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Czechoslovakia (1918-1993) Czechoslovakia was founded after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It included the former imperial provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, part of Silesia, Slovakia, and part of Ruthenia. Like the defunct empire, Czechoslovakia was a multiethnic country. The two dominant ethnic groups, Czechs and Slovaks, totaled only 67 percent of the population, the others were Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenes, and many others.
Between the two world wars, Czechoslovakia was quite prosperous and technologically advanced. It was a relatively stable democracy. It had only two presidents, Tomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes.
The wealth was not evenly distributed. The western Czech part, consisting of Bohemia and Moravia, was more developed than Slovakia in the east. The Slovaks resented what they considered the patronizing attitude of the Czechs. The country's minorities, especially the Germans and the Hungarians, did not wish to be part of Czechoslovakia but of their respective homelands. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he supported the secessionist demands of the ethnic Germans in the region of Sudeten, Bohemia.
In 1938, Sudeten was the first region to be annexed to Nazi Germany. The Munich agreement, in which the annexation was approved by great powers in a futile attempt to prevent the outbreak of World War II, became a symbol of the dangers of appeasement. Czechoslovakia continued to exist for the following six months, and was dismembered in March 1939. Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by Nazi Germany, Slovakia was established as a separate fascist state, Ruthenia was ceded to Hungary, and Silesia to Poland.
Czechoslovakia emerged from World War II as a model Soviet satellite state. The tight grip of the communist government began to loosen in 1963. In 1968, the more liberal elements of the Communist government attempted to further liberalize the country by guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion, and introducing sweeping economic reforms. The attempt was crushed by the invasion of 600,000 Soviet and other East Block troops. The resistance was generally nonviolent. From 1968 to 1989, Czechoslovakia seemed to be a country of a politically apathetic population ruled by aging communist hard liners and bureaucrats.
Political change swept through eastern Europe in 1989. Civic Forum, a group of dissenting intellectuals led by the writer Vaclav Havel, emerged as the leading opposition organization to the Communist party. In 1990, in the first post-communist elections, Vaclav Havel was elected president. In 1992, in negotiations between Czechs and Slovaks, it was decided to break Czechoslovakia into two separate states. In 1993, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist.
Interwar Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia emerged from the rubble of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. For 20 years the new state operated a functional and relatively prosperous democracy, even as its neighbors succumbed to fascism and authoritarianism. But this internal strength was not enough; when Nazi Germany pressed its claims on Czechoslovakia's German-populated Sudeten borderland, the Czech leaders had to accede to the destruction of their Republic. The Munich Agreement of September 1938 has since haunted the Czechs and the world.
Even so, Czechoslovakia got off to a promising start. Through the assertive and wise diplomacy of Tomas Masaryk and Edward Benes during World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks received independence from the Habsburgs on extremely advantageous terms. The Paris Peace Conference accepted the historic borders of Bohemia and Moravia, thereby giving western Czechoslovakia a mountainous perimeter, but also a three million strong German minority.
Slovakia, on the other hand, more closely fit ethnic boundaries, though strategic rectifications included 600,000 Hungarians on the Czechoslovak side of the border. For lack of a better solution, small and backwards Subcarpathian Ruthenia ended up as the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia. It also happened to give the new state a border with its ally Romania.
The mishmash of justifications for Czechoslovakia's borders put it in a contradictory position. Its leaders had based their territorial claims on the Wilsonian (and Leninist) argument of national self-determination, but at the same time strategic concerns prevented them from extending self-determination to the German minority. Interwar Czechoslovakia was a true multi-national state, like the Habsburg Empire had been, and it faced many of the same problems in governing that its predecessor did.
The Czechs were the most numerous ethnic group in the country, occupying the central portions of Bohemia and Moravia. Germans lived in the outer regions of these two provinces in an area called the Sudetenland. The Germans of Czechoslovakia were accustomed to living better than the Czechs, as they had under the Habsburg Empire. Their position as a national minority in the new state bred resentment.
The Slovaks were around one half as numerous as the Czechs. Culturally they were quite different. Having suffered for 1,000 years as a neglected minority in Hungary, they lacked the sizable intelligentsia that had emerged in the Czech lands during the nineteenth century. The illiteracy rate was much higher in Slovakia, and the Slovaks tended to be more pious in their Catholicism. Their language was closely related to Czech, and many Czech and Slovak intellectuals considered themselves to be a part of a unified Czechoslovak ethnicity. As a result, the censuses of the interwar period did not contain separate statistics for Czechs and Slovaks. Even so, real cultural differences produced a strong Slovak autonomy movement by the 1930s.
