ABSTRACT
The First World War and its consequences not only radically changed the economic, social and spiritual life of the peoples in East Central Europe, but their political forms of organization as well. Prior to 1914 they were essentially determined by the Vienna Reichsrat, the Budapest parliament, the Berlin Reichstag and the Petersburg duma. The thesis propagated by Lenin advocating the independence of nations, and the principles advocated by US President Woodrow Wilson for the post-war period, came out of the breaking up of multinational great empires and the laying down of arms dictated by the Western entente. A whole new group of larger, so-called nation states came into being in East Central Europe, in which of course the new dominant nation mostly comprised less than 90 per cent of the entire population. Liberal democracy in the form of representative parliamentary government was introduced, modelled on those in France, Great Britain and the USA. A catalogue of individual freedoms and basic rights was codified and universal suffrage was accomplished, mostly with the inclusion of women. In 1919-20 elected constituent national assemblies created liberal parliamentary constitutions with various presidential and plebiscite elements. Even when the new electoral laws foresaw at least a right to vote by ticket, the role of parties was not constitutionally well regulated.1
