abstract: 'Shortly after the crucial political changes connected with the events in

  November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, some differences in political attitudes

  and behavior of the Czech and Slovak population appeared. An increasing

  tension in the Czech - Slovak relations finally led to a peaceful

  dissociation of the federal Czechoslovakia and to the formation of two

  sovereign states at the beginning of 1993. It is no wonder that this

  important change caused a serious discussion of social scientists of the

  both societies about the societal reasons and consequences of this

  unexpected and sudden historical and political phenomenon. The author of

  the present study in agreement with Jiri Musil prefers the comparison of

  different developments of cultural and social structures in the Czech

  lands and Slovakia to somewhat superficial historical and politological

  analyses of the split as a unique event.

  He disposes at some serious and historically relevant sociological

  evidence concerning the development of Czech-Slovak relationships,

  namely with the results of some representative Czech and Slovak

  sociological surveys, particularly from the years 1967, 1984, 1998,

  April 1993 and October 1993. Except the 1984 survey, he personally

  participated in all of them.

  In the second half of the 1960s, the Czech lands and Slovakia

  substantially differed in cultural and social respect. Above all one

  could observe big differences concerning the degree od urbanization in

  favour of the Czech lands. Slovakia remained then a country with

  settlement structure of rural type and with much more traditional way of

  life.

  A similar lag was characteristic for the structure of economically

  active population in respect to industrial branches. In the 1960s, the

  Czech lands belonged, according to their pre-war traditions and in the

  consequence of the enforced repeated industrialization (for military

  needs of the Soviet block in the period of the Cold War), to extensively

  industrialized societies, whereas Slovakia was rather a rural-industrial

  society where a recently started extensive industrialization went on.

  Towards the end of the 1960s the educational level of the Slovak

  population was already relatively close to that of the Czech one,

  although some distinctions still remained.

  At the same time, many important differences lasted in the material

  level of household equipment which was relatively better in the Czech

  lands. On the other hand, in consequence of the redistributive economic

  system, the average earnings were already nearly equal.

  In autumn 1967, on the very eve of the political crisis which signalized

  the outburst of events known as Prague Spring 1968, a large sociological

  survey of a representative sample of adult males dealing with social

  stratification and mobility was carried out by the Czech and Slovak

  sociologists in cooperation with the State Statistical Office. Its

  results were published two years later, unfortunately already after the

  Warsaw Pact Intervention which led to the defeat of the reform attempt

  connected with the Prague Spring. A special chapter in this book was

  written by a group of Slovak sociologists headed by R. Rosko. The

  authors proved that the social status distribution in Slovakia was in

  the late 1960s significantly lower in the average than the analogical

  distribution in the Czech lands. It was caused by small differences in

  the participation of individuals in management, in the level of work

  complexity typical for the occupational structures in question, and in

  the distribution of earnings; by more remarkable differences in level of

  education and material equipment of households; and by large differences

  concerning average income per capita, standards of consumption and

  cultural level of the life-style. In general, these findings

  demonstrated a still lasting deep cultural and social inequality of the

  Czech and Slovak part of the country. This social unbalance was

  multiplied by the consequences of the anti-Slovak political repressions

  in the late 1940s and in the 1950s and of the `''constitutional reform''''

  from 1960 which brought suppression of the Slovak autonomy in favour of

  the centralized bureaucratic Prague administration. All these

  circumstances stimulated a high dissatisfaction of the relatively

  younger population of Slovakia living in conditions of a rapid

  demographic development, progress of urbanization and industrialization.

  It was important for the specific character of the social and political

  reform movement in 1968 on the Slovak territory which finally caused one

  of the few real successes of the Prague Spring - the constitutional act

  declaring federalization of the Czechoslovak Republic.

