At the beginning of the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was full of internal crises, the Habsburg ruling class was unable to support itself, the bourgeoisie within the empire achieved economic and political superiority, and the proletarian movement was also vigorously developed, not to mention the independent tendencies of all ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian Empire......
first world war
Towards the Great War
In 1909, Tomás Garrig Masaryk, the representative of the Czech Realist Party in the Austro-Hungarian Parliament, gave a speech in which he criticized the legal proceedings initiated against 53 members of the Serb-Croat Union, including the charges against them for being employed in Serbia, the legal proceedings that led to the trial of treason in Zagreb in 1909, and the defamation lawsuits that were subsequently filed by the defendants.
Thomas Garrig Masaryk
Masaryk had been fighting against Austrian policy against the suppression of the Slavic peoples and against the supremacy of the Church, and he contributed to generating public support for the Yugoslavs by exposing forged important documents provided by the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as evidence to defend the accusations.
But the Bosnian crisis of 1908 and the Balkan war of 1912-1913 inevitably increased tensions in the Balkan powder keg. And because of the intervention of Austria-Hungary in the region, Serbia was unable to create a larger state, causing contradictions on both sides.
Balkan Wars
These conflicts also increased Russian interest in the Balkans, although many European leaders at the time believed that conflicts could be confined to the Balkans and that regional wars would not necessarily develop into conflicts between the major powers or between the three Allied powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and the Entente (Great Britain, France, Russia).
However, in 1914, due to the friction between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and on the other hand, because of the dispute between Russia and Austria-Hungary, the conflict in the Balkans eventually developed into a large-scale military confrontation, at which time the two major European powers, the Allied and Entente powers, were involved, and the First World War broke out......
On June 28, 1914, Gavrio Princip, a Bosnian Serbian nationalist student, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the heir of the Habsburg dynasty, who were on an official state visit to Bosnia, in Sarajevo, which became known as the "Sarajevo Incident", which became the trigger for the outbreak of World War I.
"Sarajevo incident"
Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia on 28 July, prompting the outbreak of World War I. Of course, other events that led to World War I included Germany's declaration of war on Russia and France, Russia's military intervention in Serbian interests, Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium, and Britain's declaration of war on Germany on 4 August.
As the international system collapsed and intensified into hostilities between the Entente and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary and Germany), hopes for the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary to remain within the confines of the Balkans were dashed. While the Austro-Hungarian Empire was mobilizing for war, the different peoples of the empire responded to the military struggle in different ways......
Czech reaction to the war
In the world war of 1914-1918, Austria-Hungary sided with German imperialism because the Austro-Hungarian expansionists were interested in the Balkans. Of course, the Czech nation also had a part of its historical responsibility for the war: some Czech politicians, believing in the victory of the empire, supported the government.
Moreover, the Magyars and Croats also showed enthusiastic support for the war, although the Serbs within the empire did not support the imperial invasion of Serbia, and the Ruthenians, Czechs, and Slovaks generally carried out their military obligations in a manner lacking patriotic zeal.
In fact, many Czechs and Slovaks were disgusted by having to fight their fellow Slavs (Serbs and later Russians). However, their opposition to the war was not accepted by the wartime regime, and the imperial government banned political parties and suspended the Imperial Assembly and local councils.
Thus, part of the Czech bourgeoisie, led by Dr. Kramash, a politician of the Young Czechs, openly sided with Tsarist Russia, while others evaded military service or simply deserted. Many Czechs and Slovaks volunteered to become prisoners when they joined the Austrian army on the Russian front.
They hoped that one day they would be able to join the Russians in attacking the Habsburg Empire, shoulder to shoulder. For example, in April 1915, the 28th Infantry Regiment in Prague – the so-called "Sons of Prague" – surrendered to the Russian army at Dukla on the Carpathian front and was redeployed to Kyiv, Ukraine.
Another part of the Czech bourgeoisie, in view of the weakness of Russia, turned to the Western powers, namely Britain, France, Italy and the United States. For example, Masaryk, Eduard Benes and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Stefanik.
