History

Overview

The Czech Republic comprises the former provinces of Bohemia, Silesia and Moravia, and from 1918 to 1993 it formed part of Czechoslovakia. It became an independent republic in 1993 following the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992, In March 1999, the Czech Republic was admitted to NATO and in 2002, it was formally invited to join the EU.

Early History

Archaeologists have found evidence of prehistoric human settlement in the area dating back to the Neolithic era. In the classical era, from the 3rd century BC Celtic migrations, the Boii, and later in the 1st century Germanic tribes of Marcomanni and Quadi, settled there. During the Migration Period of the 5th century, many Germanic tribes moved westward and southward out of Central Europe. In an equally significant migration, Slavic people from the Black Sea and Carpathian regions settled in the area (a movement that was also stimulated by the onslaught of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns, Avars, Bulgars and Magyars). Following in the Germans' wake, they moved southward into Bohemia, Moravia and some of present day Austria. During the 7th century the Frankish merchant Samo, supporting the Slavs fighting their Avar rulers, became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe. The Moravian principality arose in the 8th century.

The Bohemian or Czech state emerged in the late 9th century when it was unified by the Premyslids. The kingdom of Bohemia was a significant local power during the Middle Ages. It was part of the Holy Roman Empire during the entire existence of this confederation.

Religious conflicts such as the 15th century Hussite Wars and the 17th century Thirty Years' War had a devastating effect on the local population. From the sixteenth century, Bohemia came increasingly under Habsburg control as the Habsburgs became first the elected and then hereditary rulers of Bohemia. After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia became part of Austrian Empire and later of Austria-Hungary.

1918-1938: The First Republic

Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, the independent republic of Czechoslovakia was created in 1918. This new country incorporated regions with majority German, Hungarian, Polish and Ruthenian speaking populations.

A temporary constitution was adopted and Tomás Masaryk declared president on November 14. The Treaty of St. Germain, signed in September 1919 formally recognised the new republic. Ruthenia was later added to the Czech lands and Slovakia by the Treaty of Trianon (June, 1920).

The new state was characterised by problems due to its ethnic diversity, the separate histories and greatly differing religious, cultural, and social traditions of the Czechs and Slovaks. The Germans and Magyars (Hungarians) of Czechoslovakia openly agitated against the territorial settlements.

The Czechoslovak state was conceived as a parliamentary democracy. The constitution identified the "Czechoslovak nation" as the creator and principal constituent of the Czechoslovak state and established Czech and Slovak as official languages. The concept of the Czechoslovak nation was necessary in order to justify the establishment of Czechoslovakia towards the world, because otherwise the statistical majority of the Czechs as compared to Germans would be rather weak. The operation of the new Czechoslovak government was distinguished by stability. Largely responsible for this were the well-organised political parties that emerged as the real centres of power. In 1935, Edvard Benes succeeded Masaryk as president.

1938-1939: The Second Republic

Although Czechoslovakia was the only central European country to remain a parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1938, it faced problems with ethnic minorities, the most important of which concerned the country's large German population. The ethnic Germans constituted more than 22% of the interwar state's population and were largely concentrated in the Bohemian and Moravian border regions, called the Sudetenland in German. Some members of this minority, which were predominantly sympathetic to Germany, undermined the new Czechoslovak state.

Hitler's rise in Germany, the German annexation (Anschluss) of Austria, the resulting revival of revisionism in Hungary and of agitation for autonomy in Slovakia, and the appeasement policy of the Western powers (France and the United Kingdom) left Czechoslovakia without allies, exposed to hostile Germany and Hungary on three sides and to unsympathetic Poland on the north.

After the Austrian Anschluss, Czechoslovakia was to become Hitler's next target. The German nationalist minority, led by Konrad Henlein and backed by Hitler, demanded the union of the predominantly German districts with Germany. Threatening war, Hitler extorted through the Munich Agreement in September 1938 the cession of the Bohemian, Moravian and Czech-Silesian borderlands - Sudetenland. On September 29, the Munich Agreement was signed by Germany, Italy, France and Britain. The Czechoslovak government agreed to abide by the agreement. The Munich Agreement stipulated that Czechoslovakia must cede Sudeten territory to Germany.

