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The dissolution of Czechoslovakia (Czech: Rozdělení Československa, Slovak: Rozdelenie Československa), which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the self-determined secession of the federal republic of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic (also known as Czechia) and Slovakia.
Although Czechoslovakia was the only central European country to remain a parliamentary democracy during the entire period 1918 to 1938, [11] it faced problems with ethnic minorities such as Hungarians, Poles and Sudeten Germans, which made up the largest part of the country's German minority.
Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 and the Munich Agreement in September of that same year, Adolf Hitler annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia on 1 October, giving Germany control of the extensive Czechoslovak border fortifications in this area. The incorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany left the rest of ...
After World War II, Czechoslovakia was reestablished under its pre-1938 borders, with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the Ukrainian SSR (a republic of the Soviet Union). The Communist Party seized power in a coup in 1948. From 1948 to 1989, Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc with a planned economy.
Czechoslovakia was ruled by a victorious Communist Party of Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. [28] More immediately, the coup became synonymous with the Cold War. The loss of the last remaining liberal democracy in Eastern Europe came as a profound shock to millions in the West.
In December 1987, some 500,000 Catholics in Czechoslovakia signed a petition for religious freedom. It was the biggest petition of that sort in central Europe. The first anti-Communist demonstration took place on 25 March 1988 – the Candle demonstration. An unauthorized peaceful gathering of some 2,000 (other sources 10,000) Catholics in the ...
After the Munich Agreement and the German government made clear to foreign diplomats that Czechoslovakia was now a German client state, the Czechoslovak government attempted to curry favour with Germany by banning the country's Communist Party, suspending all Jewish teachers in German educational institutes in Czechoslovakia, and enacted a law ...
Czechoslovakia thus became a part of the Eastern Bloc. Attempts at a reformation of the political system during the Prague Spring of 1968 were ended by the invasion of armies of the Warsaw Pact. [43] The Czechoslovakia remained under the rule of the Communist Party until the Velvet Revolution of 1989.