After the end of the First World War in 1918 and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Czechoslovak Republic was established on 28 October 1918 in union with Slovakia. From there, the Czechs and Slovaks began a new era of independent statehood......
independence
On 6 January 1918, members of the Czech Imperial Parliament and politicians from Sihemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia gathered in Prague during the Holy Day of the Epiphany to issue a manifesto inspired by the growing support for national self-determination in the capitals of the Entente and in post-revolutionary Russia.
The Epiphany Declaration called for the creation of an independent state for Czechs and Slovaks, including the traditional Slovak region and the Kingdom of Bohemia, as well as for official representation of Czechs and Slovaks at future peace conferences.
Two days later, however, on January 8, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson delivered his "Fourteen Points" speech to the U.S. Congress, in which he spoke of U.S. support for the Austro-Hungarian people in their quest for autonomy within the empire. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George followed a similar path, informing Austria-Hungary that Britain's war goals did not include the dismemberment of the empire.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George
But to the surprise of the Austro-Hungarian ruling class, at the end of January 1918, a wave of strikes swept through the Czech Republic from Lower Austria, and the Czech workers threw themselves into a general strike in support of their fellow workers in Austria. On 1 February, Czech and Yugoslav sailors took part in a rebellion in the Gulf of Kotor in the Adriatic Sea, raising the red banner of the revolution demanding an end to the war and the fulfillment of the right of peoples to self-determination.
The rebels also called on comrades in the Austro-Hungarian navy to join the cause, and although the authorities put an end to the riots after three weeks, only discontent spread among the army. In February, the mutiny appeared in a number of Czech units of the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy, followed by a similar operation by soldiers in Mosta, Herzegovina.
By 1918, Slovak soldiers, who had not previously been involved in the mass exodus, had become more willing to join the rebellion. In June of that year, 44 Slovak soldiers faced execution after participating in a rebellion in Kragujevac, Serbia.
While Foreign Minister Chernin continued to criticize Masaryk and his efforts to create an independent state, representatives of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Yugoslavia attended the Congress of Oppressed Peoples in Rome on 10 April and advocated for national self-determination.
Chernin
Slovak political leader Vavro Shrobar took advantage of May Day to gather Social Democrats to St. Mikulaš in Liptovsky, where he declared his support for the self-determination of the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and demanded the creation of a Czechoslovak state that would unite the two branches of the same Slavic family.
Vavro Shrobar
Shrobar's actions convinced many Slovaks abroad that Masaryk's plans for a new state had won the support of Slovaks within the empire. Although due to the arrest of Shrobar by the Hungarian authorities and the French citizenship of Štfanik, questions about the Slovak leadership surfaced.
Štfanik
On May 24, the Slovak National Party convened a secret meeting in St. Martin-sur-Turec to hear Andrej Hlinka announce the end of the millennium-long failed relationship between Slovaks and Hungarians. Like Shrobar, Hlinka encouraged Slovaks to embrace the idea of Czechoslovakia-Slovak cooperation to create a new state, a view shared by the leaders of all major Slovak political parties.
Andrei Herlinka
On 30 May, members of the Czech and Slovak Organization in the United States signed the Pittsburgh Agreement, which was drafted by Masaryk as a means of providing joint recognition to a common and independent state that included Czechs and Slovaks.
Masaryk met with Woodrow Wilson on 19 June, and shortly thereafter France recognized the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris as the precursor to a new national government. The United States made its own recognition of the status of the Czechoslovak National Council on 2 July, and the United Kingdom did the same on 9 August.
Masaryk
Back in Prague, a resurrected National Council emerged on 3 July, led by Kramaž, Švehra, and Klofać, despite the opposition of the Austro-Hungarian authorities. Benes announced on 14 October that the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris had become the provisional government of Czechoslovakia, a proclamation urging an official statement of support from the Entente.
Masaryk, the founding father of Czechoslovakia, held the presidency of the new government, Benes became Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, and Štfaník was Minister of Defence. A new Czechoslovak state was about to be reborn, and the Austro-Hungarian ruling class was no longer able to recover.
Benes, Masaryk, Stefanik
On 16 October, Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary made a belated attempt to preserve Austria-Hungary by proposing to federalize the Austrian part of the empire, but the plan still failed to improve the fate of the Slovaks under Hungarian administration.
