A steel mill sends plumes of smoke into the air of Kosice, Slovakia's second largest city. At the time of Czechoslovakia's split in 1993, a quarter million people inhabited the steel town including Hungarians, Ruthenians, Gypsies, and Poles—a cosmopolitan minority which made up 14% of the new country's population.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Czechoslovakia: The Velvet Divorce," September 1993, National Geographic magazine)