The Great Moravian Empire
The "Roman" Emperor Charlemagne annexed Bavaria, uprooted the
Avar dominion and established East Mark (Austria). Frankish missions entered
west Slovakia and Moravia. The first church was established in Nitra by Prince
Pribina, a protagonist of Frankish influence. He was driven out by Moravian
Prince Mojmir who annexed his Principality. East Frankish king Luis the German
appointed Pribina the Prince of a part of Pannonia, inhabited by Slavonic
population. He deposed Mojmir and appointed his nephew Rastislav the Prince of
Moravia. Rastislav asked in Rome for priests but obtained no answer. Then asked
in Constantinopolis. Two missionaries, brothers Constantin and Methodius were
sent. They knew the language of southern Slaves and invented a new alphabet for
it. They translated the most important liturgical texts.
They arrived to Moravia in 863 and founded a school for
priests there. They were denounced to the pope. They had to travel to Rome and
defend there their Slavonic liturgy. Constantin (Cyril) died in Rome. Methodius
was appointed Archbishop of Pannonia and Great Moravia. However, he was captured
by Bavarians and released only after interventions of the Pope and new Moravian
Prince Svatopluk, who immediately started to christianise and annex the
neighbouring Slavonic territories (Krakow region, Silesia, Bohemia, Lusatania,
Pannonia). Svatopluk sent Methodius to Rome to ask for direct protection
independent of the Frankish Empire. The pope agreed and sent Svatopluk a letter
"Industrie tue". After Methodius died in 885 no new archbishop was immediately
appointed and the new Pope demanded abolition of Slavonic liturgy. After the
pupils of Methodius were expelled from the country in 886 a high-rank papal
delegation failed to find suitable candidates for higher church posts. New
frankish attacks followed soon as well as ones of Magyars, who invaded Pannonia.
After Svatopluk died in 894 the Czech princes offered their submission to Franks.
Svatopluk's sons quarrelled over whether the country should submit to Franks or
defend its independence. In 899 another papal delegation arrived and appointed
an archbishop and bishops but it was too late. Franks and Moravians denounced
each other to the Pope for the use of Magyar mercenaries in their permanent wars.
The third (Magyars) won. The Great Moravia ceased to exist in 906 and Bavarians
lost the battle of Bratislava in 907. This enabled Magyars to attack various
parts of Europe (sometimes as mercenaries) before they were heavily beaten near
Augsburg in 955 by Otto I.
The policy of direct agreement with Rome avoiding the
dependence on the East Frankish Empire was successfully applied by many
Hungarian and Polish kings thanks to early establishment of archbishopric in
their countries which remained a dream of Czech dukes and kings from ruling
Premyslid dynasty. After the collapse of Slavonic mission in Moravia Slavonic
culture spread to Bulgaria and Russia, where the original Cyrillic script has
been further developed and is presently used by more than 200 millions of people.
Medieval Dynastic States
The first remarkable Duke from Premyslid dynasty was Boleslav
I., who came to power after having assassinated his brother Duke Wenceslas (known
from the English carol) that later became Saint-Protector of Bohemia.
Boleslav not only continued pacification of the tribes within Bohemia but
also acquired Krakow and Silesia and married his daughter Dubrava to the
Polish Piast Prince Mieszek. His son Boleslav II. extended his rule to parts
of Galicia and Slovakia and managed to establish the bishopric in Prague.
Since Boleslav II. intrigued with the Bavarian Duke Henry against new
emperor Otto II the Prague bishop was not subordinated to the archbishop in
Regensburg but in far-away Mainz. Boleslav II also liquidated his only
internal rival East-Bohemian family of Slavnikovci, that produced bishop
Saint Vojtech, one of best educated men of that time.
However, Boleslav the Brave (the grand-son of Boleslav I),
the greatest king of Poland occupied all territories under Premislyd's rule
as well as Slovakia. He was only thrown out with German aid. Another
Premyslid Bretislav succeeded to conquer the whole Poland including its
first capital Gniezdno, but was forced to retreat because of German military
and political pressure. Bretislav's subsequent submission marked the end of
Bohemian attempts to separate themselves from the German Empire. The next
Premyslids engaged in friendly policy of co-operation with the (Holy Roman)
emperors taking part in their military campaigns especially in Hungary and
Italy. Two of them (Vratislav and Vladislav II) were given the royal title
in recognition of their services. Vladislav's son Premysl Otakar I making
use problems of succession in the German Empire achieved that (according to
the Golden Bull of Sicily) Czechs themselves could elect their kings, who
became elector of Empire.
Slovakia became a part of Kingdom of Hungary, which was a
multinational political unit organised by the Arpad dynasty. The Magyars,
originally nomadic horsemen who terrorised Europe for half a century and
devastated parts of Saxony, France, Italy and the Byzantine empire, were
compelled by their defeat in 955 to settle down in the plains along the
Danube and the Theiss. They adopted the western and Roman liturgy and ritual.
The king Saint-Protector Stephen I, who married a sister
of the Bavarian Duke Henry II, was baptised by the Prague bishop Vojtech. He
was proclaimed king by both German emperor and pope.
Hungary stood only a short time under the suzerainty of
the German emperors (of the Saxon line) that was followed by the period of
Byzantine influence in 12th century. To prevent external involvement, the
country called itself the Apostolic Kingdom. Latin became the official and
literary language. Not nationality but social position was important. All
power was in the hands of clerical and secular nobility with the King as its
head.
The Later Middle Ages
The rulers of OB Premyslid, Arpad and Piast became
increasingly involved in international relations including dynastic marriages.
They were interested in reforming the economy and social structure of their
countries in order to be able to compete with Western Europe and invited western
(mostly German) settlers, artisans, miners and traders. The consequence was the
dissemination of western political, legal and economic institutions as well as
western sciences, poetry and art. In Bohemia, German settlement was confined to
frontier regions where the Slavs have not settled. But the central areas of
Bohemia remained in Czech hands, although Germans prevailed in the cities and
towns. After the Tatar invasion of Hungary, its rulers invited Germans to
Slovakia and Transylvania. A number of cities, mostly mining communities, were
founded and developed into centres of trade and culture (e.g. Jihlava and Kutna
Hora in Bohemia, Banska Stiavnica, Banska Bystrica and 24 Saxon towns in Spis
County in Slovakia). New larger towns were added to the older cities (such as
Praha and Hradec Kralovec in Bohemia, Olomouc, Brno and Znojmo in Moravia and
Bratislava, Kosice, Nitra and Trnava in Slovakia).
The Czech nobility looked with displeasure on the growth of
foreign influence in the country that took place especially under Premysl Otakar
II, who extended sovereignty of his kingdom southwards to the Adriatic and tried
to gain the crown of the German Empire. He was called the "Iron and Gold King"
throughout Europe and Dante described him in the Divine Comedy as one of great
contemporaries. The Imperial princes and the Pope were afraid of his power and
elected Rudolf of Habsburg. Before the decisive battle of Marchfeld near Vienna
in 1278 Premysl asked in vain the help of Czech nobles and Polish king stressing
their common Slav kinship. The victorious Habsburgs then occupied Moravia, and
Bohemia fell to Margrave Otto von Brandenburg, the guardian of Premysl Otakars
son Vaclav. After the following five years of economical disaster, Vaclav (having
reached adulthood) improved the economical situation by promoting mining and
minting and attempted to win neighbouring territories. He was crowned King of
Poland in 1300 and also Hungarian throne was offered to him. However, his sudden
death and the assassination of his 17 year old son Vaclav III in 1306 brought
the end to the male line of Premyslid dynasty.
In Hungaria King Endre II. made con-cessions to barons (in
order to gain their support for the expansion of the kingdom) and guaranteed
them corporate powers to restrict the King's freedom of action. The country
mutually disintegrated into a number of regions ruled by feudal lords. Matus Cak
of Trencin ruled over most of the Slovak territory. When the Arpad dynasty died
out in 1301 a part of Hungarian nobles offered the crown to the Bohemian King
Vaclav II. Another part (inspired by the Pope and the German Emperor Albrecht
Habsburg) bestowed it to the Neapolitan House of Anjou in exchange for
confirmation of their rights.
