Toma? Garrigue Masaryk
, founder and first president
Czechoslovak troops in Vladivostok (1918)
Czechoslovak declaration of independence
rally in Prague on Wenceslas Square, 28 October 1918
The area was part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire
until it collapsed at the end of
World War I
. The new state was founded by
Toma? Garrigue Masaryk
,
[13]
who served as its first president from 14?November 1918 to 14?December 1935. He was succeeded by his close ally
Edvard Bene?
(1884?1948).
The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, when philologists and educators, influenced by
Romanticism
, promoted the
Czech language
and pride in the
Czech people
. Nationalism became a mass movement in the second half of the 19th century. Taking advantage of the limited opportunities for participation in political life under Austrian rule, Czech leaders such as historian
Franti?ek Palacky
(1798?1876) founded various patriotic, self-help organizations which provided a chance for many of their compatriots to participate in communal life before independence. Palacky supported
Austro-Slavism
and worked for a reorganized federal
Austrian Empire
, which would protect the Slavic speaking peoples of Central Europe against Russian and German threats.
An advocate of democratic reform and Czech autonomy within Austria-Hungary, Masaryk was elected twice to the
Reichsrat
(Austrian Parliament), from 1891 to 1893 for the
Young Czech Party
, and from 1907 to 1914 for the
Czech Realist Party
, which he had founded in 1889 with
Karel Krama?
and
Josef Kaizl
.
During
World War I
a number of Czechs and Slovaks, the
Czechoslovak Legions
, fought with the
Allies
in France and Italy, while large numbers deserted to Russia in exchange for its support for the independence of Czechoslovakia from the Austrian Empire.
[14]
With the outbreak of World War I, Masaryk began working for Czech independence in a union with Slovakia. With Edvard Bene? and
Milan Rastislav ?tefanik
, Masaryk visited several Western countries and won support from influential publicists.
[15]
The
Czechoslovak National Council
was the main organization that advanced the claims for a Czechoslovak state.
[16]
First Czechoslovak Republic
edit
A monument to
Toma? Garrigue Masaryk
and
Milan ?tefanik
?both key figures in early Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia in 1928
The
Bohemian Kingdom
ceased to exist in 1918 when it was incorporated into Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was founded in October 1918, as one of the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of
World War I
and as part of the
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
. It consisted of the present day territories of
Bohemia
,
Moravia
, parts of
Silesia
making up present day
Czech Republic
,
Slovakia
, and a region of present-day
Ukraine
called
Carpathian Ruthenia
. Its territory included some of the most industrialized regions of the former Austria-Hungary.
Linguistic map of Czechoslovakia in 1930
The new country was a multi-ethnic state, with Czechs and Slovaks as
constituent peoples
. The population consisted of
Czechs
(51%),
Slovaks
(16%),
Germans
(22%),
Hungarians
(5%) and
Rusyns
(4%).
[17]
Many of the Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles
[18]
and some Slovaks, felt oppressed because the political elite did not generally allow political autonomy for minority ethnic groups.
[
citation needed
]
This policy led to unrest among the non-Czech population, particularly in German-speaking
Sudetenland
, which initially had proclaimed itself part of the
Republic of German-Austria
in accordance with the
self-determination
principle.
The state proclaimed the official ideology that there were no separate Czech and Slovak nations, but only one nation of Czechoslovaks (see
Czechoslovakism
), to the disagreement of Slovaks and other ethnic groups. Once a unified Czechoslovakia was restored after World War II (after the country had been divided during the war), the conflict between the
Czechs
and the
Slovaks
surfaced again. The governments of Czechoslovakia and other Central European nations deported ethnic Germans, reducing the presence of minorities in the nation. Most of the Jews had been killed during the war by the Nazis.
Ethnicities of Czechoslovakia in 1921
[19]
|
Czechs
and
Slovaks
|
8,759,701
|
64.37%
|
Germans
|
3,123,305
|
22.95%
|
Hungarians
|
744,621
|
5.47%
|
Ruthenians
|
461,449
|
3.39%
|
Jews
|
180,534
|
1.33%
|
Poles
|
75,852
|
0.56%
|
Others
|
23,139
|
0.17%
|
Foreigners
|
238,784
|
1.75%
|
Total population
|
13,607,385
|
|
Ethnicities of Czechoslovakia in 1930
[20]
|
Czechs
and
Slovaks
|
10,066,000
|
68.35%
|
Germans
|
3,229,000
|
21.93%
|
Ruthenians
|
745,000
|
5.06%
|
Hungarians
|
653,000
|
4.43%
|
Jews
|
354,000
|
2.40%
|
Poles
|
76,000
|
0.52%
|
Romanians
|
14,000
|
0.10%
|
Foreigners
|
239,000
|
1.62%
|
Total population
|
14,726,158
|
|
*Jews identified themselves as Germans or Hungarians (and Jews only by religion not ethnicity), the sum is, therefore, more than 100%.
