The Czech Republic

A Brief History: -Though it has existed in its present form for less than a decade, the historical roots of the Czech Republic go back deep into the past. About 40,000 years ago, the inhabitants of the region at the foot of the Palava Hills southeast of Brno created some of mankind's first works of art, tiny portraits in bone and female sculptures in fired clay. Much later, in the first millennium BC, came Celtic tribes (one of which, the Boii, gave its name to Bohemia), to be succeeded by Germanic tribes and, in the sixth century AD, the first Slavic tribes. By the ninth century, the region of southern Moravia and western Slovakia had been consolidated into a state - the Great Moravian Empire, with its capital in southeastern Moravia. It was here that the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius came in 863, preaching Christianity in the vernacular and creating the first Slavonic alphabet.-With the Magyar invasion in 896, the Great Moravian Empire collapsed and the centre of power shifted to the west, where a new Czech state emerged in Bohemia. Expanding gradually to include Moravia, by the fourteenth century it had become the major power in Central Europe and the Czech king, Charles IV, was also Holy Roman Emperor. Again, this period of dominance was brief: tensions grew between Czechs and German-speakers (who had been invited to settle in the Czech lands - Bohemia and Moravia - in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), and religious conflicts that erupted after the death at the stake in 1415 of the Czech religious reformer Jan Hus led to political chaos and widespread destruction in the fifteenth century. After another brief period of cultural (though no longer political) resurgence in the sixteenth century, when Prague flourished as a major centre of art and learning and the Czech lands as a whole became one of the great bastions of Protestantism, the Czechs lost the last of their independence in 1620, when their forces were defeated by the army of the Habsburgs at the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague.-The debacle at the White Mountain was followed by the mass emigration of much of the educated middle class and nobility, who refused to abandon their now outlawed Protestant faith, and the forced conversion to Catholicism of the Protestants who remained, of whatever class. In addition to imposing religious uniformity on the nation, the forces of the Counter-Reformation also introduced the Baroque style in art and architecture, now such a distinctive feature of the country. For the next three hundred years the Czech lands remained under Austrian rule. By the end of the eighteenth century virtually all of the middle and upper classes had become assimilated to German culture and were largely German - speaking.-It was in this very difficult situation that a small number of nationally - conscious Czechs set out around the turn of the nineteenth century to revive the Czech language and recreate a viable Czech culture. This National Revival movement succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its first proponents: by the beginning of the twentieth century the Czechs were once again a modern nation with a rich literary, musical, dramatic and artistic culture, a highly effective primary and secondary educational system and a university where Czech was the language of instruction. Members of the powerful new Czech middle class dominated the political institutions within the Czech lands and represented them in the Parliament in Vienna, manned the bureaucracies and enjoyed steadily increasing economic power. But Bohemia and Moravia remained part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; what the Czechs lacked was independence, a state of their own.-This came in October 1918, amidst the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the last weeks of World War I, with the creation of the new state of Czechoslovakia. Ethnically, the country was very diverse. Slovaks - though they inhabited territory immediately to the east of Moravia and spoke a language that was so close to Czech that the two tongues were mutually understandable - had been part of Hungary for a thousand years, and so shared few historical ties with the Czechs. The presence of a large German-speaking minority (almost 30 per cent of the population), most of whom would undoubtedly have preferred to be citizens of Germany or Austria, meant that nationalist tensions would always remain near the surface. And then there were the other significant minorities - Hungarians, Poles, Ruthenians, Jews and Gypsies - that made the country a miniature version of the multinational empire the Czechs had tried so hard to leave. Yet interwar Czechoslovakia turned out to be surprisingly successful, a progressive and prosperous state that remained a liberal democracy while country after country in the region gradually came under authoritarian rule. But in the end economic strains brought on by the Depression as well as political pressures from Hitler's Germany and a growing nationalist movement in Slovakia proved to be a fatal combination. In September 1938, by the terms of the infamous Munich Pact (forced on the country by its erstwhile allies, Britain and France), Czechoslovakia lost all its German-speaking border regions to the Reich; in March 1939 Hitler occupied the remaining parts of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia became a separate German puppet state. THE COUNTRY - now officially the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - suffered relatively little physical destruction in World War II, but its losses in human terms were incalculable: virtually all of its Jewish population, significant numbers of the Czech-speaking intelligentsia, almost all the Gypsies. At the end of the war in 1945, Czechoslovakia was reunited and regained its independence, but the losses continued. The eastern part of the country was handed over to the Soviet Union, and with it went most of the Ruthenians; all but about 250,000 of the 3,500,000 German-speakers were forcibly expelled, leaving vast areas in the border regions almost empty. Hardly had the country begun to recover from the war and its aftermath, when the Communist putsch in 1948 brought on more losses, this time in the form of political refugees fleeing to the West. -Czechoslovakia remained under Communist rule for more than forty years. The show trials of the late forties and early fifties, the executions and mass imprisonments and immense disruption caused to so many people's lives, gave way in the sixties to a (relatively) more open society and a renewed flourishing of the arts. This development