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The creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 was the culmination of the long struggle of the Czechs against their Austrian rulers and of the Slovaks against Magyarization and their Hungarian rulers.
The ancestors of the Czechs and the Slovaks were united in the so-called Samo's Empire for about 30 years in the 7th century. The ancestors of the Slovaks and the Moravians were later united in Great Moravia between 833 and 907. The Czechs were part of Great Moravia for only about seven years before they split from it in 895. Furthermore, in the second half of the 10th century, the Czechs conquered and controlled western Slovakia for around 30 years. That was the last time the two nations were united; the Hungarians had conquered Slovakia by the 11th century, but the Czechs maintained their own principality (a kingdom from 1198) of Bohemia from around 900 to 1918.
Both Czechs and Slovaks struggled against powerful neighbouring peoples: Germans in the case of the Czechs and Hungarians in the case of the Slovaks (see History of the Czech Republic and History of Slovakia). Contacts between the Czechs and the Slovaks arose in the late 14th century, when Slovaks started to study at the University of Prague; in the 15th century, with the campaigns of the Czech Hussite armies to Slovakia; and in the 17th century, when Czech Protestants fled to Slovakia. Between the 15th and the 18th centuries, some educated Slovaks used written Czech as well as Slovak and Latin (see History of the Slovak language). The Czechs and Slovaks were also formally united in 1436–1439, 1453–1457, and 1490–1918, when Hungary (which included Slovakia), Bohemia and other Central European states were ruled by the same kings.
![]() | This article may be confusing or unclear to readers.(April 2009) |
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Czech and Slovak situations were very different because of their overlords' different stages of development within Austria-Hungary (the Austrians in Bohemia, the Hungarians in Slovakia). The only common feature was Bohemia's status as the most industrialized part of Austria and Slovakia, albeit itself to different degrees:
Czechs Slovaks Poles | Austrians/Germans Hungarians Romanians |
Around the start of the 20th century, the idea of a "Czecho-Slovak" entity began to be advocated by some Czech and Slovak leaders. In the 1890s, contacts between Czech and Slovak intellectuals intensified. The Czech leader Masaryk was a keen advocate of Czech-Slovak cooperation. Some of his students formed the Czechoslovak Union and in 1898 published the journal Hlas ("The Voice"). In Slovakia, young Slovak intellectuals began to challenge the old Slovak National Party. But although the Czech and Slovak national movements began drawing closer together, their ultimate goals remained unclear. At least until World War I, the Czech and Slovak national movements struggled for autonomy within Austria and Hungary, respectively. Only during the war did the idea of an independent Czecho-Slovakia emerge.
At the outbreak of World War I, the Czechs and Slovaks showed little enthusiasm for fighting for their perceived respective enemies, the Germans, the Austrians and the Hungarians, against fellow Slavs, the Russians and the Serbs. Large numbers of Czechs and Slovaks defected on the Russo - Polish front and formed the Czechoslovak Legion, organised by Milan Rastislav Štefánik (a Slovak astronomer and general of the French army). Masaryk went to western Europe and began propagating the idea that the Austro-Hungarian Empire should be dismembered and that Czechoslovakia should be an independent state. In 1916, together with Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Masaryk created the Czechoslovak National Council. Masaryk in the United States, Štefánik in France, and Beneš in France and Britain then worked to gain Allied recognition. When secret talks between the Allies and Austrian emperor Charles I collapsed, the Allies recognized the Czechoslovak National Council in the summer of 1918 as the supreme organ of a future Czechoslovak government. [1]
On October 22, 1915, Czech and Slovak representatives in the United States signed the Cleveland Agreement endorsing an independent Czech and Slovak federation with national autonomy for the Slovak people. [2] This was followed by the Pittsburgh Agreement, signed on May 31, 1918 (Masaryk signed this on 30 May). The latter envisioned a plan for a unified Czecho-Slovak state in which Slovakia would have its own assembly. In early October 1918, Germany and Austria proposed peace negotiations. On October 18, while in the United States, Masaryk issued a declaration of Czechoslovak independence. Masaryk insisted that the new Czechoslovak state include the historic Bohemian Kingdom, containing the German-populated borderland. On October 21, however, German deputies from Bohemia joined other German and Austrian deputies in the Austrian parliament in declaring an independent German-Austrian state. Following the abdication of Charles I on November 11, Czech troops took control of borderlands.[ citation needed ]
Hungary withdrew from the Habsburg empire on November 1. The new liberal-democratic government of Hungary under Count Mihály Károlyi attempted to retain Slovakia. With Allied approval, the Czechs occupied Slovakia, and the Hungarians were forced to withdraw. The Czechs and Allies agreed on the Danube and Ipeľ rivers as the boundary between Hungary and Slovakia; a large Hungarian minority, occupying the fertile plain of the Danube, would be included in the new state.[ citation needed ]
Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.
