Czech Republic: A Nation of Velvet

Book Description
Czechoslovakia has captured the international imagination throughout the twentieth century. The Allied betrayal of the country to Nazi Germany in 1938 was to demonstrate the appalling consequences of naive appeasement of aggression. The wholesale reform of Soviet communism in the Prague Spring of 1968 won western support, and sympathy when it was crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks. The fierce Communist regime installed thereafter was brought down almost magically in 1989. Czechoslovakia added to international political vocabulary the term "Velvet Revolution", and the velvet metaphor has characterized much of the country's path-breaking postcommunist transformation and its peaceful break-up in 1993.
In separate chapters on history, politics, economics, foreign relations and the new Czech national identity, this book not only applauds the successes of the Czech Republic since 1993, but also uncovers the frayed edges of this velvet nation.


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Throughout the twentieth century Czechoslovakia has captured the international imagination. The Allied betrayal of the country to Nazi Germany in 1938 produced the enduring symbol of Munich as naive appeasement of aggression. The wholesale reform of Soviet communism in the Prague Spring of 1968 won western support, and sympathy when it was crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks. The fierce Communist regime installed thereafter was brought down almost magically in 1989. Czechoslovakia added to international political vocabulary the term "Velvet Revolution", and the velvet metaphor characterized much of the country's path-breaking postcommunist transformation and its peaceful dissolution in 1992." "In separate chapters on history, politics, economics, foreign relations and the new Czech national identity, this book not only applauds the successes of the Czech Republic since 1993, but also uncovers the frayed edges of this velvet nation.


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