Benes resigned as president of the Czechoslovak Republic on October 5, 1938, fled to London and was succeeded by Emil Hácha. In early November 1938, under the Vienna Award, which was a result of the Munich agreement, Czechoslovakia (and later Slovakia) was forced by Germany and Italy to cede southern Slovakia (one third of Slovak territory) to Hungary. After the 30 September ultimatum (but without consulting with any other countries), Poland obtained the disputed Zaolzie region as a territorial cession shortly after the Munich Agreement, on 2 October.

The Czechs in the greatly weakened Czechoslovak Republic were forced to grant major concessions to the non-Czechs. The executive committee of the Slovak People's Party met at ?ilina on October 5, 1938, and with the acquiescence of all Slovak parties except the Social Democrats formed an autonomous Slovak government under Jozef Tiso. Similarly, the two major factions in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the Russophiles and Ukrainophiles, agreed on the establishment of an autonomous government, which was constituted on October 8, 1938. In late November 1938, the truncated state, renamed Czecho-Slovakia (the so-called Second Republic), was reconstituted in three autonomous units: Czechia (i.e. Bohemia and Moravia), Slovakia, and Ruthenia.

On March 14, 1939, Slovakia gained nominal independence as a satellite state under Jozef Tiso. Hitler forced Hácha to surrender what remained of Bohemia and Moravia to German control on 15 March 1939, establishing the German protectorate "Bohemia and Moravia", which was created on March 16th. On the same day (March 15), the Carpatho-Ukraine (Subcarpathian Ruthenia) declared its independence and was immediately invaded and annexed by Hungary. Finally, on March 23 Hungary invaded and occupied from the Carpatho-Ukraine some further parts of Slovakia (eastern Slovakia).

1939-1945: World War II

Benes and other Czechoslovak exiles in London organised a Czechoslovak government-in-exile and negotiated to obtain international recognition for the government and a renunciation of the Munich Agreement and its consequences. The government was recognised by the government of United Kingdom (Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax) on July 18, 1940. In July and December 1941, the Soviet Union and United States also recognised the exiled government, respectively. Czechoslovak military units fought alongside Allied forces.

In December 1943, Benes's government concluded a treaty with the Soviet Union. Benes worked to bring Czechoslovak communist exiles in Britain into active cooperation with his government, offering far-reaching concessions, including nationalization of heavy industry and the creation of local people's committees at the war's end. In March 1945, he gave key cabinet positions to Czechoslovak communist exiles in Moscow.

The assassination of Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 by a group of Czech and Slovak freedom fighters (partisans) led to reprisals, including the annihilation of the village of Lidice. All adult male inhabitants were executed, while the women and children were transported to concentration camps.

On May 8, 1944, Benes signed an agreement with Soviet leaders stipulating that Czechoslovak territory liberated by Soviet armies would be placed under Czechoslovak civilian control.

From September 21, 1944, Czechoslovakia was liberated mostly by Soviet troops (the Red Army), supported by Czech and Slovak resistance, from the east to the west, only southwestern Bohemia was liberated by other Allied troops from the west. In May 1945, US forces liberated the city of Plzen. A civilian uprising against the Nazi garrison took place in Prague in May 1945. The resistance was assisted by an auxiliary force composed of Russians originally organised by the Germans.

Except for the brutalities of the German occupation in Bohemia and Moravia (and, after the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944, also in Slovakia), Czechoslovakia suffered relatively little from the war. Bratislava was taken over on April 4, 1945, and Prague on May 9, 1945 by Soviet troops. Both Soviet and Allied troops were withdrawn in the same year.

A treaty ceding Carpatho-Ukraine to the Soviet Union was signed in June 1945 between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The Potsdam Agreement provided for the expulsion of Sudeten Germans to Germany under the supervision of the Allied Control Council. Decisions regarding the Hungarian minority reverted to the Czechoslovak government. In February 1946, the Hungarian government agreed that Czechoslovakia could expatriate as many Hungarians as there were Slovaks in Hungary wishing to return to Czechoslovakia.

