Czechoslovakia
Americannoun
noun
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The Munich Pact partitioned Czechoslovakia in 1938, giving one of its regions, the Sudetenland, to Germany in an attempt to avoid war.
Communists seized complete control of the government in 1948. During the 1960s, a movement toward liberalization effected many democratizing reforms. An alarmed Soviet Union, along with its Warsaw Pact allies, put an abrupt end to the movement by invading Prague in 1968.
Czechoslovakia was created by the union of the Czech lands and Slovakia, which took place in 1918, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart.
The country surrendered to German control in 1939 and was liberated by American and Soviet forces at the end of World War II.
The communist government, confronted by mass pro-democracy demonstrations, resigned in 1989. In 1991, the last Soviet troops left the country. The end of communist rule resulted in the split of the republic into two independent states, The Czech Republic and Slovakia, in 1993.
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Kafka was a German-speaking, non-practicing Jew who lived in Prague, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, when it became the capital of Czechoslovakia.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 15, 2026
Belgium were awarded the gold medal with Czechoslovakia disqualified from the competition entirely.
From BBC • Mar. 18, 2026
Brown and black coal mining employed about 100,000 people in the 1980s, when the former Czechoslovakia was ruled by Moscow-steered communists promoting heavy industry.
From Barron's • Jan. 29, 2026
Václav Havel and the Civic Forum played the same role in Czechoslovakia.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 7, 2025
There, these “great powers” signed an agreement that gave parts of Czechoslovakia to Germany.
From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