Karl the Emperor
Carr also asked President Wilson and the Entente to agree to peace talks based on the American president's "Fourteen Points," leaving Austria-Hungary intact as an empire. Emperor Karl's proposal caused Masaryk to change his plans, and on October 18 in Washington, D.C., Masaryk issued the Declaration of National Independence of Czechoslovakia, the Washington Declaration!
The willingness of the Austro-Hungarian government to accept the public disclosure of Wilson's terms in order to negotiate a ceasefire led to the declaration of independence in Prague on October 28: delegates from all over the world came to Prague to mean that the rout and surrender of the monarchy was not far off, and then they seized the opportunity to declare the independence of the Czechs and Slovaks, and the birth of a new Czechoslovak state, essentially a bloodless revolution!
The signing of the declaration took place in the town hall and was followed by a public announcement in front of the monument to St. Wenceslas on Vinceslas Square, when the festivities had begun on the streets of Prague. During the negotiations with Benes, and as a result of Masaryk's Washington Declaration, the new government would take the form of a republic, and October 28 became the date of the birth of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Founding
On October 28, 1918, the Czechoslovak Republic was formed, but for the Germanic people in the nascent state, the agreement between Czech and Slovak politicians was contrary to their own interests, and included plans to preserve ties with Austria and create a number of autonomous Germanic provinces.
Czechoslovak Republic
On 29 October, Germanic delegates from the Czech Republic announced in the Reichstag that the Germanic region of Bohemia (Deutschbohmen) would become a province of Austria. A day later, representatives from Moravia and Silesia demanded a similar status for the Sudetenland, inhabited by the Germanic peoples.
Although the Reichstag voted in favor of Austria-Germany merger on 12 November, the Entente prevented the German-Austrian merger, in large part because the reorganization of Central Europe would allow defeated Germany to gain some important territory. The British and Americans also supported France's request that any decision on the amendment of the historic Czech territory would be taken at the forthcoming peace conference.
On 4 March 1919, when the newly elected Austrian National Assembly met for the first time, many Germanic people in the Czech lands who had denied the right to participate in the Austrian electoral process threw themselves into angry demonstrations. The brutal counterattack by the Czech army and gendarmes resulted in the death of 52 Germans and the wounding of another 84.
With the end of World War I, the Hungarian authorities wanted to preserve their political and territorial ties with the Slovaks. To this end, the Government allowed the Slovak National Party to organize a public rally in St. Martin-sur-Turets on 30 October, during which participants turned to declare their support for the new Czechoslovak state.
On 1 November, the Hungarians also declared independence from Austria-Hungary, riots broke out in Slovakia, and Shrobal arrived from Prague with the aim of establishing order, accompanied by the Slovak Provisional Government and armed detachments. The invasion of the Hungarian army forced Shrobal's forces to retreat to the Moravian border, while Benes negotiated with the French and tried to ask the Entente to clarify Slovakia's position on the terms of an armistice with the now independent Hungary.
Benes
Benes also demanded that the Hungarian army withdraw from Slovak territory on 19 December. Within a few weeks, the former Austro-Hungarian legionnaires, who had become the start-up army of the new Czechoslovak Republic, occupied Slovak territory in order to defend the new country.
On 5 November, two days after the signing of the truce between Austria-Hungary and the Entente, Benes and the leaders of the other Czech missions abroad returned to Prague, the same day that Karamarge proclaimed an independent and democratic republic. Just a week later, on 13 November, the National Council approved an interim constitution that called for the establishment of a National Revolutionary Council, with Masaryk as president, and elected by a unicameral parliament that also assumed responsibility for drafting a permanent constitution.
Masaryk
The following day, the revolution entered its final phase, and the new National Assembly declared the end of Habsburg rule in the Czech lands and formally elected Masaryk as president, accepting Klamárázh as prime minister and Benes as foreign minister. Masaryk left New York on 18 November and, after official visits to Britain, France and Italy, returned to Prague on 21 December to assume his duties as President of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Kramar Day
Prior to the opening of the Paris Peace Conference on January 18, 1919, the new republic also had a subterritorial dispute over the Principality of Chechen, which was claimed by the Poles on the basis of historic rights and a high percentage of the Polish population. As a minority in the region, the Czechs' claim to this territory was largely based on arguments of historic rights.
Despite the fact that after the Poles appealed to the peace conference, the Czechs received an order to withdraw their troops from the area, they captured Cieszyn in January. On 28 January 1920, the Council of Ambassadors decided that Czechoslovakia would be allowed to own coal resources and railways, but since neither side was satisfied with this decision, Ceschen would continue to be a point of contention between the two neighbours.