1945-1948: The Third Republic

The Third Republic came into being in April 1945. Its government, installed at Kosice on April 4 and moved to Prague in May, was a National Front coalition in which three socialist parties-KSC, Czechoslovak Social democratic Party, and Czechoslovak National Socialist Party-predominated. Certain non-socialist parties were included in the coalition; among them were the Catholic People's Party (in Moravia) and the Democratic Party (Slovakia).

Following Nazi Germany's surrender, some 2.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia with Allied approval. Czechoslovakia fell within the Soviet sphere of influence.

The popular enthusiasm evoked by the Soviet armies of liberation (which was decided by compromise of Allies and Stalin on Yaltas conference in 1944) benefited the KSC. Czechoslovaks, bitterly disappointed by the West at the Munich Agreement (1938), responded favourably to both the KSC and the Soviet alliance.

Reunited after the war, the Czechs and Slovaks set national elections for the spring of 1946. The democratic elements, led by President Edvard Benes, hoped the Soviet Union would allow Czechoslovakia the freedom to choose its own form of government and aspired to a Czechoslovakia that would act as a bridge between East and West. Communists secured strong representation in the popularly elected National Committees, the new organs of local administration. In the May 1946 election, the KSC won in the Czech part of the country (40.17%), and the anti-Communist Democratic Party won in Slovakia (62%). In sum, however, the KSC won a plurality of 38 percent of the vote at countrywide level. Edvard Benes continued as president of the republic. The Communist leader Klement Gottwald became prime minister. Most important, although the communists held only a minority of portfolios, they were able to gain control over all key ministries.

Although the communist-led government initially intended to participate in the Marshall Plan, it was forced by Moscow to back out. In 1947, Stalin summoned Gottwald to Moscow; upon his return to Prague, the KSC demonstrated a significant radicalization of its tactics.

1948: Communist Takeover

On February 20, 1948 the twelve non-communist ministers resigned, in part, to induce Benes to call for early elections: Benes refused to accept the cabinet resignations and did not call for elections. In the meantime, the KSC garnered its forces. The communist-controlled Ministry of Interior deployed police regiments to sensitive areas and equipped a workers' militia. On February 25, Benes, perhaps fearing Soviet intervention, capitulated. He accepted the resignations of the dissident ministers and received a new cabinet list from Gottwald, thus completing, under the cover of superficial legality, the communist takeover.

On March 10, 1948 the moderate foreign minister of the government, Jan Masaryk, was found dead in an apparent suicide, although the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death have led some to believe that it was a political assassination.

1948-1989: The Communist Era

In February 1948, when the Communists took power, Czechoslovakia was declared a "people's democracy" (till 1960) - a preliminary step toward socialism and, ultimately, communism. Bureaucratic centralism under the direction of KSC leadership was introduced. Dissident elements were purged from all levels of society, including the Catholic Church. The ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialist realism pervaded cultural and intellectual life. The economy was committed to comprehensive central planning and abolition of private ownership of capital. Czechoslovakia became a satellite state of the Soviet Union; it was a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) in 1949 and of the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

The attainment of Soviet-style command socialism became the government's avowed policy. Slovak autonomy was constrained; the KSS (Communist Party of Slovakia) was reunited with the KSC (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) but retained its own identity. Following the Soviet example, Czechoslovakia began emphasising the rapid development of heavy industry. Although Czechoslovakia's industrial growth of 170% between 1948 and 1957 was impressive, it was far exceeded by that of Japan (300%) and the Federal Republic of Germany (almost 300%) and more than equalled by Austria and Greece.

Benes refused to sign the Communist Constitution of 1948 (Ninth-of-May Constitution) and resigned from the presidency; he was succeeded by Klement Gottwald, who died in 1953. Gottwald was succeeded by Antonín Zápotocký as president and by Antonín Novotný as head of the KSC. After extensive purges modelled on the Stalinist pattern in other east European states, the Communist Party tried 14 of its former leaders in November 1952 and sentenced 11 to death. For more than a decade thereafter, the Czechoslovak communist political structure was characterised by the orthodoxy of the leadership of party chief Antonín Novotný, who became president in 1957 when Zápotocký died.