  In the practical politics of the `''normalization'''' regime installed by

  the Soviet intervention in August 1968, the originally intended

  federative arrangement was `''via facti'''' replaced by a new version of

  the totalitarian and bureaucratic centralism. However, this time the

  political regime was in a sense more favourable for Slovakia. The Slovak

  Communist leaders gained for more better and in some respect even

  decisive positions in the Prague central administration of the country

  than any time before. Some changes in this respect occurred only in the

  late 1980s. In consequence of all this, the process of the secondary

  redistribution of the GDP in favor of Slovakia not only continued but

  even intensified in the 1970s and 1980s. Simultaneously, political

  oppressions concerning hundreds of thousands of participants in the

  Prague Spring events were in this period sensibly weaker in Slovakia

  than in the Czech lands. Thus, paradoxically, the `''normalization

  regime'''' brought some advantages for Slovakia as compared with the past.

  Some evidence for this can be find in the data collected by Czech

  sociologists in the sociological survey on `''class and social

  structure'''' in 1984, i.e. shortly before the beginning of the Soviet

  `''perestroika''''. A recent secondary analysis of this data shows

  therefore a cultural and social situation typical for the normalization

  system on the top point of its development. It is not very surprising

  that thanks to the permanent operation of the redistributive mechanisms

  during fifteen years after the final defeat of the Prague Spring the

  cultural and social characteristics of the Czech and Slovak adult

  populations were mutually much closer in 1984 than in 1967. There

  remained practically no differences in work complexity and in average

  earnings. The quality of housing was approximately the same. The

  households were telephonized in very close percentages. People were

  equally active in professional studying and in political activities (in

  official politics, of course). In some respects small differences in

  favour of the Czech population still existed. This is true as far as the

  global educational level, the percentage of managers and some items of

  the households equipment are concerned. In their leisure, Czech

  population was more frequently engaged in typically urban cultural

  activities. The Slovak population lived in a substantially higher

  percentage in their own private houses, in more rooms per family and in

  better environment than the Czech did. They had in more cases gardens or

  other land at their disposal and devoted themselves more frequently to

  domestic agricultural work. They also were more active in social

  contacts, in visiting relatives, neighbours and friends.

  Still slightly better economic position of the households in the Czech

  lands - caused partly by lower average number of the more aged Czech

  families - expressed itself in somewhat higher evaluation of the

  standard of living from the part of the Czech population.

  In other words, in the midst of the 1980s, the cultural and social

  characteristics of the Slovak population were already close to the Czech

  standards but some lag in this respect still existed. Anyway, the Czech

  lands represented the stagnating part of the federation, while Slovakia

  was the progressing one.

  The beginning of the Soviet perestroika signalized the Czech population

  that a new historical crisis of the Soviet-type societies was coming.

  Feelings of dissatisfaction with the stagnation of the Czech lands

  combined with political frustration of the citizens of an occupied

  country gradually grew up, particularly when some difficulties

  concerning standard of living emerged in the second half of the 1980s. A

  certain dissappointment caused by the unwillingness of the Gorbatchev''s

  leadership to revise the Soviet official attitude to the events of 1968

  also played an important role. The Slovak population living still under

  the protection of current redistributive processes and under a little

  better political conditions did not feel these changes as intensively as

  the Czech did. It is no wonder that these specificities influenced the

  subjective evaluations of the economic, social, political and cultural

  situation in the country. In the public opinion polls from the second

  half of the 1980s, the degree of satisfaction of the Slovak population

  concerning nearly all questions asked then was significantly higher than

  that of the Czech citizens. Gradually, as the crisis of 1989 was coming

  nearer, the evaluations were less and less favourable for the regime in

  both republics. However, the Czech criticism grew more rapidly than the

  criticism of the population in Slovakia.

  The `''Velvet Revolution'''' of 1989 was initiated mainly by the Czech

  dissidents and the politically active part of the Czech people. It found

  an active response also in analogical groups in Slovakia. However, in

  the course of the year 1990, when the outline of the radical economic

  reform was prepared by the Federal Government and the first practical

  steps of it were undertaken, a new shift in the structure of value

  orientations occurred. Of crucial significance was above all the

  declaration of President Havel demanding the liquidation of the arms

  producing industry, strongly developed particularly in Slovakia, and the

  first measures to its realization.

