1. Introduction - Ukrainians and Ruthenians in Interwar Czechoslovakia
Recent scholarship on the post-Habsburg region has emphasised the fluid transition between the empires of the 19th century and the Central European nation states that emerged in the interwar period, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.Footnote 1 This raises the question, of how the imperial past affected the peripheral regions of these new nation states. This article focuses on Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the easternmost region of Czechoslovakia. Based on an analysis of Czechoslovak legal practices and the policies in relation to the local population, this article asks whether these were colonial in nature, as contemporaries claimed. Such accusations of colonialism deliberately called into question the image of Czechoslovakia’s image as a model democracy, and continue to resonate in recent historiography. This article offers an alternative perspective: Conceptualising the state-building process in Subcarpathian Ruthenia as ‘external democracy promotion’, a term borrowed from contemporary political science, helps to examine the strengths and the weaknesses of a democracy in the periphery of a new state. Here, the past and the present inform each other. Focusing on the motives of historical figures prevents us from falling into the trap of presentism.Footnote 2
‘Ukraine is a fortress between East and West. […] For centuries, it has defended itself against the invasions by Mongols, Tatars and Turks, thereby earning great historical merit within European culture. Even today, Ukraine is ready to fulfil this duty by turning against Bolshevism and demanding the sincere support and admission of the community of the European peoples’.Footnote 3
Stanislav Dnistrjanskyj, a legal scholar from Lviv, later Vienna and Prague, made this argument for the recognition of an independent Ukraine at the Paris Peace Conferences.Footnote 4 He emphasises the Ukrainians’ desire to join Europe and ‘the West’ rather than Russia and ‘the East’. However, in 1919, all projects of Ukrainian state building had failed. The Ukrainian-speaking population was scattered across several nation states. These included hostile and competing states, such as Poland and the Soviet Union, which were ravaged by violence and civil war, as well as Romania and Czechoslovakia. It is no coincidence that Dnistrjanskyj published the aforementioned essay, ‘Ukraine and the Peace Conference’, in English, French – and in Czech. Political circules in Prague not only welcomed the exiled Ukrainian elites, but also incorporated part of the territory claimed for an independent Ukraine into the new Czechoslovakia.
This region was officially known as ‘Podkarpatská Rus’ (Subcarpathian Ruthenia) and corresponds almost exactly to the Zakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine. During the interwar period, it had a Ruthenian majority, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character. According to the 1930 nationality census, roughly 62 per cent of the population were Ruthenian, 15 per cent were Hungarian, 13 per cent were Jewish (as nationality) and 5 per cent were Czechoslovak. The latter were mostly Czech civil servants who had come to the region after its incorporation into the new state. The remaining percentage was made up of Germans and Romanians. The variety of religions included Catholics, Protestants, Uniates (Greek Catholics) and Orthodoxes, as well as Jews. Accusations that the Czechoslovak state was pursuing a colonial policy in the region exclusively referred to the Ruthenian population.
The region had many names at the time, including Carpathian Ukraine (Karpatská Ukrajina), Carpathian Russia, Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Podkarpatská Rus) or Hungarian Ruthenia (Uherská Rus). These names reflect the ongoing political struggle for identity and loyalty that continued after the region’s legal incorporation into Czechoslovakia – a struggle that continues to this day under different circumstances.Footnote 5 During the interwar period, the term ‘Carpathian Ukraine’ was primarily employed by Ukrainophiles who regarded the Subcarpathian region as a Ukrainian-speaking area and as part of a prospective Ukraine. By contrast, ‘Carpathian Russia’ was a term coined by Russophiles who argued that the territory and its population were culturally and linguistically Russian. Initially, ‘Hungarian Ruthenia’ was a less common term that referred to the territory’s adherence to Hungarian governance before 1918. However, it gained importance following the 1939 Vienna Arbitration, which ceded the territory to authoritarian Hungary under General Miklós Horthy. This year also marked the end of Czechoslovakia’s democracy, which already lost its western territories as a result of the Munich Agreement of 1938.
Behind these many names lies the question of whether the Ruthenian inhabitants of ‘Podkarpatská Rus’ have or had a national identity worthy of legal protection. Between 1920 and 1934, complaints were lodged with the League of Nations against the Czechoslovak government, accusing it that the Ruthenians were not sufficiently protected in their national independence, and that they were being ‘colonised’ by either the Czechs or the Ukrainians in the region. One complaint, in 1932, asserted that Prague was ‘turning Ruthenians into Czechs by slow degrees’.Footnote 6 The question of whether the Ruthenians constitute a separate nationality remains controversial to this day. Another point of disagreement is whether the Czechoslovak policy towards them was colonial in nature.
