Czechoslovakias

Czechoslovakia was a Central European state that existed from 1918 to 1992. It emerged in the aftermath of World War I as the union of the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia) and Slovakia, with Carpathian Ruthenia joining briefly. Its name signaled the linguistic and national partnership of Czechs and Slovaks. The capital was Prague, and the official languages were Czech and Slovak, with German and Hungarian spoken by minorities in parts of the country.

In its first decades, the country was a parliamentary democracy known as the First Republic (1918–1938). It developed a diversified economy and a relatively high standard of living for the region, though ethnic tensions and political instability persisted. The Munich Agreement of 1938 drastically reduced its territory, and during World War II the Czech lands were occupied while Slovakia existed as a nominally independent state aligned with Nazi Germany. After 1945, Czechoslovakia was reconstituted and then became a socialist republic in 1948 within the Soviet-influenced bloc.

Following liberalization efforts and the Prague Spring of 1968, the country adopted a federation in 1969, creating the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic within the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, reforms continued and, in 1990, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. A peaceful dissolution then occurred, and on January 1, 1993, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic became independent states.

The term “Czechoslovakias” is not an official designation for a single state; historians generally refer to Czechoslovakia as a defunct federation whose dissolution produced two successor states with distinct trajectories.