The Pittsburgh (Dis)agreement

23. 4. 2010 / Andrew Wallace

Slovak arguments that the Czechs had ignored their most important document of self-determination by not implementing the agreement would lead to their disenchantment with being treated as the minor partner in the union with their Czech brethren.^[2]   This tension in mutual relations came to its height at the time the Munich Agreement was signed in 1938, and Germany would take advantage of the impending split of the Czecho-Slovak union to sign a "treaty of protection" with the Slovaks which would strengthen thir own position in Central Europe before the outbreak of war.^[3]

The post-war Košice Agreement, which aimed to regulate relations between the Czechs and Slovaks, was seemingly drawn up with one eye on the Pittsburgh Agreement, highlighting the scepticism with which Slovaks still viewed Czech intentions,^[4] yet these terms were still ignored until 1968, when some of the Slovak demands voiced at Pittsburgh were satisfied.^[5]  The relationship between Czechs and Slovaks would be a source of contention until 1992, when Czechoslovakia was divided again, this time permanently.^[6]  Essentially, the suspicion that the state was formed in 1918 by a breach of trust on the part of the creators meant that the union of the Czechs and Slovaks was always destined to become fractured and ultimately fail. 

The influence of the Pittsburgh Agreement in the twentieth century Czecho-Slovak and Central European history should not be undervalued, and each further inquest into relations between the two nations involved should carefully consider this document's implications within Czechoslovakia and in Europe in the wider context.

In this dissertation, I intend to analyse whether suspicions over Masaryk's and the centralists' supposed manipulation of the program of the first Czechoslovak Republic were justified by considering what the Pittsburgh Agreement meant and whether it was adhered to.  To analyse this in detail I will attempt to examine the following questions:

• What were the motives of both sides for the composition of the Pittsburgh Agreement?
• Did Masaryk sign the document to recognise a local émigré program or to conclude a treaty regarding state formation?
• Was the final clause of the Pittsburgh Agreement adhered to?

I will present the conclusions I have reached at the end of the dissertation, ultimately giving a final conclusion on the question undertaken in this research project.

In researching the question posed, I have consulted various primary and secondary sources in order to find a balanced bibliography that has allowed me to approach the subject from a number of angles.  Detailed analysis of these texts has been combined with my personal interpretation of the issues involved to arrive at a personal and independently-reached conclusion.

The Pittsburgh Agreement

The Creation of the Pittsburgh Agreement

At the beginning of May, 1918, Masaryk arrived in the United States.  The leader of the Czecho-Slovak National Council had a number of official and unofficial appointments to fulfil.  As well as meeting representatives of the Czech and Slovak émigré groups in the country, he also hoped to meet with representatives of the US government, with whom he had been in correspondence over the previous months. ^[7]  As Victor Mamatey, a distinguished author on Slovak émigré affairs and son of Albert Mamatey, the leader of the Slovak League during the revolutionary period, points out, the mission of his trip was twofold, : "Masaryk arrived in Washington with a double purpose in his mind: to secure transportation for the Czechoslovak corps in Russia and to win official recognition of the United States government for the Czechoslovak movement for independence."^[8]  Despite the many resolutions passed by the Allied states in approval of the program for "the liberation of Czecho-Slovaks" and the creation of a Czecho-Slovak state, the National Council had so far failed to gain official recognition from the Allies of its self-assumed status of de-facto government of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.  As it was they who would have the greatest say in the sculpting of post-war Europe, Masaryk saw it as imperative that his program for the union of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia should be given the official backing of the Allied leaders before a peace conference at the end of the conflict in which Hungary, and to a lesser extent Poland, would claim a right to the Slovak region.