The Golden Age and the Rise of Nationalism
Hungarian crown's weakness was transmitted throughout Europe.
Poland was most affected. The Hungarian King Luis d'Anjou inherited the crown of
Poland in 1370 and proclaimed a charter to the gentry of Poland in Kosice in
1374.
The Czech King and Roman Emperor Charles IV (1346-1378), son
of John Luxembourg (a Premyslide after his mother's line), made Prague the main
centre of the German Empire. Under John and Charles the Czech Kingdom was
enlarged by the regions of Silesia, Lusitania and Brandenburg that had been
largely Germanised by that time. On the other hand, Charles could speak Czech
and stimulated the development of Czech language and its use in legal documents
(besides Latin and German). Charles imported architects from all over the Europe
and built much of the Gothic that has given Prague its character and brought its
admirers ever since. He had the Prague bishopric elevated to an archbishopric in
1344 and in 1348 he founded the university of international character that bears
his name. It consisted of four parallel branches: Czech, Bavarian, Saxonian, and
Polish. The intellectual ferment that followed put the Czechs scholars (discontent
with their minority position at the university) at the forefront of reformist
ideas and the seat of the first Christian reformation. (The Bible was translated
into Czech).
It was Sigismund, son of Charles IV, King of Hungary and
Emperor of Germany (since the forced abdication of his brother, the weak Czech
King Vaclav in 1440), who lit the spark of nationalism in Bohemia. In 1414 he
summoned the Czech reformer Jan Hus (criticising the Church for its blatant
materialism) before the council of Constancy and gave him a promise of safe
conduct. But Hus was condemned to death and burned at the stake. A revolt under
the military leadership of Jan Ziska and Prokop was backed by the estates of
Bohemia. All German crusades backed by Rome were defeated and Hussites launched
attacks on the neighbouring countries. The wars exhausted the Czech Lands and
embittered Czech-German relations. The Council of Basel in 1431 made peace with
the moderate wing of Hussites, the radical wing was defeated in 1434 at the
battle of Lipany. Sigismund was acknowledged as king of Bohemia, but died in
1437 without a son. He transferred the crowns of Empire. Bohemia and Hungary to
his son-in-law Albrecht of Habsburg, who died in 1439. Afterwards, the estates
of Bohemia and Hungary elected national Kings Jiri of Podebrad and Mathias
Corvin. Both Kingdoms were united in 1490 under the rule of Polish-Lithuanian
dynasty of Jagielons (that had merged with Anjou dynasty). The King Luis
Jagielon was killed in the Battle of Mohacz against the Turks in 1526.
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The Turkish Menace and Confessional struggles
In 1526 the Czech and Hungarian nobles elected the Austrian
Duke Ferdinand Habsburg to their thrones. However another part of Hungarian
nobles supported the counter King John Zapolya, who enlisted Turkish help. The
Turks advanced towards Vienna in 1529 and 1532 but failed to conquer it. After
the peace in 1538 an the death of John Zapolya in 1541 Hungary remained divided
for 150 years with the central part including the capital Buda in Turkish hands.
Ferdinand was left with a crescent-shaped strip of land containing Slovakia, the
most western part of Hungary (with large German minority) and the western part
of Croatia. Transylvania became a vassal state of the Otoman Empire and the
basis of permanent attacks of Hungarian nobles against the Habsburg rule in
neighbouring Slovak territories. Bratislava (Pressburg, Posony) become the
administrative capital of Habsburg-ruled part of Hungarian kingdom. The
archbishop-primate moved his residence to Trnava in 1543 The Turkish conquest of
the central Hungary caused the advancement of Magyar influence in Slovakia,
where the central institutions of Hungarian state were transformed. Some Magyar
nobles escaping Ottoman power contributed, partly through intermarriage, to the
increasing Magyarization of the lower gentry, which had been largely Slovak.
Magyar peasants also sought refuge from Turks, and as a result the Magyar-Slovak
ethnic frontier shifted north.
The migration of the Magyar nobles into the towns of Slovakia
helped to weaken the position of the German patricians and improve that of
Slovaks. The Magyar nobles brought along large retinues of Slovak servants and
directly challenged the power monopoly of Germans. The Hungarian diet in
Bratislava (1608) gave Germans, Hungarians and Slovaks equal share of municipal
power and prescribed their regular rotation in each major office in royal towns.
The Lutheran religions reformation spread into Bohemia as well
as Habsburg - ruled Hungaria and Transylvania in the second half of the
sixteenth century. The effort of the Habsburgs to promote Catholicism started
immediately. Rudolf II (1583-1612), conducted the imperial court in Prague and
made the Czech lands again a centre of learning and culture, housing some of
greatest names of European astronomy and painting. (J. Kepler, Tycho de Brahe).
By that time, however, the Turkish stranglehold on the Balkan
and Middle Hungary terminated the once lucrative trade to the Middle East. The
precious metals from the New World drastically reduced the value of Czech and
Slovak silver. (The copper from Banska Bystrica a remained an important export
article). The discovery of the new sea routes moved commerce and banking to the
north-west Europe and undermined the prosperity of central Europe. Rudolf's
charter of religions freedom from 1609 eased tensions throughout the country.
Following his dead, however, the religious conflict again grew sharper. In 1619
the Diet of Czech kingdom deposed Ferdinand II Habsburg and elected Frederic of
Palatine, a leader of Protestant Union and Imperial Elector. (Few days after his
election to the Czech throne Frederic voted for the deposed Ferdinand to become
German Emperor.)
Since Frederic was the son-in-law of king James I, help from
English King was expected. However the English failed to help, the Netherlands
alone gave certain financial aid, while Gabor Bethlen of Transylvania and the
Prince of Savoy sent military help. Habsburgs could rely on the greet financial
resources of Spain and the Pope.
The Czech revolt marked the beginning of the so-called Thirty
Years War. It was crushed in the Battle of Biela Hora 1620 and 27 leaders were
publicly executed in the Old Square of Prague and their heads stuck onto the
bridge tower of the Old City. All who took merely an indirect part in the revolt
had their property confiscated. Nearly three quarters of the land was
confiscated and Habsburgs gave it or sold very cheaply to the Austrian, German,
Italian and Spanish nobles (e.g. the Schwarzenbergs, the Mandsfelds, Colloredo).
The Czech Crown Lands became Habsburg hereditary provinces;
Lusitania was given to the Protestant Elector of Saxony in recompense for his
help. Latin became the language of Prague University, the administration of
which was confided to the Jesuits. Catholicism was declared the only state
religion. The free population (i.e. nobility and burghers) were given a choice:
they had either to become Catholic or to leave the country. A considerable part
of Protestant nobility emigrated and then served in the Swedish armies in
further fights against Habsburgs. Protestant hopes engendered during the rest of
the Thirty years War by periodic military or political successes of the Swedes
and the Saxons (who joined the Protestant League 1631 and deserted it in 1637)
were completely extinguished in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia, which gave the
Habsburgs full freedom to settle religion affairs in both Bohemia and Moravia.
The following Conter-Reformation was curtailed in Silesia as well as in Slovakia
(where some 5000 Protestant families emigrated). One of the most famous Czech
emigrants was pastor Jan Amos Komensky, renowned for his advocacy of
enlightenment and humanity in education.
After the Thirty Year's War the towns and cities as well as
some whole regions of the Czech kingdom were largely depopulated and Germanised.
The remaining Catholic nobles lost their national consciousness and served the
Habsburgs. The Czech language was kept alive by the peasantry and by catholic
patriotic lower clergy.
During 17th century the Slovak territory faced devastating
attacks waged by Hungarian nobility from Transylvania against Habsburgs, The
recurring waves of aggression against Protestants culminated in 1671-73 and the
threat of the neighbouring Turkish power was removed only after the war in
1683-99 (That started by the last Turkish siege of Vienna and ended by the total
defeat of the Turks and the Hungarian estates under Thokoly). The detrimental
effects of these events were only partly offset from the stand point of Slovak
national interests - by isolating the Slovak territory from an overwhelming
Magyar impact.