For a long time, researchers have assumed that Ruthenians and Ukrainians share a common national identity. However, Paul Magosci, being the exception to this rule, introduced the term ‘Rusyns’ to historiography as a self-identification term.Footnote 7 Since the collapse of the socialist bloc, the issue of a separate Ruthenian nationality has returned to the fore, with attempts being made to legally recognise this group.Footnote 8 Since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began in 2015, Vladimir Putin has played the card of a separate Ruthenian identity.Footnote 9 In his propagandistic 2021 article ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, he deliberately refers to the Rusyns as an autonomous people, implying that they are not Ukrainian.Footnote 10 Moderate voices in Ukraine today rightly point out that surveys show national affiliations in Ukraine remain fluid to this day, emphasising that the Ukrainian civic nation encompasses several nationalities and groupings.Footnote 11
Colonialism is understood as a relationship of exploitation between a ruling society and a colonised society, resting on a fundamental imbalance of power and the notion of cultural superiority. To assess the accusations of colonialism against Czechoslovakia during the interwar period, the manifold motives of the Prague government that led to the incorporation of Subcarpathian Ruthenia in 1919 must be analysed. During the Paris peace negotiations, Prague successfully claimed the region south of the Carpathian Mountains as a strategic and military land bridge to Romania for the planned ‘Little Entente’ in Central Europe. By 1919, Czechoslovak troops already controlled the territory, which had previously been part of the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Recognising the new situation, on 8 May 1919, local Rusyn politicians, encouraged by Rusyn emigrants from the United States such as Gregory Zhatkovych, declared their intention to join a democratic Czechoslovakia.Footnote 12 Many of them had previously supported a union with Hungary or a new Ukrainian state. In the face of the socialist revolutions both in Russia and Hungary, the Užhorod Agreement endorsed a memorandum from the Rusyn–American delegation, that promised a ‘Rusyn independent state within a Czecho–Slovak-Rusyn Republic’.Footnote 13 On 10 September 1919, the Treaty of Saint-Germain finally incorporated the region into the new Czechoslovakia. France, in particular, promoted militarily strong allies in Central Europe in its rivalry with Germany. It is important to note that Czechoslovakia gained Subcarpathian Ruthenia with the consent of the local and exiled elites.
While the idea of a Czechoslovak–Romanian land bridge had imperial overtones, reminiscent of the logic of a buffer zone, the Allies imposed one condition on Czechoslovakia, that was neither imperial nor colonial: Subcarpathian Ruthenia should be guaranteed ‘the fullest degree of self-government compatible with the unity of the Czecho–Slovak state’.Footnote 14 Consequently, the Czechoslovak constitution granted Subcarpathian Ruthenia extensive self-government and autonomy, which far exceeded the rights and possibilities afforded to other non-Czech nations within Czechoslovakia. The region was to be governed by its own Diet and an elected presidium, with a governor responsible to both the Diet and the Prague government. Within the framework of the Czechoslovak legal system, the Provincial Diet (which was never convened) was to enact its own laws on matters of language, education, religion and local administration. Officials were largely to be local, coming from Subcarpathian Ruthenia itself. The processing of this constitutional provision raises the question of whether Prague exhibited a culture of colonial behaviour towards the Ruthenians, or whether the Czechoslovak state-building project can be understood as what we would today call ‘external democracy promotion’ in a territory with limited territorialisation.
2. Colonialism, or ‘External Democracy Promotion’?
It is a well-known fact that the promises and guarantees of autonomy and self-government, which were formally acknowledged by the Czechoslovak constitution in 1920, were never realised.Footnote 15 However, the question of how the fate of Subcarpathian Ruthenia changes our view of the First Czechoslovak Republic has rarely been asked. To the eyes of the contemporary elites, represented not least by the two state presidents Tomáš G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, interwar Czechoslovakia was a perfectly liberal and democratic nation state. It was based on universal suffrage for both men and women, parliamentarism and constitutionally granted individual and minority rights under the protection of constitutional and administrative jurisdiction. In short, it was based on liberal democracy, legal rule and the Wilsonian idea of national self-determination.
Historians clung and still cling to this image of interwar Czechoslovakia as the most enduring democracy in the region, until the republic fell victim to the expansionist and imperialistic policies of Nazi Germany.Footnote 16 Indeed, the resilience of Czechoslovak democracy during the interwar period, despite the increasingly authoritarian environment of its neighbouring states, is impressive. For example, elements of what we would now call consociationalism can be seen.Footnote 17 However, in constitutional history, the specific provisions on the political, institutional and cultural independence of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and their implementation have rarely been touched upon in any depth. Research on the nationality question in Czechoslovakia has taken centre stage; however, it has focused primarily on Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and Jews.Footnote 18 The history of Rusyns as Czechoslovak citizens is still in its infancy.Footnote 19
The favourable overall portrayal of interwar Czechoslovak democracy has undergone some revision. Peter Bugge offered a more critical regard to the limits of German participation during the early years of the democracy.Footnote 20 More recently, the Habsburg historian Pieter Judson provocatively labelled the successor states of 1919 including Czechoslovakia as ‘The New Empires’, arguing that: ‘Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland counted millions of people who belonged to other nations in part because each had occupied and claimed territories for strategic or historic reasons as well as for ethnic ones’.Footnote 21 He continues by stating that Subcarpathian Ruthenia was treated by the Czechoslovak state ‘as something of a backwards colony to be improved and modernized by a paternalistic rational administration’.Footnote 22 In this sense of a decentring of post-imperial studies,Footnote 23 Czechoslovakia has also been depicted as being colonial in mind with respect to Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe,Footnote 24 and as colonial in deed, especially with respect to Subcarpathian Ruthenia.Footnote 25 In a more toned-down form, Czechoslovakia’s political reality has been described as internal colonialismFootnote 26 or imperial patronage.Footnote 27 These studies are part of the present-day boom in postcolonial studies worldwide.
