Czechoslovakia
Structural Problems of a State (1918–1992)
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918 was based on two objectives: the creation of a nation with a Slavic majority in ethnically mixed Central Europe and the establishment of a state armed against revisionism on the part of those who lost the First World War. The expulsion of the Germans in 1945–1946 and the fundamental transformation of the international system after the Second World War, in particular changes in Germany’s understanding of itself, deprived the common state of Czechs and Slovaks of its basis to exist. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, a swift velvet separation followed under democratic conditions. Although Czechoslovakia’s balance sheet in matters of security, welfare, and the rule of law is by no means unambiguously negative, this state had lost its central function.
(Osteuropa 4-6/2021, pp. 7–32)