The influence of Czech culture intensified after the arrival
of Czech Protestants including important literary figures as, e.g., J. Tranovsky,
the author of the Protestant hymnal Cithara Sanctorum (1636), i.e. a collection
of Czech Hussite hymns and Slovak religious songs, which has been used by the
Protestants in Slovakia to the present time.
The Catholic university of Trnava was at that time a centre of
Counter - Reformation. It published in 1648 the first Latin-Magyar-Slovak
dictionary and in 1665 Cantus Catholicus (written in Slovak). This first
initiatives to Slovak literary expression came from Jesuits, who were largely
responsible for the decline of the Czech in Bohemian lands. In the second half
of the 17th century Vienna lost interest in supporting the German burgers in
Slovak cities viewing them as disloyal heretics. The Counter Reformation and
lack of governmental support weakened the German elite that had to yield power
to Slovaks in most of Slovak cities. New opportunities of migration to regained
territories of central and southern Hungaria emerged in the first half of 18th
century, when about 15 thousands of Slovak families migrated. Many migrants from
the overcrowded northern counties settled in southern Slovak counties. As a
result, the border of Slovak ethnic settlement, which had retreated north two
hundred years earlier, once more moved farther south, especially in the area of
Kosice and east of Bratislava. The population movement helped to generate a
sense of Slovak ethnic unity, as the arrival of settlers from north into central
and southern Slovak counties tended to blur regional, linguistic and
psychological idiosyncrasies.
At the beginning of 18th century the magnates started to
invest in manufactures. The first textile manufactures were founded in Northern
Bohemia, Northern Moravia, Central and Western Slovakia. In Slovak Gemer country
the output of iron flourished stimulated by military needs. The first high
furnace was erected in Dobrina in 1680. In 1627 the first known use of gunpowder
to extend mineshafts, anywhere in Europe, occurred in Banska Stiavnica, where a
mining school of excellent European level has bean located since 1737. An
exceptional position was occupied by Presov, which acted as a commercial hub for
Transylvania's exports and imports (via Poland). In 1703 when Austria was
involved in the War of Spanish Succession, another rebellion of Hungarian
estates broke out under F. Rakoczi. It resulted in the Szatmar Compromise that
guaranteed the Hungarian kingdom a kind of autonomy that proved to be an
obstacle for further economical development.
Enlightened Absolutism and National Awakening
During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740 - 1780) Austria lost
Silesia to Prussia. To compensate this loss the imperial government encouraged
the development of textile production in Bohemia. Both Maria Theresa and her son
Joseph II (1780-1790) introduced some reforms inspired by the ideas of the
European Enlightenment. In 1781 Joseph II published a decree that restored to
peasants their freedom of movement, which enabled their large-scale migration to
the towns.
A by-product of the European Enlightenment was strengthening
of central government that evoked a kind of Czech provincialism. In 1790 the
Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences was founded by German-speaking nobles. It
later became the centre of Czech cultural revival. In 1818 the Bohemian Museum
was set up in Prague. Its German Journal failed but the circulation of the Czech
version grew rapidly. The German provincial nobility also gave essential support
to a number of outstanding scholars whose writing facilitated and shaped the
cultural revival. Josef Dobrovsky produced the first Czech grammar, Josef
Jungmann translated foreign classics to demonstrate the capability of Czech and
put together the first large dictionary. Frantisek Palacky set to work on his
great history of the Czech nation which not only reconstructed the past but
effectively created a national philosophy out of it. In the meantime the small
but growing Czech middle class in Prague begun to penetrate various hitherto
German organisations and to establish political clubs of their own. The backbone
of Czech movement was provided by intellectuals. The school reforms of Joseph II
opened young Czechs schools. The intellectuals gave the lead when the call for
revolution spread from Paris in 1848. The Czech revolt collapsed, but it was
highly significant. The Habsburgs yielded the use of Czech for limited purposes
in university and secondary education.
The reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. made less impact
on Slovakia because the Hungarian nobility wanted to extend their own
independence of the Habsburgs. In 1792 A. Bernolak, a Catholic priest,
established a Slovak Learned Society in Trnava to publish and distribute books
in the first version of Slovak language based on local dialects of Western
Slovakia. In 1803 the Lutheran high school in Bratislava set up a centre of
Czechoslovak literature. Some Slovaks like P.J Safarik and J. Kollar wrote in
Czech. However the policy of Magyarization made the question of literary
language and its political consequences absolutely crucial. In 1840 the
Hungarian diet (that was transferred to Pest after Bratislava had been damaged
during the wars with Napoleon) passed an alarming legislation that replaced
Latin with Magyar as the official language in the whole Hungarian Kingdom. Young
Slovak intellectuals, headed by Ludovit Stur from Bratislava Lutheran school,
decided to develop the central Slovak dialect as probably the most likely to
unite all Slovaks. Paradoxically, it was much more different from Czech than the
first Trnava (catholic) version. In 1845 they began to publish the Slovak
National News and they very soon achieved their purpose. With some modifications
their choice was accepted at least among the Slovaks. Magyar policies and Slovak
aspirations were inevitably on a collision course. In 1848 some hastily armed
Slovak detachments attacked the Magyar rebels (with official encouragement of
Habsburgs). But they received no recognition from Vienna in return.
Slovakia enjoyed more favourable preconditions for industrial
development than the rest of Hungary. It possessed old tradition of crafts and
urban life, and was endowed with substantial natural resources.
However, this potential was stifled by Habsburg government and
influential Hungarian nobility that deliberately transformed Hungary into an
agrarian appendage of the Austrian Empire. The textile industry experienced most
drastically the stifling effect of Austrian and Bohemian competition. After 1815
the textile manufactories failed to develop into factories - Slovak iron
industry was slow in applying the new techniques which were initiating
industrial revolution in the Bohemia and Austrian lands. Nevertheless certain
innovations did take place and Slovakia excelled in that regard over the rest of
Hungary. Genuine factories first appeared neither in textile production, nor in
metallurgy, but in the sectors of paper-manufacturing and sugar refining, thanks
to the investment of Austrian and foreign capital.
Rapid economic growth in the Czech lands led to the systematic
introduction of machinery in the textile and food industries, and in turn, the
engineering industry began to expand. Requirements of machine building and
railroads stimulated iron production. The first furnace using coke was erected
in Vitkovice in 1836. A steam-powered railroad joined Brno with Vienna in 1839,
and Prague with Olomouc in 1845 and Bratislava with Trnava in 1848.
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Revolution, Reaction and (Constitutional) Dualism
In the second half of the 19th century Slovak cultural life
was stifled by the reaction that followed the Revolution in 1848 and by the
aftermath of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (After Austria lost the war
against Prussia in 1866).
The Hungarian government adopted a policy that sought to "magyarize"
the non-Magyar minorities and transform Hungary, in which the Magyars
constituted less than half the population into an ethnically homogeneous Magyar
state. The only escape from the oppressive Hungarian policies was emigration
that reached the proportion of a mass flight. At the end of 19th and the
beginning of 20th century about 30000 people (1% of the entire population) left
Slovakia yearly for the countries on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Many
Slovaks moved to fast growing Budapest, where in 1910 lived
about 164 000 Slovaks (that underwent Magyarization subsequently). Slovakia
shared with Ireland the highest emigration rate in Europe. This further weakened
the Slovak people by depriving them of their most enterprising elements.
In 1907 various Slovak organisations in the United States
formed the Slovak League of America defending the interest of Slovak ethnic
group and interpreting the aspirations of the Slovaks in Hungary to independence.
In the nineteen century the Czechs achieved a level of social
economic and cultural development second only to that of the Germans in the
empire. However, they failed to achieve their political ambition, which was to
restore the historic "state right" of Bohemia and secure it the place in the
empire analogous to that of the kingdom of Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian
Compromise in 1867.
Emperor Francis Joseph I (1848-1916) three times promised to
have himself crowned with the crown of St.Wenceslas. However, the Germans in
Bohemia (counting 1/3 of the population) who feared isolation in an autonomous
Bohemian state with a Czech majority, were always able to frustrate an agreement
between Vienna and the Czechs by mobilising German opinion in other part of the
empire in support of their stand. After 1906, when universal male suffrage was
adopted in the Austrian part of the Empire, the Czechs hoped to achieve their
objectives by forming an alliance of Slavs that formed two-thirds of the
population. But they failed to gain their objective, because only the Slovenes (from
south-eastern Austria) would cooperate with them (but not the Poles and the
Ukrainians from Galicia). Frustrated, they became increasingly alienated to the
empire but they did not consider their withdrawal before the out break of World
War I in 1914.
