ABSTRACT
The very existence of Czechoslovakia as a state and the extent of its boundaries were determined by the changing balance of international forces. Its domestic polity and society were influenced by outside factors that often interlocked with internal political movements so as to blur any real distinction between the domestic and external. The Czechs, living within a system that was pseudodemocratic and in some sense foreign, were by and large "Austro-slav." The Munich agreement in 1938 represented the culmination of Nazi aggression in Central Europe and of Western appeasement of Adolf Hitler's claims. World War II brought about the restoration of an independent Czechoslovakia, its boundaries unchanged except for the loss of Ruthenia. The agreement of Communists and non-Communists on a program of radical reform and the withdrawal of Soviet troops seemed to open up the prospect of Czechoslovakia being a bridge between East and West and a synthesis of socialism and democracy.
