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The Myth of Czechoslovak Democracy? — On the Czech National Myth
I have started a new series that touches on my work as a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. You can read the first post and introduction to the series here.
In this post, I want to touch on Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and his influence on Edvard Beneš. In the next post, I will explore Benes’s thinking on the essence of democracy. I am aiming for each of these posts to work as stand-alone cases, but we shall see how possible that will be.
And for those who need a brief refresher, here’s a summary of who Masaryk and Beneš were:
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
- 1918–1935
First President of Czechoslovakia from its founding after World War I until his resignation in 1935.
Edvard Beneš
- 1935–1938
Second President, resigned after the Munich Agreement of 1938. - 1945–1948
Returned as President after the Second World War until his resignation following the Communist coup in 1948.
“It was my belief that the truth would prevail, but I did not expect it to prevail unaided.”
— Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovak foreign minister and president