Edward Benes
The Czech working class is also at the forefront of social movements and national liberation movements through demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass struggle. However, the leaders of the Social Democrats among the workers failed to grasp the nature of national and social relations well and, under the influence of the policy of the Austrian Social Democrats in defending the Austro-Hungarian state, took a passive position.
Although there had been a massive anti-war and anti-government situation since 1916 due to wartime famine and poverty, the leaders of the Social Democrats did not take advantage of it. A series of demonstrations in 1916 and 1917 in the industrial areas of Plzeň, Vosstraval, Vitkovice and Prostjov were bloodily suppressed.
And for the German-speaking inhabitants of the Czech lands, the war provided an opportunity. Radical Germanic nationalists saw the Czechs as the least trustworthy people under Habsburg rule, and some hoped that the war would lead to the unification of Central Europe under the leadership of the Germanic peoples.
All in all, the Czech people were able to sever their emotional ties with the Habsburgs and the Empire through the war, even though some Czech politicians continued to fuel the war. Other Czech politicians began to pay attention to Russia as early as the beginning of 1914.
In January 1914, Wenceslas Klofać, chairman of the National Socialist Party, traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazanov on the question of the Czechs' internal resistance to Austria-Hungary. In May, on the eve of war, Karel Kramář proposed a confederacy of Slavs led by the Russian Tsar.
Karel Kramage
Klofać and Klamarj were quite confident in the Russians' advance on Prague, and they remained in the city early in the war to welcome the arrival of the Russian army. In view of this, both of them were arrested and sentenced to death by the Imperial Government, and were later exempted from death thanks to an amnesty in July 1917.
For the future founding father of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk's relationship with Russia was questionable, and he lacked confidence in the understanding of the Czechs and their culture by the Tsarist authorities, the Russian army, and the Russian government. Masaryk and Kramarík agreed that the defeat of Austria-Hungary was necessary for the future of the Czech nation, but that Masaryk wanted an independent Czech state rather than a Russian-ruled Slavic Empire.
Masaryk
On August 2, Tsar Nicholas II issued a decree ordering the expulsion of nationals from the Russian Empire from hostile countries, and most Czechs living in Russia immediately sought Russian citizenship or attempted to serve in the Russian army voluntarily. The Tsar then met with the Czech representatives, promising a consensus on the granting of freedom to the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and aroused the interest of the Russian rulers in the Slovak territory and the Czech proposal to establish the subordination of the Free Crown of St. Wenceslas to the Russian Romanov Crown.
Tsar Nicholas II
In August, the Czechs in Russia were granted permission to build their own legions, and by the end of October, the Czechs – or Druiina – could call up 800 volunteers ready to fight the Allies. The Czech leaders wanted to use these legionnaires to develop the future Czech army, and they used this as an excuse to recruit Czech prisoners of war.
The Russians, however, are apparently more interested in using Druzhna for propaganda purposes than as an actual combat force. In the early months of the war, Masaryk was encouraged by news of Austria's setback in Serbia and the Russian advance into Krakow and the Carpathian Pass to Slovakia.
Masaryk
However, the Germans were able to halt the Russian offensive on the front, and the disastrous defeats of the Russians at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lake area of East Prussia in late and mid-September extinguished this enthusiasm. Feeling isolated in his homeland, Masaryk left Austria-Hungary in October at the age of 64 with a Serbian passport.
The trip first took him to neutral Switzerland and Italy, and eventually to London, where he accepted an appointment as professor of Slavic studies at King's College London in 1915. Masaryk believes that the Entente can help complete the complete transformation of Central Europe.
Masaryk
Masaryk's long-standing ties with Slovakia led him to suggest that the emancipation of the Czechs would lead not only to the formation of an independent Czech territory, but also to a larger Czech and Slovak state. Then, by early 1915, Masaryk and his colleagues had shifted the focus of their political project to an independent state shared by Czechs and Slovaks......
