Difference between revisions of "Czechoslovakia" - New World Encyclopedia
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The Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia was facilitated by the fact that most of the country had been liberated by the Red Army, as well as the overall social and economic downturn in Europe. In the 1946 parliamentary election, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia emerged as the winner in the Czech lands while the Democratic Party won in Slovakia. In 1947, the Soviet Union and, consequently, its satellites, including Czechoslovakia, turned down [[Marshall Plan]], authored by US State Secretary George Marshall to address the economic needs of war-torn Europe. In February 1948, the Communists seized power and sealed the country’s fate for the next 41 years. Terror reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany followed, with execution of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, forceful collectivization of agriculture, censorship, and land grabs. Economy was controlled by five-year plans and the industry was overhauled in compliance with Soviet wishes to focus on heavy industry, in which Czechoslovakia had been traditionally weak. The economy retained momentum vis-à-vis its Eastern European neighbors but grew increasingly weak vis-à-vis Western Europe. | The Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia was facilitated by the fact that most of the country had been liberated by the Red Army, as well as the overall social and economic downturn in Europe. In the 1946 parliamentary election, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia emerged as the winner in the Czech lands while the Democratic Party won in Slovakia. In 1947, the Soviet Union and, consequently, its satellites, including Czechoslovakia, turned down [[Marshall Plan]], authored by US State Secretary George Marshall to address the economic needs of war-torn Europe. In February 1948, the Communists seized power and sealed the country’s fate for the next 41 years. Terror reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany followed, with execution of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, forceful collectivization of agriculture, censorship, and land grabs. Economy was controlled by five-year plans and the industry was overhauled in compliance with Soviet wishes to focus on heavy industry, in which Czechoslovakia had been traditionally weak. The economy retained momentum vis-à-vis its Eastern European neighbors but grew increasingly weak vis-à-vis Western Europe. | ||
| − | Year 1960 saw the declaration of the victory of socialism, with small businesses stamped out and the country’s name changed to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In early 60s, economic reforms were put in place and gradually grew into the reform of the overall political system referred to as the [[Prague Spring]] {{Main|Prague Spring}}, which was crushed under the tanks of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The period of ‘normalization’ followed, | + | Year 1960 saw the declaration of the victory of socialism, with small businesses stamped out and the country’s name changed to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In early 60s, economic reforms were put in place and gradually grew into the reform of the overall political system referred to as the [[Prague Spring]] {{Main|Prague Spring}}, which was crushed under the tanks of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The period of ‘normalization’ followed—the reforms were repealed, which, compounded by apolitical, military and union purges thrust the country back into 1950s. The dissident movement, epitomized by the future Czech President Václav Havel, worked underground to counter the regime. Finally, the economic crisis in 1980s facilitated the shift toward democracy. |
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==Velvet Revolution== | ==Velvet Revolution== | ||
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Czechoslovakia (Czech and Slovak: Československo, or (increasingly after 1990) in Slovak Česko-Slovensko) was a country in Central Europe that existed from October 28, 1918, when it declared independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992, with a brief intermezzo during World War II. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. During the 74 years of its existence, it saw several changes in the political and economic climate, the longest one being as a satellite of the Communist Soviet Union with a centrally planned economy. It consisted of two predominant ethnic groups—Czechs and Slovaks—both of the Slavic origin, with the population and geographic split roughly 2:1. Although Czechs and Slovaks had had different histories, they envisioned the joint state as a vehicle toward peace and the leveling of economic discrepancies, as articulated by Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, who became the country's first president. World War II interrupted the coexistence, with Slovakia declaring independence as an ally of the Nazi Germany and the Czech lands handed over to Hitler by the Allies to appease his expansionism. Czechoslovakia was liberated mostly by the Red Army and subsequently fell under the Soviet sphere of influence. With Communists gradually gaining a firm grip, it was only a natural step that the country rejected Marshall Plan, joined Warsaw Pact, nationalized private businesses and property, and introduced central economic planning. The infamous Cold War period was interrupted by the economic and political reforms of the Prague Spring in 1968 – the only glimpse of hope that was quickly quashed by the invading Warsaw Pact armies with an exception of Romania. In November 1989, Czechoslovakia joined the wave of anti-Communist uprisings throughout the Eastern Bloc and embraced democracy, with dissident Václav Havel becoming the first president. Addressing the Communist legacy, both in political and economic terms, was a painful process accompanied by escalated nationalism in Slovakia and a mounting sense of unfair economic treatment of Slovakia by the Czechs, which drove Czechoslovakia toward the peaceful split labeled Velvet Divorce.
