Velvet Divorce

Czech Republic	Slovakia

The Dissolution of Czechoslovakia (Czech: Rozdělení Československa, Slovak: Rozdelenie Česko-Slovenska), which took effect on 1 January 1993, was an event that saw the self-determined split of the federal state of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, entities which had arisen before as the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic in 1969 within the framework of Czechoslovak federalisation.

It is sometimes known as the Velvet Divorce, a reference to the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989 that led to the end of the rule of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the formation of a democratic government.

Czechoslovakia was created with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. In 1917, a meeting took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where the future Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and other Czech and Slovak representatives signed the Pittsburgh Agreement which promised a common state consisting of two equal nations, Slovaks and Czechs. Soon after, the philosophy of Edvard Beneš pushed for greater unity and a single nation.

Some Slovaks were not in favour of this change, and in March 1939, with pressure from Adolf Hitler, the First Slovak Republic was created. Occupation by the Soviet Union after World War II oversaw their reunification into the third Czechoslovak republic.

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