With Edvard Beneš and the Czecho-Slovak National Council in Paris continuing to lobby for official recognition from France, Britain and Italy, Masaryk took on a similar task in the United States.  In early 1918, it became evident that the Americans would take on the decisive role in post-war European politics, and at the beginning of January 1918, President Wilson had issued Hungary with "the fourteen points", spelling out the president's demands for an armistice and shaping of post-war Europe.^[9]  In this, he had demanded that "the peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development".^[10]   Wilson had therefore set the "self-determination of nations" as a key strategy which would be pursued in international negotiations from then on.  With this in mind, Masaryk could not depend on the United States to back the Czecho-Slovak National Council's program as things stood.  Victor Mamatey states: "At the time of its drafting Masaryk was about to approach the United States government to support the Czechoslovak cause.  President Wilson was then believed to base his support on the principle of self-determination.  This presented an embarrassing problem, because, while Czech statements claiming self-determination were numerous, no Slovak expression for independence was known abroad.^[11]  In Pittsburgh, however, where he was received by representatives of American émigré organisations, the opportunity arose whereby he could attain such a statement of self-determination in favour of the Czecho-Slovak program and a mandate to take forward the program himself from an organisation representing a sizeable number of Slovaks.

Although it remains unclear whether Masaryk had identified the Slovak League of America as a medium through which to achieve his aims prior to his visit to the United States, or whether he perceived such an opportunity only after arriving at Pittsburgh, Masaryk could not have been oblivious to benefits that an agreement with this body would have carried.  The Slovak League was the largest organisation of Slovak émigrés in the United States, wherein lived an estimated one third of the entire Slovak population.^[12]  As an American-based organisation, it is understandable that an agreement in which Slovak self-determination was stipulated would carry greater weight with the US administration in their consideration the Czecho-Slovak program.  Importantly for Masaryk's political ambitions, the Slovak League had already shown itself to be in favour of a united, even if federal, Czecho-Slovak state in the 1915 Cleveland Agreement.  As a further incentive to Masaryk, such a group of émigrés would likely keep out of internal state affairs and leave the governance of the country to Masaryk and his peers.  This final consideration comes into conflict, however, with the autonomist demands expressed by the Slovak League in the aforementioned Cleveland Agreement.  Masaryk's own program of a centralist union of Slovakia and the Czech Lands was in complete antithesis to this structure.  He was wary of giving Slovakia autonomy for a number of reasons, as James Felak sums up: "First, it was a logical consequence of the Czechoslovak idea.  If Czechs and Slovaks were a single nation, why should they not share a single government?  Second, if the new regime accorded autonomy to Slovaks, this would set a dangerous precedent, for other minorities, in particular the Germans and Hungarians, could demand it as well.  Third, there was a genuine fear in Prague that central control over Slovakia was needed lest the region fall back into Hungarian hands."^[13]  This issue would have to be delicately addressed at Pittsburgh.  Masaryk's determination in securing the émigrés' approval of the Czecho-Slovak program without committing to Slovak autonomy, and the American Slovaks' determination in having Masaryk agree to the terms of the Cleveland Agreement would clearly lead to an ambiguous and controversial outcome.

Mamatey describes the arrival of Masaryk in Pittsburgh: "On 30 May Slovak, Czech and other Slav immigrant groups in Pittsburgh, gave Masaryk a tumultuous welcome culminating in a great public meeting, at which a declaration of Secretary of State Robert Lansing was read.  It expressed `the earnest sympathy' of the United States government for `the nationalistic aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and Yugo-Slavs to freedom'.  This was the long and impatiently awaited official American endorsement of the independent movements of the Austrian Slavs.  It produced wild enthusiasm in the audience."^[14]  Although Masaryk was hailed by the American Slovak press as "the greatest living Slovak" and "our great father and leader" on his arrival, Karol Sidor, who would later become Prime Minister of an independent Slovakia, describes how the public was not entirely convinced by the fanfare surrounding Masaryk's arrival: "the bulk of the American Slovaks was not taken in by this synthetic expression of admiration for Masaryk.  What he said so nicely and smoothly they wanted down on paper, black and white, so to speak."^[15]  These Slovaks' doubts would be allayed the following day, as Masaryk met with representatives of the Slovak League of America, the Bohemian National Alliance and the Federation of Czech Catholics.  The proceedings of the meeting are much disputed, and will be dealt with later, but in the end, the following document was drawn up and signed by the participants of the meeting, including Tomáš G. Masaryk:

In this document, generally referred to as the Pittsburgh Agreement, the American émigré organisations clearly stated their approval of Masaryk's program of Czecho-Slovak unity, satisfying the main aim of the leader of the Czecho-Slovak liberation movement.  On the other hand, many of the demands that the émigrés had stated in the Cleveland Agreement were reiterated and agreed on, namely the establishment of Slovakia's own administrative system, diet, courts and use of language.  These two important elements are clouded, however, by many of the ambiguous clauses written into the document.  It was these seemingly innocuous clauses, and not the declarations in favour of a united Czecho-Slovakia and Slovak autonomy, which would lead to the greatest argument and difference of interpretation between Masaryk's camp and the autonomists.

