A Window to the West? Public Health, American Progressivism, and De-Austrianization in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Abstract During Czechoslovakia’s first decade, the state promoted public health reform and sponsored research surveys on healthcare and social welfare resources. Czechoslovak government leaders and healthcare professionals embraced a rhetoric of American progressivism and de-Austrianization to portray their country as forward-looking, democratic, and rational. Through the work of President Tomáš G. Masaryk’s daughter, Alice G. Masaryková, Czechoslovakia developed partnerships with American organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Young Women’s Christian Association, which provided funding, training, and personnel. A major undertaking of the early 1920s was the Social Survey of Greater Prague, a massive study based on American sociology methods, which helped determine state priorities in health and welfare. Yet, this strategy of partnering with American professionals and organizations obscured key continuities with the Habsburg era. Despite the influence of American health professionals in Czechoslovakia, the new state’s public health system developed within a centralized bureaucratic and legal structure inherited from Austria. As the capital of a centralized state, Prague replaced and even exceeded Vienna’s former role as the arbiter of health and welfare policies and practices.