The Hungarians in Slovakia desired only to be unified with Hungary. They constantly opposed the Czechoslovak government, and their dissatisfaction served to sour the Republic's already dismal relations with Hungary.
The Subcarpathian Ruthenians were a subset of the Ukrainian nation. A largely peasant people, with a high illiteracy rate, they had a low level of national consciousness in 1918. Though the Czechoslovak constitution promised them autonomy, the central government thought them too backwards to manage their own affairs.
Given the wide array of nationalities in the new state, the first issue the Republic's leaders faced was the problem of minority representation. Masaryk and other founding fathers felt that the Germans could not be trusted with autonomy, especially given their expressed desire to leave Czechoslovakia to join Austria and/or Germany. Even so, Masaryk and a strong majority of the Czech and Slovak people insisted that the country be founded on democratic principles.
The system best suited to these specifications was a parliamentary government with proportional representation. Political parties would put candidate lists on the ballot. Voters would cast their vote for a party, which would then receive a number of seats proportional to their percentage of the vote. In this way, minorities were sure to receive representation in parliament commensurate with their numbers.
One unfortunate bi-product of this system was a proliferation of parties. In the Czechoslovak case, fifteen or more parties came to be represented in parliament. The vote was so widely distributed that no fewer than five parties were required in coalitions to form a viable government. Such an inclusive government promised to be unmanageable, given the sometimes-conflicting nature of party platforms. To forestall destructive factionalism, coalition party leaders developed a system known as the Petka (Group of Five), which brought them together in an informal club. As a result, all major disputes took place in back room Petka meetings, and the government maintained a united front for public consumption.
The parties represented in the government ranged from Socialist to Agrarian (peasant) to Christian, and even included some German parties after 1926. The first elections after World War I produced a left-wing plurality. A brief Socialist-Agrarian (red-green) government in 1919-20 fell when the Socialist party's own left began agitating for a radical program. Masaryk quickly appointed a non-partisan government of experts until new elections could confirm the rapidly-changing political mood of the country. In early 1921 the Socialist left split off to form the Czechoslovak Communist Party (CPC), which would remain in opposition for the duration of the First Republic (1918-1938).
Under the government of experts, five of the major political parties put together the Petka as a political advisory board for the non-partisan ministers. Its first incarnation included the Social Democrats, the National Socials, the Agrarians, the Catholics, and the National Democrats. The first two parties had much in common with West European Social Democratic parties, though the National Socials were less internationalist in their outlook. They both favored land reform, worker protections, and other social reforms, but all through democratic means.
The Agrarians, led by the perennial Prime Minister, Antonin Svehla, were a sophisticated peasant party, favoring land reform and the protection of private property. The Catholics were similar to Christian Socialists under the Habsburg Empire, though they had to share a large portion of the Catholic vote with the Agrarians. They supported a combination of pro-Christian legislation and social reform. The National Democrats were the farthest right of the coalition parties, representing primarily industrialists and financiers. Their nationalism would lead them to flirt with fascism in the 1930s, but they remained a government party throughout the 1920s.
The government of experts was phased out in 1921-22 and a new Petka government took its place under the Premiership of Svehla. Throughout the years of red-green-black partnership, which ended temporarily in 1926, the government passed a number of social reforms. In the most sweeping land reform in Europe at the time, Czechoslovakia redistributed around 10% of the country's land. The government's primary target was the non-native aristocracy, many of whom did not live in Czechoslovakia. Workers also won many of their legislative goals, including an eight hour workday, unemployment insurance, and the right to bargain collectively.
In 1926 an electoral swing broke up the red-green-black coalition, which only managed to garner 45% of the vote. Svehla formed a new bourgeois coalition that excluded the Social Democrats and added middle class German parties and Slovak Catholics (Populists). Three years later, the voters shifted their support again, forcing an eight party coalition with the Social Democrats included once again.
In spite of the country's changes in government, the democratic system stayed strong--unlike the situation in neighboring Poland, Hungary, and Austria, not to mention Germany. Scholars have advanced many theories on why Czechoslovakia remained democratic as authoritarianism swept Europe. On the surface, the stabilizing institution of the Petka kept party discipline and prevented frequent changes in government that plagued the Poles and others.