However, colonialism is a concept with many intentional or unintentional connotations. Typical characteristics include political domination, economic exploitation, military violence and racism. The concept of colonialism was developed based on the relationship between European ‘white’ powers and their overseas colonies populated by people of colour. The Czechoslovak case is fundamentally different, so a more nuanced approach to the concept of ‘colonialism’ as part of the cultural history of politics is necessary. To develop an informed understanding of colonialism, we must consider, first, the mindset, secondly, the policies, and thirdly, the intentions of the respective power, be it the Prague elite or the Czech citizens. Writing a travelogue or giving a speech framed by a quasi-colonial mindset is categorically different from forcing a people violently into dependency, exploitation or even slavery by violent means. Even the harshest critics of Czechoslovak policies in Subcarpathian Ruthenia would not compare them to the violence exercised by the European great powers in their overseas colonies.
Therefore, the accusations of colonialism against the Czechoslovak government at that time will not be examined using the tools of post-colonial studies. Rather, Prague’s ‘well-minded’ intentions will be given weight in the analysis. Although Subcarpathian Ruthenia’s constitutionally promised autonomy never materialised, all its inhabitants were given the same rights as other citizens. They were not granted more rights than other non-Czech groups such as Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Jews and Slovaks, but nor were they granted fewer. Therefore, this Article draws on concepts borrowed from contemporary political science that address both democracy building and accusations of colonialism. Discussions on interwar Czechoslovak policy in Subcarpathian Ruthenia resemble discussions on so-called ‘external democracy promotion’ in territories with limited territorialisation and statehood.Footnote 28
The ‘external promotion of democracy’, understood as the well-minded intervention of one nation on the territory of another, is traditionally measured against accusations of imperialism or colonialism. This concept is exemplified by the policies of Western countries in the Global South today. Authors such as James Tully have summed up decades of debate by asking to what extent ‘democracy as a state form in the West and its spread around the world [was] implicated in western imperialism’. He argues that we must analyse not only the implemented state form itself, but also whether the way it was implemented was democratic and just.Footnote 29 Democracy-building is therefore considered to be interventionist, post-imperial or post-colonial, if it reproduces earlier asymmetrical relationships and power interests persist unchanged.Footnote 30 Policies that restrict the freedom of individuals or groups on the basis that they are better able to assess and represent the others’ interests are considered illiberal.Footnote 31 Instead, Tully and others advocate a ‘pluralistic and egalitarian ideal of genuinely democratic constitutionalization’.
This conceptual toolkit helps us to better understand and interpret Prague’s policies towards Subcarpathian Ruthenia with its urban centre Užhorod. It enables us to take a fresh look at the region’s democratic achievements and setbacks at a time when new authoritarian regimes were emerging. As well as the normative legal framework of constitutional democracy, we must also consider the implementation, especially during the initial period of a legal state of emergency when statutory laws were replaced by administrative ordinances.
3. Prague’s Policies towards Subcarpathian Ruthenia
In 1932, Michael Yuhasz, President of the Rusin Council of National Defence in the United States of America, petitioned the League of Nations, accusing the Czechoslovak government of having a colonial mindset in its dealings with Subcarpathian Ruthenia. He argues that, ‘according to the agents of the Czechoslovak propaganda abroad, that “the Ruthenian people” as they say “have not yet reached the state of maturity necessary for autonomy” so that Czechoslovakia has first to raise the Ruthenians to such a cultural level that they make good use of their autonomy and then there would be no reason why they should not get it’.Footnote 32 The petition accuses the Czechoslovak government of deliberately maintaining a substandard education system in the region to delay the achievement of this ‘cultural maturity’, and, consequently, the introduction of autonomy.Footnote 33 In its reply, Czechoslovakia stated that it had inherited different educational systems from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, only one of which – the Austrian system – had brought about ‘the degree of civilisation attained by the population’ and a flourishing education. In contrast, education in Subcarpathian Ruthenia was in a deplorable state, with no non-Hungarian schools at all.Footnote 34 The reply listed an impressive number of achievements, both with regard to the educational system and, more broadly, democracy-building.
Since 1918, the leading Czechoslovak elites had an anti-imperial and pro-democratic self-perception. Tomáš Masaryk and later Edvard Beneš condemned the late Austro-Hungarian Empire as illiberal, undemocratic and suppressive, labelling it as the ‘Peoples’ Dungeon’ (Völkerkerker). In line with the Wilsonian understanding of national self-determination, they combined the idea of people’s sovereignty with the modern concept of nation-building: ‘one nation, one state’. The new state adapted models from Western constitutional democracies. Alluding to the example of the United States of America, the preamble to the Constitution of 29 February 1920 began with the words ‘We, the Czechoslovak people…’.Footnote 35 In view of the emerging internationalist community, it continued: ‘we want to join the League of Nations as an enlightened, peace-loving, democratic and progressive member’.
