Bringing Democracy to the Eastern Borderland. the Failed Parliamentary Election of 1920 in Multiethnic Czechoslovak Ruthenia

The end of the First World War and the breakdown of the Habsburg Empire left a vacuum of power in the space of East Central Europe. Aspiring national movements used this opportunity to create their own national states, which contained a significant number of ethnic minorities. The highly centralized Czechoslovak state dealt with this issue by becoming a nationalizing state (Brubaker), while trying to build up a democratic state at the same time. The paper examines this phenomenon of a “double transformation” on the case of the parliamentary election in 1920 in Ruthenia, the eastern borderland of Czechoslovakia. In this relatively small territory (about 12,500 km²⁾ there was a Ruthenian majority, which got the support of the government in Prague, a Jewish population without clear preferences regarding their loyalties and aims, a still influential Hungarian minority and furthermore a Czech dominated state administration.  Based on archive records from the Czech National Archive and the Masaryk Institute in Prague as well as from the State Archive of the Transcarpathian Oblast in Berehove, Ukraine, the paper will characterize and analyze the intensions and aims of the Czechoslovak state administration to provide and implement democratic participation by running a parliamentary election in Ruthenia as well as the various reasons why it failed.