By Jan Urban, former Czechoslovak dissident and chair of the Civic Forum. He retired from politics in 1990. From the independent "Nepszabadsag" of Budapest. This article also appeared in the independent "Gazeta Wyborcza" of Warsaw.

Could events in Czechoslovakia spur another crisis?

Central Europe is balanced on the edge of a new historical crisis that could transform the whole region. Not only national borders but democracy itself is at stake. In Czechoslovakia, the winning parties of June's election will divide their country. This observer is surprised at how unconcerned they are, given the international consequences of their decisions. But it is no less astonishing to see how indifferently and passively the West is watching the demise of Czechoslovakia. The Western public is calmed by the assertion that war between Czechs and Slovaks is out of the question: It is not another "Yugoslavia." They call the Czechoslovak split the "velvet divorce." But no one believed in the possibility of a bloody and cruel war before the declaration of independence by Croatia and Slovenia. What we have to fear is the quick pace of change in Central Europe--sudden and unintended change. A pessimistic European scenario is becoming more and more valid. This is what sounds realistic:

In any referendum on Czechoslovakia's constitutional crisis, the citizens of both states are likely to vote for a divorce from their annoying neighbor. To increase its energy supply and its political prestige, the Slovak republic may soon reroute the Danube river away from the border it forms with Hungary and into Slovak territory. The Hungarians will no doubt contend that this step amounts to the illegal changing of the state borders. And from this already touchy quarrel, an open propaganda campaign could emerge.

Then, Hungarian nationalists could be propelled to power by a campaign for the rights of "our oppressed brothers," the more-than-half-a-million-strong Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Following a series of armed clashes, the border between Hungary and Slovakia would be modified. Those regions in southern Slovakia where the majority of the population is Hungarian would be attached to Hungary after a referendum.

In this dispute with Hungary, Slovakia would not be able to win the support of the Czech republic. On the contrary, if Slovakia had not become independent by then, the Czechs would themselves be urging separation from their destabilizing neighbor.

The borders of Czechoslovakia were defined by the peace treaties after the First World War. With the split of Czechoslovakia, the arguments of Hungarian nationalists would become clear: Hungary's treaties, they would say, are with a country that no longer exists. The same argument could be used by Ukraine to demand the easternmost territory of Slovakia. Democratic forces in these countries might challenge these arguments, but they would be called naive or, indeed, unpatriotic.

Austrian and German nationalists would continuously enhance their popular support by demanding strict restrictions on immigration from Eastern Europe, including the closing of borders to refugees. As yet, nobody is taking seriously the radical tone of groups advocating self-determination for ethnic Germans in the Czech region of Bohemia, but those who are politically insignificant today could turn influential. The economic and political demands of the Bavarian government, representing the interests of the Bohemian Germans, would grow louder and louder. The Czech government would finally ask for mediation by the German federal government, but the successor state of Czechoslovakia would be unable to withstand the growing pressure from their stronger neighbors.

The first successful revision of the Slovak borders would set a precedent for Central Europe and then, perhaps, for other parts of the world. Ethnic Hungarians living in Transylvania, Ukraine, and Vojvodina, in the former Yugoslavia, would then demand a similar solution to their problems. In the Baltics, the problem of ethnic Germans would arise. Russia could agree to give its ethnic Germans autonomous rights with special economic status; then it might be willing to pass the region along the Volga where they are settled over to Germany in return for increased economic cooperation. Still-unstable Poland would be isolated once again between Russia and Germany. And so the dreams of the last two years would fade away.

Democratic elections alone do not create democracy. In Europe during the 20th century, democracy was never able to protect itself against dictatorship or stop conflicts before they caused human deaths. For this reason, democracy and the democrats have had to pay an unbearably high price. Who remembers today that all modern dictatorships were born in this part of the world?

The importance of Czechoslovakia has always been that it rose above the notion of an ethnically pure state, creating in citizens a loyalty to a multi-national, democratic state--an idea that is not very Central European. Democracy was placed above the language of a nationality. Now it may turn out that this was nothing more than a senseless historical experiment, a useless adventure in democracy.

If European democracy cannot quickly get its act together, it will have to observe helplessly as nationalism gains power everywhere. The key role will be played by Germany--as always in the history of Central Europe. The Germans--despite their membership in the European Community and their acknowledgement of their complicity in promoting two world wars--have not been protected from the infection of nationalism.

The British and the French are also reluctant to remember that their complacency toward Adolph Hitler was as instrumental in starting the war as was Nazism itself. The sin of passive democracy is that it does not stop dictatorships until they begin to attack and kill. Just months after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich saying that he had brought back solid peace for the British, war broke out.

Seven years later, with 40 million people dead, democracy conquered Nazism. But while democracy was victorious, it was worn-out and struck another complacent deal--this time with the communist superpower. It was willing to sacrifice the rights of self-determination in those countries that ended up in the so-called communist camp. Forty-four years later, after a number of local wars and more millions dead, communism died. But can we say that democracy has won?

The defeat of communism in Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union do not yet signal the ultimate victory of democracy, and the new anti-democratic tendencies might pit democracy in much more danger that it was in during the cold war. "To have or not to have democracy in Central Europe, that is the question," ponders a present-day Hamlet. At this moment, the democratically elected politicians of Czechoslovakia are splitting up their homeland. In their neighborhoods, the blindness of the deaf does not sense that anti-democracy is coming soon.