It is not the aim of this publication to analyse in detail the causes or the course of the change in Czechoslovakia, which entered history under the name of the “Velvet Revolution”. On the contrary, the aim is to point out what factors contributed to the transformation of the bad habits of the period of one-party rule and to describe the changes in the economic situation that gave rise to the modern distortions still damaging our society today.
When the jingling of the keys sounded and Václav Havel took his seat in Prague Castle, the transformation of society, the political system and the way the state is run began after more than forty years of rule by the communists and their minions from the National Front. Separate chapters are devoted to the various types of expropriation and return of property to the original owners or their heirs. However, if we continue with the developments after 1990, the original communist governments were replaced by new ones, namely those resulting from free elections. Coalitions of political parties began to form, as we know them from developed democracies or from our country’s past. The government of Marian Čalfa prepared dozens of transformation regulations, which were approved by the bicameral Federal Assembly and signed by Václav Havel.
The Ministry of Finance under Václav Klaus, as discussed below, was preparing new rules for the management of state property and planning its privatisation. The Ministry of the Interior was given the difficult task of transforming the Public Security Agency into a company serving the police. At the Ministry of Education, textbook writers began to scratch out the fallacies of Communist propaganda and hastily draft texts from which we began to learn the truth about history, such as that the Soviet Union was not the eternal enemy of Nazism, but that Hitler and Stalin had divided Europe and jointly invaded Poland, etc. Unfortunately, the generations of Czechoslovakians who grew up in lies were partly unable to perceive the truth, and thanks to many educators who grew up in lies, some of the bullshit, rumors and lies told have not been eradicated to this day.
Within two years, the complex coexistence of the two nations became increasingly complicated, and it soon became apparent that the common state, which had functioned with a break during World War II for more than 70 years, was unsustainable. Fortunately, a purely democratic generation of politicians did not allow foolish nationalistic tendencies to lead to serious conflict, and the subsequent parting of the two countries in a federal arrangement can serve as a model for the peaceful parting of two nations. Václav Klaus also played a positive and realistic role. He understood that the Slovaks did not want to continue in the common state and, despite the opposition of some members of the government, he stopped putting obstacles to their separatist plans. Mečiar challenged the agreement in early August and again proposed confederation, but Klaus refused. At a further meeting there on 26 August 1992, they confirmed the original agreement and, shortly before midnight, announced to the public their agreement on the division of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993. Further complications arose on 1 September when Slovakia adopted its own constitution, even though there was a common state and its federal constitution, and on 1 October when the Federal Assembly refused to approve the constitutional law negotiated by Klaus and Mečiar allowing for the dissolution of the federation and instead adopted a resolution supporting the formation of a Czech-Slovak union at the suggestion of Miloš Zeman. Klaus rejected this and declared that the state would break up anyway.
Klaus’s push for the division of the state has been evaluated mostly positively in retrospect. He is said to have prevented the continued paralysis of central institutions or even the escalation of tensions into violent clashes, as happened in Yugoslavia.
After winning the elections, Václav Klaus became Prime Minister of the Czech Republic on 2 July 1992. He assembled a coalition which, in addition to Klaus’s ODS and KDS, which ran in the coalition, included the ODA and KDU-ČSL. After the division of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993, the government of Václav Klaus assumed the role of the government of an independent state. In January 1996, the government followed up the 1991 Association Agreement with the European Community and applied to join the European Union.
