Dissolution of Czechoslovakia

At midnight on 31 December 1992, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist and was replaced by two independent states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The split was negotiated by politicians in a matter of months, without a referendum and without violence. It became known as the "Velvet Divorce", an echo of the peaceful Velvet Revolution that had ended communist rule three years earlier.

Czechoslovakia was born in 1918 from the collapse of Austria-Hungary. That year Czech and Slovak representatives meeting in Pittsburgh had promised a common state of two equal nations, but the 1920 constitution spoke instead of a single "Czechoslovak nation", and many Slovaks felt that Prague dominated. In March 1939, under pressure from Hitler, the country was broken up and a Slovak state became a German satellite. The two halves were reunited after the Second World War. A 1968 law turned the communist state into a federation of Czech and Slovak republics, but in the 1970s real power drifted back to Prague.

The fall of communism in the Revolutions of 1989 revived old arguments. The Czech lands were richer, with output per head around a fifth higher than in Slovakia by 1991, and transfers from the Czech budget to Slovakia ended that January. Political parties re-emerged, but almost none had a following on both sides. Slovak politicians pressed for decentralisation and greater sovereignty, while the federal government in Prague sought to keep enough central control for the state to function.

The decisive moment came after the 1992 elections. In the Czech lands, Václav Klaus and his allies demanded either a tight, workable federation or two separate states. In Slovakia, Vladimír Mečiar wanted something closer to a confederation. The two men negotiated intensively from June. On 17 July Slovakia's parliament approved a declaration of Slovak independence, and on 23 July, at a meeting in Bratislava, Klaus and Mečiar agreed to divide the country. President Václav Havel, who opposed the split, resigned rather than preside over it.

Public opinion did not clearly support the break. A poll in September 1992 found that only 37 per cent of Slovaks and 36 per cent of Czechs favoured dissolution, and critics asked why no referendum was held. But with Yugoslavia descending into war, both sides set out to make the separation orderly. A law on dividing federal property cleared the Federal Assembly on 13 November 1992, and on 25 November a constitutional act ending the federation on 31 December. Most assets, from military equipment to railways, were divided roughly two to one, matching the population ratio. The internal border became an international one, with a few awkward spots settled by treaty later.

Neither republic claimed to be Czechoslovakia's sole successor; both joined the United Nations as new members on 19 January 1993. Each kept its own part of the old coat of arms and its half of the two-part national anthem, while the Czech Republic kept the Czechoslovak flag. A shared currency lasted only until February 1993, when separate Czech and Slovak crowns were introduced. A customs union remained until both countries joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, and border checks vanished when they entered the Schengen area in December 2007. Slovakia adopted the euro in 2009.

The Velvet Divorce was a peaceful, negotiated separation, often contrasted with the breakup of Yugoslavia and the violence that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The two languages remain mutually intelligible, ties between the two peoples are close, and Slovakia's economy has since largely caught up with its neighbour's.

Our 1985 map shows Czechoslovakia as one federal state, and the 1994 map shows the separate Czech Republic and Slovakia.