During the period between the two world wars Czechoslovakia was a democratic state. The population was generally literate, and contained fewer alienated groups. The influence of these conditions was augmented by the political values of Czechoslovakia's leaders and the policies they adopted. Under
Tomas Masaryk
, Czech and Slovak politicians promoted progressive social and economic conditions that served to defuse discontent.
Foreign minister Bene? became the prime architect of the Czechoslovak-Romanian-Yugoslav alliance (the "
Little Entente
", 1921?38) directed against Hungarian attempts to reclaim lost areas. Bene? worked closely with France. Far more dangerous was the German element, which after 1933 became allied with the Nazis in Germany.
Czech-Slovak relations came to be a central issue in Czechoslovak politics during the 1930s.
[21]
The increasing feeling of inferiority among the Slovaks,
[22]
[
failed verification
]
who were hostile to the more numerous Czechs, weakened the country in the late 1930s. Slovakia became autonomous in the fall of 1938, and by mid-1939, Slovakia had become independent, with the
First Slovak Republic
set up as a
satellite state
of Nazi Germany and the far-right
Slovak People's Party
in power .
[23]
After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in central and eastern Europe.
[24]
Munich Agreement, and Two-Step German Occupation
edit
The partition of Czechoslovakia after
Munich Agreement
The car in which
Reinhard Heydrich
was fatally injured in 1942
Territory of the
Second Czechoslovak Republic
(1938?1939)
In September 1938,
Adolf Hitler
demanded control of the
Sudetenland
. On 29?September 1938, Britain and France ceded control in the
Appeasement
at the
Munich Conference
; France ignored the military alliance it had with Czechoslovakia. During October 1938,
Nazi Germany
occupied the Sudetenland border region, effectively crippling Czechoslovak defences.
The
First Vienna Award
assigned a strip of southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary. Poland
occupied
Zaolzie, an area whose population was majority Polish, in October 1938.
On 14 March 1939, the remainder ("rump") of Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the proclamation of the
Slovak State
, the next day the rest of
Carpathian Ruthenia
was occupied and annexed by Hungary, while the following day the German
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
was proclaimed.
The eventual goal of the German state under Nazi leadership was to eradicate Czech nationality through assimilation, deportation, and extermination of the Czech intelligentsia; the intellectual elites and middle class made up a considerable number of the 200,000 people who passed through concentration camps and the 250,000 who died during German occupation.
[25]
Under
Generalplan Ost
, it was assumed that around 50% of Czechs would be fit for
Germanization
. The Czech intellectual elites were to be removed not only from Czech territories but from Europe completely. The authors of
Generalplan Ost
believed it would be best if they emigrated overseas, as even in
Siberia
they were considered a threat to German rule. Just like Jews, Poles, Serbs, and several other nations, Czechs were considered to be
untermenschen
by the Nazi state.
[26]
In 1940, in a secret Nazi plan for the Germanization of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia it was declared that those considered to be of racially Mongoloid origin and the Czech intelligentsia were not to be Germanized.
[27]
The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized under the direction of
Reinhard Heydrich
, and the fortress town of
Terezin
was made into a ghetto way station for Jewish families. On 4?June 1942 Heydrich died after being wounded by an assassin in
Operation Anthropoid
. Heydrich's successor, Colonel General
Kurt Daluege
, ordered mass arrests and executions and the destruction of the villages of
Lidice
and
Le?aky
. In 1943 the German war effort was accelerated. Under the authority of
Karl Hermann Frank
, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia, some 350,000 Czech laborers were dispatched to the Reich. Within the protectorate, all non-war-related industry was prohibited. Most of the Czech population obeyed quiescently up until the final months preceding the end of the war, while thousands were involved in the
resistance movement
.
For the Czechs of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia,
German occupation
was a period of brutal oppression. Czech losses resulting from political persecution and deaths in concentration camps totaled between 36,000 and 55,000. The Jewish populations of
Bohemia
and
Moravia
(118,000 according to the 1930 census) were virtually annihilated. Many Jews emigrated after 1939; more than 70,000 were killed; 8,000 survived at Terezin. Several thousand Jews managed to live in freedom or in hiding throughout the occupation.
Despite the estimated 136,000 deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime, the population in the Reichsprotektorate saw a net increase during the war years of approximately 250,000 in line with an increased birth rate.
[28]
On 6 May 1945, the third US Army of General Patton entered
Pilsen
from the south west. On 9?May 1945, Soviet Red Army troops entered
Prague
.
Third and Fourth Republics
edit
Socialist
coat of arms
in 1960?1989
After World War II, pre-war Czechoslovakia was reestablished, with the exception of Sub
carpathian Ruthenia
, which was annexed by the
Soviet Union
and incorporated into the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
. The
Bene? decrees
were promulgated concerning ethnic Germans (see
Potsdam Agreement
) and ethnic Hungarians. Under the decrees,
citizenship
was abrogated for people of German and Hungarian
ethnic origin
who had accepted German or Hungarian citizenship during the occupations. In 1948, this provision was cancelled for the Hungarians, but only partially for the Germans. The government then confiscated the property of the Germans and
expelled about 90% of the ethnic German population
, over 2?million people. Those who remained were
collectively accused
of supporting the Nazis after the
Munich Agreement
, as 97.32% of Sudeten Germans had voted for the
NSDAP
in the December 1938 elections. Almost every decree explicitly stated that the sanctions did not apply to antifascists. Some 250,000 Germans, many married to Czechs, some antifascists, and also those required for the post-war reconstruction of the country, remained in Czechoslovakia. The Bene? Decrees still cause controversy among nationalist groups in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Hungary.
