Yesterday at the Czech beer festival, I had a pulling-your-leg kind of debate with three Slovaks about their country’s relationship with the Czech Republic. They told me Slovaks beat Czechs in the world ice hockey championship to reach the final and how Slovaks were proud especially that the losers were Czechs. To that, I joked, “Nah, it’s family. There is nothing nice beating your ‘big’ brother. Your common ‘enemy’ is Russia. If you had let the Czechs win, they might have beaten the Russians. You should have looked at the bigger picture.” “No, they are not the big brothers. We are of equal status. We have our country.” The Slovaks shot back at me. “No. Slovakia was never a country.
It always belonged to Hungary.” “But eventually we would have gotten our own country.” “No. Not without the Czechs.” “But Czech Republic also belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire.” “Yes, but Czech was a country before.”
The debate ended because the girls needed to go to the toilet otherwise it would be very awkward to settle the topic of Slovakia’s origin amidst an environment where you supposed to get drunk and talked only about things as complicated as the weather. I followed them, and our attention diverted to another more pressing matter. They saw an open-air male toilet, right next to the woman toilet. Surely, there was no division between the Czechs and Slovaks there. Anyway, you got my point.
Looking at the past and current European history, you will notice a recurring violent theme when territories and countries break up from one another: the former Yugoslavia, South Ossetia-Georgia-Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan-Russia, Northern Ireland-UK, Basque country-Spain, Northern Cyprus-Cyprus, etc. The two main reasons for any fallout were money and identity. Any divorced couple would tell you the same thing. It was understandable that the dissolution of Czechoslovakia was initiated from poorer agriculture-based Slovakia who was pissed off that all the aid money went to Prague, then the capital of Czechoslovakia. Similar things happened in the former Yugoslavia where Belgrade (Serbia) got all the internal support while Slovenia did most of the work. Besides, the Slovaks, for centuries, had suffered from an identity crisis as they were always parts of kingdoms, empires, and federations and never really had a country of their own. It wasn’t any surprise that Czechoslovakia broke up, ending a rather happy marriage which had long overdue. Their separation went so smooth that it was coined ‘The Velvet Divorce’ lacking any form of fights and murders seen everywhere else in modern Europe. They maintained their peaceful co-existence until this day and certainly long into the future.
The only kind of conflict which might draw one’s blood is the final score at a Czech-Slovakia hockey games.
Read on the forming and the dissolving of Czechoslovakia on expats.cz
I'm a motivation explorer, personality type hacker, behavioral investigator and storyteller. I help startup founders, entrepreneurs, and corporate managers to understand themselves, the people they manage and how to get the best of their people. Specialty is in psychological personality types and brain-based methods. When I don't do the above, I hop around planet Earth with TravelJo.com to learn the Art and Science of people from everywhere and to give you all the free travel and tips and advice in many cool destinations.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