After 1918, a constitutional, parliamentary, and liberal democracy replaced the legal order of the defeated monarchy. Czechoslovakia was one of the first European states to grant universal suffrage to both men and women.Footnote 36 The catalogue of constitutional liberal rights was impressive. However, in a break with the constitutional equality of nationalities, granted and judicially protected in the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, the Czechoslovak constitution promised judicial protection of rights only to individuals, not collectives. Nevertheless, minority rights, as guaranteed in the Paris Peace Treaties, were integrated into the domestic legal system as applicable constitutional law in 1921.Footnote 37 In the multinational setting of Czechoslovakia, the question of whether nationalities should have even more rights was probably one of the most controversial political and legal issues. Alongside the principles of democracy and rights, the Czechoslovak constitution stressed the rule of law and strove to balance the judicial, administrative and legislative branches of government.Footnote 38
At a normative level, the constitutional order of Czechoslovakia provided for the equality of every individual citizen, regardless of gender, social status, nationality or religion. A critical assessment of interwar Czechoslovakia must therefore focus on policies and intentions regarding marginalised regions and groups. While the Constituent Assembly of the new Czechoslovak state in 1918 was still primarily composed of Czech deputies and did not include Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, Rusyns, Poles, or Jews in the same way, the constitution adopted on 29 February 1920 granted equal rights and equal suffrage to all nationalities. From 1920 onwards, the Czechoslovak parliament became pluralistic, and representatives of the larger minorities sat in all subsequent parliaments. The political participation of nationalities in Czechoslovakia was notable, particularly when compared to other countries at that time. By the mid-1920s, German ministers had joined a government that had previously been dominated by the Czechs.
However, the Subcarpathian–Ruthenian region and its electorate formed an important exception to this political practice of pluralism. They were not admitted to national elections until 1924. Even thereafter, there was little participation in the governance of Czechoslovakia until its end in 1939.Footnote 39 There was never a Subcarpathian–Ruthenian minister in the national government or a general in the Czechoslovak army.Footnote 40 As the quoted petition points out, Czechoslovakia’s governing elites claimed that they first needed to create the conditions for democratic institutions.Footnote 41 This argument prioritises establishing democratic institutions before holding general elections, and is in line with current policies of ‘external democracy promotion’.Footnote 42 The political motives of the time were manifold. Immediately after the war, the Subcarpathian region was destabilised by violence and fightings between the Czechoslovakian and Romanian armies as well as Hungarian troops under Béla Kun. Holding elections would have been a difficult undertaking. Instead, securing the state borders and ensuring peace for the population took precedence. However, there was also an intention to maintain a bourgeois majority in the politically fragmented National Assembly. In the early years, the Czechoslovak government tried to minimise the influence of left-wing movements, particularly the communists. This was in line with the Western allies’ policy of preventing the further spread of ‘Bolshevism’ in Central Europe. Subcarpathian Ruthenia seemed particularly susceptible to the new leftist ideas. In the 1924 election, the communists gained 39 per cent of the votes, while another 20 per cent went to parties fiercely opposed to the government. This sent shock waves through political circles in Prague and reinforced the perception of the population as being politically immature.Footnote 43 The mindset of the Prague elites regarding Subcarpathian Ruthenia as a politically backward region was reinforced.
A different political culture emerged between the western regions of Czechoslovakia and Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, reproducing the rift between the former Austrian and Hungarian territories of the Habsburg monarchy. In Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, universal male suffrage to the Vienna Chamber of Deputies had been introduced in 1907.Footnote 44 Consequently, the Czech lands were already home to a wide diversity of liberal, conservative, social democratic, communist and nationalist parties.Footnote 45 This political diversification was complemented by another dimension along national lines, with German, Czech, Polish and Jewish sections even within the international-minded social democracy. In the Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenian parts of Czechoslovakia, however, universal suffrage and a differentiated party system were novel concepts. Late imperial Hungary had permitted only around 7 per cent of the population to vote for the Reichstag in Pest.Footnote 46 The electoral system of late Hungary was one of the most rigid in Europe.
However, Subcarpathian Ruthenia had no shortage of political parties after 1918.Footnote 47 These covered the entire political and national spectrum, including Rusyn, Hungarian, German and Jewish parties. Most of these parties were branches of Czech parties that had expanded their networks from Prague to the east. The political parties that originated from Subcarpathian Ruthenia formed different strands; however, they were united by their common goal of achieving the autonomy promised in the peace treaties and in the Czechoslovak constitution. In contrast, some Hungarian parties had a separatist agenda susceptible to the irredentist propaganda from neighbouring Hungary, particularly during the 1930s.Footnote 48 The most important parties included the Agricultural Union, the Subcarpathian Worker’s Party and the Russian National Party. None of them had a large enough electorate to put forward their own candidate for the National Assembly in Prague, so they had to form coalitions during election campaigns. Following the 1924 election, which saw a relative communist majority and strong opposition to the Prague government, Prague began to take small steps towards compromise. The 1927 administrative reform established a Rusyn governor, who served alongside the president of Sub-Carpathian Rus, a Czech official.
