Czechoslovakia

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CZECHOSLOVAKIA.

THE INTERWAR PERIOD
WORLD WAR II
THE RISE OF COMMUNISM
1948–1960
THE PRAGUE SPRING
NORMALIZATION
THE VELVET REVOLUTION AND THE VELVET DIVORCE
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Czechoslovakia was a small country in central Europe that declared its independence on 28 October 1918 and dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993. Czechoslovakia was formally created at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 through the joining of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia), several counties of Upper Hungary inhabited largely by Slovak speakers, and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. All these territories had belonged to the Habsburg Empire, with the Bohemian Crownlands having been part of the post-1867 Austrian half of the empire, and the others having been part of the Hungarian half. Partly as a result of these territorial origins, partly for historical reasons stretching back into the medieval period, and partly because of the Czechoslovak leadership's successful lobbying at the Peace Conference, the state emerged with substantial German and Hungarian minorities, which represented 22 and 5 percent of the state's population in 1930, respectively.

THE INTERWAR PERIOD

Despite the potential for ethnic conflict, the inter-war Czechoslovak Republic was, by all accounts, a successful state. Initial secessionist urges among ethnic Germans living in the border regions waned when Czechoslovakia's economic success and political stability encouraged them to adopt a more positive attitude toward the republic. During the interwar period Czechoslovakia maintained a more steadfast commitment to democracy than any of its neighbors or any of the states of eastern Europe. Under the guidance of its most visible personage, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (president from 1918 to 1935), Czechoslovakia enacted several pieces of progressive legislation, including social and unemployment insurance schemes, institution of the eight-hour workday, and housing and agrarian reform. Legislation was shepherded through the parliament by an institution known as the p?tka, composed of members of the leaderships of the major political parties, and, if they reached an impasse, by caretaker governments. After initial deflationary hardships, the economy embarked on almost a decade of strong growth, bringing a generalized prosperity, although there were significant regional differences in the standard of living, with western regions faring better than those to the east. Internationally, Czechoslovakia was a supporter of the Versailles system, having alliance treaties with France, the Soviet Union, and Romania and Yugoslavia (in the Little Entente), and was a pillar of support for the League of Nations.

The years of economic growth and political calm came to an end with the onset of the Great Depression in Europe in 1931 and the rise of Nazi Germany. Czechoslovakia's German population increasingly came to support Konrad Henlein's (1898–1945) Sudeten German Party, which received financial and other support from the Nazi regime and won almost two-thirds of the German vote in the local elections of 1935. Similarly, tensions rose among the state's Hungarian population. These led to a series of international discussions aimed at resolving the Czech-German conflict that culminated in the Munich Accords, signed by the leaders of Nazi Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France on 30 September 1938. Its terms forced Masaryk's successor, Edvard Beneš (president from 1935 to 1948) to cede eleven thousand square miles of Czechoslovak territory inhabited largely by ethnic Germans to the Nazi state. Similarly, the first Vienna Award (2 November 1938) gave some four thousand six hundred square miles in Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to Germany's ally, Hungary.

WORLD WAR II

The "Munich betrayal," as Czechs still see it, by the western powers, effectively meant the end of the democratic interwar Czechoslovak state. A nominally independent Slovak state under Nazi tutelage came into existence on 14 March 1939 and the following day, as German troops entered that territory, the remaining Czech lands became the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. President Beneš, who had fled to London, successfully organized a government-in-exile, gaining recognition from the Allies during the course of 1941 and 1942. Although the war years were not as difficult for inhabitants of the Protectorate or Slovakia as for those other areas of eastern Europe, the hardships eventually provoked domestic resistance movements. In the Protectorate, Czechoslovak parachutists assassinated Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942) in 1942, while in Slovakia a large-scale uprising began on 29 August 1944, mobilizing sixty thousand troops and lasting two months. Finally, the citizens of Prague rose up on 5 May 1945, as Soviet and, in southwestern Bohemia, American troops were completing the liberation of the country.

