By Adam Novak
PRAGUE - Czecho-Slovakia is slowly disintegrating under the impact of contrary forces. In Slovakia, there is a radicalisation against the restoration of capitalism. On the other hand, there is a growing willingness of the Czech elite and its foreign advisers to divide the country in order to "save" the restoration in the richer Czech lands.
Slovakia has one-third of Czecho-Slovakia's territory and population. The country was underdeveloped by the interwar capitalist government, resulting in mass emigration. The postwar Stalinist system industrialised Slovakia in 40 years and brought its standard of living up to the Czech level. However, this was done through a reliance on polluting heavy industry.
World markets now have no use for Slovakia's factories, built in inaccessible terrain to provide jobs in isolated communities. Czecho-Slovakia's major backers, the USA, France and Britain, have forced the country to abandon arms production, previously the major source of hard currency.
The costs of this transformation are borne in Slovakia, while most new investment is directed to the western, Czech-speaking lands. Likewise, nine-tenths of the post-"revolution" tourist boom is in Czech Prague, while the traditional East German clientele has deserted Slovakia's ski resorts and forest lakes.
Where Slovakian industry survives, state monopoly is being transformed into private. One-quarter of Czecho-Slovakia's steel is produced in one factory, VSZ, in Kosice near the Ukrainian border. VSZ will soon be bought by Austria's Voest Alpine Stahl, anxious to transfer labour-intensive production to low-wage Slovakia, prevent a flood of cheap steel on Austrian markets and get its hands on VSZ's source of cheap iron ore and coal from the ex-USSR.
Under the current ban on central state investment, whole sectors of the Slovak economy are disappearing. Slovakia's military and consumer electronics sector has been reduced to two joint-venture factories. A third, which used to make hifi decks, now makes just the wooden casings.
Slovak unemployment rates are triple the Czech level. By mid- 1993, unemployment may reach 29%, according to a Slovak government report. There is less and less money to pay for social programs, since tax is collected mainly in the Czech republic, where companies are based and where export contracts are signed.
The economic collapse, combined with a return to prewar-style Czech domination, has convinced most Slovaks that they must follow a specifically Slovak reform program. They want a government-coordinated transformation of the economy, to wind down arms production and polluting chemical and petrochemical production and develop other sectors using centralised investment. Most want to do this in a looser federation with the Czechs. But if the Czech elite continues to brand all job-creation or investment projects as "crypto-Communist planning", they will consider separation.
The Prague-backed monetarist government in Bratislava has about 4% support in opinion polls. After the June 9 elections, the Slovak parliament will be dominated by centre-left and left nationalists, wanting to negotiate a looser federation and reverse the monetarist policies of the last two years.
The major nationalist force, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), is a front dominated by bureaucrats around charismatic ex-premier Vladimir Meciar. Strong on criticism of Prague, the HZDS has no clear alternative and will probably split after gaining power.
One of its few predictable policies will be the limitation of democracy and a reintroduction of centralisation. Meciar already calls for centralisation and national discipline to protect Slovaks "between the hammer of Czech domination and the anvil of separatism among [Slovakia's national] minorities".
Meciar's economic policy would combine centralism and bureaucratic state intervention with behind-the-scenes deals with foreign investors. The cement of "national consensus" would be dredged up from the dark side of Slovak nationalism.
Intolerance against the one-in-five non-Slovak population is reaching alarming proportions. A recent law makes Slovak compulsory in public offices, even in South Slovakia, where most people speak Hungarian. The news that Slovak Romanies ("Gypsies") were flooding German refugee camps, citing racist attacks and job discrimination, provoked joy or indifference, but certainly not shame, among most Slovak politicians.
The challenge for the Slovak left is to articulate a Slovak national interest which is that of all the working people. A truly democratic plan for reconstruction can work only if it is articulated by all the people, without centralisation by the ex- Stalinist, would-be patriotic bureaucracy.