Ethnic minorities in Czechoslovakia

One of the main objects of these treaties was to secure independence for minorities previously living within the Kingdom of Hungary or to reunify them with an existent nation-state.

However some territorial claims were based on economic grounds instead of ethnic ones, for instance the Czechoslovak borders with Poland (to include coal fields and a railway connection between Bohemia and Slovakia) and Hungary (on economic and strategic grounds), which resulted in successor states with percentages of minorities almost as high as in Austria-Hungary before.

[14] In his 1934 memoirs, the President of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, writes he said in a 1924 interview to a French journalist of Le Petit Parisien: «There is no Slovak nation, it has been invented by Hungarian propaganda.

(...) In one generation there will be no difference between the two branches of our national family.»[15] However the interview is nowhere to be found in the scanned full archives of Le Petit Parisien.

The Polish community is the only national (or ethnic) minority in the Czech Republic that is linked to a native specific geographical area.

However due to gerrymandering and disproportionate distribution of population between Bohemia and Slovakia the Hungarians had little (if any) representation in the National Assembly and thus their influence on the politics of Czechoslovakia remained limited.

[18] During communism there were no signs of organized Jewish life and the situation was similar to others communities of Central and Eastern Europe controlled directly by the state.

[19] After World War I, the Roma people formed an ethnic community, living on the social periphery of the mainstream population.

74, "On the permanent settlement of nomadic and semi-nomadic people"), forcibly limited the movement of that part of the Roma (perhaps 5%–10%) who still traveled on a regular basis.

[20] In the same year, the highest organ of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia passed a resolution, the aim of which was to be "the final assimilation of the Gypsy population".

[21] The popular perception of Romani even before 1989 was of lazy, dirty criminals who abused social services and posed a significant threat to majority values.

[22] Maps showing the ethnic, linguistic or religious diversity are to be considered with much precaution as they may reflect the national or ideological beliefs of their author(s), or simply include errors.