T. G. Masaryk's Nová evropa

a reinterpretation

Francesco Leoncini

pp. 65-73

in: Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (ed), Historical reflections on central Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

Is Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's Nová Evropa. Stanovisko slovanské (The New Europe: A Slavic Point of View), published in 1920, still relevant today?¹ It is a work where he not only justified the need to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire because it had proved incapable of transforming itself into a federation of equal nations, but where he also predicted a Europe united by liberalism and democracy, founded on the right of selfdetermination for all nations and on minority rights, freed from German and Tsarist domination, and organised in a supranational community. It was to be a Europe in which newly created states, like Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia, played a fundamental role, joined together in an anti-German front, but also pursuing their own independent policies.

Cited authors

Masaryk Tomáš Garrigue