A Mutually Velvet Divorce

Vladimir Meciar, Slovakia’s former three-time prime minister and self-styled father of the modern Slovak state, quietly left politics earlier this month. Good riddance. His autocratic style of governing in the 1990s was awful in many ways for the country’s image and its people’s quality of life.

Most of the young state’s democratic and economic progress in the two decades since independence was achieved thanks to his successors. But there is one achievement by which Meciar can justifiably feel vindicated: the so-called “Velvet Divorce” was a success.

The timing of Meciar’s exit from politics coincides with the approaching 20th anniversary of his signature triumph. In the summer of 1992, three years after the Velvet Revolution felled Communism in Czechoslovakia, Meciar and the Czech prime minister, Vaclav Klaus, negotiated the nonviolent division of the country.

Read More: NY Times