The industrial revolution continued in the Bohemian lands
until the economic crisis in 1873. While textiles has been the main source of
accumulation of German capital, sugar refining would serve the same function for
Czech capital. Other kinds of light industry that underwent mechanisation after
1848 were those producing glass, porcelain, paper and leather. Development of
heavy industry followed. The steel production shifted slowly to blast furnaces
fuelled by coke in Vitkovice, Kladno and Trinec. The most prominent machine-tool
industries were located in Prague and its suburbs (Ring hoffer, Daneks Prvni
Ceskomoravska Strojarna) and in Plzen (Walenstein machine works, acquired by E.
Skoda in 1869). After the loss of Lombardy in 1859, the Czech lands became the
most important area of industrial development in the empire. The beginnings of
electrical industry were connected with the names of two inventors-entrepreneurs
F. Krizik and F. Kolben. Construction of large electric power stations began in
the first decade of the twentieth century. New types of production included
motors, automobiles and equipment for electrical industries. Demand for armament
opened another stimulus for expansion. The Skoda Works, with 10000 employees,
was in 1914 one of the largest munitions producers in the world. The Bohemian
Lands depended heavily on industrial capital especially Austrian and German. In
1914 only about one-third of investments in the industries of the Bohemian Lands
were of Czech origin. Despite their rapid growth the holdings of Czech
commercial banks did not significantly exceed one quarter of the stock capital
of Viennese commercial banks. Vienna attracted a lot of migrants from South
Bohemia and South Moravia and was in 1910 the largest Czech city together with
Prague.
While still suffering from Austrian competition, Slovak
industry benefited somehow from the Hungarian government's industrial subsidies
after 1880. However, it lagged behind the general advance, particularly after
1900. Within the structure of Hungarian industry dominated by Budapest, Slovakia
shared heavily in the output of unfinished and semi-finished products,
especially paper, textiles, leather, iron, woods and chemicals. (A major oil
refinery was established in Bratislava, where Dynamite-Nobel explosives fabric
flourished since 1885.)
World War I. and the Creation of the Czechoslovak
State
After the outbreak of the World War I on July 28, 1914 most of
the Czech and Slovak politicians adopted the policy of two irons: it meant that
whatever the final outcome of the war their nations would come out as victors.
Professor T.G. Masaryk, leader of the small Realist party, made trips to neutral
countries in the fall of 1914. While in Switzerland, he was warned he might be
arrested by the Austrian authorities that had recently imprisoned a number of
Czech politicians. He decided to stay abroad and join the pro-independence
movement of Czech and Slovak emigrants that he soon led. As early as August 1914
Czech units including Slovaks were set up within the French and Russian armies.
The Czech Alliance and the Slovak League of America) reached an agreement in
Cleveland in 1915, in which they demanded the liberation of Czech and Slovak
nations and their union "in a federative form of State, with complete autonomy
for Slovakia, with its own parliament, political and financial administration,
having Slovak as the language of the state". A further similar agreement was co-signed
by T.G. Masaryk (who had a Slovak father) in Pittsburgh in May 1918. In 1915
Masaryk was joined by his chief assistant Dr. E. Benes and a Slovak, M.R.
Stefanik, a French citizen and a Major of French Air Force, who had many
influential friends in French, Italian and American governmental circles. The
Allies, especially French, appreciated the Czech and Slovak contribution to the
war, however they did not consider the possibility of assisting Czechs and
Slovak independence. They were much more attracted by the prospect of separate
peace with Austria.
The fall of Tsarist regime offered the Czechs and Slovaks an
opportunity to play a more significant role in the war. T.G. Masaryk who
travelled to Russia, was enabled by the Provisional Government of Russia to
organise two Army Corps from among both the Czech and Slovak settlers and
prisoners-of-war. By November 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, the
Czechoslovak Army Corps (otherwise called the Czechoslovak Legion) numbered 30
000 men.
After the Bolsheviks began to negotiate a separate peace, the
Czechoslovak Legion, acknowledged meanwhile as an Allied army, remained the only
substantial unit the Allies were left with in Russia.
In May 1918 a conflict broke out between the Czechoslovak
Legion and the Soviet Government in Siberia. The speed and ease with which the
Czechoslovak Legion seized the Siberian railway made the Allies consider their
intervention. The Legion would become the pivot of their intervention forces. In
summer 1918 - preparing the intervention in Russia - France, Great Britain and
USA recognised the Czechoslovak National Council, led by Masaryk, as a "de facto
government" of Czechoslovakia.
On October 16, 1918 the Austrian Emperor Charles issued a
manifesto authorising the nationalities to form national committees and
sanctioning existing ones.
On the basis of this manifesto (that was aimed on the
federalisation of Austria) the German-Austrian deputies withdrew from the
Austrian Reichsrat and constituted a provisional assembly of an independent
German-Austrian state.
On October 27 Vienna conceded defeat. The Austro-Hungarian
armistice, signed on November 3 left a legal vacuum in East Central Europe,
which lasted until the opening of Paris Peace Conference more than two month
later. On October 28, after securing the acquiescence of the Austrian military
authorities, the Prague National Committee declared the independent Czechoslovak
state. On October 30, the Slovak National Council adopted a resolution that
declared the right of self-determination for Slovaks and endorsed the principle
of Czechoslovak unity.
The German deputies from Bohemia and Moravia (Sudeten Germans)
had joined other German deputies in forming the German-Austrian Parliament and
declared the German parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia to be part of German-Austria.
On November 12, 1918 the Anschluss of German-Austrian Republic to Germany was
proclaimed, which definitely buried the possibility of a confederation of the
successor states of the Habsburg empire.
According to an agreement between the Prague National
Committee led by Kramar in Prague, and Benes as a representative of the Paris
National Committee concluded in Geneva at the beginning of November, the first
president of Czechoslovakia would be Masaryk, and the first premier Kramar, a
hero of the domestic resistance (holding very extreme nationalistic views).
Assuming the subsequent approval of the Allies, the
Czechoslovak government under Kramar decided to call for volunteers and to
occupy the Sudeten German areas. The French leaders were determined that Germany
must not come out of the war with any additional territory. They approved the
Czechoslovak occupation, which was swift and almost without fighting, since
Germans were depressed after the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungaria.
The Belgrade armistice put Hungary under direct Allied control
that was enforced by a commission under a French Lt.Col.F.Vyx. The new
government of Hungary actively resisted the effort to establish Czechoslovak
authority in Slovakia. It sent troops to Slovakia and dispersed the Slovak
National Council. Czechoslovak foreign minister Benes (still in Paris) protested
to the French government and proposed a demarcation line between the
Czechoslovak and Hungarian forces. Paris sent instructions to Col. Vyx.
Hungarian government protested but complied. At about the same time
(Dec.20,1918) Masaryk returned from exile, accompanied by the first elements of
the Legions. They swiftly moved to Slovakia and occupied it by January 20, 1919.
The last to return was Stefanik, who was in charge of legions in Russia. His
prospective position in the government was inadequate to his role in the exile
movement. The mysterious catastrophe of his plane near Bratislava has been never
properly clarified.
The Paris Peace Conference, opened in January 1919, was faced
with a series of fiats accomplish which they neither wished nor could challenge.
Czechoslovakia entered the conference in possession of essentially all the
territory to which it aspired.
The only exception was the region of Tesin disputed with
Allied Poland. It was later divided so that its coal fields and an important
railway were given to Czechoslovakia in return for territorial concessions in
northern Slovakia. However, the subsequent Polish hostility prevented closer co-operation
that could have been extremely profitable for both countries and for their
security. (Masaryk had even contemplated a federation with Poland). The Paris
Conference also approved the inclusion of Ruthenia (a small region east of
Slovakia with majority of population of Ruthenian east Slavonic stock) in
Czechoslovakia, that has been agreed by Masaryk and Ruthenian exile
representatives. The Allied powers showed partiality towards Czechoslovakia in
the political settlement but they showed none in the financial settlement. The
liberation costs assessed to Czechoslovakia.
Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia were fixed at 1.5 billion gold
francs. Of this amount, Czechoslovakia, as the most prosperous of them, was
required to pay one half. She began her existence, therefore, with a
considerable foreign debt.
Ethnically Czechoslovakia was a small inverse image of the
Habsburg Empire. The population of 13.6 million was formed by Czechs (6,7),
Slovaks (2,05), Ruthenians (0,46), Germans (3,2), Magyars (0,69), Jews (0,18)
and Poles (0,08).
The first Czechoslovak Republic
The first Czechoslovak provisional constitution was adopted on
November 13, 1918. It vested all power in a (unicameral) National Assembly. It
had 256 deputies 216 of them represented Czech political parties on the basis of
their election results in 1911. Only 40 deputies (later 54) representing
Slovakia were chosen in an arbitrary manner by V. Srobar, the only Slovak in the
government. Half of them were Protestants, although Protestants constituted only
12% of Slovak population. Seven so-called Slovak deputies were Czechs (including
E. Benes) chosen "for their Slovakophile activities". Germans, Hungarians,
Ruthenians and Poles were not represented at all. This "revolutionary" National
Assembly passed many important laws (before being replaced after the elections
in April 1920) as e.g.:
1. the currency separation law
2. the land reform laws
3. the nostrification law
4. the (definitive) Constitution of Czechoslovakia.
Under the currency separation law - the only successful
stabilisation policy among the Successor States, prepared by the Minister of
Finance A. Rasin - - 50 % of all privately hold bank notes were withdrawn; the
bank and savings accounts were blocked and converted into a 1 per cent
compulsory loan. The administration of currency and coin monopoly was
transferred from the Austro-Hungarian Bank in Vienna to the Banking Office in
Prague. The national currency (the Czechoslovak crown - Kcs) was introduced in
April 1919.
The land reform empowered the government to expropriate (for
financial compensation) all large estates exceeding 150 ha of arable land or 250
ha of land in general. It did away with the huge aristocratic estates of the
largely German and Hungarian nobility but the major part of the allotments was
too small and economically inexpedient. It allowed the creation of so-called "residual
estates" in the hands of the Land Office and throughout it of the Agrarian Party,
which used their sale to promote its political interests.
The nostrification Law forced joint-stock companies to
transfer their head offices to the territory of the new state where they had
their factories and plants. This law created favourable conditions for Czech
banks, above all the Zivnostenska Bank. It provided a strong financial base for
the Agrarian Party, that was the most stable political force of the Czechoslovak
State. From 1922 to 1938 Agrarians were the core of all coalition governments,
occupying the ministries of interior and agriculture, and holding the office of
prime minister. (The last of them was a Slovak M. Hodza.)
The constitution adopted in February 1920, defined
Czechoslovakia as a "democratic republic headed by an elected president". It
entrusted the legislative powers to the National Assembly, elected both on the
basis of universal suffrage and by a direct and secret ballot; the executive
powers to the president and the cabinet of ministers; and judicial powers to an
independent judiciary. Following the Western models, the constitution provided
for the protection of fundamental civil and political rights of all citizens on
a completely equal basis and for special protection of national and religious
minorities. The Language law designed "Czechoslovak" as the country's official
language. Since in reality a single Czechoslovak language never existed, the
Czech and Slovak enjoyed the status of official languages. However, neither of
them has ever been taught in the partner part of the country, which gave rise to
increasing dualism. The law assured the national minorities full freedom in the
use of their languages in everyday life and in schools, as well as in dealing
with authorities in district in which they constituted at least 20 % of the
population.
By identifying the Slovaks with Czechs under the label "Czechoslovak",
the constitution ignored the Slovak national identity. The Slovaks (especially
their Catholic majority) felt cheated since President Masaryk had signed the
Pittsburgh agreement guaranteeing Slovak autonomy. The Slovak pre-war populist
leader Andrej Hlinka revitalised the Slovak National Party in 1919. He insisted
on Slovak legislative autonomy on the basis of the Pittsburgh agreement. The
Slovak politics often appeared as a duel between Hlinka and Hodza.
The strongest party in the first elections in April 1920 were
the Social Democrats that have forced through the National Assembly laws which
established an eight-hours working day, special insurance schemes, and
unemployment benefits for the workers. After the secession of the communists in
1921, the party lost a great deal of its strength and regained only a part of it
in the late 1920's.
The internal conflict of the Social Democratic Party in
1920-21 when the right-wing minority invoked the aid of police to retain the
party organisation, led to the furious reaction of the left-wing that turned
against the system as such and planned to seize power. However President Masaryk
appointed a new cabinet under J. Cerna, an experienced civil servant who had
faced similar situations in the Habsburg Monarchy, and by directing personally
repressive actions, the President put down the general strike, and the communist
attempt with it. Before the end of 1921 Czechoslovakia was able to return to
parliamentary government.
The relative political stability of Czechoslovakia was above
all due to the solid administration and the political tradition it inherited
from the Habsburg Monarchy. Czechoslovakia inherited about 80 % of the
industries of the Habsburg empire, but the partition of the empire deprived them
of their natural markets. The Sudeten area had traditionally been the centre of
Bohemia's highly developed consumer industries, especially textiles and glass.
The growth of protectionism among the successor states forced a shift in
emphasis in Czechoslovak industrial production, from consumer goods to heavy
industrial goods, especially machinery and reorientation of Czechoslovak export
from Central Europe to Western Europe and overseas. This had the undesirable
effect of increasing the social and political discontent of the Sudeten Germans.
In the last 2 decades before the war, industrial development
in Slovakia was encouraged through subsidies, Hungarian state orders, tax
alleviation, and favourable transport rates. It never faced a challenging
competition because it remained effectively shielded from the more advanced
Czech industry by such protective advantages and by the difficulty in east-west
communication. After the war the situation of Slovak industry became very
difficult since it lost Hungarian markets and new potential markets were in the
great distance. Because of the many privately owned railroad lines in the
eastern part of the country compared with a practically state-owned railway
network in the west, the transportation rates were much higher in Slovakia and
it took many years before they were unified. A further burden was the relatively
higher tax rates in the east. Slovakia and Ruthenia remained under the Hungarian
tax system until 1929, when the whole Czechoslovak tax system was overhauled.
The Slovak and Ruthenian industry stagnated even during relatively prosperous
1920's. Of the combined national income Slovakia and Ruthenia shared 18,2% in
1911-13 but only 15% in 1929 and 1937.
The Slovak iron industry shared 10% in total Czechoslovak
production in 1919 but only 2,7% in 1926. Industrialisation in Slovakia took
place in relatively isolated areas, in many cases with specialised products
which supplemented the advanced Czech industries (e.g. cables, rubber products,
wood distillation). Whereas Slovak industry and banking were in the hands of
German and Hungarian entrepreneurs before the World War I, Czech industrialists
and bankers attained a decisive share of Slovak economy between the two world
wars. This resulted in differences between Czechs and Slovaks in the economic
sphere.
Development of industry in the Czech lands in 1920's was
similar to that of Western Europe, with producer goods industries gaining in
relation to the consumer goods industries.
UP
From Wall Street Crash to Munich
The initial rapid growth of industry in 1920's was accompanied
with the growth of larger enterprises and wide spread of cartels. Companies
developed a pyramid structure which created opportunities for capital expansion
in South-east Europe, via subsidiary companies of Czechoslovak banks and
industrial concerns. This formed a significant incentive for foreign investors
and was further reinforced by the comparatively low cost of labour, the
relatively stable political conditions, as well as the strategic position of the
country. Through direct investment a quarter of the Czechoslovak economy was in
the hands of foreign investors (British, French, Belgian, Dutch) during the
interwar period. The most important foreign investment in mechanical engineering
industry was the decisive holding of the French iron and steel concern,
Schneider Creusot in Skoda Plzen, that not only held the first place in this
sector in Czechoslovakia but their significance in East Central and South-east
Europe can be compared with Vickers in Great Britain and Krupp in Germany. The
Czechoslovak chemical industry was dominated by the companies that were closely
linked to the Belgian Solvay Company and to the Anglo-Dutch trust of Lever
Brothers.
