The Breakup of Czechoslovakia: The Impact of Party Development on the Separation of the State

Czechoslovakia separated on January 1, 1993, just three years after the toppling of the country's communist regime in November 1989. There were clearly multiple causes of the Czech and Slovak divorce, not the least of which was the communist repression of any attempt to articulate national grievances. The communist inheritance had also undermined the binational state in other, more quantifiable ways . Economic and constitutional conditions would prove to be particularly corrosive; communist abuse of the constitution as a facade for centralized power had invalidated the term federation for many Slovaks, who since the war had aspired to real federalization. A minority power of veto also lay in ambush in the newly animated federal parliament, an institutional reinforcement of conflicting expectations, as it were. [...]