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Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye

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This is not a very good book, but in the absence of anything else in English it will have to do. Abby Innes is a lecturer of "political sociology" who argues that the 1993 partition of Czechoslovakia was not inevitable. Instead it was in fact the result of the cunning of the Czech Vaclav Klaus and his Civic Democratic Party using and relying on the opportunist Slovak Vladimir Meciar and his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Although an overwhelming majority of people in both countries showed no desire for independent states after the 1992 parliamentary elections, Klaus refused to cooperate. Instead of compromising on a new federal structure or rearranging his economic reforms to take into account Slovakia's special needs, he refused to negotiate. Meciar played into his hands by demanding either an extremely loose federalism or independence, which Klaus used as a pretext to partition the country. Klaus also blocked all possible compromises, including a referendum and proposals to get around the deadlocked presidential elections which left the position vacant. He did this supposedly to grant Slovakia's long lasting wishes, but in reality to maximize his own power, to remove any opposition to his Thatcherite policies and to relieve himself of the burden of the poorest third of the country.

This book has a number of weakness. It is not very well written, and Innes is not very good in detailing the complicated proposals in economic reform or national unity and their path. The only primary sources are contemporary newspapers, and there is a certain lack of depth. This is all too common in political scientists and sociologists and it leads to a rather indulgent treatment of Slovak nationalism. The first chapter is a potted summary of Czechoslovakian history until 1989 and there is little critical discussion of the nature of Slovakian national identity. The image of Slovaks to many outsiders is that they are basically more rural, more Catholic, less hip Czechs who speak a slightly different language. Since Slovakia has become more urban and more secular over the past century, what does it mean to be a Slovak? The actual historical details of national consciousness are not really discussed, they are simply assumed. The process as discussed in the brilliant, if flawed works by Linda Colley on Britain and Eugen Weber on French peasants, is not really detailed. One thinks of Drew Gilpin Faust's book on Confederate Nationalism or Gary Cohen's book on nationality in Prague as better examples of analysis.

There is therefore a certain lack of critical rigor in discussing Slovak nationalism. The problem is not that nationalism made the breakup of the country inevitable, but that Slovak Nationalism is not really critiqued clearly. Czech attitudes towards Slovaks are mostly summarized, and mostly at the level of high politics. It is a bit unconvincing to think that the attitudes of Czech dissidents and Czech economic reformers were quite as simple minded as Innes portrays. It is true that Slovaks were not the contented rural hicks who blandly accepted Communism while Czech dissidents heroically suffered. But did the Czechs really believe this self-serving version that Innes imputes to them. Their ideology is never really analyzed. Although Innes provides reams of evidence of Meciar's opportunism, authoritarianism and incompetence she seems to think it condescending of Czechs to point this out. She does not really explain why Slovaks needed a veto over major legislation. Legislation required approval by the Czechoslovak version of a Senate, in which Slovakia had half the seats. Why was that insufficient? Rather than come up with programs that would ensure that Slovakia's historical relative poverty would be compensated, Slovak politician seemed to be more interested over symbols and acquiring power for its own sake. (Would it have killed them to rename the country "the Federal Republic of Czechoslovakia"?) Leading politicians seemed unduly sympathetic to the old Quisling state of Father Tiso. At one point Innes supports one proposal in which the legal continuity of the Czechoslovak state would be abrogated and two nominally independent countries would form a loose federation. Such a move insulted the Czechs, revived fears of Tisoite authoritarianism and led people to assume that Slovak politicians were much more interested in independence than they really were.

There are other weaknesses in the book. There is little discussion of civil society, or the rest of society period. Unions, Churches, Business lobbies, women's groups, how Czechoslovaks actually carried out democratic politics is not really illuminated in a picture of what is largely tedious and unduly complicated high politics. There is no discussion of intermarriage or language. Still the portrait is broadly convincing, and one should read Innes' account of Klaus' brave new Czech Republic, with its corruption and dogmatic refusal of regulation, Klaus' bullying suggestion that all who oppose him are Communists, and some of the lowest voter turnout rates in Europe. The situation in Slovakia is even worse.

Innes' fascinating book seeks to explain why Czechoslovakia split into two states. She shows that whatever else caused the split, it was certainly not re-emergent nationalisms.
The 1989 counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia had led, as counter-revolutions always do, to inflation, unemployment, declining living standards, a collapse in industrial output, worsening health and education systems, corruption and crime, but it had not caused hostilities between Czechs and Slovaks.
Indeed, in Czechoslovakia's June 1992 election, all parties, except the small Slovak National Party, opposed a split, but this election failed to turn public preferences into policy. Two weeks after the election, Vaclav Klaus, the Thatcherite Czech leader, and Vladimir Meciar, the Slovak leader, announced that Czechoslovakia was to be split. Meciar had promised a post-election referendum on the country's future, as required by the constitution, but none was held. President Vaclav Havel, the liberals' hero, failed to defend the constitution. Most of the Czechoslovakian people were opposed to splitting the state: only 16% wanted a split, but nonetheless the Czech working class feebly allowed Klaus and Meciar to split the state.
Innes concludes that the separation "was a process manufactured by a ruthlessly pragmatic Czech right, abetted, when push finally came to shove, by a populist and opportunist Slovak leadership." "Czech and Slovak post-Communist politicians remained not only practically free from public constraint but also distinctly authoritarian in their attitudes towards the state and its purpose - not to mention spectacularly deceitful to their electorates."
Significantly though, Innes does not mention the roles of the EU or of the German Government, which has always wanted to destroy a united Czechoslovakia, although she notes in passing that the Czech Republic has subsequently `become a German peninsula'. (Investigating Helmut Kohl's notorious secret funds, and Klaus and Meciar's bank accounts, could be useful.) Nor does she mention the role of the Roman Catholic Church, which has always wanted the land of the Hussites destroyed.
The whole sorry story shows that we cannot rely on the bourgeoisie to keep a country united: the working class must take the responsibility for the continuity and integrity of the nation.