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The featured observations represent selected viewpoints of World War I, highlighting
background events that led to the war. They present the situation in Austro-Hungary for whom the
war was a tool to solve its political problems and further demonstrate how the war actually made
the aforementioned country's relations with national groups more complicated. The observations
also focus on the image of the war, distorted by propaganda, and the situation on both the front
line and in the hinterland. Last but not least they deal with the war from the Czech viewpoint,
unique for many reasons including the fact that at this time the Czechs were escalating their
attempts at creating their own state.

The paper focuses on reflection of the First World War in presidential speeches in years
1990–2013. This period delimits mandates of former Czech presidents Václav Havel and Václav
Klaus. Ways in which both presidents referred to the historical event and in which they utilized its
interpretation for legitimization of their political goals are compared. As its theoretical framework,
the study utilizes an approach that has been developed by Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith as
part of their program in cultural sociology. The study aims to identify the most significant cultural
codes and narrative strategies of the analyzed speeches and to relate them to (supra)nationalistic
metanarratives that they help to maintain. The study also points to the fact that presidential
speeches represent an important case of utilization of past for the purposes of legitimization of
state policy while also being a practice with which states are established.

Since the time of its foundation (1990) the Slovak National Party (SNS) has been able to pool approximately 5-10 % of votes. During most of its 15 years existence there was a permanent crisis in the party and one could observe numerous clashes between particular groups in the Slovakian party system. As a result of this in-party fragmentation the SNS disintegrated in 2001. Following the division of supporter's votes between two successor parties, the SNS lost its parliament representation. This was the main impulse for the antagonized leaders to change their relations and start a process of integration which was successfully finished on March 3rd 2005 – the 15th anniversary of the party. From the beginning of 2005, the SNS has been enjoying growing popularity (7%) and has a good chance to succeed in the next parliamentary elections in autumn 2006.

Approximately 100 thousand men of Czech origin died during the wartime operations
in the years 1914 to 1918. The majority were aged between 23 and 35. The reproductive losses have
been estimated at another 610 thousand (550 thousand children that were never born due to the
absence of a man in the household and another 60 thousand civilian dead). In 1914 the population
in the Czech territories numbered 10 million 283 thousand, in 1919 this number decreased
to 9 million 921 thousand. The ratio of men to women decreased (in 1920 there were 92.5 men to
every 100 women). This imbalance in age frequency, a result of the low birth rate, had a long term
effect firstly on the number of marriages, then on the birth rate and eventually on the mortality
rate. These long term effects were evidently still present at the close of the 20th Century.