Basic Facts
Form of statehood:
- 1918–1938: democratic republic
- 1938–1939: after annexation of the Sudetenland region by Germany in 1938, Czechoslovakia turned into a state with loosened connections between its Czech, Slovak and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Ruthenia was annexed by Hungary, while the Zaolzie region went under Poland's control
- 1939–1945: split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the independent Slovakia, although Czechoslovakia per se was never officially dissolved; its exiled government, recognized by the Western Allies, was based in London.
- 1945–1948: democracy, governed by a coalition government, with Communist ministers charting the course
- 1948–1989: Communist state with a centrally planned economy
- 1960 on: the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
- 1969–1990: federal republic consisting of the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic
- 1990–1992: a federal democratic republic consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic
History
Inception of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia came into existence in October 1918 as one of the successor states of Austria-Hungary, whose Empire had been slowly losing ground to nationalist movements in the final years of World War I. It was comprised of the territories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Carpathian Ruthenia and some of the most industrialized regions of the former Austria-Hungary. On October 28, 1918, Alois Rašín, Antonín Švehla, František Soukup, Jiří Stříbrný, and Vavro Šrobár, the "Men of October 28th", formed a provisional government, and two days later, Slovakia endorsed the marriage of the two countries, with Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, who had crafted the blueprint for the constitution, elected president.
From Creation to Dissolution — Overview
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Czechoslovakia (or Czecho-Slovakia) | 1918 - 1939; 1945 - 1992 |
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Austria-Hungary (Bohemia, Moravia, a part of Silesia, northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia) |
Czechoslovak Republic |
Sudetenland + other German territories "Upper Hungary" territories of Hungary |
Czechoslovak Republic (ČSR) |
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (ČSSR) |
Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (ČSFR) |
Czech Republic Slovakia |
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Czecho-Slovak Republic (ČSR) incl. autonomous Slovakia and Transcarpathian Ukraine (1938-1939) |
Protectorate WWII Slovak Republic |
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(further) "Upper Hungary" of Hungary |
part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic |
Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine |
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German occupation |
Communist era |
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govern. in exile |
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World War II
End of State
Satisfaction among individual ethnic groups within the new state varied, as Germans, Slovaks, and Slovakia's ethnic Hungarians grew resentful of the political and economic dominance of the Czechs reluctance to extend political autonomy to all constituents. This policy, combined with an increasing Nazi propaganda, particularly in the industrialized German speaking Sudetenland (the German-border regions of Bohemia and Moravia), fueled the growing unrest in the years leading up to World War II.[1] Czechoslovakia started losing ground to Adolf Hitler's Germany with the Munich Agreement, signed on September 29, 1938, by the representatives of Germany—Hitler, Great Britain—Neville Chamberlain, Italy—Benito Mussolini, and France—Édouard Daladier, which deprived it of one-third of its territory, mainly the Sudetenland, the location of major border defenses. Within ten days, 1,200,000 had to leave their homes. President Edvard Beneš resigned on October 5, 1938, and Emil Hácha was appointed in his stead. Hitler thus defeated Czechoslovakia without taking up arms, while a strip of southern Slovakia was handed over to Hungary in November.
On March 14, 1939, Hácha set out for Berlin to meet with Hitler. On the same day, Slovakia declared independence and became an ally of Nazi Germany, which provided Hitler with a pretext to occupy Bohemia and Moravia on grounds that Czechoslovakia had collapsed from within and his administration of it would forestall chaos in Central Europe. Hácha described the signing away of Czechoslovakia as follows: “It’s possible to withstand Hitler’s yelling, because a person who yells is not necessarily a devil. But Göring [Hitler’s right hand], with his jovial face, was there as well. He took me by the hand and softly reproached me, asking whether it is really necessary for the beautiful Prague to be leveled in a few hours… and I could tell that the devil, able to carry out his threat, was speaking to me.”[2] Göring further asked Hácha: “You do not want or cannot understand the Führer, who wishes that lives of thousands of Czech people are spared?”[3]
The next morning, Wehrmacht occupied what remained of Czechoslovakia. After Hitler personally inspected the Czech fortifications, he privately admitted that “We would have shed a lot of blood.”[4]
Slovakia's troops fought on the Russian front until the summer of 1944, when the Slovak armed forces staged an anti-government uprising that was quickly crushed by Germany.
