APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5
Land of Forests and Factories (u/ou)
Comprising the historic provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, modern Czechoslovakia is a long and narrow landlocked nation about equal in area to New York State. By almost any measure—location, climate, drainage, or vegetation—it can be characterized as constituting the very heart of Europe. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that geography has played a key role in shaping the political and economic evolution of the country's inhabitants, both before and after they achieved independence. The strategic location of their homeland athwart some of the oldest and most significant trade routes in Europe has traditionally invited intervention by powerful neighbors. And together with the area's long division between Austrian and Magyar overlords, marked variations in weather and terrain have contributed to the growth of the economic disparities and cultural differences which still cause friction between the Czechs and Slovaks today.
For its size, Czechoslovakia exhibits an unusual variety of physical and climatic features. In the west, the Bohemian basin—the core of the so-called Czech Lands—consists primarily of a rolling fertile plateau with broad river valleys and intervening forested divides. Its hilly to mountainous rimlands are extensions of mountain systems further to the west, and the natural transportation routes through them have traditionally oriented the region and its inhabitants toward the western part of Europe. Bohemia's climate, influenced by the maritime weather systems that predominate over western Europe, tends to be somewhat milder than that of most of the rest of the country. Another distinctive feature of Bohemia is the radial convergence of its streams toward Prague in the center. All are tributaries of the Elbe, which drains the region northward and provides a water route to the North Sea. As a whole, the Bohemian region is extensively cultivated, and its northern and western reaches—where there are long-exploited coal and iron deposits and more recently discovered uranium fields—are heavily industrialized.
The Moravian lowlands, also traditional Czech domain, form a distinct transitional zone between the Bohemian basin and Slovakia. A considerably portion of Moravia is hilly, but its valleys—most of which trend towards the Moravian Gate (a strategic gap between the Sudeten Mountains and the Carpathian Alps)—provide the best avenues for north-south communication in central Europe. North of the low divide which separates the headwaters of the Baltic-bound Oder and the southward-flowing Morava, the region exhibits some of the physical and climatic characteristics of the Bohemian rimlands. Four-fifths of Moravia lies south of that divide, however, and the weather conditions and terrain features there resemble those of the neighboring lowland areas of southern Slovakia. Moreover, the soils in central and southern Moravia are generally very fertile, and, unlike the forested and marginally productive northern uplands, the area is extensively cultivated. Despite these physical variations, however, most of Moravia is densely populated. In part this reflects the area's historic importance as a hub of commercial activity, but its coal deposits and favorable location favored its early industrialization as well. The first major facilities for manufacturing and metallurgy in what is now Czechoslovakia were built in northernmost Moravia. And while, with active Austrian encouragement, factories and furnaces soon spread westward, Moravia's impressive array of urban industrial centers still nearly matches that of Bohemia.
Slovakia, which makes up the eastern two-fifths of the country, has a few rather sizable pockets of fertile lowland in the south, but unlike Bohemia and
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5
