A Year After Split, Czech and Slovak Nations Act as if There’s No Yesterday : Separation: The two successor countries have readily discarded three-quarters of a century of common tradition. Their people swiftly surmised they may be more different than alike.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia —  Newspaper editor Sona Cechova refuses to surrender to the rush of history, which a year ago abruptly severed Czechoslovakia in two. Working from a dingy office building in Europe’s newest capital city, Cechova hopes to save the soul of her lost country.

“I want people to see that there are still Czechs and Slovaks of goodwill, not of hatred and nationalism,” she explained over scattered copies of her tiny publication, Mosty, which puts a happy face on the affairs of the estranged Czechoslovak people.

But with only a few thousand subscribers in a market of 15.6 million, destiny is not on Mosty’s side.

Indeed, Cechova and people like her have run up against an astonishing turn of events: The Czech and Slovak republics are racing apart faster and farther than almost anyone thought possible.

In just one year since Czechoslovakia’s Dec. 31 breakup, its two successor countries have readily discarded three-quarters of a century of common tradition, swiftly surmising that they in fact may be more different than alike.

Czechs trade more goods with Germans than with Slovaks, while Slovaks draw more investment from Austrians than from Czechs. Hungarians far outnumber Czechs in the new Slovakia, while the deeply rooted Slovak population in the Czech Republic is now just another minority. The former compatriots don’t even flock to the same vacation spots anymore.

The surprisingly speedy unraveling of once knot-tight ties has turned upside-down the lives of many residents who still find their newfangled separateness awkward and difficult to bear. The practical truth of a divided country was illustrated one recent weekend when more than 100 vehicles backed up at a busy border crossing near here, last year just another stretch of highway between two Czechoslovak cities.

“The two republics are diverging more rapidly than any of us ever imagined,” said Filip Sedivy, a former Czechoslovak Parliament member who is the first Czech ambassador to Bratislava. “We expected that because of our many ties, there would be some kind of parallel development. But not even our trade ties have been as great as we assumed.”

Czechs and Slovaks carry different passports, vote in different elections, shop with different currencies, watch different television programs, ride on different railways, collect different social benefits, serve in different armies and even trade on different stock exchanges.

So complete has been the separation that few bookstores in Prague, the Czech capital, carry Slovak publications, even though the languages are similar and the periodicals were widely available a year ago.

In Bratislava, an attorney complained bitterly of having to drive 75 miles to find her favorite Czech authors, once prominently displayed on bookshelves in the Slovak capital.

“I want my country back,” lamented a resentful Czech woman who has lived in Slovakia since 1938, married a Slovak and has been unable to decide on Czech or Slovak citizenship after authorities ruled out dual nationality. “I still feel like a Czechoslovak. They can’t take that from me.”

After months of haggling over the disputed separation in 1992, the Czech and Slovak governments have put most of the official bickering behind them and have set out to secure their separate--and very different--independent futures.

Most of the common possessions of the former federation have been divvied up. Although there is still disagreement over Slovakia’s indebtedness to its new western neighbor, the discourse in each country has largely shifted from such problems to more pressing domestic matters.

With just four years separating their fledgling democracies from four decades of Communist rule, both countries have huge tasks ahead of them in dismantling their centrally planned economies. While there is little doubt that the Czech Republic--long the West’s darling in Eastern Europe--has had the easier go of it, national sovereignty has had its price in both places.

The smaller, poorer Slovaks gave up the most, including $1 billion a year in federal subsidies and the international prestige and political stability that the Prague government garnered with its aggressive reform program.

The richer and economically powerful Czechs lost one-third of their lucrative domestic market, slipping them further into the sphere of their dominant western neighbor, Germany, where a quarter of Czech exports have landed this year.

Both the Czech and Slovak governments are moving forward with privatization of state-owned companies, albeit at far differing paces, and are diligently pursuing new trade partners to replace traditional Czechoslovak markets lost in the former Soviet Union.

Each country is also battling inflation exceeding 20% and pursuing industrial policies heavily dependent on foreign investment.

Most objective year-end tallies show the Czechs succeeding and the Slovaks faltering, largely due to their unequal starts and the lopsided skills and fortunes of their leaders, Czech Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar.

Meciar is a lawyer and former boxer who whipped up nationalist feelings during elections in June, 1992, promising to improve Slovakia’s world image, soften the blow of the economic transformation and create a sovereign Slovak state within a Czechoslovak confederation.

Since taking the helm of independent Slovakia, his government has been shaken by resignations, party defections and firings; Meciar was only recently able to piece together a new parliamentary majority. One year into the job, he faces a daunting budget deficit, a deep recession, an unemployment rate four times that in the Czech Republic and allegations that he is dragging his feet on reforms.

Klaus is a self-assured, conservative pro-market economist whose bitter medicine as federal finance minister won him international acclaim but also some blame for fomenting secessionist sentiment in Slovakia, where outmoded heavy industries were hardest hit by his reforms.

In the end, Klaus masterminded a quick breakup (outmaneuvering Meciar at his own game, some say) after he determined that Slovakia’s demands for a loose confederation would have left Czechs footing the bill for an unbridled and fiscally unaccountable sister republic.

The popular Klaus still faces problems, but can boast of a budget surplus, a level of foreign investment in Eastern Europe second only to Hungary and the confidence of the international business community.

In the year since their separation, many Czechs and Slovaks have concluded that their cross-border counterparts are largely irrelevant, at least for now, in their changed worlds.

Jan Urban, a Czech dissident-turned-politician, said this new attitude has been an unexpected windfall of the breakup. “It means that each republic has had to face up to itself and its own problems,” said Urban, who opposed the division but says he has come to accept it. “Neither country now has its traditional scapegoat, which it blamed for everything that went wrong.”

Against such a backdrop, the divorce--as many Czechs and Slovaks refer to the events of a year ago--has been left as a painful family affair that is best not discussed or openly second-guessed, even though feelings still run deep on both sides of the border.

Sullen Czechs complain privately that the mutinous Slovaks got what they deserved (the unraveling began with a declaration of sovereignty by the Slovak Parliament, with the Czech and federal Parliaments later concurring), while defiant Slovaks sneer that the separation bore out what they viewed as the worst in their Czech partners, namely an overbearing arrogance and paternalism.

Few people in either country speak seriously of reconciliation, and those that do long for a return to the past, acknowledge that the best they can expect is some sort of “special relationship” between two independent neighbors, possibly reunited in some distant future under the umbrella of a European federation.

“I woke up one day and suddenly discovered that I was a minority in what I thought was my own country,” said a teary-eyed Vojtech Celko, a Slovak who heads the Slovak House of Culture in Prague, which closes at the end of the month for lack of money. “I am willing to give a bottle of good wine to anyone who can point to a single good thing that has come out of this.”

A recent public opinion poll in Slovakia showed that 60% of Slovaks say they would have voted against the division had the issue been put before them, and polls before the split in the Czech Republic showed little support for it there.

Even the Slovak ambassador to Prague, Ivan Mjartan, hinted in a recent interview that he would prefer events to rob him of his job.

Back at the Mosty newspaper offices, Cechova still holds out hope that small efforts like hers will help rebuild bridges--the English meaning of Mosty--between the two nationalities.

If for no other reason, she said, the memory of Czechoslovakia is worth preserving because it brought under one roof two very different nations--the fiery, creative Slovaks and the disciplined, pragmatic Czechs.

“It was a fantastic combination,” she said.