  The author of the study disposes at representative data from the survey

  on social transformation (autumn 1991) confronting the objective status

  positions of the adult population with their subjective attitudes. As

  far as the objective characteristics are concerned, the results of the

  survey on social transformation were summoned by the author in 1992 as

  follows:

  `''We discussed systematically all the relevant partial dimensions of the

  social position (status)...In all of these dimensions we could record

  only two significant signals of larger social differences. The first of

  them is a better standard of housing and a bigger amount of family

  fortunes in Slovakia (relativized, of course, by higher numerousness of

  families...). The second is a more often declaration of the subjective

  feelings of a worse market and especially financial attainability of

  consumption goods and services in Slovakia as well. In behind of this

  statement is hidden a more significant factor of a lower income per

  capita, connected with the already mentioned higher number of family

  members, and a different perception of the reality, influenced by the

  difference of social dynamics in the both republics. In no case,

  however, it is possible to speak about two fundamentally different

  status hierarchies with an essentially distinct context corresponding to

  two different phases of the civilization and cultural development.''''

  In other words, the cultural and social processes typical of the 1970s

  and 1980s, namely the stagnation and the beginning of an absolute

  decline in the Czech Republic and the continuing (although also limited

  by the character of the totalitarian and anti-meritocratic social system

  common for both of the two parts of the Federation) relative progress in

  Slovakia led to a nearly full equalization of the social unbalance which

  had been observed in 1967.

  On the other hand, the data from 1991 revealed a deep discrepancy

  between the balanced objective data and large differences of the

  subjective perception of the social situation. In principle, the

  evaluation both of the past and of the future transformation processes

  was much more favourable in the Czech than in the Slovak Republic.

  The most apparent differences in evaluation between the two republics

  could be found in the fields of standard of living and of social

  security.

  It was quite clear that such deep differences in attitudes could not be

  explained by those objective facts that revealed the attained social

  equalization of the Czech lands and Slovakia but rather in the

  specificities of the recent development of the two societies after the

  `''Velvet Revolution''''. Anyway, the contradictory shape of the popular

  attitudes became one of the stimuli that helped the victory of more

  liberal and pro-federalist rifht-wing political parties in the Czech

  Republic and rather anti-federalist political parties and movements in

  Slovakia in the elections of 1992. The election victors decided after

  relatively short negotiations, without asking people in a referendum, to

  dissociate the common state of Czechs and Slovaks. It happened at the

  beginning of 1993 in peaceful way and is acknowledged at present as a

  matter of fact by majorities of populations in both new states.

  It is highly interesting by now to find out what have been the further

  destinies of people in both countries as far as the objective positions

  and the subjective attitudes are concerned. A substantial contribution

  to this kind of knowledge could bring large representative sociological

  surveys of about 5000 adult respondents in the Czech and Slovak Republic

  that took place in April 1993 as a part of broader comparative survey on

  social stratification and mobility in Eastern Europe. The second

  important contribution could be drawn from paralel surveys of somewhat

  smaller representative samples devoted to the study of beliefs and

  behaviour of Czech and Slovak people carried out in autumn 1993.

  As far as the objective aspect of the problem is concerned, one can

  state that the economically active population of the Czech and Slovak

  Republics do not differ in none of the basic social status dimensions

  characterizing the individuals. Even the indicators of the so called

  status consistency/inconsistency, namely the rank correlations of

  education, work complexity and earnings are equal in both republics.

  Small differences have been revealed only in two newly studied status

  characteristics. The so-called social capital (the degree of development

  of purposeful informal social contacts) seems to be somewhat more

  developed in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. On the other hand, the

  Czech lands are a little bit more progressing in the development of the

  private enterpreneurship. However, the differences are not so deep as to

  make the social stratification shape of the two societies fundamentally

  dissimilar. Thus the data concerning the social positions of

  economically active individuals prove clearly that Slovakia reached

  approximately the same level od social and cultural development as the

  Czech Republic.

  There exist, of course, some not negligible differences concerning

  social and cultural characteristics of the families, including their

  economically non-active members.

