CaliGuy
Banned
Interesting information!The 1946 election showed that even before the Communist takeover of 1948 there was a big political difference between the Czech lands and Slovakia. (Or rather that the pre-war political division was persisting, even if the old Slovak People's Party had been banned.) In the Czech lands, the Communist Party was the largest single party; in Slovakia, the Slovak Democratic Party got 62 percent of the vote, compared to 30.3 percent for the Slovak Communists. https://books.google.com/books?id=AZZoTdLB4nwC&pg=PA174
Not that the Slovak Democrats advocated separation--but still they (or some successor party) were likely eventually to clash with any centralist government in Praque whether headed by the Communists or not.
Also, a bit nit-picky, but you spelled "Prague" wrong here, David.
Wouldn't avoiding World War II and keeping the Sudeten Germans significantly help with this, though? Indeed, if the Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians, and Rusyns worked together, they might be able to check Czech domination of Czechoslovakia considering that they combined made up 47% of Czechoslovakia's population:Ultimately, unless Czechoslovakia can develop either a sense of a Czechoslovak community not dominated by the Czechs or a real binational framework, I suspect it may be doomed to split.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia#Ethnicity
Plus, the non-Czech percentage of the population would grow even further if Czechoslovakia opened its doors to large numbers of immigrants--thus serving as an even stronger check on Czech domination of Czechoslovakia.