Unenthusiastic Debut for Czech Republic : Europe: New Year’s marks new start for former Czechoslovakia. But there’s little celebration of nation’s divorce.

Hoar frost sparkling on barren branches and mist cloaking the medieval spires of Prague Castle provided a storybook backdrop Friday for the vaunted New Year’s Day debut of the Czech Republic.

But even such a magical setting failed to stir Czechs from their mood of melancholy and nagging suspicion that their divorce from Slovakia may prove a sad mistake.

There was no atmosphere of festivity in Prague, despite New Year’s Day being the start of a long holiday weekend for most workers and the Czechs’ usual enthusiasm for any occasion to be marked with music or toasted with beer.

“It’s better to part in peace than to end up like Yugoslavia. That’s all that can be said about this date,” said Ladislav Sticha, 23, a construction worker who brought his 2-month-old daughter to an ecumenical service in Prague Cathedral marking the birth of the new state “because it was supposed to be historic.”

The country’s new moniker, provisionally “the Czech Republic,” grates on nearly everyone. Many said they already miss the familiar simplicity of “Czechoslovakia” and complained that their streamlined country needs a less cumbersome name. The debate continues but no one seems impressed with the suggestions of “Czecho,” “Czechland” and “Czechia.”

Unenthused by the prospects of prosperity now that they are free of the poorer Slovaks, many Czechs say they feel a lurking guilt, as if they had turned away from a struggling relative who proudly claims to need nobody’s help.

And then there is the undeniable geographic loss, raising fears of vulnerability because the country has become considerably smaller overnight. The new Czech Republic is less than two thirds the size of the federation that harmoniously housed Czechs and Slovaks for 74 years.

“We are now lying between the economic powerhouse of Germany and the mass of land and people in Russia,” said Jiri Vurma, 46, a commercial artist. “I never felt so surrounded before.”

“I try to be hopeful,” architect Anna Suchankova said of her new country, mustering a tight-lipped smile that confirmed that her veneer of optimism required effort. “Like most of us, I was in favor of staying together. But once it happened, when the Slovaks said they wanted independence, what could we do to stop them? Then we were a whole country. Now we are something less.”

Zdenek Zak said he didn’t know how he should feel when he woke up Friday morning, having spent his entire 38 years as a citizen of one country, then suddenly, overnight, belonging to another.

“On one hand, I feel relief, that this thing we have had brought on us is over. But on the other hand, I feel sad that it happened at all,” said the aircraft technician who attended the half-hearted ceremonies in Prague Cathedral.

Zak said he had come to the cultural soul of the capital more in search of an explanation for the federal divorce than to celebrate it.

Summing up the air of emotional indecision, the Prague daily newspaper Lidove Noviny observed that the partition spawned feelings of confusion. It advised readers on the eve of independence, “There’s no reason to celebrate and no need to cry.”

The thousands who attended the cathedral event and a later gala concert arrived and left emanating an aura of resignation.

“We have to be realists,” said Blazena Pacaltova, a 78-year-old retired schoolteacher swathed in fur against the icy evening mist. “It will be difficult for all of us, but we have good leaders and we ordinary people will just have to work harder for the common good. I only regret that I’m not young enough to do more for my new country.”

Separation of the Czech and Slovak republics was opposed by the majority of people in both states, according to opinion polls. But neither republic leadership would submit to a referendum on the issue, despite a petition drive that garnered 2.5 million signatures calling for a popular vote.

The breakup of Czechoslovakia became inevitable after June, 1992, elections gave the republic leaders conflicting mandates. The more prosperous Czechs, numbering about 10 million, endorsed rapid transition to a Western-style market economy, as advocated by Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, while the 5 million Slovaks living in the poorer eastern third of the federation backed their populist premier, Vladimir Meciar, who promised a slower and less painful disengagement from central planning.

Those differences over the pace of reform and recovery from more than 40 years of Communist rule fanned ethnic tensions and prompted Klaus and Meciar to declare no recourse other than a negotiated split.

In an address from Prague Castle where the new Czech Republic was proclaimed, Klaus called for fruitful relations with all neighbors, especially with the Slovaks.

“I do not want to claim our relations with Slovakia will always be smooth and entirely without conflict,” Klaus warned his fellow Czechs. “But our primary concern is that Slovakia prosper economically and that it maintain political pluralism.”

Vaclav Havel, the famed playwright who led the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that overthrew communism here and then became president of the federation, listened to Klaus’ address from the back of the castle’s ornate Vladislav Hall, modestly resuming the role of ordinary citizen now that his federal office has ceased to exist.

Havel remains hugely popular, however, and Klaus recognizes his value as an internationally respected statesman, factors expected to propel Havel into the role of Czech president once the administrative framework is completed.

The new Czech constitution calls for a two-house Parliament to replace the single-chamber republic assembly, and Prague’s politicians are still wrangling over details of the transformation. Once the legislature is composed, the deputies will select the head of state. Havel faces no serious competition.

Sixty-eight countries extended formal diplomatic ties to the Czech Republic on the day it was proclaimed, the CTK news agency reported. No comparable figures were given for Slovakia, but Meciar was quoted as saying recognition was proceeding smoothly.

In a speech Friday in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital, Meciar, whom critics accuse of being too authoritarian, issued a veiled warning to political opponents and leaders of the new country’s 500,000-member ethnic Hungarian community, according to the British news agency Reuters.

“I think it will be appropriate for all members of the Slovak Parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the new constitution which would remove any doubts . . . that it does not apply to them,” Reuters reported Meciar as saying.

Reuters said his remarks were aimed at the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) of former Premier Jan Carnogursky, which voted against the new constitution, arguing that it placed too much power in the hands of the government and the ruling party.

To the ethnic Hungarians, Meciar said: “Respect of differences between people must never be placed above the interests of the whole. Slovakia is the motherland of all its citizens, including national minorities.”