  In Slovakia, significantly more respondents declared that they were

  living in family houses. The technical equipment of the housing is

  somewhat better in the Czech lands, the size of the family flats or

  houses and the number of rooms is larger in Slovakia. The material

  equipment of the households differs somewhat in some items in favour of

  the Czech families, in some others in favour of the Slovak. The average

  amount of their family fortunes expressed in financial values seems to

  be a little higher in Slovakia. The Czech families are not so numerous

  as the relatively younger Slovak families and therefore their average

  income per capita is higher. Among the population that has been

  questioned in the stratification survey there was substantially less

  retired persons in the Slovak Republic. The percentage of unemployed

  among the respondents has been, on the contrary, some times higher in

  Slovakia. However, the final percentage of economically active was

  higher in Slovakia.

  All these characteristics are connected with well known differences of

  the two countries in the settlement structure and in the structure of

  industries and branches in national economy. In the Slovak Republic,

  significantly more people are working in agriculture, metallurgy, heavy

  industry and energetics, yet also in education, culture ans science; in

  the Czech Republic the same goes for other industry, other services,

  finance and banking. Also the already mentioned differences in the

  demographic structures play their role as well as the differences in the

  ethnical structures (large Hungarian and Gipsy minority in Slovakia) and

  in confessional structures (substantially more believers, particularly

  Roman Catholics but also Evangelics in Slovakia).

  If we take into account all the mentioned social and cultural

  differences, some of them favourable for the Czech, some for the Slovak

  Republic, we cannot notice, of course, that they are in a part derived

  from the more rural and traditional past of Slovakia as we analyzed it

  in on the basis of 1967 data. However, in the whole the weight of this

  kind of differences is not as high that it could change our basic

  statement about achieved fundamental cultural and social equality of the

  societies in question, which both now belong to the industrial type and

  started together a very similar trajectory of the post-communist

  transformation.

  However, there is one important field where the recently emerged

  differences seem to be grave. It is the standard of living of the

  households.

  In every case, we can present interesting data comparing the evaluation

  of family standards of living in the Czech lands and Slovakia in 1988

  and in 1993. In spite of the fact that they are somewhat subjectively

  coloured, especially as far as the retrospective evaluation is

  concerned, they clearly show that the obvious decline of the standard of

  living in both republics must have been much steeper in Slovakia. At the

  same time, we have here the first evidence proving the big shift of

  satisfaction/dissatisfaction attitudes in favour of the Czech lands.

  This opens the discussion of the important topic of subjective

  perception of the post-communist transformation. The evaluation, based

  on new experience, is in both republics somewhat more sceptical than in

  1991. At the same time, a remarkable change in the relation of positive

  evaluations occurred in favour of the Czech Republic. In this case also

  the experience of nine months of Slovak sovereignty evidently plays a

  certain role. In most of similar questions one can identify a constant

  phenomenon: 20-25\% less of positive and more of negative evaluations in

  Slovakia than in the Czech lands.

  The discrepancy between the relative equality of general cultural and

  social structures in the analyzed countries, on the one hand, and big

  differences in the subjective evaluations, on the other, for the first

  time revealed in the data from 1991, emerged from the data of 1993 with

  an even greater intensity. There are, in principle, three ways how to

  interpret this phenomenon.

  The first would be to query the first of the premises of our

  considerations by arguing that the residues of the traditional rural

  cultural and social relations in Slovakia are still alive, particularly

  in times of new crucial changes, and hamper the operating of relatively

  young and therefore unstable cultural and social relationships. However,

  the facts witnessing for basic equality of the present cultural and

  social structures are substantial and concern nearly all aspects of the

  daily life in both societies, so that it is not so easy to doubt them.

  There is a case for another explanation as well, namely for the

  assumption that in the stormy atmosphere of radical social changes some

  deep cultural and socio-psychological specificities of the nations

  concerned emerge, which are responsible for the different reactions to

  relatively equal situations. Neither these phenomena and mechanisms,

  taken alone, can explain the abruptness and intensity of the change in

  attitudes in the Czech lands and in Slovakia. In addition, the cultural

  and psychological phenomena are in principle very vague and their

  empirical fixation is unusually difficult. One could not notice that

  therefore this kind of argumentation has been recently many times abused

  by nationalist politicians both in Slovakia and in the Czech lands on

  the basis of arbitrary assumptions and statements.