Czechoslovakia was a landlocked state in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany, while the country lost further territories to Hungary and Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while in the remainder of the Czech Lands, the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.
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.
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.
The Czech lands, then also known as Lands of the Bohemian Crown, were largely subject to the Habsburgs from the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. There were invasions by the Turks early in the period, and by the Prussians in the next century. The Habsburgs consolidated their rule and under Maria Theresa (1740–1780) adopted enlightened absolutism, with distinct institutions of the Bohemian Kingdom absorbed into centralized structures. After the Napoleonic Wars and the establishment of the Austrian Empire, a Czech National Revival began as a scholarly trend among educated Czechs, led by figures such as František Palacký. Czech nationalism took a more politically active form during the 1848 revolution, and began to come into conflict not only with the Habsburgs but with emerging German nationalism.
The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 established the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Milan Rastislav Štefánik was a Slovak politician, diplomat, aviator and astronomer. During World War I, he served at the same time as a general in the French Army and as Minister of War for Czechoslovakia. As one of the leading members of the Czechoslovak National Council, he contributed decisively to the cause of Czechoslovak sovereignty, since the status of Czech- and Slovak-populated territories was one of those in question until shortly before the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918.
The Czechoslovak Legion were volunteer armed forces comprised predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Entente powers during World War I and the White Army during the Russian Civil War until November 1919. Their goal was to win the support of the Allied Powers for the independence of Lands of the Bohemian Crown from the Austrian Empire and of Slovak territories from the Kingdom of Hungary, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the help of émigré intellectuals and politicians such as the Czech Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, they grew into a force over 100,000 strong.
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.
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.
The Pittsburgh Agreement was a memorandum of understanding completed on 31 May 1918 between members of Czech and Slovak expatriate communities in the United States of America. It replaced the Cleveland Agreement of October 22, 1915.
The history of Czechoslovak nationality involves the rise and fall of national feeling among Czechs and Slovaks. Once forming a rather unified group, they were historically separated, unified under a democratic system, separated during threat of war, and reunified under a socialist authoritarian regime. However, a democratization process has led to a definition of separate statehood for the majority of Czechs and Slovaks.
The Czechoslovak Army was the name of the armed forces of Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1918 following Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence from Austria-Hungary.
Štefan Osuský was an Austro-Hungarian born Slovak lawyer, diplomat, politician and university professor.
Czechoslovakism is a concept which underlines reciprocity of the Czechs and the Slovaks. It is best known as an ideology which holds that there is one Czechoslovak nation, though it might also appear as a political program of two nations living in one common state. The climax of Czechoslovakism fell on 1918-1938, when as a one-nation-theory it became the official political doctrine of Czechoslovakia; its best known representative was Tomáš Masaryk. Today Czechoslovakism as political concept or ideology is almost defunct; its remnant is a general sentiment of cultural affinity, present among many Czechs and Slovaks.
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 Czechoslovak Italian Legion was a legion of Czechoslovak volunteers formed late in World War I. The first formal Czechoslovak Volunteers Group was formed in Italian prisoner-of-war camps in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, near Naples and matured at Padula near Salerno. In January 1918, the headquarters of the 6th Italian Army finally agreed to form reconnaissance squadrons from Czechoslovak and Southern Slav volunteers. In September 1918, the 39th Regiment of the Czechoslovak Italian Legion was formed from those volunteer reconnaissance squadrons. The following regiments of Czechoslovak Italian Legion were formed in April and May 1918:
Czechoslovak National Council was an organization founded by Czech and Slovak émigrés during World War I to liberate their homeland from Austria-Hungary. During the closing weeks of the war, the Czechoslovak National Council was formally upgraded to a provisional government and its members were designated to hold top offices in the First Czechoslovak Republic.
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.