APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5
A Star-Crossed People (u/ou)
Czechoslovakia's population may be aging, but at least it is less ethnically complex than it was only a generation ago. In an effort to provide the country with some natural protection against potentially hostile neighbors, the elder statesmen of Versailles gave their creation borders—for the most part historic—that generally follow mountain ridges and major rivers. By so doing, however, they also endowed the Czechoslovak state with large groups of people who were neither Czech nor Slovak and whose existence was subsequently used to justify irredentist territorial claims. Individuals of German extraction, for example, accounted for slightly more than 22% of the population, far outnumbering the Slovaks. Another 11% was composed of Hungarians, Ruthenians, and various lesser minority groups. But as a result of the territorial and population adjustments which followed World War II—the most significant of which were the mass expulsion of Germans, the resettlement of large numbers of Hungarians, and the loss of the country's easternmost province (Ruthenia) to the U.S.S.R.—Czechoslovakia is not almost solidly Slavic. The dominant Czechs now make up about 65% of the population, and the Slovaks about 30%. A half million or Hungarians for the most part concentrated in Slovakia near the border of their ethnic homeland, constitute the largest remaining minority group.
The Czechs and the Slovaks are descendants of a western Slav group that migrated into the general area of their present homeland from beyond the Carpathian Mountains before the sixth century A.D. Much of the region had been occupied earlier by Celtic tribes, from one of which, the Boii, Bohemia and the adjacent German state of Bavaria derive their names. The Celts were gradually supplanted by Germanic groups, and in the seventh century, the Slavic tribes banded together for the first time under a single leader—a merchant named Samo—in order to fend off both the Franks and raiding Avar tribesmen from Asia. For a while, they were successful. But Samo's kingdom, which embraced Bohemia, Moravia, and part of modern-day Austria, died with him in 685 A.D. For the next 100 years, the history of the Czech and Slovak peoples was scarred by Avar domination and periodic Frankish incursions.
In the early ninth century, however, following the defeat of the Avars by the Franks under Charlemagne, the Czechs and the Slovaks once again emerged from the shadows. Czech princes established what soon became known as the Great Moravian Empire and, in 863, invited Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methods to visit their domain and convert their subjects to Christianity. By then, the empire was one of the largest states in Europe. Centered on Moravia and Slovakia and covering a very respectable share of the central and eastern portions of the continent, it showed promise of becoming a permanent fixture of the political scene. Internal discord over succession gradually weakens it, however, and over time, the locus of political power began shifting westward to Bohemia, where the Prague-based Premyslid princely house was gaining strength. Finally, in 906, defeat by Magyar forces that had invaded Slovakia brought the Moravian Empire down altogether.
The Czech lands survived this catastrophe relatively unscathed. The Premyslid princes succeeded in establishing the independent duchy—later kingdom—of Bohemia and quickly incorporated Moravia into their domain. The Slovaks, on the other hand, had no such luck. Their homeland was annexed by Hungary in 973, an event that ushered them into nearly 10 centuries of uninterrupted isolation and repression.
The Bohemian state is generally regarded as the direct predecessor of modern Czechoslovakia. Indeed, the statue and name of one of its earliest rulers, Prince Vaclav (later sainted and still widely celebrated as the "Good King Wenceslas" whose exploits are recorded in a traditional English Christmas carol) somewhat incongruously continue to grace the main square in Communist Prague today. Although few of Vaclav's successors won greater fame, their influence in shaping the distinctive character and outlook of the Czech people was no less profound.
Under the Premyslids, who ruled until 1306, the Kingdom of Bohemia entered into a loose relationship with the Holy Roman Empire, thus beginning an association with Germanic lands to the west that has affected Czech political and cultural life ever since.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110008-5