The Nature of the Pittsburgh Agreement

Arguments over interpretation of the text mainly focussed on defining the political nature of the Pittsburgh Agreement.  Over the following years and decades, the document became scrutinised and interpreted in different ways by different groups according to their own aims in order to determine whether the agreement was signed as a treaty undertaken by Masaryk to bring forward and implement the program of the American Slovaks, or whether it was merely a confirmation indicating that Masaryk recognised the local émigré agreement put forward and would hence consider it in the creation of the Czecho-Slovak state without necessarily implementing it.  Here, I will attempt to sum up the arguments of both the autonomists and centralists to arrive at a conclusion as to how we should regard the nature of the Pittsburgh Agreement, and therefore what Masaryk was agreeing to by signing the document and on whose behalf he was signing.

We must firstly assess the text of the agreement and the interpretations offered previously in order to arrive at an initial sub-conclusion.  In relation to the role of Masaryk at the negotiations, the opening paragraph describes the deliberations as having taken place "in the presence of the Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council, Professor Masaryk".  Ivan Dérer, who in 1938, and acting as Czechoslovak Minister of Justice, launched a staunch denial that the Pittsburgh Agreement had been breached in any way, states that this suggests that Masaryk's involvement in the proceedings was minimal: "If those societies had desired to conclude a contract with Masaryk the protocol would not have spoken of Masaryk merely as one of the persons present but would have referred to him expressly as a contracting party...It is thus obvious from the text of the protocol that Masaryk's part was merely to listen to the deliberations of the societies in question and to hear what they decided upon."^[17]  According to Dérer, then, Masaryk did not undertake any resolution or obligation.  This interpretation is contradicted, however, by the account of Victor Mamatey: "As several Slovak spokesmen expressed apprehension lest their compatriots in the new state be assimilated ("Czechified") by the much stronger Czech element, Masaryk, to allay their fears, sat down and drafted a program of common aims for the Czech and Slovak organizations to follow."^[18]  Although this version of events does not pin Masaryk down to any obligation, it does at least show that the role he played at Pittsburgh was more active than Dérer suggests.  Masaryk spelled out his own role in his memoirs in 1927, claiming that the agreement "was concluded in order to appease a small Slovak faction which was dreaming of God knows what sort of independence for Slovakia".^[19]  This implicitly indicates an active participation on Masaryk's part in agreeing to accept the terms of the Pittsburgh Agreement, thus tying him to an agreement between himself and the American Slovaks.  Indeed, Masaryk was under immense pressure to accept such an agreement.  He was well aware of the importance of positive propaganda in enhancing his own reputation, revelling in public processions and great rallies in order to appeal to the public.^[20]  Such an effect also works the other way around however, and if Masaryk was to refuse the American Slovaks their perceived national rights after the scenes of elation and his own speeches flattering the Slovak American population of the day before, his own reputation and the reputation of the entire Czecho-Slovak liberation movement would suffer a crushing blow. 

The centralist claim that the Pittsburgh Agreement was a local agreement is also vindicated as the text goes on to mention further efforts in the "collaboration between Czechs and Slovaks in the United States".  If the focus of the document were a pact with Masaryk, we would expect that the "collaboration" would be between the émigré groups and the Czecho-Slovak National Council, thus tying the agreements made exclusively to the future Czecho-Slovak state.  Dérer also argues that the nature of the text is more evidently local if we ignore the title: "The heading of the protocol "Czecho-Slovak Agreement, concluded at Pittsburgh, Pa., on the 30th May, 1918" was written subsequently; it is not known by whom."^[21]  There is considerable strength in such an argument, as the date given for the signing of the document is wrong.  Other historians have noted that the document was actually signed on the 31st May, not the 30th as is stated on the document.^[22]  The error over the date suggests that this too was added afterwards, perhaps at the same time as the title.  The title of the document became significant in the following years as different parties referred to the document using different terms depending on their stance in relation to centralism, with the term "agreement", suggesting Masaryk's approval, becoming the most common.

