Talk:History of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938)

Solutions???

The second sentence claims that "Several ethnic groups and territories with different historical, political, and economic traditions had to be blended into a new state structure."

Was it in fact necessary, or does this statement just represent the viewpoint of those in charge after WWI? Were no other solutions possible or feasible?

Possible move?

Since Republic of Czechoslovakia deals exclusively with the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, shouldn't this article be titled History of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia or (like the other histories) Czechoslovakia: 1918–1938 ? - TheMightyQuill 10:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move (done by User:Hexagon1). Patstuart^talk|edits 22:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

First Republic of Czechoslovakia → Czechoslovakia: 1918 - 1938 — Consistency with other Czechoslovak History pages, avoid confusion with Republic of Czechoslovakia TheMightyQuill 04:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

• Oppose Name actually used; disambiguation by dates should be avoided. If consistency is a worry, write the article on the Second Republic, ending March 1939, and retitle the others. Septentrionalis 21:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
• Obvious and Strong Support. It will align the history series and end confusion between Republic of Czechoslovakia and First Republic of Czechoslovakia, two differently oriented articles. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 09:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support weakly because there are not two but four articles dealing with the same period to varying degrees: First Republic of Czechoslovakia, Republic of Czechoslovakia, History of Czechoslovakia, and Czechoslovakia. The title "Republic of Czechoslovakia" reads as a constituent of "Czechoslovakia." However, "First Republic of Czechoslovakia" could be seen as a sub-article of "Republic of Czechoslovakia" or "History of Czechoslovakia." "Czechoslovakia: 1918 - 1938" is consistent with the other history articles and the title makes it slightly clearer that it refers to history rather than the state itself. (Did that make sense?) —  AjaxSmack  04:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
• Support - reasons stated. TheMightyQuill 05:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments:

Why should disambiguation by dates be avoided? History of the United States does it, so does History of Poland. Still that's beside the point. This article is on the history of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia. The article Republic of Czechoslovakia is on the exact same topic, but is formatted as a country article, rather than a history article. If an article on the Second Republic were to be written, the Republic of Czechoslovakia article would have to move to the namespace currently being used by this article. If you prefer History of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia that's fine, but it sounds a little long to me. TheMightyQuill 01:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation by dates is avoided, where feasible, because it is less informative to the reader and less likely to be found in searches. I'm not sure what American articles you are thinking of; Progressive Era does not use dates, nor does its fork, Fourth Party System. Septentrionalis 04:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

As I said, by dates or not by dates is beside the point. If you think History of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia is going to return more searches, I'm more than open to it.

As for the History of the United States, I was referring to these ones:

• History of the United States (1776–1789), History of the United States (1789–1849)
• History of the United States (1849–1865), History of the United States (1865–1918)
• History of the United States (1918–1945), History of the United States (1945–1964)
• History of the United States (1964–1980), History of the United States (1980–1988)
• History of the United States (1988–present)

Further examples:

• Canada: History of Canada (1945-1960), History of Canada (1960-1981), History of Canada (1982-1992)
• France: France in the nineteenth century, France in the twentieth century
• Ireland: Ireland 1691–1801, History of Ireland (1801–1922)
• Portugal: History of Portugal (1578-1777), History of Portugal (1777–1834)
• USSR: History of the Soviet Union (1953-1985), History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)
• Czechoslovakia: Czechoslovakia: 1945-1948, Czechoslovakia: 1948-1968, Czechoslovakia: 1969-1987, Czechoslovakia: 1987-1992

The best example is something like History of Poland (1918–1939) which has a corresponding country article Second Polish Republic, and History of Poland (1569–1795) has Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, History of Poland (1945–1989) has People's Republic of Poland. See what I mean?

