Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia (Czech and Slovak: Československo) was a nation bordering East and West Germany, Poland, Austria and Hungary. It was later divided into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic of central/eastern Europe. Its capital was Prague.
Contents
Geography
Czechoslovakia contained 127,905 square kilometers. It was divided into three major areas: Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia. The main river in the country was the Danube, and the main mountain range was the Carpathians.
History
The area was long part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I and the new state was born.
The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, when philologists and educators, influenced by Romanticism, promoted of the Czech language and pride in the Czech nation. Nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century. Taking advantage of the opportunities for limited participation in political life available under Austrian rule, Czech leaders such as Frantisek Palacky founded numerous patriotic, self-help organizations that provided a chance for many of their compatriots to participate in communal life even prior to independence.
Bohemia and Moravia, under Austrian rule, were Czech-speaking major industrial centers, while Slovakia, which was part of Hungary, was an undeveloped agrarian region. Conditions were much better for the development of a mass national movement in the Czech lands than in Slovakia. Nevertheless the two movements and created the new nation.
The period between the two world wars saw the flowering of democracy in Czechoslovakia. Of all the new states established in central Europe after 1918, only Czechoslovakia preserved a democratic government until it was ended by outside forces. The persistence of democracy in part reflected the fact that the preconditions for maintaining democracy were better in Czechoslovakia than elsewhere in the region. Thus, despite regional disparities, its level of development was much higher than that of neighboring states. The population was by and large literate, and contained fewer alienated groups. The impact of these conditions was augmented by 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 diffuse discontent.
By a major blunder in 1919 the nation included "Sudetenland" an outer fringe region that comprised 3 million Germans, who wanted no part in the new country and who were treated as second class citizens by the new government in Prague. The original idea was that the Sudetenland had hilly areas that made feasible a military defense; far more dangerous was the German element, which after 1933 became allied with the Nazis in Germany. In 1938 Hitler demanded control of the Sudetenland, and the major powers at the Munich Conference gave it to them, ignoring the military alliance Czechoslovakia had with France. In 1939 the Nazis took over the rest of the the country, split it apart, and ruled cruelly during World War II. Growing Slovak inferiority complex hostile to the more numerous Czech population weakened Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. Many Slovaks supported an extreme nationalist movement and welcomed the puppet Slovak state set up under Hitler's control in 1939.
With no army, the area became an industrial and agricultural resource for the Nazis; relatively few civilians were killed in the war, but the sense of bitterness over the betrayal at Munich persisted.
Eduard Benes, the prewar president who had led the Czechoslovak liberation movement from London resumed his position as head of state. Soviet influence was exerted through the Red Army; Stalin refused to allow the country to join the Marshall Plan. he had his own plan, and in Feb. 1948 Benes died mysteriously and the local Communists seized control. The old elite was exiled, imprisoned or killed and the country became a satellite of the Soviet Union. The Communist takeover was a major factor that caused the Cold War.
1968=
"Prague Spring" was a liberalization movement seeking to reform the Czechoslovak government on principles of freedom of speech and religion.
On August 21, 1968 the Soviet Union and its satellite Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to crush Prague Spring, and execute its leaders.
Velvet Revolution 1989
In 1989, as the Soviet Union began to dissolve, Czechoslovakia staged the Velvet Revolution and became democratic again.
Split
On January 1, 1993 the country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both are now NATO members.
Korbel
Josef Korbel (1909-77) was a diplomat of Jewish descent who served successively as Jan Masaryk's personal secretary, head of the broadcasting department of the Czech government-in-exile in London, youngest Czech ambassador at age 36 to postwar Yugoslavia, and chairman of the UN Commission on India and Pakistan which settled the Kashmir crisis. Exiled after the 1948 Communist coup d'etat, Korbel began a second distinguished career in academia, teaching at the University of Denver and publishing numerous works on political and diplomatic history and explaining the failures of Communism. His shaped two secretaries of state--his PhD student Condoleezza Rice (b. 1954) and his daughter Madelaine Korbel Albright (b. 1937)
Religion
The land of Czechoslovakia contained many different religions affiliations. The main ones were: Roman Catholic Church, Czechoslovak National Church, Slovak Evangelical Church, Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and Uniate Church. The majority of inhabitants were Roman Catholic. There were also a small number of Jews. After the communist takeover religion was suppressed, even though the constitution allowed freedom of religion. Between 1948 and 1968, the number of catholic priests declined by half, and half the remaining clergy were over sixty years of age[1]. The communist governments promoted atheism through the use of harassment and propaganda, and they also promoted it in schools by ordering teachers to attack religion.
Demography
In 1987 Czechs represented 63% of population and Slovaks 31%, with Hungarian and other minorities at 5%. In 1986, the population was 15.5 million with a low a population growth rate of 0.3. The life expectancy in 1984 was sixty-seven years for men and seventy-four years for women. The major cities in 1986 were:
- Prague, 1.2 million population
- Bratislava, 417,103
- Brünn, 385,684
- Ostrava, 327,791
- Kosice, 222,175
- Pilsen, 175,244
Two-thirds of the people lived in cities and towns. There were two official languages, Czech and Slovak, but the old sense of Slovak inferiority never vanished and led to the split shortly after the nation became free of Communism.
Further reading
- Heimann, Mary. Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed (2009). the best scholarly history in English, but with a negative tone stressing maltreatment of minorities.
- Leff, Carol Skalnick. National Conflict in Czechoslovakia: The Making and Remaking of a State, 1918-87 (1988)
- Naimark, Norman, and Leonid Gibianskii, eds. The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944-1949 (1997) online edition
- Paul, David. Czechoslovakia: Profile of a Socialist Republic at the Crossroads of Europe (1990)
- Wheaton, Bernard; Zdenek Kavav. "The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988-1991". (1992).
- Wolchik, Sharon L. Czechoslovakia: Politics, Society, and Economics (1990)
- online books and articles
Library of Congress Country Studies Czechoslovakia in Public Domain