Czechoslovakia was a country in Central Europe. The country was bordered by Austria and Hungary to the south, Germany to the west and northwest, Poland to the northeast, and Ukraine to the southeast. Czechoslovakia had a hilly and mostly mountainous landscape that covered an area of with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city was Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň, Liberec, Bratislava and Košice.
Championed by nationalists and first presidents Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia declared independence in 1918 amid the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and had its sovereignty affirmed in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the Sudetenland was annexed by Nazi Germany while the Second Czechoslovak Republic was formed as a client state. In 1939, the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed while the Slovak Republic was administered separately and Carpathian Ruthenia was annexed by Hungary. Although the state thus ceased to exist, following the outbreak of World War II, Beneš formed a government-in-exile that was recognised by the Allies.
Following liberation by the Red Army in 1944 and 1945, Czechoslovakia was re-established under its pre-1938 borders, with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the Ukrainian SSR (a republic of the Soviet Union). The Communist Party seized power in a coup in 1948 and afterward, Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc with a planned economy. Its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949 and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of 1955. A period of political liberalization in 1968, the Prague Spring, ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by other Warsaw Pact countries, invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1989, as Marxist–Leninist governments and communism were ending all over Central and Eastern Europe, Czechoslovaks peacefully deposed their communist government during the Velvet Revolution, which began on 17 November 1989 and ended 11 days later on 28 November when all of the top Communist leaders and the Communist party itself resigned. On 31 December 1992, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Characteristics Form of state 1918–1937: A democratic republic championed by Tomáš Masaryk. 1938–1939: After the annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A strip of southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia was redeemed by Hungary, and the Trans-Olza region was annexed by Poland. 1939–1945: The remainder of the state was dismembered and became split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic, while the rest of Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied and annexed by Hungary. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and their Allies; after the German invasion of Soviet Union, it was also recognized by the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948: The country was governed by a coalition government with communist ministers, including the prime minister and the minister of interior. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union. 1948–1989: The country became a Marxist-Leninist state under Soviet domination with a command economy. In 1960, the country officially became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a satellite state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990: Czechoslovakia formally became a federal republic comprising the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic. In late 1989, the communist rule came to an end during the Velvet Revolution followed by the re-establishment of a democratic parliamentary republic. 1990–1992: Shortly after the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (Slovakia) until the peaceful dissolution on 31 December 1992.
Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany (both predecessors, West Germany and East Germany, were neighbors between 1949 and 1990) Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 (Soviet Union member until 1991) Topography The country was of generally irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands. The eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin.
Climate The weather was characterized by mild to cold winters and mild to warm summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, the Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The country was situated in the transition zone between the oceanic and continental climate types.
Names
1918–1938: Czechoslovak Republic (abbreviated ČSR), or Czechoslovakia, before the formalization of the name in 1920, also known as Czecho-Slovakia or the Czecho-Slovak state 1938–1939: Czecho-Slovak Republic, or Czecho-Slovakia 1945–1960: Czechoslovak Republic (ČSR), or Czechoslovakia 1960–1990: Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR), or Czechoslovakia 1990: Czechoslovak Federative Republic (ČSFR) 1990–1992: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (ČSFR), or Czechoslovakia
History
Origins
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 Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his close ally Edvard Beneš (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 František Palacký (1798–1876) founded various patriotic self-help organizations which provided a chance for many of their compatriots to participate in communal life before independence. Palacký 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 Kramář 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.PRECLÍK, Vratislav. Masaryk a legie (Masaryk and legions), váz. kniha, 219 str., vydalo nakladatelství Paris Karviná, Žižkova 2379 (734 01 Karviná) ve spolupráci s Masarykovým demokratickým hnutím (Masaryk Democratic Movement, Prague), 2019, , pp. 8 – 52, 57 – 120, 124 – 128, 140 – 148, 184 – 190 With the outbreak of World War I, Masaryk began working for Czech independence in a union with Slovakia. With Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Masaryk visited several Western countries and won support from influential publicists.Z. A. B. Zeman, The Masaryks: The Making of Czechoslovakia (1976) The Czechoslovak National Council was the main organization that advanced the claims for a Czechoslovak state.
First Czechoslovak Republic
Formation
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.
Ethnicity
The new country was a multi-ethnic state, with Czechs and Slovaks as constituent peoples. The population consisted of Czechs (51%), Germans (22%), Slovaks (16%), Hungarians (5%) and Rusyns (4%)."The War of the World", Niall Ferguson Allen Lane 2006. Many of the Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles and some Slovaks, felt oppressed because the political elite did not generally allow political autonomy for minority ethnic groups., Prague Post, 6 July 2005 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 Czechoslovakism as its official ideology, defining the population as a single Czechoslovak nation rather than distinct Czech and Slovak ethnicities. This unifying doctrine was met with significant resistance and disagreement from Slovak nationalists and other ethnic minorities within the country. 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 Germans.
Ethnicities of Czechoslovakia in 1921Škorpila F. B.; Zeměpisný atlas pro měšťanské školy; Státní Nakladatelství; second edition; 1930; Czechoslovakia 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 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%.
Interwar period 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 Beneš became the prime architect of the Czechoslovak-Romanian-Yugoslav alliance (the "Little Entente," 1921–38) directed against Hungarian attempts to reclaim lost areas. Beneš 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. The increasing feeling of inferiority among the Slovaks, 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.
After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in central and eastern Europe.