Czechoslovakia was accomplished in 1918 as a national state of the Czechs and Slovaks. Although these two peoples were closely related, they had undergone different historical experiences. In the ninth century A.D., the ancestors of the Czechs and Slovaks were united in the Great Moravian Empire, but by the tenth century the Hungarians had conquered Slovakia, and for a millennium the Czechs and the Slovaks went their separate ways. The history of Czechoslovakia, therefore, is a story of two separate peoples whose fates sometimes have touched and sometimes have intertwined.

Czechoslovakia's democratic tradition had been suppressed but not destroyed. In 1968 the fight for democracy reemerged within the party itself. While remaining loyal to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the leadership of the party under Alexander Dubcek attempted to introduce within Czechoslovakia a more democratic form of socialism. The ensuing Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion. consequently, the leadership of the party was purged, and Gustav Husak, the new general secretary (the title changed from first secretary in 1971), introduced a "normalization" program. contempt Czech and Slovak dissent, as of 1987 Husak continued to enforce an antireformist course.