Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; COUNTRY PROFILE CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5.pdf/11

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5

Overlooking the forested Moravian Beskydies are the Slovak Carpathians. The wealth of forest land in Slovakia has given rise to large wood processing works.

Moravia, it is predominantly mountainous. Its rugged highlands extend in a thick arc from the Danube in the southwest to the Soviet frontier in the east, attaining their highest elevations and greatest beauty in the craggy High Tatras mountain chain which forms part of Czechoslovakia's border with Poland. Much of this rough terrain is also heavily forested, and although it poses no insurmountable obstacle to communication, it has reinforced the effects of a thousand years of unenlightened Magyar rule in isolating the Slovaks from western European influence and in retarding their economic development. Drainage is to the Black Sea via the Danube, and since Slovakia's principal communication routes follow the river valleys that penetrate deeply into its mountainous backbone from the Danubian Plain in the south, its natural orientation is toward Hungary and the Balkans. This, in turn, together with the difficulties involved in tapping the region's timber and mineral resources, has contributed to the area's slow rate of industrialization and thus to the economic and cultural differences which set the relatively provincial and tradition-bound Slovaks apart from their more urbanized and sophisticated Czech cousins.

Even in today's age of modern technology, the stubborn facts of geography have hampered Prague's efforts to hasten Slovakia's economic and social development. True, Bratislava and the Vah valley have become the core of a small but highly diversified industrial belt which, with its new petrochemical, machine tool, and steel plants, now complements the traditionally important agricultural economy of the intensively cultivated lowland regions. But despite the local impact of large forestry and mining operations, Slovakia's mountainous hinterland is still a predominantly backward and sparsely populated area, and the people there still live in comparative isolation.

Viewed as a whole, however, Czechoslovakia has attained a rather advanced level of economic development and, over the years, the process of growth has placed increasingly heavy demands on the nation's natural and human resources. While a variety of other important industrial minerals—including tungsten, lead, copper, gold, silver, zinc, and low grade iron ore—continue to be mined, only magnesite and uranium ore (the latter almost totally earmarked for export to the Soviet Union) are being produced in sufficient quantities at present to meet the country's requirements. In some respects, at least, the energy picture is considerably brighter. Both hard and soft coal are still in relatively abundant supply, and hydroelectric power sources are being developed. On the other hand, there is little oil or natural gas anywhere in Czechoslovakia. In fact, locally produced petroleum products account for less than 5% of domestic consumption.

With a population estimated in 1973 at only a little under 14.5 million—less than half that of Poland and well under that of the German Democratic Republic, Eastern Europe's geographically compact industrial giant—Czechoslovakia has also felt a manpower pinch. This problem is not attributably to the modest number of its inhabitants alone, however. Government-sponsored urban migration has seriously depleted the country's agricultural work force, a development which has contributed in no small way to the continuing inability of the modern and extensive agricultural sector to produce enough food to meet domestic needs. At the same time, Czechoslovakia's low rate of population growth—also at least partly a byproduct of the modernization process—has helped to depress the nation's overall manpower pool by bringing about a rise in the median age of the population.

5

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5