Accusations of a Czechoslovak ‘colonialism’ and the very concept of colonialism are closely linked with economic exploitation.Footnote 49 The overseas colonies of the European powers had to fill the state treasuries as well as the pockets of imperial elites. In Central Europe, the socio-economic structures were about to change fundamentally after 1918. The formerly integrated Austro–Hungarian market with its different economic focuses – agriculture in Hungary and industrialisation, coal and iron mines in northern and western Austria and Bohemia – collapsed as a result of the war and the Paris Peace Agreement. Czechoslovakia had inherited a quarter of the Habsburg Empire’s population, as well as 80 per cent of its industrial potential, and in some sectors, 90 per cent.Footnote 50 These prosperous industries now concentrated exclusively in western Czechoslovakia. There were plans to establish a common market between Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. However, these plans were thwarted by the complicated foreign relations of the three states. The economic disintegration and fragmentation that occurred after 1918 was particularly damaging to eastern Czechoslovakia. The Slovak and Subcarpathian-Ruthenian regions were unable to benefit from industrial centres in north-eastern Czechoslovakia, such as around Ostrava, or in the north-west around Ústí and Labem. Infrastructural links such as railways had to be built first.
Economically, the position of Subcarpathian Ruthenia in interwar Czechoslovakia was as ambivalent as distinctive.Footnote 51 The Prague government did not prioritise the region’s economic and industrial development, allowing Czech companies and businesses to tap into the region as a new sales market. This was in line with the economic nationalism prevalent in overall Central European at the time. In Czechoslovakia, economic nationalism was justified with the argument that Czechs and Slovaks could only catch up economically, if the previous economic elite, the Germans and Hungarians, were disadvantaged for a limited time.Footnote 52 However, this argument of affirmative discrimination could not be applied to Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Conversely, the state invested large sums in the construction of new infrastructure such as railways, hydroelectric plants and opened a national and international airport in Užhorod.Footnote 53 These investments far outweighed the benefits of expanding markets to the east. In economic terms, the Czechoslovakian state revenue did not benefit from the incorporation of Subcarpathian Ruthenia during the interwar period.
The social welfare and public health systems emphasised the political and economic east–west divide. These systems were well established in the former Bohemian lands, institutionalised at state, crown lands and factory levels.Footnote 54 Social security institutions were far less developed in Slovakia and in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, that is in former Habsburg Hungary.Footnote 55 Public health reports from Czechoslovak authorities displayed shocking child mortality rates for the Carpathian regions. The Rusyns were described as ‘unhealthy, pale, sapless, anaemic and badly nourished’, with reports stressing both physical and mental degeneration.Footnote 56 Czech public opinion was ready to accept the Rusyns as a ‘backwards Slavic nation waiting for Czech guidance’, an attitude analysed by Victoria Shmidt as a the gaze of an interior colonizer.Footnote 57 The same applied to other policy areas such as schooling and education.Footnote 58 A lack of primary, secondary and technical schools, as well as illiteracy, prevented the kind of social mobility that Czechs had experienced and profited from in the 19th century.
The level of social security and public health in Czechoslovakia’s east was comparable to the situation in former Galicia or Transylvania.Footnote 59 Prague was well aware of these precarious circumstances. After 1918, the Czechoslovak government invested in social security systems and school education. Between 1920 and 1934, the number of primary schools doubled, and the number of pupils tripled.Footnote 60 In order to de-Magyarise the educational system (and because initially many teachers of Hungarian origin rejected a loyalty oath to the Czechoslovak constitution), the Prague government sent Czech teachers to the region. These teachers forged a Czechoslovak identity among the younger generations. However, some émigrés from the former Galician territories countered these efforts to win children’s hearts and minds.Footnote 61 These Galician intellectuals and teachers found new roots in a region that was similar to their own in terms of language and customs, and some of them favoured the idea of a future Ukrainian state. Both the Czechoslovak authorities and Rusyn politicians pursuing a separate Ruthenian identity rejected this promotion of a distinct Ukrainian identity in the region.Footnote 62 The aim of fostering Ukrainian-speaking higher education was to focus on the Free Ukrainian University, founded in Prague by Ukrainian émigrés.
The expansion of a state-funded modern culture and architecture in its way symbolises the ‘external promotion of democracy’ from western Czechoslovakia to its easternmost regions. The transformation of the arts and culture after 1918 was an important area of symbolic policy through which Czechoslovakia sought and received international recognition. State-funded arts and architecture projects were meant to express the new state’s anti-imperial attitude and democratic approach. The new republic should emulate the former trend-setting historicising models of Vienna’s Ringstrasse as little as possible. Examples of the famous modernism of the interwar period can still be seen today in the urban architecture of Prague and Brno, as well as in Užhorod. In the 1930s, publications also outlined the extent of the new technical buildings in Subcarpathian Ruthenia and their modernity. Official architecture was universal, not shaped by local styles. Czech modernism built on French functionalism.
The modernist architecture was brought to the region by leading Czech architects and urban planners. The city of Užhorod was transformed into a representative centre and the region’s modern capital.Footnote 63 The transformation encompassed river regulation against floods, the construction of a hygienic water supply system and social housing, primarily for the Czech state employees, moving to the region, as well as numerous public buildings. Within 12 years, the population grew by a third, reaching 30,000 inhabitants by 1930. The 1930 census also reflects the exchange of elites. Whereas the town was originally of Hungarian character, now the influx of Czech inhabitants changed its image. Streets were named after the heroes of the 1918 Czech national revolution such as the president Tomáš G Masaryk; the minister for foreign affairs, and later president, Edvard Beneš; minister of finance, Alois Rašín; and founder of the Czech national sports movement, Sokol, Miroslav Tyrš. With one third of the municipal population being Czech, who formed the largest ethnic group in town, everyday life was now dominated by a bilingualism or multilingualism. In the rural areas, however, Czech and Slovak were absent; in the countryside, there were just about 2 per cent Czechs and Slovaks.
