The Czech Republic

Geography

The CR is quite a small state lies in the real heart of Europe. It’s neighbours are Germany on the west, Poland on the north, Slovakia on the east and Austria on the south.
The CR consists of three parts: Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia  . It’s borders are composed naturally, by a belt of the mountains: the Lužické and the Jizerské Mountains and the Krkonoše   (Sněžka, 1 603 m) on the north, the Orlické Mountains   and the Jeseníky on the north-east, the Moravian-Silesian Beskids and the Bílé Karpaty on the south-east, the Šumava and the Czech Forest on the south and south-west and finally the Krušné Mountains   on the north-west. Bohemia and Moravia is separated by the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Other - it means central - parts of the CR are composed by many hills, plains, flats etc.
The biggest river is the Elbe, which springs in Krkonoše and flows through Germany to the North Sea but the longest only Czech rivers are the Vltava River or the Ohře River in Bohemia and the Morava River or the Dyje River in Moravia.
There isn’t many lakes in our republic (e.g. the Black Lake or the Devil Lake in the Šumava) but there are plenty of ponds, especially in the southern Bohemia near Třeboň (e.g. the Rožmberk or the Dehtář). On the big rivers (e.g. the Vltava River or the Dyje River) there are cascade system of dams   - e.g. Lipno, Orlík, Slapy etc.
Not only because of the threaten   and the devastation of nature (see Climate) there are three National Parks in the CR - Šumava, Krkonoše and Podyjí - and many Nature Reservations where grow the rare flowers and live the rare animals. 
The biggest and the most important cities are Prague, Brno, Hradec Králové, Ostrava and Plzeň.
Climate

Because of its position in central Europe, the Czech Republic has both continental and oceanic climate. It means quite warm - but not hot - summers and mild - but rainy - winters. Big parts of the CR - mainly in border belt and around the big cities - are devastated by an air pollution and the acid rains from the chemical factories and heating plants or spoiled by industry (e.g. the Most area). Ecology policy is one of the biggest problem in the CR.
Political system
The Czech system of government is based on the constitution - our country is a democratic parliamentary republic. The President (since January 1998 Václav Havel) is the head of state, his official residence is the Prague Castle. He is elected every five years and he cannot be elected more than twice.
The Cabinet with the Prime Minister (since January 1998 Josef Tošovský) as the head is designed every four years.
    The Parliament is composed of two houses - the Senate and the House of Representatives. It seats in the former noblemen’s palaces at the Lesser Quarter in Sněmovní Street (the House of R.) and in the Wallenstein Palace (the Senate). The Senate has 81 members, the House of Representatives has 200 members.
The main political parties are: Socialist-Democratic Party (ČSSD), Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Union of Liberty (US) and Christian-Democratic Party (KDU-ČSL).
    The Czech flag consist of white and red strip and a blue bosom  . The Czech national anthem is called ‘Kde domov můj’.

    There is quite a difficult political situation since November 1997 because of many corruption and authority affairs almost in each political parties. Because of this, there will be an early elections in June and all predictions show that the Social-Democratic Party will be the winner