THE RISE OF COMMUNISM

The immediate postwar years were filled with political, social, and economic turmoil as the state sought to reintegrate its Czech and Slovak halves and to reestablish itself. Following approval by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference (17 July–2 August 1945), President Beneš issued a decree revoking the citizenship of close to three million ethnic German citizens of prewar Czechoslovakia, resulting in their sometimes-violent expulsion. This decree also affected ethnic Hungarian citizens, whose expulsion was halted by the Communist Party's assumption of power. The expulsions were the source of continuing tension between Czechoslovakia (and, later, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and their neighbors. The property of the expelled populations became the basis for a wide-ranging land reform. Czechoslovakia also experienced a reorientation in foreign policy after Beneš signed a twenty-year alliance treaty with the Soviet Union in December 1943. The ceding of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to the Soviet Union followed in June 1945.

Domestically, a leftward political shift was evident in a number of measures, including the nationalization of key sectors of the economy and larger individual enterprises, resulting in 62 percent of the workforce being employed in the public sector. It was also evident in the political makeup of the National Front government, in which the right wing, whose parties had been banned, was absent. In this constellation, the Communist Party was by far the dominant force, winning 38 percent of the vote in the elections of May 1946 and installing its chairman, Klement Gottwald (1896–1953), as prime minister. Tensions between the Communists and their opponents worsened markedly in late 1947 and a political crisis erupted in February 1948 when several noncommunist ministers resigned. The crisis was resolved when Beneš approved Gottwald's government reorganization plan on 25 February 1948, a plan that included only Communist ministers and fellow travelers from the other parties, effectively making Czechoslovakia a communist state. Following the highly suspicious suicide of the noncommunist foreign minister, Jan Masaryk (son of the former president), on 10 March 1948, an ill President Beneš refused to sign the new Communist constitution and abdicated on 7 June 1948. He died on 3 September of that year, leaving the presidency to Gottwald.

1948–1960

The first years of Communist rule brought enormous change and considerable suffering. Beginning in 1948 the Communists deepened the nationalization program and embarked on the collectivization of agriculture, while internationally the state was a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. The regime also quickly began a purge of (often only suspected) political enemies in the state apparatus, the military, and leading roles in the economy. These purges were followed by the trials, imprisonments, and occasionally executions of those deemed opposed to the new regime. The victims included many religious leaders, members of noncommunist political parties, Slovak nationalists, and army personnel who had served in the west during World War II. Finally, these pseudo-judicial proceedings came to be directed against party members themselves, culminating in a show trial with strong anti-Semitic overtones involving the General Secretary of the CPCz, Rudolf Slánský(1901–1952), and thirteen other important communists in November of 1952, in which Slánskýandtenof his codefendants were executed. President Gottwald died on 14 March 1953 and was succeeded by Antonín Zápotocký (president from 1953 to1957), who was succeeded in turn by Antonín Novotný (president from 1957 to 1968).

Developments in the Czechoslovak economy also had political consequences. Growth was impressive in the 1950s, although the economy was increasingly centralized and growth was concentrated in heavy industry. A currency reform was carried out in 1953, despite the fact that it triggered protests across the country, most notably in the industrial city of Plze? (Pilsen). The reform, coupled with Gottwald's death before the onset of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's initial destalinization push, allowed the regime to weather 1956. By improving the standard of living Czechoslovakia avoided the political turmoil experienced in neighboring Poland and Hungary. It was against this backdrop of general quiescence and the absence of destalinization that President Novotný promulgated a new constitution in 1960. It further centralized decision-making and declared that socialism had been achieved, formally changing the state's name to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic to reflect this.

THE PRAGUE SPRING

Shortly after the introduction of the 1960 constitution Prague's Stalinist leaders encountered difficulties. Initially, these were economic, with growth slowing in the early 1960s and actually declining in 1963. Here, in the wake of Khrushchev's intensification of the destalinization campaign in 1961, the regime began to encourage limited reforms. Dissatisfactions spread, however, in the mid-1960s, as ferment began among intellectuals, students, and the released victims of the show trials of the 1950s. During the course of the decade, Novotný, who occupied both the presidency and the Communist Party chairmanship, managed to alienate most of the important constituencies in the polity and was forced to relinquish his party position on 5 January 1968.

