Czechoslovak independence

On Monday 28 October 1918 almost four hundred years of Habsburg rule over the Czech lands came to an end in Prague without a shot being fired. The Czechoslovak National Committee took over the offices in the city, and in the evening it passed a law that began with the words: “The independent Czechoslovak state has come into being.” It and an appeal to the nation were signed by five men whom the Czechs have since called “the men of 28 October”: the Agrarian Antonín Švehla, the National Democrat Alois Rašín, the National Socialist Jiří Stříbrný, the Social Democrat František Soukup and the Slovak Vavro Šrobár. Ten days earlier the provisional government in exile had proclaimed independence in the Washington Declaration. Now the new state came into being on the spot. The day became Czechoslovakia’s national holiday, and the British chronology of the war takes it as the official date of Czechoslovakia’s entry into the war as a state.

The Committee waits for its moment

The National Committee was formed in Prague on 13 July 1918 from representatives of all the Czech parties. It was chaired by Karel Kramář, who had been sentenced to death for treason during the war and pardoned in 1917; Švehla was his deputy and Soukup the secretary. The Committee was to prepare the takeover of power at the moment of the monarchy’s collapse and kept up secret contact with the émigrés, with Tomáš Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. Its leaders wanted to avoid bloodshed and chaos, which Vienna also feared. On 14 October the left-wing Socialist Council called a general strike, and in several towns, among them Písek, speakers proclaimed an independent republic. The Committee distanced itself from these actions, and the authorities brought troops into Prague and arrested some of the organisers. There was no bloodshed.

The Committee rejected Emperor Charles’s manifesto of 16 October, which promised to transform Austria into a union of national states. At the end of October a delegation with Kramář and the vice-chairman Václav Klofáč left, with the authorities’ consent, for Switzerland to meet Beneš. Švehla, Rašín, Soukup and Stříbrný stayed in Prague.

Andrássy’s note

On the morning of 28 October news reached Prague of the note that the foreign minister, Gyula Andrássy, had sent to President Wilson the day before. In it Austria-Hungary asked for an immediate armistice and accepted all of Wilson’s conditions, including his position on the rights of the Czechoslovaks and the Yugoslavs. People understood it as the monarchy’s capitulation and a recognition of independence. Crowds filled the streets. Imperial eagles were torn down from buildings, Austrian emblems on post boxes were painted over, red-and-white flags were hung out, and Czech soldiers tore the imperial badges from their uniforms. On Wenceslas Square, beneath the statue of Saint Wenceslas, Father Isidor Zahradník, a priest associated with the Agrarians, announced to the crowd the birth of an independent state. According to Czech studies, representatives of the Committee did the same there soon afterwards.

The takeover of power

The Committee acted quickly. At about nine in the morning Švehla and Soukup, on behalf of the Committee, took over the War Grain Office, the agency that allocated grain and sent it to the army at the front. The aim was to stop grain being shipped out of the country. The officials swore an oath of loyalty to the new state. The Committee’s leaders were joined by Šrobár, a doctor from Ružomberok who happened to be in Prague. His signature was meant to show that the new state also included Slovakia, although the Slovaks did not yet know what was happening in Prague. The Committee took over one office after another and called on them to continue working, but now under its authority. The Austrian garrison, commanded by General Paul Kestranek, made no attempt that day to hinder the takeover.

In the evening, in the Municipal House (Obecní dům), where the Committee had met since July, the first law of the new state, drafted by Rašín, was passed. It stated that “the independent Czechoslovak state has come into being”. To avoid confusion, it kept the existing provincial and state laws in force and placed all offices, from state to municipal, under the Committee. The Committee declared itself the expression of “the unanimous will of the nation” and the holder of state sovereignty. The form of government was to be determined by a National Assembly in agreement with the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris. The law was later published in the collection of laws as no. 11/1918. An appeal was also issued, beginning with the words: “Czechoslovak people! Your age-old dream has become reality. The Czechoslovak state has today taken its place among the independent, free, civilised states of the world.” The appeal called for order to be kept and recalled the deeds of the Czechoslovak Legions on the Western Front and in Siberia. That same day four representatives of the Slovaks were co-opted to the Committee. Germans and Hungarians were not invited.

Geneva

That same day in Geneva the Committee’s delegation began talks with Beneš. The Prague takeover took it by surprise. Over the following days the politicians from home and from exile agreed that the new state would be a republic and not a monarchy, which some of them had been considering until recently, that Masaryk would become president and Kramář prime minister. By then the provisional government had already been recognised by France, Britain and Italy, and the United States had treated the National Council as a de facto government since September. Czech historians stress that Czechoslovakia was the only state created on the ruins of the monarchy whose existence the Allies recognised before the peace conference.

The following days

The takeover did not end on 28 October. On 29 October the Committee negotiated with the governor of Bohemia about handing over the administration, and Czechoslovak authority was being established in Brno, Pilsen, Ostrava, Olomouc and other towns. According to Czech studies, the Austrian military command in Prague finally submitted to the Committee on 30 October. That same day Slovak politicians gathered in Martin adopted the Martin Declaration, in which they came out in favour of a common state with the Czechs. German deputies from northern Bohemia had already proclaimed the province of German Bohemia on 29 October and wanted to join it to German Austria. The borders of the new state, including those with reborn Poland in Cieszyn Silesia, remained open. On 14 November the Committee was transformed into the Revolutionary National Assembly, which proclaimed a republic, elected Masaryk president and appointed Kramář’s government.