The region that was to become the Czech Republic has been part of a number of
empires, including the Great Moravian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire and the
Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire. After the fall of the Hapsburgs, the Czech
experience with parliamentary democracy was brief. Given over to Nazi Germany by
the West as part of the 1938 Munich Agreement, Czechoslovakia (the union of the
Czech and Slovak Republics) underwent occupation and partition. Independence was
restored with the defeat of Germany in World War II, but the country quickly
fell under the dominance of the Soviet Union. Long a center for experimentation
in central Europe, Czechoslovakia tried to make socialism work in the mid 1960s.
Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek's reformist policies, called "socialism with a
human face," ended when Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968.
Thereafter, the country suffered under one of the most oppressive and hard-line
governments in the Soviet Bloc.
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the
Czech hard-liners lost their protector. Mass demonstrations in 1989 shook the
government and finally brought about its collapse. The culmination of this
Velvet Revolution, as it was called, came when playwright Vaclav Havel was
elected president in 1989.
All troubles did not end with the ouster of the Communists, however. Slovaks
protested against the new Czech-dominated government. The country was
reorganized as the Czech and Slovak Federated Republic, but tensions remained
between the two areas. They were prompted in part by personal and political
differences between powerful Czech prime minister Vaclav Klaus and Slovak leader
Vladimir Meciar. On 31 December 1992, the two areas officially became separate
countries. Since then, Havel has twice been re-elected president of the Czech
Republic.
The economic boom that continued through the mid 1990s gave way to corruption
and lax financial regulation by the end of the decade. But the economy has
improved in recent years, and foreign investment is bolstering regions of the
country decimated by privatization of state-run industries. High-tech firms are
also cropping up, turning the Czech Republic—and especially Prague—into a
technology center for the region. Underlying all this revitalization is the
government's push for entrance into the European Union.
