Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was a Czechoslovak statesman, political activist and philosopher who served as the first president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935. He is regarded as the founding father of Czechoslovakia.
The First Czechoslovak Republic emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in October 1918. The new state consisted mostly of territories inhabited by Czechs and Slovaks, but also included areas containing majority populations of other nationalities, particularly Germans (22.95 %), who accounted for more citizens than the state's second state nation of the Slovaks, Hungarians (5.47 %) and Ruthenians (3.39 %). The new state comprised the total of Bohemia whose borders did not coincide with the language border between German and Czech. Despite initially developing effective representative institutions alongside a successful economy, the deteriorating international economic situation in the 1930s gave rise to growing ethnic tensions. The dispute between the Czech and German populations, fanned by the rise of Nazism in neighbouring Germany, resulted in the loss of territory under the terms of the Munich Agreement and subsequent events in the autumn of 1938, bringing about the end of the First Republic.
Rusyns and Ukrainians in Czechoslovakia during the period from 1918 to 1938, were ethnic Rusyns and Ukrainians of the First Czechoslovak Republic, representing the two main ethnic communities in the most eastern region of Czechoslovakia, known during that period as the Subcarpathian Rus.
With the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of World War I, the independent country of Czechoslovakia was formed as a result of the critical intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, among others.
Vojta Beneš was a Czech educator, political leader in Czechoslovakia and brother of Edvard Beneš.
Jan Syrový was a Czechoslovak general who was the prime minister of Czechoslovakia during the Munich Crisis.
Karel Kramář was a Czech politician. He was a representative of the major Czech political party, the Young Czechs, in the Austrian Imperial Council from 1891 to 1915, becoming the party leader in 1897.
Jan Malypetr was a Czechoslovak politician. As prime minister during the Great Depression he strong-armed Czechoslovakia into a more rapid economic recovery than elsewhere in Europe.
Alois Rašín was a Czech and Czechoslovakian politician, economist, one of the founders of Czechoslovakia and first Ministry for Finance. He was the author of the first law of Czechoslovakia and creator of the country's currency, the Czechoslovak koruna. Rašín was a representative of conservative liberalism and was mortally wounded in assassination for being viewed as a head of the nation's capitalism.
The Battle of Zborov was a part of the Kerensky Offensive. The battle was the first significant action of the Czechoslovak Legions on the Eastern Front and the only successful engagement of the failed Russian offensive.
The First Czechoslovak Republic, often colloquially referred to as the First Republic, was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia, a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian and Hungarian territories.
Karel Pergler, known also by Anglicized Charles Pergler was a Czech-American lawyer, journalist, diplomat and politician. He was a Czechoslovak First Republic ambassador to the United States and Japan.
The Pětka, or Committee of Five, was an unofficial informal extraparliamentary semi-constitutional political forum that was designed to cope with political difficulties of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia. Founded in September 1920, it was a council of leaders of the coalition parties that made up the Czechoslovak government. Its name came from the Czech word for "five" and is pronounced pyetka. It played a crucial role in the country's politics.
Franz Spina was a German-Czechoslovakian right-wing and activist politician of the First Republic Era. Franz Spina was chairman of Bund der Landwirte, or Union of Farmers and Rural Enterprises, right-wing party of German-speaking countryside of Czechoslovakia. His party was the first to actively cooperate with Czechoslovak government and entered the Cabinet of Lord's Coalition together with Czechoslovak agrarians, clericals, entrepreneurs and national democrats. Franz Spina became the very first ethnic German government minister in Czechoslovakia. Since the establishment of Sudeten German Party, popularity of Union of Farmers had been declining. However, Spina believed in successful Czechoslovak-German cooperation until his death in 1938, fortnight before the Munich Agreement.
The Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants was a centre-right agrarian party of Czechoslovakia, seen as representing big business and agriculture. In the period up to 1935 it was the biggest and most influential political party in the country. Led by Antonín Švehla and Milan Hodža, the party influenced Czechoslovak politics between World War I and World War II. It participated in the Pětka coalition governments, and it was a member of the International Agrarian Bureau.
Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk was the American-born wife of the Czechoslovak philosopher, sociologist, and politician, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia.
The Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence or the Washington Declaration was drafted in Washington, D.C., and published by Czechoslovakia's Paris-based Provisional Government on 18 October 1918. The creation of the document, officially the Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation by Its Provisional Government, was prompted by the imminent collapse of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which the Czech and Slovak lands had been part for almost 400 years, following the First World War.
The Martin Declaration is the name usually given to the Declaration of the Slovak Nation that was proclaimed in the town of Turčiansky Svätý Martin on 30 October 1918. The declaration was effectively a declaration of independence from the Kingdom of Hungary and presaged Slovakia's unification with the Czech lands as part of the new state of Czechoslovakia.
Vavrinec Ján Šrobár, known as Vavro Šrobár was a Slovak medical doctor and politician. He was a major figure in Slovak politics in the interwar period.
Anton Štefánek was a Slovak politician and sociologist who was involved in the campaign for Czech and Slovak unity and independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was an important promoter of the concept of Czechoslovakism and served for 14 years in the Czechoslovak National Assembly and the Senate of Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s. He also pursued an academic career at Comenius University in Bratislava, culminating in his serving as rector of the university for several years after the Second World War. He was forced into retirement a year after the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948.
