As we know, today in the Republic of Bohemia Czech is an official language alongside German, however it is only spoken by a small minority. How can the Czech langauge be saved from being replaced by German?
There's an even smaller minority language in the neighboring part of northern Hungary called Slovak that's closely related to Czech--Maybe if it were somehow united with Bohemia, that could strengthen the "Czech-Slovak" identity?
You know; weird thought, after I read your comment about the Slovaks. What if we stopped some of the racial policies of the Russian Pan-Slavists during the Global War? I remember reading that the Russians, after occupying Bohemia and Hungary tried to set up Slavic and Czech speakers as the new aristocracy since they came from 'pure' slavic stock. We all know about the atrocities the Russians committed during the war, but it was these new elites that had to carry out the programs and is caused a backlash against Czech and Slovak after the regions were liberated.
Probably not enough to 'save' either language, but it might mean that there would be more efforts to preserve and expand the languages later on. Just a random thought, but figured I would give it a go. I'm sure there are people on this board that know a lot more about the topic than I do.
Wai- what?!![]()
OOC: at some point during the ATL, there is a massive war where Russia develops a racially tinged Pan-Slavic ideology. They conquer Bohemia and *Slovakia and draw the occupational leadership from those communities that still speak Czech and Slovak. Eventually they are pushed back.
In DBWIs one doesn't neccarily have to have their 'character' focus solely upon the period 'we' know they should.
OoC: Didn't realize this was a DBWI. I is stupid. *puts on dunce hat*
The Global War is way too late, the Czech and Slovak languages had already weakened considerably then. The Russian occupation lasted, what, three months roughly and they could barely find any Czech or Slovaks to raise up to leadership (most of the local backers of the occupation were ethnic Ukrainians).
Russia could never win the Global War, it was a foolish war launched by a foolish government. The Czech language can be saved with an earlier PoD I think, something that stops the Germanization process of northeastern Europe, maybe stop the rise of Brandeburg- Prussia. Today we have german speaking Republics of Böhmen, Schlesien, Posen and Preussen mostly because of the success of the Prussian kingdom.