Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It's Not you, It's Me: The velvet Divorce
In the autumn of 1989, hundreds of thousands of Czechs
a n d S lova k s s tre a m e d into P ra g u e to d e m o n s trate o n
Wenceslas Square. Their “Velvet Revolution” succeeded, and
Czechoslovakia's communist regime peacefully excused itself.
This is the history behind the split. Ever since they joined
with the Czechs in 1918, the Slovaks felt they were ruled from
Prague (unmistakably the political, economic, and cultural cen-
ter of the country), rather than from their own capital. And the
Czechs, for their part, resented the financial burden of carrying
their poorer neighbors to the east. In the post-communist world,
the Czechs found themselves with a 10 percent unemployment
rate...compared to 20 or 30 percent unemployment in the Slovak
lands. In this new world of flux and freedom, long-standing
tensions came to a head.
The dissolution of Czechoslovakia began over a hyphen,
as the Slovaks wanted to rename the country Czecho-Slovakia.
Ideally, this symbolic move would come with a redistribution
of powers: two capitals and two UN reps, but one national
bank and a single currency. The Slovaks were also less enthu-
siastic about abandoning the communist society altogether,
since the Soviet regime had left them with a heavily indus-
trialized economy that depended on a socialist element for
survival.
Initially, many Czechs couldn't understand the Slovaks'
young generation of reform-minded communists in 1968—came to
an abrupt halt because of Soviet tanks.
The charismatic leader, Alexander Dubček, was exiled (and
made a backwoods forest ranger), and the years following the
unsuccessful revolt were particularly disheartening. In the late
1980s, the communists began constructing Prague's huge Žižkov
TV tower (now the city's tallest structure)—not only to broadcast
Czech TV transmissions, but also to jam Western signals. The
Metro, built at about the same time, was intended for mass transit,
but was also designed to be a giant fallout shelter for protection
against capitalist bombs.
But the Soviet empire crumbled. Czechoslovakia regained
its freedom in the student- and artist-powered 1989 “Velvet
Revolution” (so called because there were no casualties...or
even broken windows). Václav Havel, a writer who had been
imprisoned by the communist regime, became Czechoslovakia's
first post-communist president. In 1993, the Czech and Slovak
Republics agreed on the “Velvet Divorce” and became two sepa-
rate countries (see sidebar). Two other major turning points were
May 1, 2004, when the Czech Republic joined the European
