Abstract
Slovakia achieved its independence on January 1, 1993 as Czechoslovakia split apart in a ‘velvet divorce’ brokered by the prime ministers of the two republics, Václav Klaus and Vladimír Mečiar, the summer before. In the years that followed, the Czech Republic affirmed its reputation as one of the most stable and democratic states in the former Soviet bloc. Slovakia achieved the opposite. As Mečiar led his people into a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship the country was increasingly shunned as a pariah. What went wrong?
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Notes
M. Glenny, The Rebirth of History. Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), p. 246.
S.J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia, The Struggle for Survival (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 211.
P. Pithart, ‘Towards a Shared Freedom 1968–89’, in The End of Czechoslovakia, ed. Jiři Musil (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995), pp. 221–2.
A. Innes, ‘The Break up of Czechoslovakia: The Impact of Party Development on the Separation of the State’, East European Politics and Societies, 11, no. 3 (Fall 1997), pp. 393–435.
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© 2000 Robin H. E. Shepherd
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Shepherd, R.H.E. (2000). The Velvet Divorce. In: Czechoslovakia: the Velvet Revolution and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07975-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07975-6_8
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