Sentimentalism vs. pragmatism

The Czech Republic and Slovakia will be soon marking the 20th anniversary of a peaceful divorce initiated by the current Czech President Vaclav Klaus, then head of the government, and the then Slovak premier Vladimir Meciar. It is on January 1, 1993 that the two countries emerged on the world’s map, thus putting an end to more than a 70-year-long existence of Czechoslovakia. It was not until this year that the two countries’ prime ministers held the first full-fledged bilateral meeting. The Day requested a Czech and a Slovak expert to say if the relations between the peoples of former Czechoslovakia had become better than they were before the divorce and, in general, about the current trends in the relationships between the Slovaks and the Czechs.

“A ‘family atmosphere’ still remains”

Daniel KAISER, political observer, Lidove Noviny, Prague

Now, 20 years after the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, statements that ‘relations between our two countries are better than when we lived together’ are a common occurrence, at least in the Czech Republic. If you watch Czech television or read in the press something about Slovak art, society, or even politics, the first thing you should do is play down the tone and praises in order to get a more realistic picture.

The peak of Czech friendliness to anything Slovak was thunderous applause to the successful ex-prime minister Mikulas Dzurinda at a congress of the leading Czech center right party ODS. Members of this party made a hero out of him at the congress – this ranged from good words about him to such a typical banality as invitation to the concert of a rock group that used to be well known in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and still has more aficionados in Prague than in Bratislava.

Another example: Milan Knazko, a 1980s Slovak actor who became the face of the Velvet Revolution in Prague, was received later by Vaclav Havel in Prague Castle. Yet, after some time, he joined forces with Vladimir Meciar on the Slovak political arena and, before they won the 1992 elections and broke up Czechoslovakia, Knazko had made some very outrageous statements that the Czechs had always oppressed the Slovaks. However, he is welcomed these days in Prague on stage and in cinema. When he is interviewed, he is never asked about what he was saying and doing 20 years ago.

On the other hand, the Czechs do not read Slovak literature, do not watch Slovak films (to be frank, there are very few of them), and, besides, you will hardly manage to buy a Slovak newspaper in Prague. The Czechs have always been taking a paternalistic and very romantic approach to the Slovaks. Traveling to Slovakia, when it was part of a single state, you might think you were in a half-wild country, sort of an untouched East. Many Czechs still erroneously mix up this paternalism (which, of course, boosted the Slovaks’ desire to be independent) and cheap sentimentality with genuine interest in Slovaks.

The reverse is true on the Slovak side of the border. While the Czechs go east for a vacation, the Slovaks take a more pragmatic approach to the Czechs – they go west for a career, education, and money. They also watch Czech television, many of them buy Czech newspapers and books written by Czechs or published in the Czech language. More than 130,000 Slovak nationals work here. Thanks to an interstate agreement, which allows studying in our country free of charge and in the native language, more than 20,000 Slovaks study in the Czech Republic but only about 1,200 Czechs do so in Slovakia. A small but rather eloquent detail: master’s degree papers written in the Slovak language can be accepted in Czech universities, whereas Czech students cannot do this in their language in Slovakia, so they often prefer to write their theses in English (!) rather than in Slovak. You can see young Slovaks who speak Slovak in a Prague cafe or store, and nobody objects to this. Three years ago, the Czech minister of transport did not even make an effort to speak Czech and he did not have a Czech passport at first.

How can we explain this difference in approaches, this sentimentality versus pragmatism? Of course, there is some explanation in history. Although Czech politicians and intellectuals helped their ‘brothers’ at the latest stage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when Slovaks were under a tight pressure of Hungary, the Slovaks were always a nation that differed from the Czechs. So there is no parent-child relationship here, and every time the Czechs offered this, this only caused the Slovaks to get upset.

By all accounts, these relations remind an elder-younger-brother relationship, when the former is much older and sometimes feels that he has a parental duty to do. In the 1990s, when the West did know what to do with the Meciar-ruled Slovakia, Prague was constantly, albeit not so pressingly, lobbying Bratislava to give the latter another chance. I saw some declassified documents on that-time diplomatic and intergovernmental negotiations, which showed that this was the unchanging line of behavior.

On the other hand, Prague has not usually benefited from Bratislava governments on the international arena – neither before (I personally heard Slovak President Rudolf Schuster humiliating the Czechs, who had already been in NATO, while the Slovaks were on the threshold, in front of a group of German journalists at a Bratislava presidential palace party), nor today – last year the Czech prime minister refused to join the so-called Financial Pact, the EU’s latest initiative that will give the European Commission the right to audit a country’s budget. He had to display courage to do so. Nevertheless, his Slovak counterpart Iveta Radicova publicly condemned him, saying that he ‘does not behave the way men should do.’ And although Slovakia boldly joined a risky common-currency project mostly to prove to itself and to the world that it had overcome Meciar’s legacy and no longer belonged to the East, it was also, undoubtedly, a fact that helped the Slovaks to find comfort in the hope that they would join the club which the Czechs failed to enter.

