In political strata they key proponent of Czechoslovakism was Hrad, an informal group composed mostly of Czechs and related to president Masaryk; he was also the chief ideologue of Czechoslovakism.according to one scholar Masaryk explicitly considered Slovaks to be Czechs pure and simple, and agreed to a Czechoslovak denomination as a tactical measure adopted to attract the Slovaks; in Problém malého národa (Problem of a Small Nation, 1905) he wrote: "just consider, how Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and lastly Slovakia are separated in our minds. There are two million Czechs in the Hungarian kingdom!” quoted after Bakke 1999, p. 154. Another vision – see e.g. the opinion of Irena Chovančíková - is that Masaryk saw Czechoslovak nation as a political and not ethnic community, Masarykův čechoslovakismus se stal politickou zbraní, pragmatický byl vznik i zánik Československa, [in:] Radiozurnal service, available here; another version is that for Masaryk, it “was less a theory and more a pragmatic political programme”, Dusan Kovac, Czechs and Slovaks in modern history, [in:] Mikulas Teich, Bohemia in History, Cambridge 1998, , p. 370. Entirely different reading, which advances the thesis of highly-spirited ideological concept, in Josette Baer, The Genesis of Czechoslovakism. An Interdisciplinary Inquiry into the Influence of Rousseau’s Réligion Civile, [in:] William B. Simons (ed.), East European Faces of Law and Society; Values and Practices, Leiden 2014, , pp. 307-345 It has been largely accepted as official state concept; most political parties either renamed themselves to “Czechoslovak”this was the case of Social-Democratic, Communist, Popular, National-Democratic, Small Traders and Socialist parties or dropped any national references.this was the case of the strongest party of the interwar Czechoslovakia, Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants; in Czech lands it operated as "Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu", in Slovak lands as "Republikánska strana zemedelského a maloroľníckeho ľudu", Bakke 1999, pp. 162-165 A Czech nationalism has not emerged; the Slovak one has gradually taken the shape of Slovak People's Party, known as "ľudáci". Under leadership of Andrej Hlinka it grew to the strongest party in Slovakia and was increasingly critical about the alleged Czech bias. The central government adopted a number of measures supposed to defuse Slovak discontent, like administrative reform of 1928, increased investments and personal policy, including the premiership of a Slovak, Milan Hodža. However, in the late 1930s ľudáci already demanded political autonomy, even though they declared full loyalty to Czechoslovak state as the only defence line against German and Hungarian revisionism.Bakke 1999, pp. 506-507
