11 - Slovakia

Summary

From Czechoslovakia to Slovakia

Slovakia's post-communist transition has followed a winding path. When still part of Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s, it was categorized with Poland and Hungary as on the fast track to reform. Its separation from Czechia was accompanied by the emergence of a more authoritarian government that quickly turned Slovakia into the black sheep of this Visegrad family, its route to the European Union blocked by failure to meet the EU's criteria for democracy. Thus Slovakia was left out of the first round of both NATO expansion to the east and the EU's negotiations with potential new members. The new Slovak state faced many challenges, and some deep internal divisions. Yet by the end of the 1990s, Slovakia seemed set fair once again.

The independent Slovak state dates to January 1993, resulting formally from the vote on November 25, 1992, of the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia to legislate the “Velvet Divorce” from Czechia. The Divorce did perhaps have deeper roots. The creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 out of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not entirely happy. Interwar Czechoslovakia was a parliamentary democracy and, apart from East Germany, the most prosperous and industrialized of the countries that were to become part of the Soviet bloc. However, the level of industrialization was much greater in the Czech lands than in Slovakia. During the Second World War, the Czech lands and Slovakia were separated, with a puppet fascist regime running Slovakia.