His replacement as party secretary, Alexander Dub?ek, was a Slovak who actively encouraged reform in the early months of 1968, producing the flowering known as the "Prague Spring." Czechoslovak society became involved in wide-ranging discussions about democratization, federalization, and economic reform and formed new civic associations to support what became called "socialism with a human face." Censorship began to break down, and the public began to express reformist opinions that went far beyond those the regime was willing to consider, given that the leadership was split among reformers, centrists, and conservatives who had been weakened by the replacement of Novotný as president by Ludvík Svoboda (president from 1968 to 1975) in late March. Further, over the course of the months leading into the summer, Czechoslovakia's communist allies expressed increasing concern over developments in the state, fearing that the reform process had escaped the party's control and demanding the reinstitution of censorship and other changes designed to stifle reform. Tensions began to peak in late July when Leonid Brezhnev and much of the Soviet leadership met personally with Dub?ek and the Czechoslovak leadership and demanded a set of changes. When these changes were not enacted to the Soviet leadership's satisfaction, and a looming party congress was expected to result in the sweeping victory of reformers, Czechoslovakia was invaded by troops from the USSR, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria on the night of 20–21 August 1968. The invasion was the source of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which, although never explicitly acknowledged as such, required socialist states to militarily intervene in any state where socialism was perceived as under threat.

Although the invasion was a success militarily, it failed politically, as conservative forces had not prepared the way for the replacement of the reformers, the feared party congress met in secret and condemned the invasion, and the public rallied in support of the leadership. In such conditions, the Soviet leadership was forced to negotiate with its Czechoslovak counterpart. Dub?ek and his associates, who had been taken to Moscow, were forced to sign the Moscow Protocol, which bound them to carry out a list of demands. Only when these steps were taken would the Soviet Union consider the situation in Czechoslovakia "normalized" and begin withdrawing its troops. Over the course of the months after the invasion Dub?ek sacrificed virtually all of the reforms he had championed. By the time of his resignation as Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPCz) head, on 17 April 1969, the only major reform that remained standing was the federalization of the state into Czech and Slovak halves, adopted by the parliament on 28 October 1968.

NORMALIZATION

Dub?ek's successor as CPCz leader was another Slovak, Gustáv Husák (1913–1991), who also succeeded Svoboda as president, ruling from 1975 until 1989. The final two decades of Communist rule, known as the period of "normalization," after the term from the Moscow Protocol, are closely associated with his name. The period is notable for five features. First, the regime undertook a wide-ranging purge of the party and institutions of economic and public life. Second, the era was exemplified by political changelessness and a general sense of dreariness. Third, the regime's strategy for gaining the acquiescence of an initially hostile citizenry was to encourage consumerism and a withdrawal into private life. This proved quite successful while the economy grew through the mid-1970s, but by 1977 the economy began a slide into the stagnation that characterized the 1980s, sapping the approach's viability, although living standards remained higher than almost anywhere else in the Eastern bloc. Fourth, a large and active secret police force and networks of informers made Czechoslovakia one of the most restrictive societies in Eastern Europe. Finally, the strictness of the regime inhibited the founding and growth of dissident movements. The most important of these was Charter 77, whose most notable figure was the playwright Václav Havel (b. 1936). It was founded in 1977 and had more than one thousand two hundred signatories by the mid-1980s.

THE VELVET REVOLUTION AND THE VELVET DIVORCE

On 17 November 1989, after many Czechs and Slovaks had become aware of the changes taking place elsewhere and other organizations had begun to spring up alongside Charter 77, a government-sponsored student parade turned into a demonstration calling for freedom and democracy. The movement rapidly gained support and, after days of massive demonstrations across the country and a highly successful nationwide general strike on 27 November, the CPCz entered into negotiations with opposition leaders. These culminated on 10 December, when Husák announced the formation of a largely noncommunist government and resigned his post. Havel succeeded him as president, while Dub?ek returned to serve as speaker of the parliament. That this took place without violence has led to it being called the "Velvet Revolution."

After elections in June 1990 the country began the difficult process of postcommunist transition. In addition to the difficulties of reforming all spheres of public and economic life, the nature of the relationship between the two republics needed to be addressed. With an eye to this, the state changed its official name to "The Czech and Slovak Federative Republic." More importantly, however, differences between the two republics in approaches toward fiscal and privatization issues, among others, and the desire for more autonomy or even independence among many Slovaks caused political tensions. These peaked after the June 1992 elections, which brought a party advocating closer relations between the republics to power in the Czech lands, whereas in Slovakia the victorious party favored a much looser, essentially confederal, arrangement. These two parties began meeting shortly after the elections and, after much intense negotiation, the decision was reached to divide the country. Despite the fact that a majority of Czechs and Slovaks opposed the end of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia came into existence on 1 January 1993, with this "Velvet Divorce" mirroring the "Velvet Revolution" in its lack of violence.