The Czech Republic is located in Central Europe, southeast of Germany. It is bordered by Slovakia, Poland, Germany, and Austria. It has a total area of 78,866 square kilometers, and is slightly smaller than South Carolina.
With Slovakia, the Czech Republic was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to World War I. In the years between World War I and World War II, Czechoslovakia was an independent republic. Following World War II the Soviet Union gained influence over Czechoslovakia, and controlled the country from 1948 until the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. In 1990, Czechoslovakia was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic and free elections were held. The Federative Republic was dissolved in 1993, and the Federative Republic became two separate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Czech Republic retained the regions of Bohemia and Moravia. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
The government of the Czech Republic is a parliamentary democracy, with a president, a prime minister, a Cabinet, a bicameral parliament, and a Constitutional Court. The capital of the country is Prague.
The population of the Czech Republic is 10,228,744 (estimated as of July 2007). The main ethnic group is Czech (90.4 percent) followed by Moravian (3.7 percent), Slovak (1.9 percent) and other (4 percent). The largest religious group is Roman Catholic (26.8 percent), but the greater percentage of the population listed their affiliation in the last census as “Unaffiliated” (59 percent). Most of the population speaks Czech (94.9 percent), with Slovak spoken by 2 percent and other languages by 3 percent.
The Czechs have a long cultural tradition. The first Czech writer to use his native language, rather than Latin or German was the religious reformer John Huss. Some other famous Czechs are the composers Bedrich Smetana and Antonin Dvorak, and the writers Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Schweik), Milan Kundera, Vaclav Havel, and Ivan Klima.
Web Sites
Catalog
Search the library's catalog for Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia.