체코정치가들의 활동 및 지향목표

Activities and Proposed Strategies of Czechs Politicians

The military disaster of 1866 compelled Francis Joseph Ⅰ to come to terms with the Magyars. The subsequent Ausgleich, or Compromise, of 1867 transformed the Habsburg Empire into a dual monarchy in which Austria and Hungary became almost separate states except for defence and foreign affairs. Many of the other national groups within the empire-including the Czechs-opposed the Compromise of 1867. The dual monarchy, in effect, permitted the German-speaking Austrians and the Hungarian Magyars to dominate all other nationalities in their respective states. The most severe critics were the Czechs of Bohemia. At that time they favored policy of trialism. In 1871 Francis Joseph Ⅰ was willing to accept this concept. However, the Hungarian Magyars and the German-speaking Austrians vetoed the proposal due to the fear that they might have to make similar concessions to their own subject nationalities. For more than ten years the Czechs were conciliated by extension of generous Austrian patronage and admission to the Austrian bureaucracy. During this time Czechs politicians agreed with F.Palacky on the issue that the introduction of the Federalism into Austria was necessary to maintain the Habsburg Empire. On June 28, 1914, a young Bosnian nationalist shot and killed the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, an heir to the throne, and his wife as they drove in an open car through the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. The assassin was a member of conspiracy hatched by the political terrorist society called Union and Death, better known as the Black. At this time the Archduke had been known to favor a form of federal government that would have given a higher status to the Slaves in the empire. Austria was sure that it was a Serbian who killed its prince, and Austrian leaders made up their minds to make war on Serbia. During the First World War T. Masaryk and his followers had given up Austroslavism of F.Palacky. Instead, they had tried to aid the Allies. From Geneve onwards T.G.Masaryk started organizing Czechs and Slovaks living outside Austria-Hungary, primarily in Switzerland, France, England, Russia and the United States, and establishing the contacts that would prove crucial to the cause of Czechoslovak independence. T.G.Masaryk originally wished to reform the Habsburg monarchy into a democratic federal state, but during First World War he began to favor the abolition of the monarchy. As a result of this constant efforts of T.G.Masaryk and his followers the Czechs had a real chance of constructing a viable modem nation-state. With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia joined with the Solvaks and Ruthenians to the east to form Czechoslovakia, and this new state included several million unhappy Germans. During the war the Czechs and the Slovaks had cooperated to aid the Allies. They had learned to work together and to trust each other.