If we consider the text of the Pittsburgh Agreement in and of itself, it is impossible to assess whether it is essentially a local or national agreement, due in part to the ambiguity of the final clause as well and also to the lack of specificity regarding the role in which Masaryk was signing the document.   If Thomas Masaryk signed the document as an observer, this needed to be stated to avoid argument over his participation, equally so if he were signing the document on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council.  But with no such qualification, it is necessary to look further into the context in which it was signed in order to accurately analyse the nature of the Pittsburgh Agreement.

On the foundation of the First Czechoslovak Republic, all of the documents signed by Masaryk on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council during the revolutionary period became binding in accordance with Czechoslovak law.^[23]  This was done primarily to safeguard the international agreements he had undertaken with various foreign powers, but if he indeed entered into an agreement on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council with the American Slovaks, this would have become legally binding as well.  As Masaryk does not indicate on whose behalf he is signing the agreement, this is open to interpretation.  The centralists argued that because the Slovak League of America was not recognised by the United States authorities when the Pittsburgh Agreement was signed, the agreement could not be relevant under this law.^[24]  This reasoning carries an air of hypocrisy, however, as during the revolutionary period Masaryk's government was also not recognised by the United States, or any other state.  The argument can thus be discredited as it would question the legality of any international agreements signed by the Czecho-Slovak National Council during the revolutionary period.  We can therefore consider the agreement legally binding.

It is evident that the American émigrés intended the Pittsburgh Agreement as a national pact which would be incorporated into the newly formed state due to the fact they had already signed a local agreement at Cleveland only three years previously, and therefore another purely local agreement among themselves with similar terms would be counter-productive.  At Pittsburgh, they desired for this previously agreed program to be accepted and taken on by Masaryk, who could not have been unaware of the intentions of the American émigrés.  The evidence therefore dictates that the American Slovaks understood that Masaryk was signing the agreement on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council and therefore as a national pact.  Further argument exists, however, over the right of an émigré group to decide national policy of the state.  Ivan Dérer claims: "What these American citizens decided upon could not naturally be binding for the new Czechoslovak State, the less so as the great majority of the members of those societies had never had any intention of returning to Europe."^[25]  Although this is very probably the case, the truth is that their claim to determine the future of Slovakia was perhaps at the time the strongest.  Whereas the American Slovaks had clear aims for the future of Slovakia, as shown in the Cleveland agreement, their compatriots under the Tatras had no such program.  By early 1918, a decision had still not even been made comprehensively in regards to in what state the nation's future belonged.^[26]  In comparison with the Czechs, the national maturity of the Slovaks was at a far lesser level, and, as Joseph Mikuš notes, they could not put forward a cohesive program for Slovakia even when the union of the two nations was a formality: "But they did not formulate a clear statement of the way in which the relations between the Czechs and the Slovaks should be expressed in the Constitution of the new State.  They simply relied upon the unwritten principles of good will and honest intentions."^[27]  The Slovaks in the United States had reached a level of national maturity that was much more comparable to the Czechs, and their awareness of the situation in their homeland as well as their influence in the other direction can be deduced by the number of their publications which were read widely in Slovakia, in comparison to the very few publications produced and distributed by Slovaks in Slovakia.^[28]  If we add to this the vast financial, political and military contribution of the Slovak League towards the Czecho-Slovak National Council and the Czecho-Slovak Legions, it is difficult to negate the Slovak émigrés' right to have an important say in the way that their country would be run.^[29]  Furthermore, regardless of Masaryk's role in the agreement at Pittsburgh, he evidently considered the émigrés' intellectual input to be important enough to let his own name be associated with.

