Cross Border Minority Issues in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia: Challenges for Security in a Dynamic Environment

Abstract

Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia’s centuries long common history, their own attainments in the statehood conceptions among the Central European region, their commitment to the development of respective nations make their inter-state relations a unique political, economic, social, and cultural network. Their neighborhood, and the history of their relations relate to all kinds of ties on bilateral and trilateral levels—from close cooperation and friendship to distance, hostility, and even conflict. The peculiarity of their cooperation was highly influenced with 18th century partitions that directed and structured their nation safeguarding processes and political maturity. The division between Austro-Hungarian and Prussian empires mainly (as Poland was also under the Russian domination), impacted the Czech, Polish and Slovak citizenship and involvement into the activity of their countries rebuilt after World War I. The different models of rule consisting on politically adapted approaches to the national composition of the empires slightly diverged and thus the resulting status quo of the minority groups, and above all their attitude to the rule of their respective countries made up their heritage, memory, and identity respectively as Czechs, Poles, and Slovaks. To understand the issue of potential chances and challenges of the modern Czech-Polish-Slovak relations, this paper presents a historical overview of their relations. The second part of the paper stresses the main characteristics of the national identity of these three countries, to focus in the last part our attention on the question of the most probable challenges and potential threats to their cooperation.