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PART TWO
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
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Introduction
Oh believe, (that) a better time will come for the Czechoslav brothers,
when everything again roars as one voice from Šumava to the Tatras.
Svatopluk Čech, 18881
P
art Two is meant as a historical backdrop for the analysis of why the Czechoslovak nation
project failed and why the national conflict level increased during the First Czechoslovak
Republic. The historical context was important for the outcome, in the sense that the historical
heritage provided the foundation for nationally relevant conflicts in the inter-war period.
Furthermore, the historical context can help us understand why the Czechs and Slovaks
became nations. Finally, an outline of Czech and Slovak history is necessary as a backdrop to
the analysis of the struggle for national identity, since the dispute about the Czechoslovak
reinterpretation of history was so central to that struggle.
In Chapter Five I give a basic outline of events and periods that shaped Czech and Slovak
(pre-)national identity, and that are important for Czech and Slovak self-understanding, with
special focus on the period from the mid-18th century to the First World War.
As noted in Part One, national movements strive to fulfill the dual task of defining the
contents of nationhood (including consolidating its outwards expressions), and of convincing
the members of the nation-to-be that they are a nation that should stick together. They also
present demands on behalf of the nation-to-be towards the rulers, aimed at recognition,
national equality and eventually autonomy. The nation-forming aspect will be dealt with
separately in Chapters Six and Seven for the sake of clarity, while I have chosen to treat the
national demands and the response of the rulers (nationality policy) as an integral part of
Chapter Five. National demands and nationality policy are hard to separate from the general
political development of the Habsburg Empire in this period, since the national question was a
(if not the) major conflict dimension.
Chapter Six deals with the three phases in the nation-forming process, following Miroslav
Hroch's scheme. The main emphasis will be on the period that the Czechs call obrození
(revival), from the 1770s to the mid-19th century, i.e. the first two of these phases. In Chapter
Seven the focus is on the changing conceptions of the contents of nationhood in the course of
these revivals, with special emphasis on the central "awakeners" (buditelé) – the men who
formed the Czech and Slovak self-understanding at the threshold of nationhood.
1
(Ó věřte, lepší vzejde čas pro českoslávské bratry, až zahřmí zas vše v jeden hlas od Šumavy až v Tatry!). Quoted in Josef
Pešek: Matka vlast. Obrázkové dějiny československé (1923:368).