To accurately identify on whose behalf Masaryk understood his signature to be and therefore more clearly define the nature of the document, we must analyse the national and international context in which the agreement was signed.  Firstly, we must note that Masaryk was in the United States to secure the transportation for the Czecho-Slovak Legions in Russia, which the Czecho-Slovak National Council recognised as its national military force.^[30]  Masaryk was therefore in the United States first and foremost as a statesman.  Any agreements that he undertook on the visit would therefore be taken on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council unless stated otherwise, as was not done in the Pittsburgh Agreement. 

It has already been described how Masaryk required an agreement to persuade the United States that Slovak self-determination was in favour of the Czecho-Slovak program.  The Czech leader believed that such an agreement would assist him in arranging a meeting with the United States administration.  Indeed, only four days later, Masaryk met with American Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and later in the month met with President Wilson.  Although in reality Masaryk was granted an audience with these statesmen more due to the successes of the Czecho-Slovak Legions than to recognition of the self-determination of the Czechs and Slovaks, Masaryk aimed to use the agreement with the American Slovaks on the international stage.^[31]  The fact that the document was used with the intention of furthering the international interests of the Czecho-Slovak National Council proves that Masaryk considered the Pittsburgh Agreement as essential to the state.  It is thus evident that his signature was on behalf of the Czecho-Slovak National Council, and the agreement therefore takes on the nature of a national pact between the American Slovaks and the leadership of the Czecho-Slovak liberation movement.

The Implementation of the Pittsburgh Agreement

On 29^th February 1920, the constitution of the First Czechoslovak Republic was agreed unanimously.^[32]  Slovak autonomists were aghast as the Revolutionary National Assembly passed a constitution which denied Slovakia "her own administrative system, her own diet and her own courts".  No distinction was made between the Czechs and Slovaks, and therefore no concessions were made to the latter as were demanded in the Pittsburgh Agreement.  The linguistic demands were also disregarded as the distinctions between the Slovak and Czech language disappeared.  The constitution stated that the "Czechoslovak" language was to be the official language of the state.^[33]  As Mary Heimann points out, many Slovaks saw this law as a program for "Czechoslovak" assimilation, "an insidious means, akin to Magyarization, of denying their distinctively Slovak national identity".^[34]

However, whether the National Assembly had blatantly disregarded the terms of the Pittsburgh Agreement is disputable when we consider the final clause of the document.  The autonomists certainly considered the "detailed provisions of the Czecho-Slovak State" to concern the particular details of Slovak autonomy and insisted that the terms of the agreement relating to this aspect had not been filled as was legally required.^[35]  However, even if we consider the Pittsburgh Agreement as a national treaty, the National Assembly had not necessarily infringed on the pact.  Ivan Dérer sums up the most voiced centralist argument: "When the Pittsburgh protocol left the "detailed provisions of the Czechoslovak State to the liberated Czechs and Slovaks and their duly accredited representatives" this of course was the same as saying that in case of doubts and conflicts touching the interpretation of the Pittsburgh stipulations those representatives were naturally to have the deciding voice.  This was also what happened when the Czechoslovak Convention Parliament unanimously passed the Constitution on the 29th February 1920."^[36]  The ambiguity of the text renders such an interpretation reasonable.  If the National Assembly was truly constituted of the "duly accredited representatives" of "the liberated Czechs and Slovaks", then the Pittsburgh Agreement was not necessarily breached, but merely turned down after its careful consideration as it was the Assembly's right to do.  We must therefore examine how far such a statement is true by investigating the composition of the National Assembly.

