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1918 October 28 — Czechoslovakia declares its independence on Austria-Hungary
.
1918 November 1 — Ruthenia in eastern Czechoslovakia declares brief independence
1918 November 14 — Czechoslovakia becomes a republic
.
1920 Tomáš Masaryk
becomes president of Czechoslovakia.
1933 Assassination of Theodore Lessing in Marienbad (Mariánské Lázne), Czechoslovakia
1934 Tomáš Masaryk
re-elected president of Czechoslovakia.
1938 Europe
an crisis over German demand for annexation of Sudeten
borderland of Czechoslovakia.
1938 Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia, resigns
1939 German
troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia
and Moravia
; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist; beginning hostilities leading to WWII
1942 World War II
: the Gestapo massacred 173 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in retaliation for the killing of a Nazi official.
1945 Czechoslovakia cedes Ruthenia to Soviet Union
1948 The Communist Party seizes control of Czechoslovakia.
1948 Czech
foreign minister Jan Masaryk killed in fall from a window of his apartment in Prague
. Later communist government rules it "suicide".
1952 Show trial in Czechoslovakia sentences 11 ex-communist officials to death - all of them Jew
s.
1953 Currency
reform causes riots in Czechoslovakia
1961 A mine explosion in Czechoslovakia leaves 108 dead.
1968 Alexander Dubcek
is elected leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party - the "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia.
1968 Alexander Dubcek
is elected leader of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party - the "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia.
1968 Two hundred thousand Warsaw Pact
troops and 5,000 tank
s invade Czechoslovakia, to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
1969 Student Jan Palach sets himself on fire in Prague
's Wenceslas Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Three days later he dies.
1972 Yugoslavian
air stewardress Vesna Vulovic is the only survivor when her plane crashes in Czechoslovakia. She survives after falling about 30,000' in the tail section of the aircraft.
1981 An explosion at a mine in Zalizin, Czechoslovakia, kills 65.
1987 Czechoslovakian
leader Gustáv Husák resigns as General Secretary of the Communist Party.
1988 The Candle Demonstration in Bratislava
, Slovakia
is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
1989 Cold War
: TheVelvet Revolution
begins - In Czechoslovakia a peaceful student demonstration in Prague
is severely beaten back by riot poli This sparks a revolution aimed at overthrowing the Communist government (it succeeds on December 29).
1989 Cold War
: Velvet Revolution
- The number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague
, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
1989 Cold War
: Velvet Revolution
- With other Communist regimes falling all around it and with growing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces they will give up their monopoly
on political power (elections held in December bring the first non-communist government to Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years).
1989 Václav Havel
is elected president of Czechoslovakia.
1990 The USSR agrees to withdraw all 73,500 troops from Czechoslovakia by July, 1991.
1991 The Visegrad Agreement, establishing cooperation to move toward free-market systems, is signed by the leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary
and Poland
.
1992 Václav Havel
resigns as president of Czechoslovakia
1992 The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into the Czech Republic
and Slovakia
, starting on January 1, 1993.
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Timeline