This state’s symbolic policy of promoting modern, democratic, and secular arts also resonates in the official perception of literature from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. In a 1934 speech, Edvard Beneš, by then president, emphasised that Subcarpathian Ruthenia had regained its own literature.Footnote 64 He claimed that local writers would never again be forcibly de-nationalised. They should never again have to seek artistic expression in a foreign language, such as Hungarian. Beneš saw a generation of young people growing up independently, strongly and self-confidently, unaware of the danger of ‘Magyarisation’. Beneš emphasised the secular character of the new writers in particular, stating that they ‘are no longer exclusively priests, but also teachers and even farmers’. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was clerics from the Uniate Church, who fostered the development of the Ruthenian and Ukrainian languages in literature and science. Beneš was now alluding to the secularisation of interwar Czechoslovakia, similar to the French separation of state and church. Neither the Uniate and Orthodox traditions nor the Eastern Jewish traditions fitted this image. Although Beneš did not speak of them in hostile terms, he did speak of them as if they were strangers.
4. Double Standards and the Emergency Laws
During his visit to the regional capital, Užhorod, in 1934, Edvard Beneš defended Czechoslovak policy in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. He responded to accusations that the Czechoslovak government was acting in an undemocratic, illiberal, or colonial manner. Although autonomy had not yet been achieved, Beneš said that there was ‘no particular intention behind it, no Czech or Czechoslovak imperialism or expansionism’.Footnote 65 In 1919, an autonomy would have overburdened the population of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, which was not yet ripe for it. First, the Prague government had to create the necessary conditions by investing in the school system, political education, public administration, and public health. Like many of his fellow elites, Beneš presumed that the Prague government was better informed about the needs of the Subcarpathian Ruthenians than the local elites and population themselves. Although Czech newspapers had shown greater awareness of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, Beneš argued that the Czech press had presented the situation there as worse than it actually was.Footnote 66
Beneš rejected the appeals made by Rusyns to the League of Nations for autonomy, deeming them unfounded. He stamped them as irresponsible in the light of the international situation. Like Dnistrjanskij, quoted earlier, Beneš spoke of the transformation of Subcarpathian Ruthenia as a cultural uplifting from East to West, from Russia to Europe. According to Beneš, the inhabitants of Subcarpathian Ruthenia had to recognise their position between the West and the East and their different cultural orientations.Footnote 67 While Subcarpathian Ruthenia had been culturally and nationally oriented towards the Russian East under Hungarian rule, he said that it now belonged ‘to the Czechoslovak state, […] which visibly and consciously aligned itself with the West and designed its political and social institutions according to Western European democratic principles’.Footnote 68 He said that neither the government nor the constitution imposed a particular linguistic, cultural or national orientation on the inhabitants. However, Prague would not tolerate any irredentism or return ‘to the East’. Only a Western-oriented Czechoslovakia could ensure peace and stability, though terms and concepts from the Czech Western context do not yet fit the eastern region.
A. The State of Emergency in eastern Czechoslovakia
This double standard for the east and the west brings us back to the question of whether interwar Czechoslovakia aligned itself with the trends of its Western allies by introducing the norms aimed at national self-determination. Democracy as a means of political self-determination did not spread evenly across Czechoslovakia. While the Czech lands in the west were governed by the rule of law, the eastern territories Subcarpathian Ruthenia and Slovakia were subject to a state of emergency in the early years of Czechoslovakia. Not only was the population of Subcarpathian Ruthenia excluded from the elections to the National Assembly until 1924, but they were also not governed by the laws of this parliament, as were their fellow citizens in the western territories. Instead, they were governed by ministerial decrees and ordinances. This imposed emergency administration had also provoked accusations of colonial behaviour.
The Czechoslovak emergency administration in Subcarpathian Ruthenia followed the template of the emergency administration, that had been in place in Slovakia from 1918 until the mid-1920s. As early as December 1918, Prague had passed the Act on Extraordinary Provisional Decrees in Slovakia, which entrusted a minister without portfolio with the administration of Slovakia in order to ‘do everything possible to maintain order, consolidate the situation and ensure orderly state life’, as Article 14 of the Act stated.Footnote 69 The Slovak Minister, Vavro Šrobár, was assisted by a team of advisers. They issued decrees for central policies where a statutory law would otherwise have been required. For instance, the fundamental organisation of the political administration and the powers of regional chiefs were determined by decree, bypassing parliamentary discussion. Alongside this special legislation for Slovakia, the administration also relied on previous emergency legislation, such as the War Authorisation Act No. 337/1920. Furthermore, the old Hungarian Emergency Act No. 58/1912 remained in force in the Slovakian part of the region. This permitted decrees without a legal basis, something that would have been unthinkable in the western part of Czechoslovakia. The Minister for Slovakia made intensive use of all these possibilities.
