Czech Historians and the End of Austria-Hungary

Abstract

When on 28 October 1918 it became known in Prague that the day before the foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, Count Andrassy, had sent a note to President Wilson asking for an immediate armistice, the people of Prague took to the streets and tore down the insignia of Habsburg power. On the evening of that day the Czechoslovak National Committee, which claimed to represent the Czechoslovak people, passed a law on the establishment of an independent republic. True enough, military power still lay with the garrison but by 30 October its power had seeped away as the troops, mainly Romanian and Hungarian, either gave their support to the National Committee or simply made preparations to return home. That same day Minister President Lammasch welcomed Vladimir Tusar, the Czech representative in Vienna, as the ambassador of the new state. To the Czechs and Slovaks the events of the 28th were a revolution: the převrat, for which the Germans use the word der Umsturz. The two surviving leaders of the resistance abroad, T. G. Masaryk and E. Benes -M. R. Stefanik having been killed on his return to Bratislava in May 1919 — both used the word revolution in the titles of the accounts of their wartime actions that they gave to the Czechoslovak peoples. Thus we have Masaryk’s World Revolution, and Benes’s World War and our Revolution1 Even in their German translation the revolutionary purpose is maintained.