Page:The Constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic (1948).pdf/14

 ''liberation. The thoughts of freedom, progress and humanity were the guiding ideas of our two nations when in the 19th century, they entered, by the joint effort of Slovak and Czech intellectual pioneers who had sprung from the people, upon the era of national revival. Under this flag also both our nations began their joint struggle against German imperialism during the first World War, and, inspired by the Great October Revolution, they created after centuries of subjection, on October 28th, 1918, their common State—the democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia.''

''Already then, during the first resistance, movement, our people, inspired by the great example of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian workers and peasants, longed for a better social order, for socialism. But this progressive endeavour, true to our best traditions, was shortly brought to nought, when, upon the split of the workers' movement in December 1920, the numerically weak section of capitalists and landowners succeeded in turning back, in spite of the democratic Constitution, the progressive development of our Republic, and in establishing the capitalist economic order with all its attendant evils, above all the nightmare of unemployment.''

When before long a new imperialist expansion, in the foul likeness of German nazism, threatened both our nations with destruction, then once again, as the nobility had betrayed the people in the Hussite Wars, now the latter-day ruling class, the bourgeoisie, allied itself in the time of greatest peril with the enemy against the people and thus enabled world imperialism to settle its differences, albeit temporarily, at the expense of both our nations, by the shameful Munich Pact.

''Thus the road was cleared for the rape of our peace-loving country by the ancient enemy, with the zealous assistance of the descendants of alien colonists settled in our midst and enjoying, equally with us, full democratic rights in accordance with our Constitution. The dreadful events of the second World War saw our two nations again united in the common struggle for liberation, a struggle which, at the cost of the lives of countless of our best sons and with the aid of the Allies, above all the great Slav Power, the Union of Soviet Socialist'' 10