Resistance Movement
On October 28, 1939, the 21st anniversary of the establishment of the country, Czechoslovakia, emboldened by hopes for an early restoration of the independence, was swept by massive demonstrations. The Nazi Germany retaliated by spontaneous executions of student leaders and the closure of universities, which sent resistance movement underground. Czechoslovak units composed of recruits from the ranks of exiled Czechoslovak citizens were created in Poland, France, and Great Britain, coordinated by the London-based exiled government. On the home turf, resistance movement continued chiefly through massive demonstrations, which reached an apex in 1941. However, widespread arrests severely disrupted the underground networks and cut off radio networks between domestic and foreign components of the resistance movement, which were then reestablished by paratroopers dispatched into the Protectorate.
Operation Anthropoid
The Czechoslovak-British Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the assassination of the top Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of RSHA, an organization that included the Gestapo (Secret Police), SD (Security Agency) and Kripo (Criminal Police). Heydrich was the mastermind of the purge of Hitler's opponents as well as the genocide of Jews. Thanks to his reputation as the liquidator of resistance movements in Europe, he was sent to Prague in September 1941 to make order as the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The Protectorate was of strategic importance to Hitler’s plans, and Heydrich, dubbed the “Butcher of Prague”, "The Blond Beast" or "The Hangman", wasted no time upon his arrival, handing out death sentences the day after his arrival.
With the fighting spirit in the Protectorate at lull, the exiled military officials started planning an operation that would stir up the nation’s consciousness — six Czech and one Slovak paratroopers were chosen for the assassination of Heydrich, and two of them— Czech Josef Valčík and Slovak Josef Gabčik, executed it. Heydrich died of complications following surgery. The Gestapo tracked the paratroopers’ contacts and eventually discovered the assassins' hideaway in a Prague church. Three of them died in a shootout while trying to buy time for the others so that they could dig out an escape route; the remaining four used their last bullets to take their lives.
Heydrich’s successor Karl Herrmann Frank had 10,000 Czechs executed as a warning, and two villages that assisted the paratroopers were leveled down, with the adults murdered and young children sent to German families for re-education. The combined actions of the Gestapo and its confidantes virtually paralyzed the Czech resistance movement; on the other hand, the assassination bolstered Czechoslovakia’s prestige in the world and was crucial to the country’s securing of demands for an independent republic following the end of WWII.
End of War
Toward the end of the war, partisan movement was gaining momentum, and once the Allies were on the winning side, the political orientation of Czechoslovakia was high on the agenda of the two most influential exiled centres–the government in London and the communist officials in Moscow. Both endorsed the agreement on friendship, mutual assistance and postwar cooperation with the Soviet Union as a means to stem German expansion on one hand and the Soviet Union’s mingling into Czechoslovakia's internal affairs on the other.
Communist Czechoslovakia
Retaliation
After World War II, Czechoslovakia was reestablished. Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied by and in June 1945 formally ceded to the Soviet Union, while Sudetenland Germans were expelled in an act of retaliation coined by the Beneš Decrees, which continue to fuel controversy between nationalist groups in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and Hungary.[5]. Altogether around 90% of the ethnic German population of Czechoslovakia was forced to leave. Wartime traitors and collaborators accused of treason along with ethnic Germans and Hungarians were expropriated.
Communist Takeover
The Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia was facilitated by the fact that most of the country had been liberated by the Red Army, as well as the overall social and economic downturn in Europe. In the 1946 parliamentary election, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia emerged as the winner in the Czech lands while the Democratic Party won in Slovakia. In 1947, the Soviet Union and, consequently, its satellites, including Czechoslovakia, turned down Marshall Plan, authored by US State Secretary George Marshall to address the economic needs of war-torn Europe. In February 1948, the Communists seized power and sealed the country’s fate for the next 41 years. Terror reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany followed, with execution of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, forceful collectivization of agriculture, censorship, and land grabs. Economy was controlled by five-year plans and the industry was overhauled in compliance with Soviet wishes to focus on heavy industry, in which Czechoslovakia had been traditionally weak. The economy retained momentum vis-à-vis its Eastern European neighbors but grew increasingly weak vis-à-vis Western Europe.
Year 1960 saw the declaration of the victory of socialism, with small businesses stamped out and the country’s name changed to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In early 60s, economic reforms were put in place and gradually grew into the reform of the overall political system referred to as the Prague Spring
- , which was crushed under the tanks of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The period of ‘normalization’ followed—the reforms were repealed, which, compounded by apolitical, military and union purges thrust the country back into 1950s. The dissident movement, epitomized by the future Czech President Václav Havel, worked underground to counter the regime. Finally, the economic crisis in 1980s facilitated the shift toward democracy.
