The Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 brought out again the hopes of Yugoslav pro-Soviet emigrants in countries of the eastern bloc concerning the opening of the Yugoslav issue. Main proponents of the Prague Informbyro group were very critical to the development during the Prague Spring; hence they mostly welcomed the entering of the armies of the Warsaw Pact. The sudden worsening of Soviet-Yugoslav relations, the weakened international position of Yugoslavia and the internal crisis in that country did not rule out a similar solution as in Czechoslovakia. As a result, the core of activists of the Prague group together with the proponents of Informbyro in other countries of the socialist bloc directed their activities at the beginning of the 1970s towards the restoration of their political activities. The study attempts to map these activities and the opinions held by leading Yugoslav emigrants with the use of sources mainly from the archives of intelligence services.
Czechoslovak politics reflected a new national situation in Macedonia as early as in the interwar period. However, as a small country which primarily needed to take care of itself, it did not make any official statements on the situation. Czechoslovak politics supported the Yugoslav opinion – Yugoslavia was an ally of Czechoslovakia in the trilateral pact known as 'Little Entente'. After 1945, Czechoslovakia established intensive relations with Yugoslavia and attempted, within their scope, to establish cultural relations between Czechoslovakia and Macedonia; unfortunately, this process was interrupted by the conflict between the USSR and Yugoslavia in 1948. In the 1950s, Czechoslovakia maintained a pro-Bulgarian position, which changed in the 1960s. Czechoslovak politics officially acknowledged the existence of the Macedonian nation and the Macedonian language. This position did not change after the Soviet invasion with Bulgarian participation into Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the establishment of a neo-Stalinist regime known as normalization.
Before of the First World War Triple Alliance and Entente rivalled for influence onto Turkey. For all Russia observed with unbelief of increase position German officers into Turkey army. Russian endurance 'overflow' in the fall of new chief of German military mission of general O. Liman von Sanders in November 1913. Russia asked for energetic action against German military mission in common with Paris and London. France and Britain did not want risk of war and promised diplomatic support only. London initiated diplomatic action for peaceful compromise and in common with others powers procured of constringency of German military mission out from Turkey in January 1914. This affair pointed dangerously of suspicion between powers, for all between Russia and Germany, in eve of the First World War.
Josef Korbel (1909-1977), a Czechoslovak lawyer and diplomat, became publicly known both due to his historical and political works and as the father of the US Secretary of Foreign Affairs Madeleine Albright; the presented contribution introduces Korbel as a Czechoslovak ambassador in Yugoslavia, where he worked in 1945-1948. Yugoslavia was one of the traditional partners of Czechoslovakia and was to play an important role in the 'Neo-Slavonic Concept' by Edvard Benes. However, the state of Yugoslavia, restored after the Second World War, entrenched itself as a real communist dictatorship led by Josip Broz Tito; its policy in Central and South-eastern Europe soon rather complicated the position of Czechoslovakia. Korbel, who became familiar with the Yugoslav environment in the 1930s (he was a Press Executive at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Belgrade at that time), witnessed how the new regime strengthened its power; the initial most visible manifestations of this trend were elections (the only candidate was the National Front) and the subsequent deposing of the dynasty of Karadjordjevićs and the declaring of a federative people's republic. As a result of the initiative of Josip Broz Tito, the restored Yugoslavia became a formal ally of Czechoslovakia in May 1946; however, its aims differed a lot from the concept of foreign policy of the democratic government in Prague.
From the beginning of the transformation in Slovakia after 1989, the crucial problems were the issue of statehood and its resolution and the Hungarian issue. In summer 1990, the dispute over the resolution of the constitutional arrangement moved to the designation of powers. Simultaneously, the conflict concerning the speed and method of economic transformation sharpened on the Slovak political scene. The parliamentary elections of 1992 and the subsequent adoption of The Declaration of the Independence of Slovakia and The Constitution of Slovakia were of crucial importance for the further destiny of Czechoslovakia. After the establishment of an independent Slovak state, relations with Hungary and the Hungarian minority gained a new dimension.
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