But the Petka was the manifestation of a deeper Czechoslovak desire for stability. The country was territorially sated, and bourgeois minded. Czechs and Slovaks tended not to like revolution, either on the left or right, and as a result they supported centrist parties like the Agrarians or moderate socialists, like the Social Democrats. Further adding to the system's stability was the leadership of Tomas Masaryk, President from 1918-1935. A philosophically-minded politician, he tirelessly promoted democracy and humanism.
Economic success during the 1920s helped a great deal too. Czechoslovakia inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire a productive industrial and financial infrastructure. Though the country encountered problems finding markets for its products in the early 1920s, its output relative to its neighbors was favorable. In addition, the Czech lands had developed a balanced social structure during the nineteenth century. A wealthy and assertive bourgeoisie, an active and self-conscious working class, and a proud land owning peasantry found a healthy balance both economically and politically.
The depression of the early 1930s put an end to Czechoslovak prosperity, as it did to economies throughout Europe. An agricultural downturn led to protectionism and trade wars with Hungary and other neighbors. Industry lost export markets, and production dropped dramatically. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
The economic disaster hit hardest in the German speaking Sudetenland. The Germans were most dependent on industry, and many of their products, such as fine glassware, suffered from declining demand. The government made an effort to help hard-hit areas, but their aid tended to favor Czech producers over Germans. Resentment grew among the Germans, who had supported and even taken part in the government after 1926.
After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Sudeten Germans began to receive outside encouragement in favor of autonomy. A fascist-inspired (and Hitler-supported) Sudeten German Party (SdP) emerged under the leadership of Konrad Henlein in 1934. In 1935 elections the SdP won 65% of the German vote. In the next few years its support grew, until 85% of Germans voted for SdP candidates in 1938 municipal elections. The new party began almost immediately to call for autonomy.
Under Hitler's prompting, Henlein escalated his demands in 1937 and 1938 until the Czechoslovak government had little more room for compromise. After Hitler annexed Austria in March of 1938, he turned his diplomacy of force on Czechoslovakia. He pressured Britain and France to request that Czechoslovakia give up the Sudetenland. Fearing war and hoping to appease Hitler, Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier pressured Benes to yield. Czechoslovakia at first refused, but an ultimatum devised at Munich on September 29 led Benes to back down.
Britain and France had abandoned Czechoslovakia, and Benes saw little hope of defending the country against Germany. There has been much debate about the wisdom of his decision. Military leaders felt that the disciplined and well-equipped Czechoslovak army could have resisted the Germans for at least six weeks, a breathing space that would have allowed world opinion to sway in the Republic's favor. Many political leaders felt Benes had the moral responsibility to resist aggression; they thought that long term national morale would be irreparably damaged by capitulation. Benes and his supporters countered that it was most important to preserve the physical existence of the nation. In retrospect, Benes appears to have faced a moral dilemma; either choice implied a terrible loss.
The ultimate blame for Munich lies with France and Great Britain. The British pressured Benes to give Hitler the Sudetenland, and the French, in spite of treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia, let Chamberlain have his way. Students of diplomacy have drawn a number of lessons from Munich. Foremost, appeasement of an aggressive power is almost sure to lead to more demands. The way to avoid such situations is through strong collective security agreements.
For the Czechoslovaks, and especially Benes, the lessons of Munich were: 1) that Western powers do not always honor their treaties; 2) that democracies will not necessarily step in to defend fellow democracies; and 3) that the German minority in Czechoslovakia would have to be physically removed to prevent future German demands for territory.
The truncated Czechoslovak Republic did not last long. At Hitler's urging, Benes resigned as President almost immediately after Munich. The new government, under the weak President Emile Hacha, became little more than a German client state. In March of 1939, Hitler pressured Hacha into accepting a German Protectorate over what was left of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovakia became an independent fascist state, a puppet of the Germans.
For the next six years, the Czechs suffered the humiliation and oppression of a German occupation. Their embarrassment fueled a silent rage that would burst forth in 1945 upon their liberation. In the year following the end of the war, the Czechs forcibly expelled most of the 3.5 million Germans who had lived in Bohemia and Moravia for hundreds of years.
Sources:
Campbell, Gregory. "Central Europe's Bastion of Democracy," East European Quarterly, Summer 1977.
Komjathy, Anthony and Stockwell, Rebecca. German Minorities and the Third Reich. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980.
Korbel, Josef. Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of its History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Rothschild, Joseph. East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992 [1974].
D. Bosnyak Joseph Held, ed., The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995. Chapter 4: Czechoslovakia
Grolier's Encyclopedia
E. Glassheim