‘Turning Ruthenians into Czechs’? Accusations of colonialism, and Czechoslovak democracy-building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, 1919–1939

Abstract Recent scholarship on the post-Habsburg world has highlighted the often ambiguous transitions between nineteenth-century empires and the Central European nation-states of the interwar period such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In this vein, the article reconsiders how imperial legacies continued to inform the political cultures, administrative practices, and center-periphery relations, in one such contested periphery: Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the easternmost province of interwar Czechoslovakia. By examining Czechoslovak practices and policies toward the region, it interrogates whether Prague’s governance assumed a colonial character, as contemporary observers and strands of recent historiography have contended. Such accusations struck at the heart of Czechoslovakia’s interwar standing as Central Europe’s exemplary democracy. Rather than accepting or dismissing these charges at face value, the article advances an alternative interpretation by conceptualizing Czechoslovak state-building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia as “external democracy promotion”—a concept drawn from contemporary political science. This more differentiated assessment of the achievements and limitations of democratic governance in a nascent state’s periphery, as well as of the declared intentions and concrete practices of the historical actors, permits a more productive dialogue between past and present. It navigates beyond the pitfalls of presentism, but remains critically engaged with enduring questions of power, legitimacy, and democratic praxis regarding interwar Central Europe.