Czech Republic

The **Czech Republic** (Czech: *Česká republika*) or **Czechia** (*Česko*), sometimes referred to in official documents as the **Czechoslovak Republic** (*Československá republika*), is a country in Central Europe. Formed after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the state initially claimed areas now under the control of the Free Socialist Republic of Germany and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but soon faced troubles in those areas that led to its current borders.

## History

### Czechoslovak National Council

The Czechoslovak National Council was an organisation founded by Czech and Slovak émigrés during the Great War to liberate their homeland from Austria-Hungary. During the closing weeks of the war, the Czechoslovak National Council was formally recognised by the Entente powers as a provisional government.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, current President of the Czech Republic, was a Moravian professor and politician who went into exile in Switzerland in December 1914. Over the following months, he gradually secured the support of the Czech and Slovak groups in Western Europe, and on 14 November 1915 his organization, calling itself the Czech Committee Abroad, published a manifesto declaring war on Austria-Hungary. Shortly afterwards, the Czech Committee Abroad was reconstituted as the Czechoslovak National Council.

The Czechoslovak National Council was initially led by Masaryk and another Czech exile, Josef Dürich. However, after a falling-out over differences in vision, Dürich left to set up his own organisation with the backing of the tsarist Russian government. This organisation became defunct after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Thereafter the Czechoslovak National Council was led by Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, with Milan Štefánik, a Slovak in the French Army, representing Slovak interests. In 1917, Masaryk played a crucial role in organising the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia, which fought alongside the Allies against the Bolshevik Red Army.

### Provisional Government

On 14 October 1918, Beneš formally upgraded the Czechoslovak National Council to the Czechoslovak provisional government, a move which was promptly recognized by France. Masaryk was designated president of the republic, while Beneš was to serve as acting foreign minister and Štefánik as acting minister of war. This arrangement was accepted by Czech leaders in Prague after the Czech declaration of independence on 28 October. Two days later, Slovak leaders approved their inclusion in the new Czechoslovak state at a meeting held at Turčansky Svätý Martin.

### German Minority

Despite their desire to join either the new German Republic or the Republic of German-Austria, the Germans in the province of German Bohemia were incorporated into the Czechoslovak Republic. They were not involved in discussions on the constitution of the new state. On 4 March 1919, a large portion of the German population demonstrated peacefully in tandem with a general strike called by the German socialist leadership, which was the most influential of the German political factions in the region. These demonstrations were put down by the Czechoslovak military, involving 54 deaths and 84 wounded.

### Hungarian-Czechoslovak War

*Main article: Hungarian-Czechoslovak War*

After the declaration in Hungary of a soviet republic by the communist Béla Kun on 21 March, the communists needed to consolidate their power and inspire confidence in their regime. Claiming that they would reclaim territory that had belonged to Hungary before the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hungarian government declared war on Czechoslovakia in May 1919.

The Czechoslovak Army was easily pushed back by the Hungarian Red Army. Although the Czechoslovak Army was beginning to consolidate their forces in the region and plan a counterattack, these plans were ruined when the republic was forced to divert a large part of their forces west, to German Bohemia.

The Slovak Soviet Republic was declared in Prešov on 16 June 1919. The Czechoslovak Republic was never able to recover these territories.

### Uprisings in German Bohemia

Inspired by the communist revolution in Germany that began on 1 May 1919, the socialist leadership in German Bohemia was quickly radicalised and rallied the German population in the towns of Reichenberg, Aussig, and Karlsbad.

On 23 May, the populace in those towns took up arms and declared their allegiance to the nascent German Socialist Republic. They took control of the entire region with little opposition and coordinated with the communist forces in the nearby German cities of Dresden and Chemnitz.

On 26 May, the Czechoslovak Army began an offensive to take Reichenberg. Although they were better equipped and trained than the impromptu militias that had risen up in German Bohemia, the Czechoslovaks were repelled with help from Germany.

### March on Prague and Collapse of the Slovak Front

The Germans quickly drew up plans to invade the western portion of Czechoslovakia in tandem with the Hungarian invasion of Slovakia, and sent word to Budapest. On 30 May, the communist Germans began to advance towards Prague and called for all Czech workers to rise up against the bourgeois government.

However, the Germans in the formerly Czechoslovak territory were driven by a combination of revolutionary enthusiasm and a desire to live under a German government. Although the left was a significant force in Czech industrial centres such as Prague, it was much less popular in the countryside, and most Czechs were happy simply to be represented by a Czech government.

As a result, this call fell on mostly deaf ears. Although the left-wing of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party (ČSDSD) called for the establishment of a socialist republic at this time, there was little support for the proposal and they were wary of alienating the Czech political apparatus and people.

By this time Hungary had advanced further into Slovakia, and a small detachment of Soviet troops in Poland pushed south into Slovakia to meet them, encircling a part of the Czechoslovak Army in the process and supporting the Hungarian war effort. With the situation in the west deteriorating, the sections of the Czechoslovak Army that remained in Slovakia pulled back in order to divert more forces west.

A battle ensued outside Prague, and without the revolutionary fervour spreading into Czechia, the Germans were unable to take it. The Hungarian regime notified the Germans that they were unable to commit to an invasion of Czechia due to their war with Romania, and the German Red Army slowly fell back into German-populated territory.

The Czech government, unable to reclaim their lost territories, signed an armistice with the socialist regimes on their borders and focused their strength on guarding their *de facto* borders, although they never relinquished formal claims to Slovak or German Bohemian lands.