the nationality of all inhabitants of the czech provinces and ...

The Czechs and Germans and the Birth
of Czechoslovakia
significance after the October
Revolution in 1917 when major splits
occurred in their ranks, with some
legionaries joining the Red Army.
However, the major part of the Czech
and Slovak troops was to become the
main anti-Bolshevik military force in
the country.
The first congress of Czechs and
Slovaks was already held in Paris in
January and February 1915. It demanded
that the constitution of a Czech state
comprising all Czech and Slovak
territories be based on liberal principles
and that the state should have a
constitutional government similar to
those of France and England. The
declaration of the Czech Committee of
November 14, 1915 voiced the demand
for an independent Czechoslovak state as
an expression of resistance to the ruling
dynasty which maintained its rule with
the help of “a feckless nobility, a
nationless dynasty and an anti-national
officer corps.” The congress also
condemned “the shameful trials” of Serbs
and levelled at the Austro-Hungarian
government the charge that “it
unscrupulously used faked documents
against the Yugoslavs that had been
manufactured in their own embassy and
Vienna and Budapest continue this war
on the basis of such forgeries. Now, on
top of these forgeries, they are resorting
to barbaric vindictiveness and cruelty
against the non-German and non-
Magyar nations.” That declaration once
more voiced the demand for an
independent Czechoslovak state. The
Czech and Slovak activists signing the
declaration included the Reichsrat
deputies Josef Dürich and T.G.Masaryk,
the Czech émigré association
representatives Karel Pergler and
Emanuel Voska from Chicago, Bohdan
Pavlů from Petrograd, and Albert
Mamatey and Ivan Daxner
representatives of the Slovak League in
the USA. The declaration was also signed
by a number of Czech artists living
abroad, such as František Kupka in Paris.
All the declarations abroad, starting
with Masaryk’s treatise “Independent
Bohemia” from 1915 (which marked
39
Chapter II
the author’s final rejection of Austria)
stressed that only the people back
home, the “legitimate representatives”
would be able to take the final decision
about the future organisation of the
state. This would only be possible after
the war, in a free state. The most
eloquent exposition of the programme
of the Czechoslovak resistance was the
Declaration of the Independence of the
Czechoslovak Nation by the Provisional
The first headquarters of the
Czechoslovak National Council created
in Paris in 1916 as the supreme body of
the movement for national
independence.
Czechoslovak Government, of October
18, 1918 (the Washington Declaration).
It was drafted by T.G.Masaryk with his
American friends and was strongly
influenced by the ideas of American
democracy. The declaration called for
the Habsburgs to be deposed from the
Czech throne and proclaimed an
independent Czechoslovak nation and
state. Regarding Slovakia, it stated that
it had once formed part of a common
state (during the Greater Moravian
Empire) with historic lands. The
Declaration endorsed the American
Declaration of Independence, the
principles of Lincoln and the French