In the context of the creation of a democratic Czecho-Slovak state, we can understand a nation's "duly accredited representatives" to correspond to a group of democratically selected individuals who could best satisfy the principle of "self-determination" within the state's constitution. Whereas in the Czech Lands this was achieved by selecting party members according to election results for the Austrian Reichsrat prior to the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, such an approach was impossible in Slovakia due to the fact that only two Slovaks had been elected to the parliament in Budapest immediately before the war.^[37]  There therefore existed no obvious system to decide who was best accredited to sit in the Slovak Club of the National Assembly.^[38]  The method best suiting the principles of self-determination would thus have been to elect the Slovak deputies to the National Assembly in a national vote.  However, as renowned expert on Slovakia R. W. Seton-Watson explains, this was dismissed as an option:  "If it was found impossible to hold elections in the "historic lands" despite the existence of universal suffrage and ordered electoral conditions, it was infinitely more impossible in Slovakia, where the narrow franchise of the Tisza regime was still in force, where the registers were too often in a farcical condition, and where consequently the very basis of a democratic appeal to the people was lacking."^[39]  In this situation, Vavro Šrobár, the centralist Minister entrusted with a quasi-dictatorial control over Slovak affairs, was entrusted with handpicking the Slovak deputies.  Of the original forty members of the "Slovak Club", thirty were Lutheran and therefore generally of the "Czechoslovak" persuasion and only ten were Catholic, despite the fact that Slovakia was around eighty percent Catholic.^[40]  Although autonomists maintained that the composition of the Assembly was doctored to be able to pass through a centralist constitution, Mikuš argues that "the Czech leadership fell back on its own Slovak connections for the delegates who would tend to be more of a "Czechoslovak" persuasion than those with whom the centralists had little or no negative contact.  Incidentally, the "centralist" Slovak leaders were, by and large, Protestant in religious convictions".^[41]  Nevertheless, the makeup of the Assembly leads us to understand why the program for Slovak autonomy was rejected.  The Assembly did, however, include six delegates from the autonomist Slovak People's Part of Andrej Hlinka.^[42]  During the proceedings, there were repeated calls from these deputies for the adoption of Slovak autonomy as stated in the Pittsburgh Agreement, and Hlinka himself attempted to waken international awareness of the movement for autonomy by attempting to display a copy of the Pittsburgh Agreement to the Peace Conference in Paris.^[43]  In this context, it seems odd that the centralist constitution should be passed unanimously, and indeed it was done so with reluctance, as six members signed the constitution for the sake of unanimity, and "did not hide the fact that they considered their support for such a constitution to be only temporary".^[44]  Despite its success in passing the constitution, the skewered composition of the Revolutionary National Assembly does raise questions over its legitimacy as a body of "duly accredited representatives" of the "liberated Czechs and Slovaks".  Although much of the criticism has been pointed at Šrobár in his position of Minister plenipotentiary for Slovakia, Seton-Watson points the finger at the decision-makers higher up: "In the light of subsequent events, it is easy to see that Prague submitted a blunder in placing so exclusive a reliance upon Dr. Šrobár, as its advisor on all Slovak questions, instead of recognising the [Slovak] National Council in Turčianský Sv. Martin as the source of authority in the early days of revolution, and seeking to widen its base by the inclusion of every shade of opinion."^[45]  The Slovak National Council had been selected by the Slovak parties in Slovakia and had already proved their political worth by issuing the important Martin Declaration on 30 October.  Indeed, it is difficult not to agree with the conclusion made by Seton-Watson, as a more democratic approach such as this would certainly have given the Slovak Club of the National Assembly a more obvious mandate to decree on the self-determination of the Slovaks within the Czecho-Slovak state.  In relation to the terms set out and agreed in the Pittsburgh Agreement, the autocratic manner in which the constitution was drawn up and approved prevents the Assembly's decisions from being considered legitimate in fulfilling the final clause of the agreement, meaning that this treaty determining the agreed formation of Czecho-Slovak internal affairs was legally breached.

Conclusions

After careful analysis of the details of the Pittsburgh Agreement, the context in which it was signed and the arguments which ensued in its aftermath, certain conclusions can be drawn which point to the nature of the agreement and to whether the terms of the agreement were ultimately met.

Few conclusions can be drawn as to the nature of the Pittsburgh Agreement if we analyse the text in and of itself.  It is only when we examine the document in the context in which it was produced that we can determine whether it should be regarded as a local agreement between American émigré organisations or a national treaty between the Slovaks and the Czechs.  We have seen how Masaryk used the Pittsburgh Agreement to further the program of the Czecho-Slovak National Council on the international stage, using the opportunity of an agreement with the Slovak League of America to procure evidence of the Slovaks' "self-determination" in agreeing to unite with the Czechs in a joint state which would be well received by the United States administration, whereas having already concluded a local émigré agreement at Cleveland, the Slovak émigrés approached Masaryk specifically requesting his written guarantees for Slovak autonomy within the Czecho-Slovak state, which were given.  As Masaryk's visit to the United States was of an official nature regarding the state military, and because Czechoslovak law acknowledged all the agreements of Masaryk during the First World War, we must consider the Pittsburgh Agreement as a full national treaty from a contextual as well as a legal point of view.