[29]
Following the expulsion of the ethnic German population from Czechoslovakia, parts of the former
Sudetenland
, especially around Krnov and the surrounding villages of the
Jesenik
mountain region in northeastern Czechoslovakia, were settled in 1949 by Communist refugees from
Northern Greece
who had left their homeland as a result of the
Greek Civil War
. These
Greeks
made up a large proportion of the town and region's population until the late 1980s/early 1990s. Although defined as "Greeks", the Greek Communist community of Krnov and the Jeseniky region actually consisted of an ethnically diverse population, including
Greek Macedonians
,
Macedonians
,
Vlachs
,
Pontic Greeks
and Turkish speaking
Urums
or
Caucasus Greeks
.
[30]
Spartakiad
in 1960
Carpathian Ruthenia
(Podkarpatska Rus) was occupied by (and in June 1945 formally ceded to) the Soviet Union. In the 1946 parliamentary election, the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
was the winner in the
Czech lands
, and the
Democratic Party
won in Slovakia. In
February 1948 the Communists seized power
. Although they would maintain the fiction of political pluralism through the existence of the
National Front
, except for a short period in the late 1960s (the
Prague Spring
) the country had no
liberal democracy
. Since citizens lacked significant electoral methods of registering protest against government policies, periodically there were street protests that became violent. For example, there were riots in the town of
Plze? in 1953
, reflecting economic discontent. Police and army units put down the rebellion, and hundreds were injured but no one was killed. While its economy remained more advanced than those of its neighbors in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia grew increasingly economically weak relative to Western Europe.
[31]
The currency reform of 1953 caused dissatisfaction among Czechoslovak laborers. To equalize the wage rate, Czechoslovaks had to turn in their old money for new at a decreased value. The banks also confiscated savings and bank deposits to control the amount of money in circulation.
[31]
In the 1950s, Czechoslovakia experienced high economic growth (averaging 7% per year), which allowed for a substantial increase in wages and living standards, thus promoting the stability of the regime.
[32]
Czechoslovakia after 1969
In 1968, when the reformer
Alexander Dub?ek
was appointed to the key post of First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, there was a brief period of liberalization known as the
Prague Spring
. In response, after failing to persuade the Czechoslovak leaders to change course, five other
members of the Warsaw Pact invaded
. Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on the night of 20?21?August 1968.
[33]
Soviet Communist Party General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev
viewed this intervention as vital for the preservation of the Soviet, socialist system and vowed to intervene in any state that sought to replace
Marxism-Leninism
with
capitalism
.
[34]
In the week after the invasion there was a spontaneous campaign of
civil resistance
against the occupation. This resistance involved a wide range of acts of non-cooperation and defiance: this was followed by a period in which the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, having been forced in Moscow to make concessions to the Soviet Union, gradually put the brakes on their earlier liberal policies.
[35]
Meanwhile, one plank of the reform program had been carried out: in 1968?69, Czechoslovakia was turned into a federation of the
Czech Socialist Republic
and
Slovak Socialist Republic
. The theory was that under the federation, social and economic inequities between the Czech and Slovak halves of the state would be largely eliminated. A number of ministries, such as education, now became two formally equal bodies in the two formally equal republics. However, the centralized political control by the Czechoslovak Communist Party severely limited the effects of federalization.
The 1970s saw the rise of the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, represented among others by
Vaclav Havel
. The movement sought greater political participation and expression in the face of official disapproval, manifested in limitations on work activities, which went as far as a ban on professional employment, the refusal of higher education for the dissidents' children, police harassment and prison.
During the 1980s, Czechoslovakia became one of the most tightly controlled Communist regimes in the
Warsaw Pact
in resistance to the mitigation of controls notified by Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev
.
The
Visegrad Group
signing ceremony in February 1991
In 1989, the
Velvet Revolution
restored democracy.
[10]
This occurred around the same time as the fall of communism in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland.
The word "socialist" was removed from the country's full name on 29?March 1990 and replaced by "federal".
Pope John Paul II
made a
papal visit
to Czechoslovakia on 21 April 1990, hailing it as a symbolic step of reviving Christianity in the newly-formed post-communist state.
Czechoslovakia participated in the Gulf War
with a small force of 200 troops under the command of the U.S.-led coalition.
In 1992, because of growing
nationalist
tensions in the government, Czechoslovakia was
peacefully dissolved
by parliament. On the 31st of December 1992, it formally separated into two independent countries, the
Czech Republic
and the
Slovak Republic
.
[10]