In the 1950s, the Stalinists accused their opponents of "conspiracy against the people's democratic order" and "high treason" in order to oust them from positions of power. Large-scale arrests of Communists with an "international" background, i.e., those with a wartime connection with the West, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Jews and Slovak "bourgeois nationalists," were followed by show trials.

The 1960 Constitution declared the victory of socialism and proclaimed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In the early 1960s, the Czechoslovak economy became severely stagnated. The industrial growth rate was the lowest in Eastern Europe. As a result, in 1965 the party approved the New Economic Model, introducing free market elements into the economy. The KSC "Theses" of December 1965 presented the party response to the call for political reform. Democratic centralism was redefined, placing a stronger emphasis on democracy. The leading role of the KSC was reaffirmed but limited. Slovaks pressed for federalization.

On January 5, 1968, the KSC Central Committee elected Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak reformer, to replace Novotný as first secretary of the KSC. On March 22, 1968, Novotný resigned from the presidency and was succeeded by General Ludvík Svoboda.

1968: The Prague Spring

Dubcek carried the reform movement a step further in the direction of liberalism. After Novotný's fall, censorship was lifted. The press, radio and television were mobilised for reformist propaganda purposes. The movement to democratise socialism in Czechoslovakia, formerly confined largely to the party intelligentsia, acquired a new, popular dynamism in the spring of 1968 (the "Prague Spring"). Radical elements found expression: anti-Soviet polemics appeared in the press; the Social Democrats began to form a separate party; new unaffiliated political clubs were created. Party conservatives urged the implementation of repressive measures, but Dubcek counselled moderation and reemphasised KSC leadership. In addition, the Dubcek leadership called for politico-military changes in the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. The leadership affirmed its loyalty to socialism and the Warsaw Pact but also expressed the desire to improve relations with all countries of the world regardless of their social systems.

A program adopted in April 1968 set guidelines for a modern, humanistic socialist democracy that would guarantee, among other things, freedom of religion, press, assembly, speech, and travel; a program that, in Dubcek's words, would give socialism "a human face". After 20 years of little public participation, the population gradually started to take interest in the government, and Dubcek became a popular national figure.

The internal reforms and foreign policy statements of the Dubcek leadership created great concern among some other Warsaw Pact governments. KSC conservatives had misinformed Moscow regarding the strength of the reform movement. As a result, the troops of Warsaw Pact countries (except Romania) invaded Czechoslovakia during the night of August 20-21. Two-thirds of the KSC Central Committee opposed the Soviet intervention. Popular opposition was expressed in numerous spontaneous acts of nonviolent resistance. In Prague and other cities throughout the republic, Czechs and Slovaks greeted Warsaw Pact soldiers with arguments and reproaches. The Czechoslovak Government declared that the troops had not been invited into the country and that their invasion was a violation of socialist principles, international law and the UN Charter. Dubcek, who had been arrested on the night of August 20, was taken to Moscow for negotiations. The outcome was the Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty, which provided for the strengthening of the KSC, strict party control of the media, and the suppression of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party.

On January 19, 1969, the student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague's Wenceslas Square to protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968.

The principal Czechoslovak reformers were forcibly and secretly taken to the Soviet Union where they signed a treaty that provided for the "temporary stationing" of an unspecified number of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Dubcek was removed as party First Secretary on 17 April 1969, and replaced by another Slovak, Gustáv Husák. Later, Dubcek and many of his allies within the party were stripped of their party positions in a purge that lasted until 1971 and reduced party membership by almost one-third.

Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s

The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia made major gains in industrial production in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s, its industrial production was near parity with that of the Czech lands. Slovakia's portion of per capita national income rose from slightly more than 60% of that of Bohemia and Moravia in 1948 to nearly 80% in 1968, and Slovak per capita earning power equalled that of the Czechs in 1971. The pace of Slovak economic growth has continued to exceed that of Czech growth to the present day.

Dubcek remained in office only until April 1969. Gustáv Husák (a centrist, and interestingly one of the Slovak "bourgeois nationalists" imprisoned by his own KSC in the 1950s) was named first secretary (title changed to general secretary in 1971). A program of "Normalization" (the restoration of continuity with the pre-reform period) was initiated. Normalization entailed thoroughgoing political repression and the return to ideological conformity. A new purge cleansed the Czechoslovak leadership of all reformist elements.

