Dissolution of Czechoslovakia
Since the federalization in 1968, Czechoslovakia had divided citizenship, either of the Czech Socialist Republic or of the Slovak Socialist Republic (the word 'Socialist' was dropped from both names shortly after the Velvet Revolution). This distinction, however, had little effect on the citizen's life. On January 1, 1993, all Czechoslovak citizens automatically became citizens either of the Czech Republic or the Slovak Republic, based on their previous citizenship, permanent residence address, birthplace, family ties, job, and other criteria. Additionally, people had one year's time to claim the other citizenship under certain conditions.
Slovaks in Czechoslovakia (1948–89)
The division between Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia persisted as a key element in the reform movement of the 1960s and the retrenchment of the 1970s, a decade that dealt harshly with the aspirations of both Czechs and Slovaks. Ethnicity still remained integral to the social, political, and economic affairs of the country. In 1968, a Slovak writer called for a more positive reappraisal of the Slovak Republic. Although as a Marxist he found Monsignor Jozef Tiso's "clerico-fascist state" politically abhorrent, he acknowledged that "the Slovak Republic existed as the national state of the Slovaks, the only one in our history..." Comparable sentiments surfaced periodically throughout the 1970s in letters to Bratislava's Pravda, even though the newspaper's editors tried to inculcate in their readership a "class and concretely historical approach" to the nationality question.