Those are prime candidates for merger. In this case, First Republic of Czechoslovakia is clearly distinct from the Republic of Czechoslovakia which would be comparable to History of Poland. Septentrionalis 21:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I know it's weird, but a lot of the former counties of in Europe are divided like this: German Democratic Republic& History of the German Democratic Republic, History of Poland (1945–1989) & People's Republic of Poland, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth & History of Poland (1569–1795), Soviet Union & History of the Soviet Union for example. I'm not opposed to merging them, but there is surprisingly little overlap between the two articles. -TheMightyQuill 09:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

But again, as long as this article is distinguished more clearly from the country article Republic_of_Czechoslovakia, I don't really care what you call it. - TheMightyQuill 07:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how they can be confused; but then I don't see why it's a problem. Both articles are historical, after all. Septentrionalis 21:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Two articles about the first republic of Czechoslovakia, one is called Republic of Czechoslovakia the other First Republic of Czechoslovakia and you can't see how their names could be confusing? -TheMightyQuill 09:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

First republic (první republika) is a common term used in the Czech language, between historics and in politics. You also won't move World War II to World War 1939-1945. Don't move. --213.155.224.232 15:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

You also misunderstand. I know that the First Republic is a common term. Please see above: One is to be a country page Republic of Czechoslovakia, the other a history page Czechoslovakia: 1918 - 1938. I don't see why this is so complicated for everyone. - TheMightyQuill 21:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Disagreement with merger results, above

I've read the archived discussion, and I don't get it. Maybe a lot of the particulars have changed in the intervening year, but the position that won the day doesn't seem to have happened as a result of the merger. The apparent nominator said, "First Republic of Czechoslovakia should be merged with Czechoslovakia: 1918 - 1938 to avoid confusion with Republic of Czechoslovakia." But the thing is, all three are pointing to the same thing. So, surely, there's confusion there.

Wouldn't it be better if Republic of Czechoslovakia were actually a disambig page listing all the states that could legitimately use that name?

Later in the discussion, a call is issued for two articles, one for the country existing in 1918-1938 and one for a history of the country. This I agree with, but by merging First Republic of Czechoslovakia with Czechoslovakia: 1918-1938, precisely the opposite has happened. This creates disharmony with Template:Czechoslovakia timeline, which is screaming out for there to be a page for each country on the timeline, as well as pages for each historical period.

Navigate backwards from the Czech Republic article and you'll immediately see the problem. At the top right of Czech Republic there's the nifty li'l country template. Arrows near the top of the frame lead you backward to the preceding state. Click on the left arrow and you get CSFR. Again you're greeted by a country box. Click on the left arrow again and you get CSSR. It's all well and good until you hit the left arrow again. Now the navigation is broken, because you're not on a state page anymore, you're on a history page. The next state that has a state infoox is Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. {Incidentally, what's weird about the infobox on the Protectorate page is that if you hit the right arrow, you go to CSSR. But, again, if you hit the left arrow on CSSR you don't go back to the Protectorate.)

From the Protectorate page, the left arrow takes you neither to the Second Republic of Czechoslovakia but to the First Republic of Czechoslovakia (which, as a result of the merger, is a history page, and therefore has no state infobox to continue the navigation).

It is to my mind very confusing, and stems at least in part from this decision to merge.

I think we need a page for both states and time periods. And to avoid confusion on the name "Republic of Czechoslovakia", we should create a disambig page with that title, and perhaps put a li'l disambig tag at the top of each of the state pages, as:

For other uses, see Republic of Czechoslovakia.

CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:51, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

