Once home to much of Czechoslovakia’s heavy industry - exporting arms and heavy machinery to the former Soviet bloc - Slovakia bore a disproportionate share of the costs incurred by the transition from communism in the early 1990s. High unemployment and a fall in real incomes led Slovaks to reject the reforms that were seen as imposed by the Czech leaders – who were more pro-market and pro-Western than Slovak politicians of the era. At the time of the country’s break-up, in 1992, the per capita income in Slovakia, expressed in purchasing power parity, was merely 62 per cent of that in the Czech Republic.