Ethnic minorities in Czechoslovakia

This article describes ethnic minorities in Czechoslovakia from 1918 until 1992.

Czechoslovakia was founded as a country in the aftermath of World War I with its borders set out in the Treaty of Trianon and Treaty of Versailles, though the new borders were de facto established about a year prior. 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. Czechoslovakia had the highest proportion of minorities, who constituted 32.4% of the population.

After WWII the Jewish and Romani minorities had been exterminated by the Nazis, and most Germans and many Hungarians were expelled under the Beneš decrees. Other minority groups migrated to Czechoslovakia, Roma from Hungary and Romania, Bulgarians fleeing the Soviet troops, Greeks and Macedonians fleeing the Greek Civil War, then migrant workers and students came from other Communist bloc countries, Vietnamese and Koreans.

According to article 128 §3 of the 1920 Constitution "Citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic may, within the limits of the common law, freely use any language they chose in private and business intercourse, in all matters pertaining to religion, in the press and in all publications whatsoever, or in public assemblies."

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