In addition to territorial disputes with Hungary and Poland, dealing with the historical legacy of the post-World War I period also became a key task for the new Czechoslovak Republic, so the leaders of the new republic also participated in the Paris Peace Conference after World War I......
Paris Peace Conference
And with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a new economic and political situation emerged in Central Europe. Czechoslovakia was the most important successor state to rise on the remnants of the Habsburg Empire: it inherited three-quarters of the Austro-Hungarian industry, and its geographical location in Central Europe gave it an important strategic position.
Although the bourgeoisie of the Czech and Slovak czechs and Slovakia had gained power in the new state through revolution, the size and power of the international revolutionary movement was a constant threat to the bourgeois authorities. The main effort of the representatives of the bourgeoisie was therefore to ensure that Czechoslovakia was able to lay a strong international foundation as soon as possible.
In this regard, the interests of the Czech Republic and Slovakia were in line with those of the governments of Western Europe, which, out of hostility to the Soviet Russian regime and fear of the red wave in Eastern Europe, urgently needed to establish a new international balance of power after the war, and thus the post-war Paris Peace Conference came into being.
The Paris Peace Conference was officially opened on January 18, 1919, and the meetings and consultations continued until June. Most of the major issues concerning Czechoslovakia were discussed and dealt with by mid-April, while formal treaties with Germany (the Treaty of Versailles), Austria (the Treaty of Saint-Germain) and Hungary (the Treaty of Trianon) were subsequently reached.
Paris Peace Conference
The Czechoslovak delegation, led by Kramarj and Benes, received confirmation of territorial claims, including the historic Czech territories, Slovakia, Lusatia, Ceschen and Lower Carpath-Ruthenia in the east. When the Hungarians refuted Slovakia's claims with their own historic rights, Benes succeeded in arguing the strategic and economic necessity of including these regions in Slovak territory.
However, the consultations ruled out Benes' proposal for a trans-Hungarian corridor linking Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. As part of the negotiated settlement, Czechoslovakia signed a minority treaty guaranteeing the protection of minorities and accepting demands for compensation for liberation, which was also imposed on the independent former Austro-Hungarian territories of Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia.
Benes
At the end of March 1919, Bolshevik journalist Béla Kuhn won power as the leader of the radical Hungarian Soviet Republic, which was trying to regain Slovakia through the military invasion of the Hungarian Red Army in early May. The Hungarians occupied two-thirds of Slovakia and imposed regional Soviets in Slovakia and some parts of Ruthenia.
Bella Kuhn
Thus, a Slovak Soviet Republic influenced by the October Revolution in Soviet Russia appeared in Prešov on 16 June, and its leaders declared their support for the Soviet republics in Hungary and Russia. By mid-June, however, the threat of military action from the Great Powers forced the Hungarians to abandon Slovak territory and led to the fall of the Slovak Soviet Republic, which the Czechoslovak army regained Slovakia.
Slovak Soviet Republic
On the other hand, at the post-war Paris Peace Conference, France recognized the new Czechoslovak state as an important agent of its own power policy in Central Europe, and therefore at the Paris Peace Conference it supported the territorial and other claims made by the Czechoslovak delegation.
On the whole, therefore, the territorial claims of Czechoslovakia were satisfied, and the boundaries of the newly proclaimed Czechoslovak Republic were finally determined in the peace treaty. This was because the ruling circles of Western Europe wanted to treat Czechoslovakia as "an island of peace and order", so that it could play the role of a buffer against Soviet Russia and against the revolutionary movement in Central Europe as a whole.
Therefore, the governments of Western Europe were happy to annex Transcarpathian Ukraine to the territory of Czechoslovakia, whose inhabitants belonged to the Ukrainian ethnic group, and most of them were willing to be incorporated into Soviet Ukraine. Thus, Czechoslovakia had an area of about 140,000 square kilometers and a population of about fifteen million, of which only about 10 million belonged to the Czechoslovak and Slovak nationalities!
The rest belonged to minorities, with the largest numbers being ethnic Germans (3.25 million) and Hungarians (about 700,000), and the rest Poles and Ukrainians. The foreign policy of the Czechoslovak Republic, on the other hand, was characterized by its anti-Soviet bias, which was the exact opposite of the pro-Soviet attitude of the general population.
Therefore, although Czechoslovakia was founded, it still had to make a difficult choice between the bourgeois government of Western Europe and the proletarian power of Soviet Russia......