If I remember, it was a confusing and tense time, because someone had just unilaterally made these kinds of changes. (see Talk:Czechoslovakia#Where_is_the_rest_of_the_history.3F and the following discussion.) Creating a disambig out of Republic of Czechoslovakia linking to the various numbered states is probably not so controversial as what to do with Czechoslovakia. There's the argument that, despite the various republics, there was one more-or-less continuous czechoslovak state from 1918-1992 (save the war). Setting up Czechoslovakia as a simple disambig might suggest that this was not the case. The example of Yugoslavia is given as a possibility, but that article is essentially the parallel of History of Czechoslovakia. Others have pointed out the absurdity of having both a Czechoslovakia and a History of Czechoslovakia article when they are clearly BOTH history. I don't like the idea of merging them and turning Czechoslovakia into a "history" article, because that confuses the two streams of "history" and "state" articles. I don't know... I guess I think Czechoslovakia and Republic of Czechoslovakia should be disambig pages, but it wouldn't be pretty. I was going to suggest we involve User:Juro who had pretty strong feelings about all this, but it looks like he's been blocked indefinitely. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 01:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Looking over the "history" articles again, this one is actually more of "state" article, laid out in terms of economy, politics and ethnic groups. All the others in the series are organized chronologically. I suppose this just adds to the confusion. Sorry. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 01:18, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm not saying Czechoslovakia should be the disambig page, but rather Republic of Czechoslovakia (I.e., break the current redirect with a list of all the entities called "Republic of Czecho (or Czecho-)slovakia). I think our model here should be the set up of France-related articles, not Eastern European countries. In the French section, France is the current country. History of France is sort of a tree-branching long article, a gateway leading you in various directions. Then there are individual state articles for each iteration of the Republic/Empire/Kingdom. Then there are periods of French history, generally (but not exclusively) broken up in terms of centuries; thus France in the nineteenth century.

Taking this as a paradigm, we could see that there need not be two separate articles for Czechoslovakia and History of Czechoslovakia. It's an historical entity, so the two articles are arguably redundant. However, due to the fact that the content of the two articles is substantively different (one as a state article and one as historical) I suppose they can be maintained as is.

Given the compressed nature of the history of Czechoslovakia, we could then keep the "by year range" articles, and also make sure there are "by constitution" state articles.

This would then seem to be fully consistent with "how it's done elsewhere on Wikipedia", with a minimum of confusion and a maximum of navigability. The only difference is that Republic of France redirects to France because that's the legal name of the current entity. Since there is no current Czechoslovakia, Republic of Czechoslovakia would naturally lead to a disambig page in my view; there's no reason to assume that a person looking up an historical state is looking for any one particular "Republic of Czechoslovakia".

Note how this is handled with other European countries. Republic of Spain leads to a disambig page. This is perhaps the clearest western European parallel to the ROCz, because it doesn't exist anymore. Republic of Italy leads Italy (because Italy is currently a republic), but includes a disambig note at the top of the page for anyone looking for the former ROI. Yugoslavia is a difficult parallel because although it doesn't exist anymore, it's quite unlike Czechoslovakia in that it exists in no form at all. Nothing's called "Yugoslavia" now, and had there been a truly "Yugoslav culture", there likely wouldn't have been the kind of wars we've seen since the fall of communism. Nevertheless, as a point of style, it is instructive to note that even Republic of Yugoslavia uses a disambig note at the top of its page, just as I'm suggesting should be atop each Republic of Czechoslovakia page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your plan, so that's what's important, but to be clear, this is going to be quite different than France. It may have various articles with states as names (French Third Republic for instance) but they are all actually chronological "history" articles. They have a Template:Governments of France but its parts are all also included in Template:History of France. I notice their organization gets a little confusing around ww2, same as it does for us, but our new and improved timeline is much clearer than their Gov'ts of France template. The Second Czechoslovak Republic article can really be little more than a stub, with a short paragraph and a link to Occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany. Like the small "state" article for the short lived Hungarian Democratic Republic.

Anyway, I think the Czechoslovakia article may end up being problematic. As you mentioned, it's different than Spain or France because it no longer exists. I don't want to just direct to History of Czechoslovakia, and a disambiguation probably isn't a good idea. I suppose we could just leave it as is for now. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 02:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... A new page (Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1939)) has been unilaterally created without discussion. Is this the name we want to keep? I guess we should see discussion on that page? Or maybe we should move this discussion to Czechoslovakia? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 19:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I suggest that the History of Czechoslovakia (1918-1938) should be merged with the page you mentioned, but that we change the title to "Czechoslovak Republic 1918-1938". - Realismadder (talk) 13:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)