culminated in 1968 in the Prague Spring, a movement headed by reform Communists whose aims were summed up in the slogan "socialism with a human face". But for the Soviet Union and the other countries of the socialist bloc, the reforms being planned in Czechoslovakia represented too great a threat to be ignored: in August 1968 the country was invaded by the armies of the Warsaw Pact, and the Prague Spring came to an end. -Once again there was a wave of emigrants, a large proportion of them highly educated. Their absence was felt particularly keenly in the period of "normalization" that followed in the 1970s, when an extremely rigid and retrograde form of Communist Party control was reimposed on the society and the country once again became cut off from the outside world. And as the Communist regimes in neighbouring Hungary and Poland began to move towards cautious reform in the 1980s, even contact with these supposedly "fraternal states" became limited. Only the tiny Charter 77 movement, launched by Vaclav Havel and the philosopher Jan Patocka, gave evidence that some hope for a civil society remained. -In November 1989, following the brutal suppression of a student march, mass demonstrations throughout the country brought about the precipitate collapse of the Communist regime: in just over three weeks a new government without a Communist majority took power, and by the end of December Vaclav Havel had been elected President. The good humour and lack of violence that distinguished this transition led to its being dubbed "The Velvet Revolution". -The 1990s saw a sudden explosion of activity. Private enterprise was given the green light, state-owned industries were sold off or went bankrupt, investment flowed into the country. The Czech Republic was "discovered" by the rest of the world, and Prague in particular became a tourist mecca. Political parties sprang up, and elections were fiercely contested. At a more personal level, property was returned to its rightful owners, and the many injustices that people had suffered during the forty years of totalitarian rule slowly began to be righted. The long process of "returning to Europe" began. New laws were drawn up to reflect the needs of a pluralistic, modern democracy. The country entered into negotiations with the European Union, and was included in the group of applicants who will be admitted in 2004 as the first new members from the East. In 1999 the country joined NATO. -But this country was no longer Czechoslovakia. Immediately after November 1989, many of the issues that had remained taboo during the Communist years burst on an unsuspecting public. One of these was the question of Slovakia's role in the federation. After almost three years of intense debate on the subject, the federal Parliament voted to let each of the country's two nations go its own way: at midnight on 1 January 1993 two new states were born, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The two countries retained a "special relationship" owing to their past history, but henceforth each would go its separate way.-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------THE COUNTRY-The three territories that constitute the Czech Republic have existed as distinct entities for almost a millenium. The most westerly of these, Bohemia, is dominated by the capital city, Prague, with its population of 1,200,000. Bohemia is surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges and highlands; historically, these have served both to protect and to isolate the land and its people. The variety of natural features within Bohemia is remarkable. Particularly noteworthy regions include the large expanse of gently undulating countryside in the south, with its thousands of artificial ponds, some of them immense and many dating back as far as the fifteenth century, the hilly country in the west, the setting for the elegant spa towns of Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Marianske lazne (Marienbad), and the area of weird sandstone formations in the north known as Bohemian Switzerland.-Moravia, to the east of Bohemia, though flanked by the White Carpathians along the border with Slovakia, opens up to the north and south, and historically this has favoured a receptivity to new ideas and cultural trends and the flow of trade. Three major cities highlight its natural diversity. Brno, the historical capital of Moravia, is the focus in the south: wooded highlands spread out to the north and west, while to the south and east, the open country with its low rolling hills provides the ideal terrain for most of the country's vineyards. The flat central plain in the interior of Moravia centres on Olomouc, the ecclesiastical capital of the province and the country's second largest urban conservation area. In the north, the industrial town of Ostrava is situated in a low-lying trough flanked by hills and mountains that leads north to Poland.-Finally, on the northern fringes of Moravia, lie the small remnants of the province of Silesia, most of which was lost to Prussia in the eighteenth century (and now forms part of Poland). West of the historical capital, Opava, the land rises gradually to the still largely unspoiled Jeseniky Mountains.-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------THE PEOPLE-With a population of about 10,300,000, the Czech Republic is one of Europe's middling-small countries. Though for centuries the complex ethnic makeup of the Czech lands and Czechoslovakia made them a kind of Central Europe in miniature, the events of the last sixty years have transformed the population into one of the most homogeneous in Europe. Well over 90% is Czech; there are small Slovak and Polish minorities, and even smaller numbers of Germans, Hungarians and Greeks. The main minority group in the country now is the Roma (Gypsies); estimates of their size run from 100,000 to 300,000. Most, especially the younger Roma, speak Czech, though the majority are bilingual and some older Roma speak only Romani.-Religiously, the Czechs are notable for the high proportion of people who label themselves atheists (58%). The major faith is Roman Catholicism (26.3%), with Protestants (1.3%) and the Czechoslovak Hussite church (0.9%) coming far behind. There is a tiny Jewish community. Since 1989, there has been increased activity by groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Eastern religions, too, have come to the country: Brno has the Czech Republic's first (and so far only) mosque, while about 50 kilometres to the east is one of Central Europe's largest ashrams. Girls Layouts MySpace Generators MySpace Comments MySpace Codes Icon Collages I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4