The fact that the National Assembly did not insert the demands for Slovak autonomy made at Pittsburgh into the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920, however, did not indicate a breach of the Pittsburgh Agreement.  The failure of the signatories to specify what they meant by the "detailed provisions relating to the organization of the Czecho-Slovak State" meant that it was up to the National Assembly to interpret the final clause of the agreement how they saw fit.  Their centralist interpretation led to a rejection of the terms of Slovak autonomy.

We have discovered that the Pittsburgh Agreement was breached, however, by the method in which the National Assembly was selected.  This selection process led to a manipulated makeup of the Assembly, which failed to satisfy the final clause of the Pittsburgh Agreement in which the constitution would be decided by the "duly accredited representatives" of "the liberated Czechs and Slovaks".  The democratic nature stipulated in the Pittsburgh Agreement was therefore not fulfilled and the Agreement was breached.

To sum up the arguments posed in this dissertation, there is little doubt that the Pittsburgh Agreement was signed as a treaty between the Slovaks and the Czecho-Slovak leadership specifying Slovak involvement in the new joint state.  When we reflect on the undemocratic nature in which the constitution was agreed, and thus the breach of this legal agreement regarding Slovak self-determination, we observe that although the First Czechoslovak Republic was created and formed in an atmosphere of mutual misunderstanding and general confusion regarding the internal and international situation, Slovak suspicions of the intentional manipulation and abuse of the trust placed in the Prague leaders in the formation of a unified state were entirely justified, indicating that the ultimate disintegration of Czechoslovakia was, in a manner of speaking, foreseen by the nature of its conception.

Acknowledgements

In presenting this dissertation, I would like to thank some of the people whose help was invaluable in the composition of the project.

Firstly, I would like to express an enormous wealth of gratitude to the advisor for this dissertation, and Professor of Czech Studies at Glasgow University, Jan Čulik.  Jan has been exceedingly helpful throughout the dissertation project, offering advice, suggestions and criticism, which have encouraged me to take my dissertation forward to its conclusion.  Not just as an advisor, but also as a lecturer and teacher he has been an inspirational figure not just in the field of Czechoslovak history, but in the general field of Czech studies and Czech language, which have allowed me to develop a good understanding of the cultural situation in Czecho-Slovakia during the period in question, its roots and its aftermath.  Indeed, his encouragement to me, not just in regards to this dissertation, but also to my academic career at Glasgow University, as well as to those of my peers, has been enormous.

I would also like to thank my peers at Glasgow University who have pointed me in the direction of numerous sources which have contributed to this projected.  They have not hesitated to pass on recommendations of sources or share their understandings of the situations investigated, and have helped me to look at the dissertation from a wider angle.  Particular acknowledgement goes to David Green in this regard who has been keen to share his knowledge of the subject.

I would finally like to quickly acknowledge the help of my family, friends, flatmates and girlfriend Brenda, who have continually helped me to de-stress in the recent weeks and months.

Endnotes

[1] Mastny, EEPS 2000, pp. 75

[2] Mark Cornwall and Robert John Weston Evans. Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918-1948. (Oxford: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2007), 169

[3] Mark Cornwall and Robert John Weston Evans. Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918-1948. (Oxford: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2007), 169

[4] Dorothea H. El Mallakh. The Slovak Autonomy Movement, 1935-1939: A Study in Unrelenting Nationalism. (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1979), 149

[5] Ibid.,150

[6] Karen Henderson. Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility. (London: Routledge, 2002),

[7] Mark Cornwall and Robert John Weston Evans. Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918-1948. 271-284

[8] Victor S. Mamatey. The United States and East Central Europe, 1914-1918. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 282.

[9]Věra Olivová. The Doomed Democracy: Czechoslovakia in a Disrupted Europe, 1914-38. (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1972), 84.