Between 1919 and 1922, the disparity between the western and the eastern regions of the republic increased. The eastern region was destabilised by social unrest caused by hunger, epidemics and housing shortages, as well as a wave of strikes and the military invasion of Hungarian troops under Béla Kun. Both Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia were placed under a ‘military dictatorship’ in 1919.Footnote 70 Two military officers were granted unlimited police powers. They relied on a system of de facto intervention and, together with the Slovak minister, on the emergency legislation. Vratislav Kalousek, a constitutional lawyer and senior official at the Ministry of the Interior at the time, describes the violence that sometimes accompanied this military administration: ‘Hostage-taking, fines imposed by municipalities and threats of the death penalty. The war mentality was still very much alive’.Footnote 71 The military dictatorship was lifted on 6 April 1922 by the Minister for Slovakia himself (sic!). However, many of his special powers remained in force.
In both regions Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the Czechoslovak government and parliament thus disregarded the principles of parliamentary democracy that they had accepted for the western part of the territory. Instead of regional self-administration, the Prague government appointed governors to administer the region. Instead of statutory laws, decrees and ordinances of emergency were introduced. In both Subcarpathian Ruthenia and in Slovakia, this state of emergency was justified by the political and military instability following the war. The efforts and achievements of this emergency administration were mixed. During the period of military dictatorship, the reform plans were drawn up from above. Even if they were in the interest of the population, they were not given and implemented by their elected representatives. Ambitious educational projects, necessary infrastructure measures and the state-subsidised development of a local industry were repeatedly put on the back burner by the Prague bureaucracy and government. The reforms from above with which the Prague elites had justified the state of emergency largely failed to materialise.
B. Judicial Control and Its Limits
The Czechoslovak constitution was not only based on the principles of democracy, rights and parliamentarianism. Drawing on the liberal idea of the separation of powers, it also cherished the principle of the rule of law. A series of highest courts had been designated to protect the constitution, the constitutionality of parliamentary legislation and the legality of the administration, thus ultimately protecting the rights of the individual. Firstly, there was the innovative institution of a Constitutional Court, one of the first in the world to be exclusively responsible for scrutinising the constitutionality of parliamentary legislation. Unlike its famous Austrian counterpart, the Verfassungsgerichtshof in Vienna, remained rather inactive, but it delivered an important ruling on emergency decrees as early as 1922. Secondly, the Supreme Administrative Court became instead the most prominent judicial body in Czechoslovakia, responsible for protecting rights and ensuring the legality of administrative procedures. Thirdly, the Electoral Court was introduced to scrutinise the lawfulness of elections to the National Assembly, however, in could not uphold its independence from the Czech political parties, and thus did not fulfil its function as a guardian of the constitution.
The fact, that the constitution-makers placed so much trust in the judicial bodies, is an important legacy of the late Austrian judiciary in the Habsburg Monarchy, that is still praised today.Footnote 72 Many important judges in the supreme courts of Czechoslovakia were educated, socialised and served as judges in the supreme courts of the Habsburg Monarchy before 1918. The Rechtsstaat character of the Habsburg Empire challenges the black-and-white distinction between the authoritarian nature of empires and the integrative features of nation states. When Austria–Hungary abandoned the standards of the rule of law and relied heavily on emergency decrees instead during the war, this was one of the reasons why its legitimacy eroded.Footnote 73 Paradoxically, the Czechoslovak state made a similar mistake, underestimating the effect that its emergency laws and ordinances had on public opinion at national and international level. While the modern constitution and the rule of law had contributed to the international reputation of the new state, fuelling transnational discourse and exchange among of experts on democracy and judicial review between Czechoslovakia, Austria, the Weimar Republic and France, the imposition of a state of emergency in the eastern part of the state was one reason why the government lost legitimacy there.
This loss of legitimacy was exacerbated by the fact that the highest courts endorsed the unconstitutional use of emergency decrees in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. After 1918, both the Czechoslovak Supreme Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court dealt with the aforementioned extraordinary emergency decrees in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Two significant decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court with opposing tendencies emerged. One limited the emergency decrees in accordance with the constitution, while the other justified them in favour of the government.
Both rulings were based on the central interpretation of § 3, para. 8 of the Czechoslovak Constitutional Charter, which was pivotal in the emergency and provisional decrees. As promised at the peace conferences, the Czechoslovak Constitution granted political autonomy to Subcarpathian Ruthenia, thereby imposing restrictions on the central government in Prague. § 3 para. 6 of the Constitution read: ‘Subcarpathian Ruthenia is headed by a governor appointed by the President of the Czechoslovak Republic at the request of the government and who is also responsible to the Subcarpathian-Ruthenian Diet’. The Prague government was only entitled to issue decrees to prepare for and facilitate elections to the Subcarpathian-Ruthenian Diet. § 3, para. 8 stated: ‘The details, in particular the right to vote and the eligibility for election to the Diet, are governed by special provisions’. Following the establishment of autonomy, the regional parliament was to take control of the administration. As previously mentioned, neither Subcarpathian-Ruthenian autonomy nor the Užhorod regional diet materialised. Instead, the Czechoslovak government exercised its constitutional authorisation to the fullest extent. They believed that § 3 para. 8 authorised them to provisionally regulate all matters concerning Subcarpathian Ruthenia.