  That is why we offer a third hypothesis, interpreting the stated

  discrepancy from the angle of the specificities of social and historical

  dynamics. It tries to explain the differences in attitudes as rationally

  arguable reactions of two neighbouring nations to historically different

  combinations of long-term and short-term dynamics.

  It is undisputable, that from the fall of the 1930s, Slovakia, a former

  agrarian and economically underdeveloped region, moved - with short

  breaks only - steadily in the direction to an industrial and relatively

  modern society with growing political authority. Although the Slovaks

  did not like communism (as the results of the elections in 1946 clearly

  showed) and had to be forced to adapt themselves to the state-socialist

  system (as the events in 1947 and 1948 prove), paradoxically the peak of

  the modernization of their society, bringing hitherto the best living

  conditions for the population, has been achieved during the period of

  `''normalization'''', i.e. on the top of the development of the

  totalitarian and anti-meritocratic (egalitarian) social system in

  Czechoslovakia. It is quite clear from this that typical ideologies of

  the state socialist era: egalitarianism, state paternalism and

  authoritarianism have far deeper roots in Slovakia than in the Czech

  Republic.

  The social experience of a long-term trajectory of a gradual rise and

  emancipation of the Slovak nation clashed at once after 1989 with a

  contradictory experience of a rapid decline and deteriorization of the

  economic and social conditions, much more intensive than in the Czech

  lands. It is no wonder that the Slovak population reacted to the new

  situation in a greater extent than the Czech with feelings of

  frustration, resignation or even refusal.

  The social experience of the Czech nation since the end of the 1930s has

  been substatially different. In the rude trajectory of development until

  the end of the 1980s, degradation and stagnation of a formerly well

  developed Central European land prevailed in general. A short

  contradictory wave of a renewed progress in the 1960s finished by a

  grave frustration from the defeat of the Prague spring. The Soviet

  occupation meant a real lost of national sovereignty for the Czech

  nation that never accepted it. After the lost of illusions about the

  possibilities of the Soviet `''perestroika'''' and after a certain

  deteriorization of the standard of living in the second half of the

  1980s, the Czech nation was mentally prepared for a `''return to

  Europe''''. The subsequent decline in the first phase of the

  post-communist transformation was the slightest one among the Central

  and East European countries and the signs of some improvement showed

  very early. It is no wonder, again, that most people are relatively more

  satisfied with the development until now and more optimistic about the

  future than the Slovak population is. It does not mean, of course that

  there does not exist a danger of a later desillusion of a part of

  society and of some rise of feelings of frustration and resignation in

  the future.

  It is easy to see that this kind of interpretation of our data is

  rational and corresponds the historical facts found out or corroborated

  in our surveys. It can explain without distortion of the evident

  historical reality most of the seeming paradoxes of the Czech and Slovak

  reality and mutual relationships. In a way it gives also some keys to

  the explanation of the split of Czechoslovakia and of its unexpected

  abruptness and peaceful forms.'
affiliation: MACHONIN, P (Corresponding Author), CZECHOSLOVAK ACAD SCI, INST SOCIOL,
  VILSKA 1, CS-11000 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC.
author: MACHONIN, P
author_list:
- family: MACHONIN
  given: P
da: '2023-09-28'
eissn: 1336-8613
files: []
issn: 0049-1225
journal: SOCIOLOGIA
keywords: 'VELVET REVOLUTION; PEACEFUL DISSOCIATION OF THE FEDERAL CZECHOSLOVAKIA;

  TRANSFORMATION PROCESSES'
keywords-plus: CZECHOSLOVAKIA
language: Slovak
number: '4'
number-of-cited-references: '15'
pages: 333+
papis_id: 3691e723557b9331d8c334b99baf2c58
ref: Machonin1994sociologicalcomparis
times-cited: '7'
title: TOWARDS SOCIOLOGICAL COMPARISON OF CZECH AND SLOVAK SOCIETY
type: Article
unique-id: WOS:A1994QG72500002
usage-count-last-180-days: '1'
usage-count-since-2013: '54'
volume: '26'
web-of-science-categories: Sociology
year: '1994'