Marianne Chybik, a first-generation Czechoslovakian-American, lived in her parents` homeland for a month this summer, on the eve of the announcement that the country will split into two republics.
She paid attention to talk about the rupture and what it would mean for Czechs and Slovaks and for people living in the central region of Moravia, where Chybik`s parents grew up.
”We kind of laugh because I have friends who are of Czech descent, and some who are Slovakian, and others who are Moravian,” said Chybik, 26, a nurse living in southwest suburban Countryside. ”It`s like, Are we not supposed to talk to each other because everyone is splitting up?”
A surreal range of concerns keeps Chybik and other Czechoslovakians in the Chicago area chuckling despite the forthcoming breakup: They wonder what to call the countries now, where to send their mail and how to relate to their relatives and fellow countrymen.
”I`m having a hard time communicating with my own relatives” in Czechoslovakia, said Josef Kucera, 37, of Cicero. ”They`ve been under lock and key for basically 40 years, and they`re used to hearing one opinion. When they hear different opinions, they get mixed up.”
Like many Czechoslovakians in the Chicago area, Chybik said the breakup of her parents` homeland into the Czech and Slovak republics is inevitable and tragic, coming on the heels of the Velvet Revolution that overthrew communism in 1989.
In announcing the breakup Aug. 26, Czech Premier Vaclav Klaus and his Slovak counterpart, Vladimir Meciar, said the country will separate in January. The two leaders had agreed in June to split the 74-year-old Czechoslovakian federation, which was created after World War I, and last week`s announcement made it official.
”I get the sense that, for so long, the people had no control over their lives, and this is just another thing they have no control over,” Chybik said.
Some Czechoslovakian-Americans say that the split could lead to economic misery for the country`s 5 million Slovaks, who have the bulk of the country`s agriculture and munitions factories but who lack the industrial muscle to carry them comfortably into the post-communist era.
The Slovaks also must contend with 600,000 ethnic Hungarians. The Czech lands have about 10 million people and most of the former country`s industry. The rupture leaves people on both sides of the Atlantic pondering a communications abyss.
Michael Kaplan, 70, who is American-born but lived in Bratislava in the Slovak republic between 1926 and 1950, said the Czechoslovakian people should have been allowed to choose their own destiny.
”I`m against the two presidents deciding to break the country into two pieces,” Kaplan said. ”There were a few people who wanted to get on top for prestige. I hope the people will stand on their feet and vote against it.”
”It`s an opportunity for the people at the top to have more power at the expense of their country,” said Kucera, who is president of Denni Hlasatel, a Czechoslovakian semi-weekly newspaper that, he said, reaches about 100,000 readers. ”Pretty much the sentiment is that this is the last thing that they wanted, to split into two countries.”
But some Slovakian people in the Chicago area said that the smaller region will be able to survive on its own, and they argue that a separate country of Slovakia is more natural than the Czechoslovakian union.
”I think it is very good because they have been waiting for it for 1,000 years,” said Ivan Kralik, 72, who lived in Bytca, Slovakia, between 1923 and 1957. ”The union of Czechoslovakia was a big mistake. It was a very unhappy marriage.”
Although the shutdown of some industries in Slovakia around 1918 may have hurt the republic economically, Kaplan said, the image of the Slovak republic as a depressed, rural region is inaccurate.
”They are not uneducated people. And they will do everything possible to be on their own.”
But Tony Jandacek, 58, vice president of the Czechoslovak National Council, predicts hard times in the Slovak republic.
”They are heading for a disaster because economically they cannot sustain themselves,” he predicted.
Even if the republics face economic hardship, fighting is not likely in the former Czechoslovakia, people in the United States say.
”I don`t think there`s that fear; there isn`t that big of an ethnic diversity in either of the two republics,” said Kucera, the newspaper president. ”In Yugoslavia, there are all kinds of ethnic and religious groups. I don`t think it`s the nature of the Czechoslovak people to be that violence-prone.”
