Two Paths Of State Breakup: Czechoslovakia And Yugoslavia

11 Pages 2648 Words

intentions and actions; and fourth, the international context and reaction.
The fundamental principle behind a nation-state, as previously delineated, is the occupation of a distinct territorial area (the state) by a distinct national group. Therefore, the creation of a nation-state requires one of two conditions: an area solely occupied by a single national group, a historical anomaly due to natural human patterns of movement, or an effective means of expelling all minority nations from an area, whether by voluntary or forceful relocation or, more violently, by mass assimilation or extermination campaigns. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia both faced the dilemma of creating relatively homogeneous territorial regions due to the presence of minority populations, but each encountered significantly different situations and utilized different tactics to achieve national territorial homogeneity. Czechoslovakia entered WWII a state rife with national conflict – the significant ethnic German population in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia fueled Hitler’s pursuit of absorption of the region into a “Greater Germany” – and emerged from WWII with its “ethnic problem” partially solved (Wallace 53). First, Nazi genocide campaigns brutally eliminated much of the Jewish population scattered within Czechoslovakia (Radio Prague). Second, the widespread disgust with Nazi atrocities during the war led to a violent expulsion of about 3 million ethnic German residents (Buchsbaum 6). Czechoslovakia emerged from WWII divided between two major nations, Czechs and Slovaks, which due to historical circumstances were largely separate territorially. Czechoslovakia was thus easily divided between Czechs and Slovaks in the 1990s, with little need even for relocations, let alone “ethnic cleansing” or expulsion campaigns, to create two relatively homogenous states. Czechoslovakia solved its ethnic problem in the 1940s, leaving it much freer to divide a...