The newly created Federal Assembly (i.e. federal parliament), which replaced the National Assembly, was to work in close cooperation with the Czech National Council and the Slovak National Council (i.e. national parliaments).

In 1975, Gustáv Husák added the position of president to his post as party chief. The Husák regime required conformity and obedience in all aspects of life. Husák also tried to obtain acquiescence to his rule by providing an improved standard of living. He returned Czechoslovakia to an orthodox command economy with a heavy emphasis on central planning and continued to extend industrialization. For a while the policy seemed successful, the 1980s however were more or less a period of economic stagnation. Another feature of Husák's rule was a continued dependence on the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, approximately 50% of Czechoslovakia's foreign trade was with the Soviet Union, and almost 80% was with communist countries.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, the regime was challenged by individuals and organised groups aspiring to independent thinking and activity. The first organised opposition emerged under the umbrella of Charter 77. On January 6, 1977, a manifesto called Charter 77 appeared in West German newspapers. The original manifesto reportedly was signed by 243 persons; among them were artists, former public officials, and other prominent figures. The Charter had over 800 signatures by the end of 1977, including workers and youth. It criticised the government for failing to implement human rights provisions of documents it had signed, including the state's own constitution; international covenants on political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights; and the Final Act of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Although not organised in any real sense, the signatories of Charter 77 constituted a citizens' initiative aimed at inducing the Czechoslovak Government to observe formal obligations to respect the human rights of its citizens. Signatories were arrested and interrogated; dismissal from employment often followed. Because religion offered possibilities for thought and activities independent of the state, it too was severely restricted and controlled. Clergymen were required to be licensed. Unlike in Poland, dissent and independent activity were limited in Czechoslovakia to a fairly small segment of the populace. Many Czechs and Slovaks emigrated to the West.

1989: The Velvet Revolution

On November 17, 1989, a peaceful student demonstration in Prague was suppressed by riot police. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27.

With the collapse of other Communist governments, and increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on November 28 that it would relinquish power and dismantle the single-party state. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On December 10, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned. Alexander Dubček was elected speaker of the federal parliament on December 28 and Václav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on December 29 1989.

In June 1990 the first democratic elections since 1946 were held in Czechoslovakia, resulting in the country's first completely non-Communist government in over forty years.

1990-1992: Democratic Czechoslovakia

The first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1946 took place in June 1990 without incident and with more than 95% of the population voting. As anticipated, Civic Forum and Public Against Violence won landslide victories in their respective republics and gained a comfortable majority in the federal parliament. The parliament undertook substantial steps toward securing the democratic evolution of Czechoslovakia. It successfully moved toward fair local elections in November 1990, ensuring fundamental change at the county and town level.

Civic Forum found, however, that although it had successfully completed its primary objective-the overthrow of the communist regime-it was ineffectual as a governing party. The demise of Civic Forum was viewed by most as necessary and inevitable.

By the end of 1990, unofficial parliamentary "clubs" had evolved with distinct political agendas. Most influential was the Civic Democratic Party, headed by former Prime Minister Václav Klaus. Other notable parties that came into being after the split were the Czech Social Democratic Party, Civic Movement and Civic Democratic Alliance.

By 1992, Slovak calls for greater autonomy effectively blocked the daily functioning of the federal government. In the election of June 1992, Klaus's Civic Democratic Party won handily in the Czech lands on a platform of economic reform. Vladimír Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia emerged as the leading party in Slovakia, basing its appeal on fairness to Slovak demands for autonomy. Federalists, like Havel, were unable to contain the trend toward the split. In July 1992, President Havel resigned. In the latter half of 1992, Klaus and Meciar hammered out an agreement that the two republics would go their separate ways by the end of the year.

1993 to Present: The Czech Republic

Members of Czechoslovakia's parliament (the Federal Assembly), divided along national lines, barely cooperated enough to pass the law officially separating the two nations in late 1992. On 1 January 1993, the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia were simultaneously and peacefully founded.

Relationships between the two states, despite occasional disputes about the division of federal property and the governing of the border, have been peaceful. Both states attained immediate recognition from the US and their European neighbours.