The principle of national self-determination holds that there should be one state for every nation and one nation for every state. In its heyday after the First World War, however, the principle was used to justify several states in Central and Eastern Europe that were almost as multi-national as the empires they replaced. One of these states was Czechoslovakia. Despite the fact that the national minorities comprised a third of the population, Czechoslovakia was from the outset officially presented as the unitary nation-state of the'Czechoslovak nation with two tribes'. 1 The 1920 Czechoslovak constitution was adopted in the name of this Czechoslovak nation, and imposed a unitary state form and a centralized political set-up.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the principle of national self-determination was again used to justify new'national states'. Five states, including Slovakia, even invoked this principle in their constitutions, all on behalf of the core nation. 2 The very same principle that was used to justify the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918 was thus used to justify its demise 74 years later; only this time the principle was invoked on behalf of the Slovak nation.