Only in the shoe industry the foreign capital played no
important role. Thanks to a monopoly position of Bata Works Czechoslovakia held
the first place among the world's leading shoe exporters in 1930's after
overtaking Great Britain and the USA.
During the world economic crisis of 1929-1933 Czechoslovakia
was very hard hit. Czechoslovak government provided legislative support for
cartelisation of those branches of industry which were still relatively
competitive. Czechoslovak cartels participated in the majority of international
cartels existing at that time. In 212 valid international cartel agreements a
striking by large number of German companies emerged. This way the German
producers obtained an agreed stare in the former markets of Czechoslovak
manufacturers, mainly in South-eastern Europe.
The Czechoslovak Government, dominated by agrarians introduced
a system of protective tariffs for agricultural products. Consequently, exports
of the Balkan states to Czechoslovakia began to drop, and they started to look
to Germany as a potential trading partner. The German share of Balkan foreign
trade rose while the Czechoslovak share fell.
This development weakened the so-called Little Entante,
concluded by Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania against Hungarian
aspirations to revise the post-war borders. In 1936, when the new Czechoslovak
president E.Benes proposed a military pact of the Little Entente against any
aggressor. Rumania and Yugoslavia did not answer positively. Their position
seemed to be less vulnerable and they did not want to antagonise Germany, which
had already acquired hold over their economies. On the other hand, Benes, who
had been Czechoslovak foreign minister since 1918, failed to conclude an
alliance with Poland, that was strongly advocated by agrarians and military
experts, since he considered the Polish position more vulnerable. (Both he and
Masaryk expressed belief that the Danzig Corridor was "an absurdity" that Poland
would have to abandon to the Germans.)
In 1934 Poland and Germany surprisingly signed a declaration
of non-aggression, which was a blow to Prague's diplomacy. Worried by the German-Polish
agreement, France came forth with a plan for an Eastern Pact including
Czechoslovakia and Soviet Russia.
Eventually, only two bilateral treaties - a Franco-Russian and
Czechoslovak-Russian - were signed in 1935. The Russian aid to Czechoslovakia
was conditional on working of the French alliance of 1925. This alliance proved
to be nothing but a theoretical link, when the Sudeten German problem became
acute after Konrad Henlein's party gained seventy percent of Sudeten German
votes in 1935. President Benes desperately tried to bargain secretly with Hitler,
who was not interested in agreement but in discrediting and isolating
Czechoslovakia.
In winter 1938 Hitler annexed Austria and publicly promised to
help the Sudeten Germans. In September 1938 he made it clear that the Sudeten
problem was a question of war and peace. The French and British governments
tried to appease Hitler. On September 30, the French and British Prime Ministers,
together with Mussolini and Hitler reached an agreement (in Munich) stating that
the Sudeten districts would be separated from Czechoslovakia. Poland and Hungary
also claimed parts of Czechoslovak territory. President Benes accepted the
Munich arbitration despite wide-spread rioting in the Czech provinces.
Czechoslovakia was deprived of one - third of her territory containing some of
her most important industrial centres and most fertile farm land, left her
economically crippled. President Benes resigned and went into exile. He was
replaced by E.Hacha, a non-party bureaucrat. Rudolf Beran, an Agrarian party
leader, who had criticised Benes for refusing to seek an agreement with Hitler,
became prime minister. The old Slovak and Ruthenian demands for autonomy were
finally granted.
France recalled her military mission from Prague. The giant
armament concern Skoda Works, which had been under French control since 1919 was
sold to a Czechoslovak consortium and latter passed to the Hermann-Goring Werke.
The Communist party of Czechoslovakia was dissolved. Czech rightist parties
established the National Unity party under Agrarian leadership, while leftist (non-communist)
formed the National Labour Party. The Slovak Populists came to terms with
Agrarians and formed the Slovak National Unity Party. It won more than 90% of
the votes in the election to the new Slovak diet in December 1939. The Slovak
minister of interior F. Durcansky visited Germany and indicated that some Slovak
politicians preferred independence in association with Germany. The Prague
government became suspicions, sent troops to Slovakia, deposed the Slovak
government and appointed a new one under K. Sidor, a member of the Central
government. Durcansky escaped to Vienna and sent a telegram to Berlin, asking
for German help. Hitler summoned the deposed Premier Tiso to Berlin, and gave
him the choice of declaring Slovakia's independence or seeing it annexed by
Hungary. On March 14 the Slovak Diet declared Slovakia independent.
Simultaneously, Hungary was permitted by Hitler to annex Ruthenia (together with
a part of eastern and southern Slovakia).
Meanwhile President Hacha solicited an interview with Hitler
to discuss the Slovak situation. Instead, he was bullied to sign a document
placing Bohemia and Moravia under German protection. On March 15, 1939 the
German army occupied the provinces.
Protectorate and Slovak State
Almost immediately the Czechs began to form resistance
organisations. However, they were confined to gathering of intelligence,
sabotage of industrial production, occasional attacks on German officials and
maintaining communications with the exile government in London (established in
1940 by Benes and recognised by the British government).
After the student riots in November 1939 the Czech
universities and colleges were closed. In contrast to Poland and Yugoslavia
there was almost no news of open Czech resistance before 1942. To maintain the
negotiating power of his exile government, Benes decided to parachute trained
agents that assassinated the hated German Protector Heydrich in May 1942.
Retribution was swift and vicious. Thousands were arrested, hundreds shot.
Gestapo decided to destroy villages Lidice and Lezaky for it suspected their
population of complicity in the assassination. The men were shot, the women sent
to concentration camps and the children divided among German families. The
buildings were burned and flattened. Almost the entire resistant movement was
destroyed. But the assassination achieved its political aim. It confirmed Benes
leadership in Allied eyes and the destruction of Lidice made the Czechoslovak
cause plausible to Allied politicians and public opinion all over the world. The
British and French governments repudiated the Munich agreement.
There were no major acts of sabotage in the Czech countries
between May 1942 and May 1945. The Czech regions were of particular value to the
German armament industry as places of greater security from Allied bombardment.
In 1939-40 the German government was concerned with the impression that its
treatment of Slovakia would make on the countries of South-eastern Europe, on
which it depended for wheat, oil and other supplies. Therefore, it made a great
show of respect of Slovak sovereignty and independence.
Slovakia had its own diplomatic service and was recognised by 27 governments,
among them those of the Soviet Union, France and Britain. This, however, did not
prevent German government agencies from assigning large "advisory missions" to
all Slovak ministries. Soon the young Slovak nationalists as well as the
Catholic conservatives began to demand a wider sphere of affairs free from
German interference. Durcansky, who combined the posts of interior and foreign
ministers, addressed proposals for neutrality to France and Britain to assure
Slovakia's independence in the event of German defeat. The spectacular German
victory in France put the Reich in position to discipline its Slovak protégé.
Durcansky was dismissed and premier Tuka, who proclaimed "Slovak National
Socialism" became minister of foreign affairs. The post of minister of interior
was given to A. Mach. However, Tiso, who had been elected President in October
1939, was prepared to collaborate with Germany in the economic and diplomatic
spheres, but as a priest an patriot he was dead against the nazification of
Slovak life. The radicals intended to carry out a coup d' etat but their plans
were disclosed by army circles. German government decided to sacrifice
ideological conformity for the sake of political and economical stability. The
corps of German advisers were transformed from an instrument of ideological
indoctrination into a team of economic experts that sought to increase Slovak
war production through the modernisation and reorganisation of Slovak industry.
