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( Czechoslovakia)
Czechoslovakia may also refer to what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Czechoslovakia was founded in October 1918 as one of the successor states of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I. It consisted of the present-day territories of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. Its territory included some of the most industrialized regions of the former Austria-Hungary. It was a democratic republic throughout the pre-World War II period, but was characterized by ethnic problems stemming from dissatisfaction among the second and third largest ethnic groups (Germans and Slovaks, respectively) with the political and economic dominance of the Czechs, and from a failure among most Germans and Hungarians of Czechoslovakia to ever fully accept the creation of the new state. The official statement about constituent nations at the time was that there are no Czechs and Slovaks, but only one nation Czechoslovaks (see Czechoslovakism). According to this idea was also old statistic from this era about population and nations in the country (see bellow). But not all people agreed with this ideology (mainly among Slovaks) and once a unified Czechoslovakia was restored after WWII (see dividing of the country during WWII) this idea was left behind and Czechoslovakia was a country of two nations - the Czechs and the Slovaks. The original ethnic composition of the new state was 51% Czechs, 16% Slovaks, 22% Germans, 5% Hungarians and 4% Rusyns.[2] Many of the Germans, Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles[3] and also some Slovaks, felt disadvantaged in Czechoslovakia, because the political elite of the country introduced a centralized state and most of the time did not allow political autonomy for the ethnic groups. This policy, combined with increasing Nazi propaganda especially in the industrialized German speaking Sudetenland, led to increasing unrest among the Non-Czech population.
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