How (Not) to Betray Democracy: Czechoslovakia’s 1923 Law for the Protection of the Republic and the “Democratic-Republican State Form”
How (Not) to Betray Democracy: Czechoslovakia’s 1923 Law for the Protection of the Republic and the “Democratic-Republican State Form”

Summary/Abstract: Among the new states established in East Central Europe after the First World War, Czechoslovakia was the most democratic – and the most precarious. In order to defend the state against domestic political threats, the authorities relied on Austrian and Hungarian penal law, which, however, they soon found to be insufficient for both practical and ideological reasons. Czechoslovak legislators therefore looked to older republics for examples of how to protect the state’s democratic constitution. In March 1923, parliament passed the Law for the Protection of the Republic (Zákon na ochranu republiky), which covered both crimes traditionally considered to constitute high treason and attempts to change the “democratic-republican state form.” Unlike the Austrian and Hungarian legal codes, the law thus formulated an expectation that citizens’ loyalty extend from the state as such to a specific political system. This article analyzes how the law’s genesis, its specific stipulations, and its early application bear witness to Czechoslovakia’s transition from a post-imperial ad-hoc creation to a fully institutionalized nation-state. As such, the law reflected both of the paradoxes of militant democracy and the post-imperial ironies that abound in the history of the first Czechoslovak Republic.

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