoking, that is more or less the old Autobahn argument, sorry. Autobahns were planned during the Weimar years and not built because the money was not there. Eugenics were popular before the nazis came to power and not just in Germany, mind. The Nazis put them in pratice that is all.
Hitler was a nonsmoker, a hypochondriac, a vegan, a teetotaller (herbal teas only) and given to really bizarre nature recipes as well. He also become a drug addict later on. In some ways he was even the first “Green” politician. Just read his stuff if you can stand the bad writing.
My larger point is that Hitler was not an evil Bismarck or Frederic the Great as Darth Vader. Think Jim Jones or James Manson or maybe Idi Amin. To get back to the starting point, the same goes for his settlement policies or medical policies.
PS: I did think of the new situation in Iraq but I did not wish to put it in this context. While I do not care at all for the great US proconsuls in Iraq I felt it wd be unfair and unjust to do so.
Lex,
Thought provoking as always. However I cannot quite agree. Starting with the jews, they were not to my knowledge much of a political factor so what was achived by murdering them all ? As for Romania I was last in Romania after Ceaucescu`s demise and they did have minority problems then and still have afaik. Same goes for Hungary (Magyar Garda and all).
I concede you can always “solve” problems by doing away with everybody concerned or – as in the old Soviet times – by oppresssion. Ethnic Germans were “sold” btw.: West Germany just paid for them, took them in and integrated them since the 1950s. To me it still looks as if the problems were not solved by settlement policies, just frozen by oppression and will surface again.
As for Prussia, it was finished long before WWII: On 20. Juli 1932 a Reichskommissar was installed and Prussia came under the control of the central govt. The reason given was as usual “the maintenance of Law and Order”, the legal basis an Emergency Ordinance (Notverordnung) Art. 48 of the Weimar constitution.
The last Ministerpräsident was a Social Democrat btw. and Prussia had had solidly centrist / left govts until the fatal 1932 elections (combined Nazi / Communist majority).
On 3.31.1933 the Erste Gleichschaltungsgesetz more or less abolished federalism in Germany and killed of the German Länder as they then were. This was Prussia`s second demise. What followed was just the cutting up of a dead body.
Prussian militarism is a tired cliché though it was much in vogue after WWII. I frankly do not see why it should be worse than French militarism (Bonaparte, Boulanger etc.) for example. The prussian military organisation was just a tool, like the legal system or the scientific establishment. The Nazis used it.
Why the deeds of 1) a failed painter from the whatsitcalled in Austria who made his fame in the beer halls of Munich, 2) the myopic, nerdy son of a school headmaster (Himmler, born in Munich) and 3) a clump-footed dwarfish Dr.phil. from the Rhineland (Goebbels) should be imputed to the heirs of Moltke and Scharnhorst is just beyond me.
Addendum: Göring was born in Rosenheim (Bavaria) but his family was from the Rhineland, again. At least he was a military man. Heydrich was from Saxony, again no Prussian, darn, but a naval officer.
Finally, the DDR was very Prussian in many respects. After reunification the Prussians are back and the Bonner Republik has turned into the Berliner Republik.
The point that the Czech and Slovak populations, judging from opinion polls at least, did not want to split is a good one.
On the other hand, the Czech lands and Slovakia were rarely united under one government until their federation was cobble together after World War I (it was supposed to be the northern counterpart of Yugoslavia, which itself should give some indication of how bad an idea it was). Even before 1914, Slovakia was part of the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary and the Czech lands were part of the other half. The people in both countries speak different languages, albeit both are part of the Slavic language tree, and there is simply no reason to put them both in the same country except that both countries are small and have even less in common with the surrounding German, Hungarian, and Polish territories.
FM: As to Prussia, the Allies formally abolished it after World War II. They thought it was important to do so. And Adenauer knew German politics better than I could ever know it. I will simply rest my case on their judgment that not having Prussia around any more, and having what was left of it chopped off from the rest of Germany, made a contribution toward peace. Maybe they were mistaken about it. We will never know. And, as you note, the DDR was the real heir of Prussia, to the extent there was one.
On the other point, I am having no luck finding the passage in Milward’ s book. Maybe I am not remembering correctly who wrote about the ethnic “rationalization” of Europe. I will simply note that the five or more centuries of German dispersal throughout the East, usually in villages and cities which where ethnically homogeneous, amidst a larger population of (usually) Slavs, came to an end once and for all in 1944-45. That certainly undermined any future argument for a German-led conquest of the East. Whether or not the immense human suffering of the relocations and exterminations had any impact on postwar peace can never be proven. It seems that doing away with excuses for revanchism probably helped. The long European peace must have had a lot of causes.
Lex,
Fully aware of the final date. I suppose we will agree to disagree on that one. Where I sit, unwittingly shooting a dead body with even the most effective of projectiles is still an impossible attempt at homicde, not murder.
I am a great admirer of Adenauer, but there are many distinguisehd Germans who did disagree with him then and disagree with him now. Further, the old fox had his own political interest to consider. And, as a Catholic from the Rhineland he instinctively disliked “Prussia” and all it stood for. Btw. as a half-German southern Catholic born and raised in Bavaria I feel actually foreign in Berlin, even today. I`d move to Paris or Strasbourg at once if given professional reasons to to do, but wd probably refuse Berlin if I cd. My defence of Prussia is not based on sentiment.
German minorities were just pretexts. Lebensraum, the conquest of “German India” as Hitler put it, were the motives for expasnionism. Natural resources and space. So your supposition is wrong imo. Take southern Tyrol as an example.
Causes: that wd be a good subject for a dissertation. My money still is on the Pax Atomica of the cold war plus the need to rebuild.
I do not know if the gentlemen in this conversation have read this piece, but your discussion reminds me of a rather brilliant essay published in Foreign Affairs a year or two ago.
Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism.
Jerry Z. Muller. Foreign Affairs. March/April 2008.
In the essay, Muller argues that the best way to solve many ethnic crises is to partition area disputed. As does LexG above, Muller uses modern Europe as his main example for the “nationalization” of the political boundaries.
For those not subscribing to FA, you can find a free and viewable copy here.
“German minorities were just pretexts.” So, the pretext no longer existed.
“Adenauer … as a Catholic from the Rhineland he instinctively disliked “Prussia” and all it stood for.” Not sure instinct is the right word. Experience and observation may be closer to the mark.
I agree that the Pax Atomica is the main thing. It is not possible to sort the relative importance of all the secondary causes.
To return to the focus of this post — the Velvet Divorce was only possible in a pacified Europe, where the two pieces did not have significant minorities on either side of the new border, or at least were unwilling to fight about any such minorities. By that time Central Europe was a very difference place from what it had been in the past.
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Automatic Ballpoint, thanks for that trackback — interesting to see a country as small as Belgium perhaps embroiled in the same thing!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/327fxssq.asp
No problem! I think that the bright side to a Belgian breakup (that is, if you don’t support it to begin with) would be that it’s probably as smooth as the Czech one, if not more so. Both parties seem to want it, so it would be entirely amicable.