Edvard Beneš in the context of "Ninth-of-May Constitution"

In late February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia through a coup d'état. It marked the beginning of four decades of the party's rule in the country.

The KSČ enjoyed a period of popularity following the reestablishment of pre-war Czechoslovakia. After a successful performance during the 1946 parliamentary election, party leader Klement Gottwald became prime minister of a coalition government at the behest of President Edvard Beneš. By summer 1947, however, the KSČ's popularity had significantly dwindled, and the party was expected to be soundly defeated in the May 1948 elections. This, along with the electoral failures of the French and Italian communist parties, prompted Joseph Stalin to harden his approach and order Gottwald to seize power.

Czechoslovakia (/ˌtʃɛkoʊsloʊˈvæki.ə, ˈtʃɛkə-, -slə-, -ˈvɑː-/ CHEK-oh-sloh-VAK-ee-ə, CHEK-ə-, -⁠slə-, -⁠VAH-; Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko) was a landlocked country in Central Europe created in 1918 when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland became part of Nazi Germany. Between 1939 and 1945, the state ceased to exist, as Slovakia proclaimed its independence and Carpathian Ruthenia became part of Hungary, while the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed in the remainder of the Czech Lands. In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, former Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš formed a government-in-exile and sought recognition from the Allies.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia was re-established under its pre-1938 borders, with the exception of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of the Ukrainian SSR (a republic of the Soviet Union). The Communist Party seized power in a coup in 1948. From 1948 to 1989, Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc with a planned economy. Its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949 and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of 1955. A period of political liberalization in 1968, the Prague Spring, ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by other Warsaw Pact countries, invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1989, as Marxist–Leninist governments and communism were ending all over Central and Eastern Europe, Czechoslovaks peacefully deposed their communist government during the Velvet Revolution, which began on 17 November 1989 and ended 11 days later on 28 November when all of the top Communist leaders and Communist party itself resigned. On 31 December 1992, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a principal architect of the Holocaust, was assassinated during the Second World War in a coordinated operation by the Czechoslovak resistance. The assassination attempt, code-named Operation Anthropoid, was carried out by resistance operatives Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 27 May 1942. Heydrich was wounded in the attack and died of his injuries on 4 June.

The operatives who carried out the assassination were soldiers of the Czechoslovak Army who were prepared and trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) with the approval of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, led by Edvard Beneš. The Czechoslovaks undertook the operation to help confer legitimacy on the government-in-exile, and to exact retribution for Heydrich's brutal rule. The operation was the only verified government-sponsored assassination of a senior Nazi leader during the war. Heydrich's death led to a wave of reprisals by SS troops, including the destruction of villages and mass killings of civilians, including the Lidice massacre.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 1850 – 14 September 1937) was a Czechoslovak statesman, political activist and philosopher who served as the first president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935. He is regarded as the founding father of Czechoslovakia.

Born in Hodonín, Moravia (then part of the Austrian Empire), Masaryk obtained a doctorate at the University of Vienna and was a professor of philosophy at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University. He began his political career as a deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat, serving from 1891 to 1893 and from 1907 to 1914. He was an advocate of restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state, but by the outbreak of the First World War, he had become a supporter of Czech and Slovak independence. He went into exile, and travelled around Europe to organise and promote the Czechoslovak cause. He played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Czechoslovak Legion, which fought against the Central Powers during the war. In 1918, Masaryk, along with his protégés Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, travelled to the United States to obtain support from President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Their negotiations resulted in the Washington Declaration, which proclaimed the independence of a Czechoslovak state.

The Third Czechoslovak Republic, officially the Czechoslovak Republic, was a sovereign state from April 1945 to February 1948 following the end of World War II.

After the fall of Nazi Germany, the country was reformed and reassigned coterminous borders as its pre-war predecessor state, First Czechoslovak Republic; it likewise restored the predecessor's international recognition. Due to the rise of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), Czechoslovakia fell within the Soviet sphere of influence, and this circumstance dominated any plans or strategies for post-war reconstruction. Consequently, the political and economic organisation of Czechoslovakia became largely a matter of negotiations between Edvard Beneš and the Communist Party members exiled in Moscow.

Parliamentary elections were held in Czechoslovakia on 26 May 1946. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia emerged as the largest party, winning 114 of the 300 seats (93 for the main party and 21 for its Slovak branch) with 38% of the vote. The Communist vote share was higher than any party had ever achieved in a Czechoslovak parliamentary election; previously, no party had ever won more than 25%. Voter turnout was 94%. The national results also determined the composition of the Slovak National Council and local committees.

This was one of only two free nationwide elections held in the Eastern Bloc, the other having been held in Hungary a year earlier. Two years later, the Communists staged a coup d'etat and forced President Edvard Beneš to appoint a Communist-dominated government. As a result, the 1946 election was the last free and fair election held in Czechoslovakia until 1990.

Klement Gottwald (Czech pronunciation: [ˈklɛmɛnt ˈɡotvalt]; 23 November 1896 – 14 March 1953) was a Czech communist politician, who was the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1929 until his death in 1953 – titled as general secretary until 1945 and as chairman from 1945 to 1953. He was the first leader of Communist Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1953.

Following the collapse of democratic Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement, the right-wing leadership of the Czechoslovak Second Republic banned the Communist Party, forcing Gottwald to emigrate to the Soviet Union in November 1938. In 1943, Gottwald agreed with representatives of the Czechoslovak-government-in-exile located in London, along with President Edvard Beneš, to unify domestic and foreign anti-fascist resistance and form the National Front. He was the 14th prime minister of Czechoslovakia from July 1946 until June 1948, the first Communist to hold the post. In June 1948, he was elected as Czechoslovakia's first Communist president, four months after the 1948 coup d'état in which his party seized power with the backing of the Soviet Union. He held the post until his death.

The Czechoslovak government-in-exile, sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia (Czech: Prozatímní vláda Československa; Slovak: Dočasná vláda Československa), was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee (Czech: Výbor Československého Národního Osvobození; Slovak: Československý Výbor Národného Oslobodenia), initially by British diplomatic recognition. The name came to be used by other Allied governments during the Second World War as they subsequently recognised it. The committee was originally created by the former Czechoslovak President, Edvard Beneš in Paris, France, in October 1939. Unsuccessful negotiations with France for diplomatic status, as well as the impending Nazi occupation of France, forced the committee to withdraw to London in 1940. The Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile offices were at various locations in London but mainly at a building called Fursecroft, Marylebone.

It was regarded as the legitimate government for Czechoslovakia throughout the Second World War by the Allies. A specifically anti-Fascist government, it sought to reverse the Munich Agreement and the subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and to return the Republic to its 1937 boundaries. As such it was ultimately considered, by those countries that recognized it, the legal continuation of the First Czechoslovak Republic.