Michael Kraus

If 1989 will go down in history as "the annus mirabilis," marking the
peaceful demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, the 1990s will be
remembered as "the springtime of ethnicity." In the wake of the collapse
of Communist systems, conflicts and tensions between ethnic groups
have not only brought about the disintegration of multinational federa-
tions of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, but many of
the new successor states also face the prospect of further territorial divi-
sions. As the rapidly burgeoning scholarship on the subject indicates, the
general sources of these conflicts vary, but typically they include the
impact of historical influences, the legacies of Communist rule, the role
of political elites, and the differential effects of economic and political
transitions upon ethnic relations.

Explanations for the demise of the Czechoslovak federation tend to
fall into one or more of six categories, including (1) the legacies of the
Communist and pre-Communist eras; (2) the rational and/or erratic
actions of post-Communist political elites; (3) constitutional deadlock;
(4) regional economic disparities; (5) the absence of political parties, as
well as other associations and groupings that united people across eth-
nic lines; and (6) the role of the mass media. ¹

To date, the impact of foreign policy issues on national conflict and on
the processes of state disintegration, and the influence of international
factors fostering separatism, has received minimal attention. This paper
seeks to fill the gap by examining the emergence of foreign policy diver-
gence along national lines in the context of the 1990-92 Czech-Slovak
debate concerning the present, the past, and the future of the common

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