The war stimulated an economic boom in Slovakia. The number of employed in
industry rose by 50 percent. However, the Slovak shares in the total Slovak
joint-stocks capital increased only from 15 percent to 18 percent between 1939
and 1945, while the German share grew from 0,2 percent to 62 percent and the
Czech decreased from 84 percent to 8 percent. Slovakia became a substantial
creditor of Germany. It never received full payment for its exports. On
September 10, 1941, Tuka and Mach pushed through the Diet the approval of a
Jewish code, which provided the legal foundation for the property expropriation
outlawing, internment, and, finally, deportation of 56000 Jews between March and
August 1942 alone. The deportations were halted only when the Vatican repeatedly
protested against them and pointed out that the question was not of
"resettlement" but of extermination of Jews. For two years Tiso resisted the
pressures of Tuka, Mach and Germans to resume the deportations. In May 1944 the
Diet passed a law to stop the transports and to confine Jews in relatively
"humane" Slovak concentration camps. Unfortunately, in September 1944, when
Germany occupied Slovakia, the SS seized many Jews, most of whom did not survive
the German special treatment.
The Battle of Stalingrad and the Allied landing in Italy
opened the prospects of Germany's defeat in 1943. Two Slovak resistance
movements, one democratic and one communist, then sprang up. In the Christmas
Agreement of 1943 they agreed upon a common program of struggle for the
restoration of a democratic Czechoslovakia with two distinct nations, the Czechs
and the Slovaks and formed the Slovak National Council.
After the tragedy of Lidice Benes ceased his negotiations with
Sudeten German Social Democrats and joined Czech radicals that demanded the
expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the war. In summer of 1942 he secured the
agreement of Britain to the principle of transfer. American agreement, at least
to a radical solution, came during Benes visit to the USA in summer 1943.
However, in America he also confirmed the impression that the Czechoslovakia's
future was more dependent on the Soviet Union. Although discouraged by the
Western Allies he made a journey to Moscow, and in December 1943 signed a
friendship treaty with the Soviets, that had already considered population
transfer as a useful instrument for their own East European policy. The treaty
was Presidents Benes recognition of the change in the balance of power in
Central Europe as well as of in of internal Czechoslovak adjustment: the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia would have to be admitted and integrated into
the post-war system.
Several high-ranking officers of the Slovak army were involved
in the activity of the Slovak National Council and began to plan an insurrection
against the Tiso regime. They managed (with a tacit approval of Minister of
Defence Gen. Catlos to concentrate army units and supplies of ammunition, food,
medicine and money in the highlands of central Slovakia. The preparations for
the uprising were complicated by the outbreak of partisan warfare, led in part
by parachuted Soviet commanders, which threatened to bring on the German
occupation before the uprising was ready. The inopportune capture and execution
of the German military mission by partisans, forced the Slovak National Council
prematurely to proclaim the Slovak National Insurrection at Banska Bystrica on
August 29. It took Germans exactly two months to crush the uprising. The Soviet
army, waiting in the Carpathian Mountains, passively witnessed this national
tragedy as they had done near Warsaw during the Polish revolt. The London exiles
succeeded to persuade Americans to airlift weapons and ammunition from Italy to
Slovakia. But the airlift was promptly stopped after the Soviets vetoed it as an
encroachment upon what was their zone of military operations. Remnants of the
insurrectionists retreated into the mountains and continued guerrilla warfare
until the occupation of Slovakia by Soviet armies in the spring 1945.
In March 1945 Benes and the exile government moved from London
to Moscow. There the exiled leaders of the democratic parties, Communists and of
the Slovak National Council agreed upon the program and composition of the first
post-war government. A draft of the program was drawn up by the Communists;
there were no rival drafts. Conflict arose in the discussion of the Slovak
organs of government. The Communists favoured a large measure of Slovak autonomy.
Finally the Slovak National Council (SNR) was recognised as the instrument of
legislative and executive power representing the Slovak nation and enjoying wide
powers of autonomy. The six parties (National Socialists, Social Democrats, the
People's Party and Communists on the Czech side, the Democrats and Communists on
the Slovak side) agreed to ban the two formerly strongest parties the Czech
Agrarians and the Slovak Populists "which had harmed the national interest".
The communists in fact replaced the Agrarian party. They
managed to secure for themselves the key positions in the government, such as
the Ministry of Interior which gave them control over the entire apparatus of
internal administration including the police; the Ministry of Information and
Education which put into Communist hands a powerful weapon of thought control;
the Ministry of Agriculture which was to become the distributor of land to be
confiscated from the expelled Sudeten Germans and whose possession by the
Communists was thus certain to provide them with tremendous leverage over the
country's sizeable peasant population.
The new government returned to Czechoslovakia on April 3 1945.
They set foot in Kosice, where they announced their program, subsequently called
the Kosice program.
They went to Prague on May 10, having been preceded by the Red
Army that entered the capital one day after the end of the war. Three weeks
before that the American Army liberated Plzen and was ordered to halt its
unresisted eastward drive which would have allowed it to liberate the most
populous portion of Czechoslovakia, including Prague.
UP
From Democracy to Communism
As envisaged in the Kosice program, large-scale industry and
all banking and insurance were nationalised and the first stage of land reform
was performed. Some industries were transferred from the Sudeten area to
Slovakia.
Nationalisation created a powerful public sector in the
economy, including two-thirds of the industrial work-force. The land reform was
concerned with the confiscation and distribution of land end farmsteads that had
belonged to the expelled Germans. Their property was given to agricultural
labourers and landless persons, giving rise to a new group of medium-size
farmers who owed their existence to the new regime.
By the turn of the year the parties had completed their own
structures and the population had settled into a party pattern. The most
numerous was Gottwald's Communist Party, which by March 1946 had over a million
members, about the some amounts the three other Czech parties together. In
Slovakia, the Communist Party had a member ship of 63 000 and the Democratic
Party some 400 000.
On the 26 May 1946 elections to the Constituent National
Assembly the Communists emerged as the strongest party with a total for the
whole country of 38 percent. The Communists were not happy about the election
results in Slovakia where the Democratic Party obtained an absolute majority (about
67 %). Communists proposed the restriction on the autonomy of Slovak national
authorities - to the applause of all the Czech non-Communist parties.
The election results entitled Communists to take the
premiership but not to hold power alone. Despite the objections of his advisors,
Benes re-appointed the Communist Minister of Interior who had been accused of
misusing his powers.
In July 1947 Gottwald, after his interview with Stalin,
telephoned from Moscow to say that the Czechoslovak government must rescind its
previous decision to participate in the Marshall Plan talks in Paris, a decision
for which Gottwald and his comrades themselves had previously voted. About the
same time Benes suffered his first major stroke and thus was not in position to
act.
The formation of the Cominform in 1947 signalled the communist
decision to end their co-operation with democratic parties and to liquidate the
latter as a dangerous fifth column of the West in the Soviet sphere.
In Czechoslovakia, the decision was implemented in two stages.
First, in November 1947, the Slovak Democratic Party was emasculated. Next, in
February 1948 the Czech democratic parties were eliminated.
It both instances, the Communists used the same tools--mass
organisations to pass "spontaneous" resolutions and the police forces to enforce
them. Only President Benes stood in the way of their monopoly of power. After a
brief resistance, he bowed to a communist show of force in Prague, as he had
bowed to Hitler's show of force at Munich ten years earlier. The communists had
arrived to power by a bloodless (velvet) coup. (They lost their power in "the
velvet revolution" in November 1989.)
From Gottwald to Dubček
February 1948 meant the end of Moscow compromise from 1945.
Some leaders, like Benes, still nurtured faint hopes. Others, like Ripka fled
abroad and still others, like Sramek were arrested and imprisoned. Jan Masaryk,
the Foreign Minister, (who had failed to join the resignation of non-communist
ministers on February 20 and presented Gottwald with a parliamentary means of
taking all power) committed suicide. A general election in May 1948 brought the
predictable victory of the "renovated" National Front; only ten percent dared to
vote against. In October 1948 a Five Year Plan (1949-53) was approved. It was
still based on pragmatic considerations rather then on ideological assumptions.