[10] Seth P. Tillman. Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 29

[11] Victor S. Mamatey. The United States and East Central Europe, 1914-1918. 223

[12] Josef Kalvoda. The Genesis of Czechoslovakia. (Boulder [Colo.]: East European Monographs, 1986), 284

[13] James Ramon Felak. At the Price of the Republic: Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938. 18-19

[14] Victor S. Mamatey, ed. Norman Stone and Eduard Strouhal. "Czechoslovakia: Crossroads and Crises, 1918-88". (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with the BBC World Service, 1989), 72

[15] Karol Sidor, The Slovak League of America and the Slovak Nation's Struggle for Autonomy. Ed. Jozef Paučo. "Sixty Years of the Slovak League of America". (Middletown, Pa: [Slovak League of America], 1967), 52

[16]Dorothea H. El Mallakh. The Slovak Autonomy Movement, 1935-1939. 32

[17] Ivan Dérer. The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks. Has the Pittsburgh Declaration Been Carried Out? (Prague: "Orbis" publishing co, 1938), 25-26

[18] Victor S. Mamatey. The United States and East Central Europe, 1914-1918. 282

[19] T. G. Masaryk and Henry Wickham Steed. The Making of a State, Memories and Observations 1914-1918. (London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1927), 203

[20] Ibid,. 207

[21] Ivan Dérer. The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks. Has the Pittsburgh Declaration Been Carried Out? 24-25

[22] Victor S. Mamatey. The United States and East Central Europe, 1914-1918. 282

[23]James Ramon Felak. At the Price of the Republic: Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938. 41

[24] T. G. Masaryk and Henry Wickham Steed. The Making of a State. 210

[25] Ivan Dérer. The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks. Has the Pittsburgh Declaration Been Carried Out? 14

[26] Macartney, C. A. Hungary and Her Successors; The Treaty of Trianon and Its Consequences 1919-1937. (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 94

[27] Joseph A. Mikuš. Slovakia and the Slovaks. (Washington: Three Continents Press, 1977), 30

[28] Ismo Nurmi. Slovakia, a Playground for Nationalism and National Identity: Manifestations of the National Identity of the Slovaks, 1918-1920. (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1999), 15

[29] Karol Sidor, The Slovak League of America and the Slovak Nation's Struggle for Autonomy. Ed. Jozef Paučo. "Sixty Years of the Slovak League of America". 49

[30] Josef Kalvoda. The Genesis of Czechoslovakia. 197

[31] Ibid., 292

[32] Stanislav J. Kirschbaum. A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival. (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 165

[33] Czechoslovakia, Jiří Hoetzel, and V. Joachim. The Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic. (Prague: Edition de la Société l'effort de la Tchécoslovaquie, 1920).

[34] Mary Heimann. Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 68

[35] Karol Sidor, The Slovak League of America and the Slovak Nation's Struggle for Autonomy. Ed. Jozef Paučo. "Sixty Years of the Slovak League of America". 64

[36] Ivan Dérer. The Unity of the Czechs and Slovaks. Has the Pittsburgh Declaration Been Carried Out? 64

[37] Mary Heimann. Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed. 43; James Ramon Felak. At the Price of the Republic: Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938. 13

[38] R. W. Seton-Watson. The New Slovakia. (Prague: F. Borový, 1924), 22

[39] Ibid., 22

[40] Josef Kalvoda. The Genesis of Czechoslovakia. 432

[41]Joseph A. Mikuš, Slovakia, A Political History: 1918-1950. Marquette Slavic studies, 5. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1963), 11-12; quoted in Dorothea H. El Mallakh. The Slovak Autonomy Movement, 1935-1939. 162n18

[42]James Ramon Felak. At the Price of the Republic: Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938. 41

[43] Josef Kalvoda. The Genesis of Czechoslovakia. 457

[44] Ibid., 19

[45] R. W. Seton-Watson. The New Slovakia. 24

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Articles, Periodical Literature

• Kožak, J. B. "The Future of Czechoslovakia." Slavonic and East European Review. American Series. Vol. 3, No. 1 (May, 1944), pp. 41-64. Print.
• Nykl, Alois R. "Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia?" Slavonic and East European Review. American Series. Vol. 3, No. 4 (Dec., 1944), pp. 99-110. Print

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