Interestingly, all these frictions cause no ripple. I think this ‘ungrateful’ behavior of the Slovaks still fits in with the cliche of a prodigal son, when you can always count on those you left at home but you do not think you owe them too much. A ‘family atmosphere’ still remains.

Interviewed by Mykola SIRUK, The Day

“It is a legend that relations between these nations improved after the divorce”

By Grigorij MESEZNIKOV, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava

The Czech and Slovak nations have always maintained good relations. The majority of the population does not support the partition of Czechoslovakia which occurred as a result of the games of political elites. Our surveys show that only two-thirds of the Czechs and Slovaks favored this partition. It is a legend that relations between these nations improved after the divorce. On the other hand, relations between the Czech Republic and Slovakia on the political level are now better than before the partition. But relations between the peoples have always been good.

It also follows from our polls that the citizens of these states are still suffering from a “trauma” of sorts because the partition occurred without a referendum. A major part of the population considers this a grave mistake and believes that the partition was not fully legitimate. Yet this occurred in accordance with a law passed by the Federal Assembly, which thus denied the populace an opportunity to express its will.

Now the relations between the two countries are good. Both are members of the European Union and NATO. The Slovak and Czech republics are taking similar positions on many foreign policy issues.

The main cause of the partition is mismatch of the political elites that came to power in 1992. Slovakia saw a swing towards the political forces that did not accept the main guidelines of the reforms Prague had set in motion in 1990. Those were more liberal reforms which called for a more market-oriented economy. Slovakia’s economy was not fit for this kind of reforms and was tied up with the defense industry. Market liberalization boosted unemployment – therefore, the parties that aired contrary views on socioeconomic reforms received support. Yet some political scientists claim that the [united] state could have been saved if more political will had been displayed.

What eased a peaceful partition of Czechoslovakia was the experience of the coexistence of Czechs and Slovaks as part of a single state, cultural and linguistic closeness, and good relations, after all.

It is difficult even to imagine that this partition could have provoked any conflicts [between the two nations]. The people failed to save the state, but they came out in defense of it. It is only in parliament that there were tough conflicts that eventually resulted in the partition of Czechoslovakia. The Slovaks were inclined to peacefully solve even such a difficult problem.

Many Slovak experts will agree that Slovakia lost very much in the first five years of independence. First of all, it is about a stable political development. Slovakia was excluded from European integration due to domestic problems (recurrent authoritarianism). As the Slovak republic had never been an independent state before, it had to build the state and the governmental apparatus in more difficult conditions compared to the Czech Republic because the federal capital and ministries had been in the Czech part of the country. It was also a problem that the Slovak population did not identify themselves with the new state. Naturally, this created economic difficulties, for the Slovak economy was weaker than the Czech one. Yet the political course changed within five years, and the populace began to take a more active part in the country’s political life. As a result, Vladimir Meciar’s authoritarian party [Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. – Ed.] was defeated, and democratic parties came to power. This offered Slovakia a chance to join the European Union and NATO. Slovakia and the Czech Republic have been developing along similar lines since 1998.

Naturally, this has brought about major changes in Slovak society. I am critical of the very process of partition. Slovakia entered the process of European integration as an independent state and carried out the required reforms. At a certain moment of its development it became more advanced in reforms than the Czech Republic – the Slovak experts who had drawn up some reforms in health care and social security helped their Czech counterparts.

To tell the truth, the first five years were not very successful for the Czechs, either. A part of the Czech population also blamed the Slovaks for the partition of Czechoslovakia. These people prophesied that Slovakia would fail to stand the test of independence, but the situation began to change from 1998 onwards. Since then, Slovakia’s status has grown up in the eyes of Czech society and relations between the two countries have leveled. That Slovakia is now a self-sufficient state is having a positive effect on the relations between Czechs and Slovaks. Still I do not think that they would be worse if the Czechs and Slovaks lived in a united state. The Czech-Slovak relations are the warmest in the entire European Union.

The Soviet Union was a somewhat different state. Firstly, a “big” nation and republic dominated over the others. Secondly, we should not forget that Czechoslovakia partitioned in the conditions of a democratic political system. Conversely, the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a communist empire. Yet Czechoslovakia made sure that the partition was peaceful. The political forces that came to power thereafter were legitimized as a result of democratic elections. As is known, the perestroika in the Soviet Union did not result in transition to a full-fledged democratic setup and ended up in a collapse. The asymmetry between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was not as glaring as that between Russia and other Soviet republics. The Czechs and Slovaks did not have the problems that the Soviet Union’s nations did. What played the crucial role was the cultural and linguistic closeness of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Interviewed by Ihor SAMOKYSH, The Day