The first case brought before the Highest Administrative Court concerned the regulations relating to the municipal council and the municipal financial commission in Mukačevo.Footnote 74 The Administrative Court seized the opportunity presented by the individual case to deliver a landmark decision. A 1923 government regulation had authorised municipal notaries and other local experts to elect and to be elected to the city or municipal councils in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. However, a plaintiff objected to this practice, pointing out that this municipal council had named and appointed the members of Mukačevo’s financial commission at its first meeting instead of providing a list of possible members for election. The Administrative Court declared the 1923 government decree on municipal elections in Subcarpathian Ruthenia invalid. The court argued that, even under a broad interpretation of the constitutional Article § 3, para. 8 – which would extend the authorisation to issue ordinances from Diet elections to all elections in Subcarpathian Ruthenia – these ordinances must still be based on statutory law. Under the law of emergency and military dictatorship, this was often not the case.
Shortly afterwards, however, the Supreme Administrative Court changed its mind. The second case concerned a civil servant who sued the district office in Mukačevo for his pension entitlements.Footnote 75 Pensions for civil servants in Subcarpathian Ruthenia were regulated by a government decree rather than statutory law. Thus, the Administrative Court again commented on the interpretation of the constitutional provisions on Subcarpathian Ruthenia and the validity of government provisional decrees. On two key points, the court departed from its previous decision. Firstly, it stated that the authorisation in § 3 para. 8 related not only to electoral issues. The administrative judges now confirmed that the government could ‘regulate by decree all matters necessary for the organisation of the autonomous region of Subcarpathian Ruthenia’. Secondly, the court ruled that government decrees no longer required a statutory basis. As long as there were no statutory laws, it said, the constitutional clause was sufficient, because it authorised the government directly. Consequently, the administrative judges empowered the government to continue regulating all matters in the east by means of emergency decrees.Footnote 76
At the time, only a few lawyers analysed and criticised the legal state of emergency and its implementation in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Official textbooks avoided this issue. Even today, the fact that western Czechoslovakia was governed according to different principles in its early years than the rest of the country is hardly anchored in public consciousness. These emergency measures not only limited the political self-determination of Slovaks, Ruthenians, Jews, Hungarians and others living in the region, but also limited the national self-determination of the here predominantly non-Czech population.
5. Conclusion: Czechoslovak Democracy-Building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia
Assessing interwar Czechoslovak democracy-building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia requires careful distinction between rhetoric and practice, and between good intentions and their implementation. Contemporary accusations of ‘colonialism’, and their resonance in scholarship, gain plausibility when they highlight asymmetries of power, paternalistic language, and the prolonged suspension of constitutional guarantees. Yet they become misleading when they imply a Czechoslovak agenda of cultural eradication, exploitation, or coercive assimilation. Nothing in the political, social, or legal record supports the claim that the Czechoslovakia sought to ‘turn Ruthenians into Czechs’. On the contrary, all officially recognised nationalities entered the republic as citizens endowed with the same rights and freedoms.
At the same time, the Czechoslovak democratic project was far from flawless. The first years revealed double standards in the application of constitutional principles between the western centre and the eastern peripheries. State-building ambitions collided with the realities of post-war instability, and the government’s decision to rely on emergency decrees in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia departed markedly from the normative framework that Prague had championed in the Bohemian lands. Rather than being governed by parliamentary legislation, eastern citizens were subject to ministerial ordinances, military administrators, and provisional decrees whose legality was later upheld – controversially – by the highest courts. These practices were seen as necessary to restore order in the early years of the republic. In the region, they fostered the perception that the non-Czech populations did not belong to the new state in the same way and were not mature enough to participate fully.
However, viewing these tensions through the lens of ‘external democracy promotion’ rather than colonialism helps to reconcile these contradictions. Prague’s goal was the transplantation of a liberal–democratic model into a region that it perceived as politically fragile, economically and culturally underdeveloped, and vulnerable to irredentist pressures. State-funded investments in education, infrastructure, public health and cultural institutions were substantial and they were intended to integrate Subcarpathian Ruthenia into a democratic state rather than to extract wealth from it. The language of uplift and modernization – however paternalistic – reflected a belief that democracy could be expanded eastward, that societies could be ‘prepared’ for self-government, and that stable institutions were a prerequisite for national self-determination. By the mid-1920s, elements of this approach gained renewed momentum, once the immediate post-war crises had passed. However, the paradox remains: democracy was invoked to justify practices that restricted democratic participation.
Thus, interwar Czechoslovakia in its policy towards Subcarpathian Ruthenia cannot be considered neither a pure model democracy nor a disguised colonial state. It was a polity that genuinely embraced liberal principles and provided far-reaching rights to its citizens. But it was also a state whose political elites viewed their eastern territories through a hierarchical lens and tolerated administrative shortcuts that were incompatible with their own constitutional ideals. Understanding this duality – its promises as well as its blind spots – allows for a more nuanced interpretation of Czechoslovakia’s democracy-building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It also highlights a broader lesson: democratic projects, whether in the interwar period or in the present day, risk perpetuating older inequalities whenever the centre assumes the right to represent the periphery, even when acting in the name of progress.
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