중동부유럽

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk(1850-1937), sometimes called Thomas Massaryk in English, was a Czechoslovak politician, who was an eager advocate of Czechoslovak independence during the First World War and became the founder and first President of Czechoslovakia. This study will discuss political activities of Masaryk from the beginning of his political career to the President of Czechoslovak Republic. Masaryk served in the Austrian Parliament(Reichsrat) from 1891 to 1893 in the Young Czech Party and again from 1907 to 1914in the Realist Party, but he did not hold campaign for independence of Czechs and Slovak from Austria-Hungary. During the First World War T. G. Masaryk and his followers had given up Austroslavism of F. Palacký. Instead, they had tried to aid the Allies. From Genève onwards T. Masaryk started organizing Czechs and Slovaks living outside Austria-Hungary, primarily in Switzerland, France, England, Russia and the United States,establishing 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 the First World War he began to favour the abolition of the monarchy. As a result of this constant efforts of T. G. Masaryk and his followers the Czechs had a chance to construct a viable independent state. With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia joined 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. On November 14, 1918, T. G. Masaryk was elected President of Czechoslovak Republic by the National Assembly in Prague. In the person of T. G. Massaryk, the nation possessed a gifted leader of immense integrity and fairness. The country had a real chance of constructing a viable modern nation-state. However, it was plagued with discontent among its smaller national groups including the German population of the Sudetenland assigned to Czechoslovakia.