Velvet Revolution
Mikhail Gorbachev’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in which he endorsed the rights for all nations to decide on their courses, was among the first signs of the worldwide crumbling of the Communist empire. However, Communist authorities in Prague brutally dispersed ad hoc anti-regime demonstrations on November 17, 1989, in commemoration of the 1939 Nazi attack against university dormitories. That day in 1989, however, saw not only water hoses and spontaneous arrests but also sheer violence, with young people brutally beaten by the police that had blocked off all escape routes at Prague's Národni Třida (National Avenue). This set in motion the Velvet Revolution, as the events in November and December that unseated Communism in the country came to be known. The student-led protests in the metropolis soon spilled over to other parts of the country.
As Communist governments in neighboring countries were being toppled, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced in late November an intention to hand over power. Borders with Western Europe were open in early December, and a week later, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first government composed of largely non-Communists since 1948, and resigned. Alexander Dubček, who played a crucial role in the Prague Spring, became the voice of the federal parliament and Václav Havel the President. In June 1990, the first democratic elections since 1946 were held.
Toward Velvet Divorce
Discussion of the proposal to drop the country’s socialist attribute introduced in 1960 revealed a serious Czecho-Slovak conflict, with many Slovak deputies calling for the reinstatement of the original name, Czecho-Slovakia, adopted by the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. The country was eventually renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic in April 1990, but voices for Slovakia’s indepence were mounting, and the fiercely nationalistic Slovak National Party, whose key agenda was independence, was founded around this time. Even prior to that, Slovakia's creation of the Foreign Relations Ministry in 1990 had signaled intensified independence efforts.
The June 1990 elections uncovered the growing rift between the two countries when Slovakia openly challenged President Havel's intervening in Slovak internal affairs. While the conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) won a sweeping victory in the Czech Republic, Slovakia voted in the liberal Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). The cabinets of both countries were no longer composed of mostly former dissidents, and although the federal government operated on the principle of symmetric power-sharing, disagreements between the republics escalated into Slovakia’s declaration of a sovereign state in July 1992, whereby its laws overrode the federal laws. Negotiations on the dissolution of the federal state took place for the rest of the year, which was materialized on January 1, 1993, when two independent states—Slovakia and the Czech Republic—appeared on the map of Europe.
Footnotes
- ↑ July 6, 2005, "Playing the Blame Game", Prague Post[1]
- ↑ March 15, 2007, "Chcete zničit Prahu? ptal se Göring Háchy", idnes News [2]
- ↑ March 15, 2007, "Chcete zničit Prahu? ptal se Göring Háchy", idnes News [3]
- ↑ "Munich Agreement", Wikipedia [4]
- ↑ "The Other Central Europe", The New York University School of Law [5]
External Links
English Language
- Czechoslovak Republicdefunct link, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- "Munich Agreement" Wikipedia, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- "Velvet Revolution"] Wikipedia, Retrieved June 14, 2007.
- "The Breakup of Czechoslovakia" Slovakia Website, Retrieved July 4, 2007.
Czech Language
- “Czechoslovak Orders and Medals” Awards, Retrieved June 10, 2007.
- “Lidice a Ležáky“ Czech Republic History, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- Gazdik, Jan March 15, 2007 ”Do You Want to Destroy Prague? Goring Asked Hacha” iDnes News, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Czechoslovak Resistance Movement in the West” Wars, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Emergence of Czechoslovakia and Shaping of our Borders” Jan Skokan’s History Website, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- Mikulecky, Tomas “Emergence of Czechoslovakia” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Second Czechoslovak Resistance Movement” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Second Czechoslovak Resistance Movement, the Role of the Three Kings and the Resistance Movement Role of Vladimir Krajina” History, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- ”Life in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Assassination of Reynhard Heidrich” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Velvet Revolution or Eleven Days that Rocked Czechoslovakia” Totalitarianism, Retrieved June 4, 2007.* “International Events of 1989” Totalitarianism, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Political Processes in the Czech Socialist Republic 1948-1989” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Timeline of November 17 Demonstrations” Totalitarianism, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Charter 77” Resources for Students, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- “Velvet Revolution ‘89” 1989 Revolution, Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- "History of the Ministry" Czech Republic Finance Ministry, Retrieved July 4, 2007.
- "January 1993: Breakup of Czechoslovakia and Creation of Independent Czech Diplomacy" Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Retrieved July 4, 2007.
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