However, after the COMECON had been founded in January 1949, Czechoslovakia was
subjected to pressure to play the role of main supplier of investment goods for
the entire Soviet block. As a result, the five-year plan was revised in 1950 and
again in 1951, when Stalin ordered a drastic increase of military production. He
believed that the Soviet bloc absolute superiority in conventional troops and
weapons provided it the opportunity to occupy Europe. President Gottwald and his
colleagues realised that Czechoslovakia had been given unrealistic quotas by the
Soviet general staff. They decided to invite more Soviet advisors to run the
militarisation program and take the responsibility if its objective were not
achieved. Some Soviet advisors already arrived in 1948 and 1950. They organised
and commanded a Soviet-style secret police apparatus and sought out victims,
forced their confessions, and stage-managed their trials. Soon they extended the
range of crimes and included Communists in their purge. Leading Slovak
Communists (including G. Husak, who had headed their coup in November 1947) were
arrested on a charge of bourgeois nationalism. Stalin's agents soon struck at
the heart of Czechoslovak Communist Party. Even its Secretary General R. Slansky
fell and was ultimately executed. His Jewish origin made Stalin pick on him
rather than on Gottwald.
In March 1953 Stalin and Gottwald suddenly died. The results
of the militarization program were disastrous. It absorbed half of the total
industrial investment. Military production was increased by 700 percent! The
output of agricultural machinery had declined to 69 percent of the 1949 level,
tractors to 28 percent, passenger cars to 46 percent and truck to 87 percent.
Traditional consumer industries were undermined. Living standard declined. Since
high wages were paid to employees in industries that did not produce consumers
goods and services, the population accumulated enormous savings. In June 1953 a
currency reform nullified the savings, causing worker's riots in several
industrial centres.
The period of relaxation started in mid-1953 and ended
abruptly in 1955. During this time the Czechoslovak economy was run in
accordance with continually redrafted, ad hoc, one year plans. Parallel to the
development in USSR and Nikita Khrushchev's career, A. Novotny's rise to supreme
power in Czechoslovakia began as well. He was a rather limited apparatchik who
could manipulate other apparatchiki.
He had been Gottwald's chief aide in the party after Slansky's
arrest. However, he succeeded to apportion blame to "enemies" within and without
the party. He consecutively sacrificed all his Stalinist friends. Many party
members and leaders accused of "deviations" were heavily sentenced.
In the second five-year plan for 1956-60 emphasis was once
again placed on heavy military industries. In 1958, a sort of economic reform
with an emphasis on overall economic efficiency was introduced. However, it was
accompanied by a "political verification" of entire employed population. As a
result, tens of thousands of managerial and technical personal were purged.
The third five-year plan for 1960-65 came to a bitter end,
known as the first "socialist economic recession". The recession shocked the
party leadership which firmly believed that the central planning would ensure
non-cyclical economic development. A group of "economists" called for a profound
systematic reform based on a synthesis of a market and an indicative plan. They
were either reformers (O.Sik), or technocrats (O.Cermak) or even dissatisfied
members of the central committee of the Communist party. However, the party
apparatus refused to give up its control over the economy, including the
day-to-day control of enterprises.
Tensions between the reluctantly reformed economic system and
the unchanged political system were growing. The "economists" were joined by a
large group of party "intellectuals" who detested the self-made President and
resented his occasional interference in a sphere they considered as their own
domain.
In addition, President Novotny succeeded in antagonising the
Slovaks. In 1950s Slovak communists grumbling was drowned in the blood, but in
the 1960s, when the surviving victims were rehabilitated and resumed important
offices, the grumbling recurred.
The organisation structure of the Czechoslovak Communist Party
was asymmetrical. The Slovak Communist Party had been surviving as its
subordinated branch since the uprising in 1944. There was no similar Czech
counterpart.
At the Central Committee meeting in October 1967, Alexander
Dubcek, the First Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party, unexpectedly
criticised Novotny for systematically damaging Slovakia's economic and cultural
interests. Many CC members from Bohemia and Moravia joined the attack demanding
the separation of the posts of first secretary and president. Novotny found
himself in a minority.
In despair he appealed to the Soviet leaders to help him, but they refused,
for they considered him as the fallen Khrushchev's protégé, and disliked him
accordingly. In January 1968 Dubcek was elected the first secretary of the
Czechoslovak Communist Party. Novotny remained President. Surprisingly, Dubcek
decided to force his retreat by means of the pressure of public opinion within
and without the party. The media look up this task with great enthusiasm.
Novotny had to resign.
In April 68 the Communist Party proclaimed a new action
program - AP. It promised federalisation with Slovakia. (There would be no
possibility of Czechs outvoting Slovaks on legal or constitutional questions).
However, AP would not give up " the leading role" of the Communist Party.
Other political parties and associations would have been
tolerated only under the condition of accepting the Communist monopoly of
political power within the so-called National Front. AP recognised the necessity
of introducing market forces and modest private enterprise in the service sector.
The newly acquired freedom of communication not only
revitalised communist party but also resuscitated old political forces.
The Soviet leaders came to consider the Czechoslovak
experiment as great unorthodox risk. But the Czechoslovak leaders were impressed
by an enthusiastic popular support and wanted to make use of it. They believed
that they would be permitted to devise their own particular "socialism with
human face" different from the Soviet and Chinese ones. This was a
miscalculation. On August 21, 1968 the Soviet army, and four other "allies"
invaded and occupied Czechoslovak territory. Many leaders, including Dubcek,
Premier Cernak and Parliament President Smrkovsky were kidnapped to the USSR.
The spontaneous passive resistance prevented Soviets to
install a new government headed by members of die-hards Indra - Bilak group.
However, on August 26 the Moscow Protocol was signed that enabled Dubcek to
return as First Secretary of CP, but left him little room for manoeuvre. The
Czechoslovak public was not informed of the full content of the protocol.
Dubcek's reassurances that he intended to continue with so-called post-January
policies calmed the situation for a while. Although many reformers could
preliminary keep their position a strong group of die-hards had to be appointed
to the Central Committee. However the die-hards were extremely unpopular and
Bilak was replaced by Husak at the top of the Slovak Communist party. Husak had
been in charge of the committee preparing Czech-Slovak federation. His position
was that so long as Czechoslovakia was federated, much of the rest of the Action
Program was negotiable. The constitution law signed on October 28, 1968, the
50th Anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, created a new federal
republic and two national republics, Slovak and Czech, which were to enjoy equal
and wide autonomy. This meant at least temporary satisfaction for the Slovaks
and strengthening the position of Husak. He became more and more critical of
Dubcek and the unrealistic policies that he believed Dubcek stood for.
Reaction and Stagnation
On 17 April 1969 the central committee announced that Dubcek
was replaced by Husak as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
However, Husak soon found himself outvoted by the die-hards in the CC. He
had to stop his frequent unprepared public presentations and limit himself
to reading ideologically approved boring speeches. Having no other choice he
served the die-hards and Soviets enjoying the glance of the topmost post in
the party to which he added that of Czechoslovak President in 1975, reaching
the very "cumulation of functions" for which Novotny had been removed.
He was ruthless enough to preside over the relentless
purges of his former colleagues. The screening of party members reduced its
numbers from 140000 to 1100000. The purges affected the central and local
bureaucracies, the news media and the whole education system. Although
Czechoslovakia was formally a federation of two national states with
separate governments and national councils, the organisation structure of
the Communist Party remained asymmetric and most of real power was
centralised in the hands of its Presidium in Prague. Husak's only credit
seems to be that no show trials of reform leaders have occurred.
Since 1970 most elements of the economic reforms from the
second half of 1960s were withdrawn and Czechoslovakia became a rigidly neo-Stalinistic
country. However, her economic performance in the first half of 1970s was
surprisingly good. The post-1969 leadership began to invest in consumer
branches, agriculture, housing and infrastructure. In Prague the
construction of very expensive subway began, and so did the construction of
a modern highway from Prague to Brno and Bratislava. The consumer/infrastructure
boom was partly financed by loans both from the East and the West.
Productive investment was postponed. The trade balance was in the red.
However, the situation changed since mid 1970-s Industry,
energy and joint project with the Comecon required large investments while
debts had to be repaid and trade balanced.
The world energy crisis forced the leadership increasingly
to substitute soft coal for oil and gas with disastrous environmental damage
as a result. In the early 1980s another recession arrived. In 1980s,
consumption continued to increase despite declining growth and investment
ratio declined substantially.
Inspired by Perestroika in the Soviet Union, various
measures were taken after 1986. New laws increased the possibilities of
companies to engage in foreign trade and in joint ventures with foreign
partners that were allowed to repatriate their profits.
UP