Slovakia's reaction to the war
Like most Czechs, when news of the war broke, the Slovaks reacted with indifference. Of course, the Magyars at this time showed their patriotic fervor. As wartime authorities swiftly cracked down on internal opposition, Slovak nationalists and anti-war factions faced censorship and arrest, sometimes even violent attacks in public.
The Slovak national leader and poet Pavol Orsage-Khwizdoslav expressed his anti-war sentiments in the poem "Bloody Sonnets", written in August 1914 but not published until 1919 due to wartime circumstances.
Pavol Orsage-Hwizdoslav
Founded in Cleveland in 1907, the Union of Slovak Americans, from 1860 to 1900, about 276,000 Slovaks left their home countries to settle in the United States and other countries, and in the 18 years that followed, 695,000 emigrated abroad.
In the early months of the conflict, the secretary general of the Union of Slovak Americas was Ivan Daxner, whose father was Stefan Marko Daxner, whose "Voices from Slovakia" inspired the creation of the 1861 Slovak National Memorandum.
Although the Slovak Union initially supported the autonomy of the Slovaks within the Kingdom of Hungary, the war brought about a shift in its tactics, as reflected in an article written by the president of the League in October 1914 calling for an alliance between Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia as the best option for the Slovaks.
With the early Russian offensive moving closer to the Slovak front, Russia's occupation of Slovak territory and advance into Budapest looked unstoppable in the coming months. In this environment, Slovak political leaders began to consider the consequences of the defeat of the Central Powers, including options ranging from autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary to an alliance with Russia and possibly even an alliance with Poland.
However, there was one option that slowly gathered support from both home and abroad, and that was the integration of the Czechs and Slovakia! It depended on a belief that working with the Czechs gave the Slovak nation the best hope for self-determination after the defeat of the empire and its likely dissolution.
By mid-November, the Russians had entered eastern Slovakia through the Carpathian Pass and captured the towns of Humenne and Bardejov, before being driven away by an Austro-Hungarian counterattack. Fighting continued in the mountains of this area until May 1915.
At this time, a wave of German offensive from the Gorlice-Tarnów area near Krakow led to the collapse of the Russian army on the entire Galician front and a retreat to Ukraine and Belarus. For the Slovaks and Czechs, who hoped to be liberated by the Russians, the disastrous results of 1914-1915 did little to provide little impetus for sustained enthusiasm.
A New Hope
At the same time, the main purpose of the war was to oppose the first competitor, Germany, and they did not want to defeat Austria-Hungary, which was in conflict with the Czechs and Slovaks, because only the complete extinction of Austria-Hungary could usher in the spring of independence for the Czech and Slovak nations.
Austro-Hungarian Empire
In 1917, when the United States joined the side of the Allies and began to fight against Germany, the United States' policy towards Austria-Hungary was no different from that of the rest of the West, as can be seen from the famous President Wilson's Fourteen Points of Peace published in early 1918, in which there was no mention of the abolition of the multi-ethnic Habsburg state.
Fourteen Principles of Peace
The tenth point of the document states: "The peoples of Austria-Hungary should have the freest opportunity for the development of self-government, and we would like to see their international position protected and guaranteed". Therefore, whether relying on the external forces of Russia or the post-war vision of the Entente, it was difficult for the Czechs and Slovaks to achieve their goal of national independence.
At this time, another major event occurred that greatly affected the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that is, the October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 established a workers' and peasants' government! After the October Revolution, Russia promulgated a peace decree and declared the right of all nationalities to self-determination, including the right to withdraw from the Union, and this revolution stimulated the struggle of the Czech people for national and social liberation!
October Revolution
Together with the efforts of a number of Czech and Slovak politicians, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was finally dissolved after the end of World War I in 1918, and the Czechs and Slovakia united to form the historic Czechoslovak Republic!
So how did the Czechs and Slovaks fight, how did Austria-Hungary die, and what did Masaryk, the founding father of Czechoslovakia, do?
Stay tuned to this series and stay tuned for the next installment!