Important events in history

    The Czech Republic is not only small but also new state. It was established on January 1, 1993 as the following state of the Czechoslovakia. 
    Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia existed from the Middle Ages in the one state or confederation of states.
    The first historical tribes on nowadays CR area were the Celtic tribes in the 4th century.
According to one of the oldest Czech legends the Primal Father Czech   came with his group to Bohemia, climbed up the hill Říp, observe the country and gave order to settle in this fertile and  picturesque   country. From archaeological finds we can affirm with certainly   that the first Slavs came to Bohemia form the north during the 6th century. The strongest tribe of these Slavs were the Czechs, who settled in the region of nowadays central Bohemia.
    The most glorious period of the old history of this country is the time of the Grate Moravian Empire in the 9th century. At this time Bohemia was a loyal ally of Moravia. The Moravian sovereign Rastislav requested from the Byzantium the Christian mission led by brothers Constantine and Methodius, originally the Greeks from Salonica. They arrived in Moravia in 863 and promoted the Slavonic liturgy. For it’s propose Constantine formed the Old Slavonic language and separate script. Methodius baptised the Czech duke Bořivoj - the first historical documented member of Přemyslid dynasty - and his wife Ludmila in 874. At the first years of the 10th century the Great Moravian Empire was destroyed by Magyar invasion from its southern part.
    The importance of the Czech state grown. One of the most important peak of the Czech history was the time of the Charles IV, the Czech king and Roman Emperor. His residence was Prague and he created the Bohemian Kingdom as the centre of his power.
    After the death of Jan Hus, the sharp critic of the growing riches of the Catholic Church, who was buried to death in 1415, the Hussite   movement started in 1419. In the 2nd half of the 15th century, the ’Hussite King’ Jiří z Poděbrad worked out a project for a League of European states - the idea of the ‘United Nations’ - but it wasn’t too much successful.
    The short rule of Jagellon dynasty between 1471 and 1520 continues by a hard period of 400 hundred dominance of the Habsburg House.
Czech king Rudolf II, who is the world-known sovereign because of his extravagance but also because of famous art collections, created the Bohemian Kingdom as the centre of his empire and the centre of whole Europe and Prague became the capitol of the monarchy. But unfortunately, after the Battle of the Bílá Hora in 1620 and during the Thirty Year’s War, which took place throughout Europe, Prague became only the provincial city.
    Another important sovereigns of Habsburg dynasty were Queen Maria Teresia and her son, Roman Emperor Joseph II, who prefer the rule of ‘the Enlightenment’  . In this time the country was strongly germanised.
During the 2nd half of the 19th century the Czech language became important again and the modern Czech nation grew up.
At the end of the WW I, the Australian-Hungarian Empire fell and in October 28, 1918 the Czechoslovakia Republic was established under the leadership of the first Czech President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. New chapter in the history of our country began. Our republic was a democratic capitalistic state and one of the strongest economic power in the world. Unfortunately, Hitler’s fascism and W W II put the end to this promising development.
The Munich Treaty in 1938 attributed the border of Bohemian territory to Germany and in March 1939 the rest of our state was occupied by the Germans. The Czechoslovakia was liberated by the Russian Red and US Armies in May 1945.
    The new post-war period in Europe, which was one of the results of the WW II, was also unfavourable for Czechoslovakia. In February 1948 the Communist Party sized the power and together with other states of central and eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia became a satellite of the USSR. The 1950s are known as the period of ‘red terror’ with many political trials and the ‘Personality Cult’.
On August 21, 1968 the whole country was occupied by the Warsaw Pact Troops in order to stop democratic reforms in our country. The 1970s are known as the period of ‘normalisation’ when many non-conformists had to leave the country.
After 40 years of totalitarian depression, on November 17, 1989 ‘the Velvet Revolution’ started in Prague and huge demonstrations of hundreds thousand Praguers woke up the whole nation. For several years now, the Czech nation have had their freedom again. The Czechs can take part in private business, they can go as tourist abroad to the West, they are no longer slaves of a foreign power.

    But for the time being nobody knows when the Czech economy will be able to compete with the West, when air and water will be pure, when border mountains will be covered with new forests, when criminality will fall etc. Now the country is trying to follow democratic principles, but it isn’t always easy. Our state still suffers from a lack   of political and moral culture.


Places of interest

    There are really plenty of interesting places in our republic. In my opinion the most spectacular and famous for visited are those places, which belong to special UNICEF fond. There are the worth seeing, often very old and - in its category - quite extraordinary places and objects such as: the historical centre of Prague, the historical centre of Moravian towns Telč and Slavonice, the Chapel of St.John Nepomucký on Zelená Hora near Žďár-upon-Sázava and the natural reservation Pálava in southern Moravia.
    Tourists can walk around preserved old castles or ruins such as Karlštejn, Křivoklát, Konopiště, Zvíkov, Lednice, Hluboká and many others. Worth seeing are also the old Czech monasteries and sacred buildings - e.g. the Monastery in Zlatá Koruna or the Monastery in Vyšší Brod in the southern Bohemia.
    In the Czech Republic there are many famous and world-known spas too - e.g. Carlsbad, Marienbad in Western Bohemia or Luhačovice in Moravia.
Almost every city and town has its own historical centre and every Czech village in the countryside has its church or chapel built mainly in baroque style.


Economy
   
The Czech economy, after more than 40 years under a state monopoly system, is trying to reconstruct into prosperous free market system. The country tries to follow the principles of democracy and hopes that by the year 2000 it will became a partner state of Europe. The most important part of our economy is engineering (cars, trams, locomotives, agriculture machines etc.). Other important branches are metallurgical and chemical industries and of course tourism.
The CR is an industrial county with big reserves mainly in brown (but also in black) coal, but it haven’t’t got reserves of petroleum and natural gas as well as ore resources. Textile and glass industries have a long traditions as do cut glass, china and food productions.
The main items of our agriculture are wheat, maize, sugar-beat, grapes, hops and fruit. In animal production cattle-breeding and pig-beading are the most important but also fish-breading, especially capr-breeding, has a long tradition in Southern Bohemian in many ponds. The CR is world known in beer brewing.