CHAPTER 3 - Czechoslovakia

Abstract

This chapter discusses the political and economic development in Czechoslovakia. The creation of the Czechoslovak Republic after the First World War freed the Czechs and Slovaks from foreign rule and enabled them to push ahead with political and economic development until the country was one of the most politically stable and industrially advanced in Central Europe. The educational and social problems inherited by the communist regime differed in many ways from those in other countries. Nationalism, then as now, was less strident and was in any case directed more against the Germans than the Russians. Czechoslovakia has had only a minor nationality problem since the end of the Second World War and the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. At present, over 94 percent of the populations are Czechs or Slovaks, with Hungarians, Poles, and Germans forming tiny minorities. Czechoslovakia has long been more industrialized than the other countries—over 80 per cent of the population is urban—and has, thus, been spared many of the problems of educational backwardness and low living standards that have so sorely tried the resources of Poland or Yugoslavia.