If you lived as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and ...

The Creation of Czechoslovakia
When at midnight on October 28, 1918 the
journalist, commentator and freedom fighter
Jan Hajsman returned to his flat exhilarated
and exhausted, he realized that he had witnessed
a historic turning point:
“I was incapable of thought. I kept coming
back to this: in the morning I got up as
a subject of Austria; now I am a citizen of a
free Czechoslovakia state. How strange! In
the morning the sun came up over a subjected
land, over a nation which, scattered to the
four corners of the earth, worked with all its
might, fought for freedom, and in the evening
the sun set on a liberated nation. How strange,
how strangely it all happened! A fairy tale, a
miracle!”
It must have seemed like a miracle to Czechs
back then, when they read or heard the proclamation
adopted by the Czechoslovak National
Committee at 5:00 p.m. on that eventful day:
“Czechoslovak nation! Your age-old dream
has become a reality. On this day the state
of Czechoslovakia has taken its place among
the independent, free, civilized states of the
world. The National Committee empowered
by the trust of entire Czechoslovak nation
has, as the sole and legitimate power, taken
into its hands the apparatus of your state,
Czechoslovak nation! All that you do from this
moment onward you do as a new, free member
of the family of independent nations.”
An independent Czechoslovak state! No one
had even considered such a thing before the
outbreak of World War I. The Czech political
parties and Czech politicians assumed that the
Czech nation would continue to live within
the Habsberg monarch. The more daring ones
demanded that the “lands of Czech crown,”
Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia form a single
unit within their historical boundaries, which
would be confirmed by Emperor Franz Josef
accepting the Crown of Saint Wenceslas.
Considering the pre-war modesty of Czech
politicians, who limited themselves to achieving
their goals within a federalized Habsburg
monarch, October 28th seemed an un-heard-of,
incredible success: on that day the formation of
a completely independent state was announced,
one that consisted not only of the historical
lands of the Czech crown, but Slovakia as well
and later Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia (now part of
the Ukraine).
No wonder then, that for contemporaries
October 28th, the day that became the symbol
of the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic
felt like a miracle, and the date became the
cornerstone of the Czech historical dream. For
Frantisek Soukup, one of the “Men of October
28,” a member of the National Committee
that declared the creation of an independent
Czechoslovak state and later a cabinet minister,
Member of Parliament and Senator, the creation
of an independent Czechoslovak state was
almost mystical culmination of the history of
the Czech nation: “And on that October 28 the
entire history of the Czech nation passed before
our mind’s eye. On that October 28 the whole
era of the Hussite republic flashed through our
soul, led by the revolutionary martyr Jan Hus
and Jan Zizka, the Hussite military leader,
whose names were borne on the flags of the
Czechoslovak legions a half millennium after
their time.” In his passionate style Soukup
praised to the heights the first President of
the Czechoslovak Republic, Tomas Garrigue
Masaryk: “That Apostle of Humanity who
organized an army, refused all compromise and
declared that war and revolution must be fought
to the end. A statesman who in Washington
proclaimed the independence and constitution
of our Republic, and with the great Woodrow
Wilson laid the foundations for a new Europe…
The leader of a nation the arrival of whom was
greeted by millions with open arms, calling in
mystical intoxication from the depths of their
souls: ‘Behold the redeemer!’.”
The date of the creation of the Czechoslovak
Republic, October 28th, was proclaimed a
national holiday by the Act on Sundays and
Holidays, passed on March 21, 1925. The date
was celebrated every year during the interwar
era. In the garrison of towns military reviews
were held, and parades of uniformed legionnaires,
members of Sokol athletic clubs, workers’
physical fitness clubs and riflemen’s clubs,
firemen, people dressed in their national costumes,
artisans in the uniforms of their trade. In
banquet halls and on the squares, by memorials
and by bonfires, speeches were made, as well
as concerts and paper lantern parades, soil from
battlefields where the legionnaires had fought
was brought home and ceremonially placed in
the ground, liberty trees were planted.
At the time, October 28th appeared to be
the Czech’s final historical triumph. But nothing
is absolute and definitive in history, much
less the dreams and victories of small nations.
State independence is not merely sovereignty,
the Presidential standard flying over Prague
Castle and fanfares from Bedrich Smetana’s
opera Libuse. For a small nation in an exposed
position in the heart of Europe, independence
brought risk.
Celebrations of the tenth anniversary of independence
in 1928 were especially ostentatious.
There was plenty to brag about. A great threevolume
luxury publication, Ten Years of the
Czechoslovak Republic, was a proud retrospective
on the new state in the heart of Europe and
the progress it had made; there was optimism
for the future.
Ten years later everything was different. The
Liberation Memorial, a proud symbol of the
independent Czechoslovak state and its army,
was scheduled to be dedicated on Vitkov hill
in Prague on October 28, 1938. The ceremony
never took place. After the catastrophe of
Munich and the defeat of the state, there was
nothing to celebrate. Voices were even heard
calling October 28th a failure of vision, an
expression of Czech megalomania, a failure to
comprehend the harsh reality of the struggle
between national egoisms, in which the biggest
always win. The majority of the nation
T h e N e w s o f T h e C z e c h C e n t e r
21
disagreed, however. On October 28, 1939, the
first Independence Day after the Nazi occupation
and the shriveling of Czechoslovakia into
the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”,
a large demonstration turned out against the
German occupation. Praguers were still loyal to
the state that had been founded in 1918: from
the resistance movement arose the rallying cry
“Another October 28!”
Then came May 1945 and liberation, and
October 28th could be celebrated once again
as a national and state holiday. But it also
became the date of nationalization decrees
that foreshadowed the Communist takeover.
Under the Communist regime October 28th
was not celebrated as Independence Day but
as Nationalization Day. The Communist propaganda
slogan of the 1950s “Without November
7, 1917 there would be no October 28, 1918”
was an attempt to portray the creation of the
Czechoslovak state as the direct result of the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Criticism of
such ideological and political constructions,
along with calls to restore October 28th as a
state holiday, resurfaced as son as the monolithic
Communist regime relaxed its grip (for
example at the congress of Czechoslovak historians
in 1966).
A demonstration on October 28, 1989 directly
preceded the fall of totalitarianism, which was
often interpreted as a return to the values of
interwar Czechoslovakia, that is, expressed
symbolically, to the values of October 28.
However, in many ways it seems as if Central
Europe has turned back the clock to before
1918. In the past the holiday of October 28,
1918 was connected with October 30, 1918,
the date of St. Martin Declaration, in which
Slovak politicians declared allegiance to a
common Czech-Slovak state. Today the alliance
of October 28 and 30 no longer exists,
as the Czech-Slovak state no longer exists.
Today October 28th is celebrated in the Czech
Republic only. However, both in modern Czech
and Slovak history, as well as in the history of
Central Europe, it has an important symbolic
value and remains a fundamental historical
milestone.
Jan Galandauer, Heart of Europe
A Volunteer Markets the CCMH
Allen Livanec presents a check to Effie Rosene
to engrave an Honor Tile. Allen marketed
and solicited money at his family’s reunion.
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