Your review of Mary Heimann’s Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009) cannot but remind me of another country that failed at roughly the same time: Yugoslavia (“A Chequered History,” November 21, 2009). There are many things that connect the two countries’ histories. Both owed their existence to Woodrow Wilson, who pushed for federal solutions after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the wake of World War I. The ethnic groups that suffered most in both arrangements were, not surprisingly, German and Hungarian speakers. Both countries survived World War II under similar regimes allied with the Soviet Union. And both were let to fall apart when the cordon sanitaire that buffered the rest of Europe from the Soviet Union lost its geopolitical usefulness to the west. Of course, Czechs and Slovaks split up without any bloodshed, for which they should be praised. And the breakup of Yugoslavia shows very well how badly states can fail: one-hundred and forty-thousand dead. By comparison with Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia’s history is hardly chequered at all.

Addendum (December 11, 2009)