Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Bohemia

Czechs are West Slavs, as are Poles and Slovaks. The capital Prague is often called The Heart of Europe. There are about 10 million people in the Czech Republic and about 1.3 million people in Prague. Western part of the Czech Republic is called Bohemia, eastern Moravia.

At the beginning of the 20th century Bohemia was a part of Austrian Empire. After World War I in 1918 Czechoslovakia declared its independence. The new republic had three parts: Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. The popular Tomas Garigue Masaryk became the first president. In October 1938 the Nazis occupied the Sudetenland, with the acquiescence of Britain and France, after the infamous Munich Agreement. In March 1939 Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia. Slovakia proclaimed independence as a Nazi puppet state. After World War II in 1945 Czechoslovakia was reestablished as an independent state. In the 1946 elections, the Communists became the largest party with 36% of the popular vote and formed coalition government. In 1948 the Communist staged coup d'etat and Czechoslovakia became a communist country. In the 1960s Czechoslovakia enjoyed a gradual liberalization under the reformist general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Alexander Dubcek. But this short period was crushed by a Soviet invasion in August 1968. In 1969 the reformist Dubcek was replaced by the orthodox Gustav Husak and Czechoslovakia stayed a communist country under the Soviet influence. The communist government resignated in November 1989 after a week of demonstrations known as the Velvet Revolution. The popular Vaclav Havel was elected president of the republic. At the end of 1992 Czechoslovakia split into Czech Republic (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovak Republic (Slovakia). This peaceful splitting is called the Velvet Divorce. Twelve years later, on May 1, 2004 Czech Republic became a part of the European Union.

http://www.czechsite.com/history.html
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Bohemia (Čechy in Czech, Böhmen in German) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western and middle thirds of the Czech Republic. With an area of 52,750 sq. km. and 6.25 million of the country's 10.3 million inhabitants, Bohemia is bounded by Germany to the north-west, west and south-west, Poland to the north-east, the Czech province of Moravia to the east and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Šumava, the Ore Mountains or Krkonoše (Riesengebirge) as part of the Sudeten mountains.

Note: In the Czech language, there is no distinction between the adjectives Bohemian and Czech (český).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemia
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Bohemia is also a place in the State of New York in the United States of America: see Bohemia, New York.

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