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Transition, fragmentation, recomposition

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Violette Rey

Czechoslovakia. Transition, Fragmentation, Recomposition

Current Events and Geographical Problematics

Violette Rey

Texte intégral

« The most severe crisis broke out in the immediate wake of Independence (1920). So many diverse possibilities suddenly lay before us and, with them, so many temptations ; our life proved unable to resist these winds of change. »
J. Patocka,
Czech Culture in Europe, 1939

  • 1 As a matter of fact, the most commonly-used new appellation since 1993 is « Ceskà Republika », espe (...)

1In 1990 there was the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Then came the period of the Czecho-Slovak Republic. And now, since January 1, 1993, there is the Czech Republic, Cechy, and the Slovak Republic, Slovensko1. Such, first of all, has been the transition from Communism for the society residing on the territory of former Czechoslovakia. The break-up of territory has been pacific, of a political nature, and seemingly unanticipated by the majority of the population. No attempt was made to sollicit public opinion by means of a democratic vote, nor were any popular demonstrations organized in opposition to these changes.

2We will consider the geographical dimension of this complex and multifaceted question from a variety of angles. When, as here, events of a political nature result in the redrawing of the map and cause spatial organization to be put into question, geography comes to represent a significant part of the larger dossier. The old spatial dynamics are modified ; some are obstructed ; others, valorized. The territorial aspect of the break-up, its position at the center of Europe, even earlier attempts to achieve it, raise fundamental questions about integration and geographic discontinuities, as well the mechanisms for territorial auto-organization.

Transition, Fragmentation and the Bifurcation of Europe of the Entre-Deux

3By situating the break-up of Czechoslovakia within its particular spatial and temporal context and by considering it within a logical framework, we will be able to shed some light on the subject without doing injustice to the uniqueness of the experience lived by each collectivity or to the particularity of historical circumstances.

4An initial question arrests our attention : how could such a separation into two states and two territories have taken place in the absence of tremendous popular demand ? The paradigm of systems dynamics provides a conceptual framework within which this strangeness, this unexpected bifurcation – neither wished nor prepared for – might be comprehended. Phenomena of this sort appear in contexts « far from a state of equilibrium » : a modest fluctuation can lead to real rupture, i.e., to a change of state and a new trajectory with no return to the previous one. That which represents the situation « far from a state of equilibrium » is easily discerned here, in the context of a crisis produced by the dissolution of the soviet system. In the transition which followed, political tension between certain Czech and Slovak leaders effectively constituted these modest yet decisive fluctuations, as evidenced by the political separation which resulted, along with the emergence of two states destined to follow as yet unknown courses. We need to look at the preparatory signs that were the forerunners of separation to see that this formal proposition to interpret « that which might not have taken place » (separation) is not contradicted. Fluctuation was transformed into disunity bifurcation because alternative structures existed which were coherent enough to seize upon and convert it. It had, indeed, been a curious federation, composed of just two elements and bom in the aftermath of the repression of Prague Spring (1968) ; hardly noticed outside of the country, the new union was received with considerable reserve within. For a full twenty years, it functioned by combining at least two orders of reality : on the one hand, that of a puppet federation whose most important decisions were made by the Communist Party, which attempted to centralize power and was obedient to the Soviets ; and on the other, that of more self-centered local practices which were influenced by a fast-developing Slovak identity. Strongly indicative of this latter was the publication in 1983 of the Atlas of Slovakia – a very complete work devoted exclusively to just one of the two members of the federation.

5Well incorporated into the twentieth century, this disunity, which took place during the period of post-communist transition, signaled the end of a political experience that had lasted just three quarters of a century (1918-1993). It also announced the failure of an attempt to combine into a single State two Western Slavic peoples which had existed for centuries as distinct groups with distinct territories and histories : Bohemia-Moravia had been under Austrian control since the beginning of the sixteenth century, while Slovakia had been a part of the Hungarian Kingdom since the twelfth century. In this light, we might wonder to what extent we ought to reconsider the term « fragmentation, » which is perhaps less well suited than it would seem to describe this phenomenon.

6It is in this way that the phenomenon of Czecho-Slovakian rupture participates in an group of processes which are particular to an entre-deux space – in this case, Europe of the Entre-Deux. The notion of « entre-deux » makes it possible for three categories of properties to be joined which, together, define a specific mode of interaction and a kind of spatial system (Rey, 1992, 1994). The first category of properties corresponds to a geographic situation in which certain forces come into play, whose distant origins are beyond the local area and whose power is an obstacle for indigenous organizational capacities. The ever external character of the association of the Czech and Slovak spaces belongs to this category. In the twentieth century alone, this was the role first played by the vanquishers of the First World War, who supported the principle of union (the 1920 Constitution, strong support by French politicians), and then played by the vanquishers of the Second World War with the full weight of the USSR. Each time foreign influence was eased, however, the fragility of the association broke open, while indigenous forces, weakened by earlier, long-lasting pressures, struggled to build their own model with the few means available to them.

7The second category of entre-deux properties involves a transitional situation, the place in which innovations and changes appeared and were first initiated the full development of which would take place elsewhere, where the necessary conditions for such flourishing were better. The initial Reformation of Catholicism and the movement created by Jan Huss, the climax of which would take place outside of Bohemia, ought to be included in this category. Also included here is the failure, since the nineteenth century, of attempts to introduce the Western model of the Nation-State, because national cohesion preceded statehood – the reverse of the process in the West. In this last decade of the twentieth century, a fragmentation/recomposition of the cells of the State is starting up in « the late » Eastern Europe ; we might wonder to what extent Western Europe will be touched or spared by this european phenomenon which might be considered « new and innovative » because it breaks with the double tendancy of the past era to recognize both the intangibility of borders and the coalescence of several states into one. No one knows how this movement bom in Entre-Deux Europe will be answered. We hope that it will help to establish new models for reconciling feelings of national identity with the political management of territory, in order to create a Europe that is wealthier in Nations than in States.

8A third category of entre-deux properties is inscribed in the experience of time and duration, principally as a matter of new beginnings and cyclical repetition which works against the process of accumulation and never allows enough time for the processes of integration to get into gear. Here too, the experience of beginning over is a familiar one for the populations who inhabit Czecho-slovakian space, as evidenced, in particular, by their near-obligation, from an economic point of view, to reconsider their relations with their immediate neighbor, Germany, which has once again assumed the role of principal interlocutor and investor.

Fragmentation, Discontinuity, the Self and the Other

9This separation that grows out of seventy-five years of aggregation – or rather, this graft that did not take between Czech and Slovak regions, has brought other dilemmas and paradoxes evident to light.

10The dilemma of identification bears on feelings of belonging, and on one’s sense of self and of the other. When the unitary state of Czechoslovakia was coming into being, emancipation from control by Austria and Hungary was at stake. However great the tensions might have been between the Slovak and Czech elites, a shared identity as West Slavs – the unity of peoples of the same linguistic branch in the face of the Germanic influence – prevailed. Yet this extremely new political unity did not substantially contribute to a truly « Czechoslovakian » identity, insofar as both peoples preserved a sense of an « ethnic » national identity in addition to, and quite distinct from, their sense of citizenship. No national elites has really tried to promote this new possible citizenship. A review of demographic evolutions over the last century particular to each community will provide certain points of reference which will facilitate reflection on this complex question of allegiances and identification, as well as of the possible – or improbable – shift from one object of identification to another.

11Over the course of the twentieth century, the demographic poles between the Czech and Slovak sections were inverted. Up until the First World War, the populations of Bohemia-Moravia enjoyed considerable vitality. They benefited from better sanitary conditions and full employment, including industrial expansion, and they expressed their identity ever more forcefully vis-a-vis the local German populations. Meanwhile, the overwhelmingly rural and agriculturally-based Slovak populations were being depleted by a high mortality rate and emigration to America. These dynamics were inversed by a time-lag in the demographic transition : the natural growth in the Western area leveled off much more quickly than in the Slovak area ; the closing of the doors of emigration to far-off places by the socialist regime also served to bolster the Slovak population in comparison with its Czech counterpart. Such a change in factors could hardly fail to influence mechanisms of identification and feelings of belonging, particularly as they took place at the same time as the principal political change, the achievement of complete independence.

12The paradox of integration even more directly concerns Czechoslovakian territorial construction. Any state power anxious to maintain its power will attempt to organize and manage the territory in such a way that each regional part will feel a solidarity with the national whole. It will thus act in ways that favored homogenization and integration over those that contributed to differentiation and fragmentation. For the new Czech state, the task was tremendous in 1918, as again in 1945 : two unities had to be united which had been governed for centuries either by Vienna or Budapest, and beyond Prague, located far to the west of a territory stretched out longitudinally ; the tremendous disparities in conditions and standard of living and training between the Czech and Slovak areas had to be reduced ; after 1945, moreover, a complete flow reversal had to be effectuated to the benefit of the new, exclusive orientation towards the USSR. The task was indeed an extraordinary one, and when the relative evening out of standards of living, equipment networks and the generalization of the flow of goods and persons are properly taken into account, the results appear no less great. In quantitative terms, measured by economic and social indicators, overall integration of different parts of the state was never so pronounced as in the 1980’s – the decade which ended with disunity ! This paradoxical result encourages us to reconsider the symbolic integration, which had taken hold to a much lesser extent and was also, perhaps, progressively less and less sought by a growing segment of the population. To a significant degree, the political and territorial organization and developments under socialism created only a simulacrum of integration and contributed to the gradual collapse of structures for cohesion. This took place by means of two mechanisms. On the one hand, imposed identification with the socialist State and the international proletarian cause resulted in the profound intensification of the need to be rooted in the identity of the preceding era. On the other hand, the application of the principal of « divide in order to rule » – the special tool of all political authority, and especially of an external power – played on these two modes of identification on a national level.

13In the shifting of demographic poles no less than in the modalities of integration, contact between the Czech and Slovak regions continued to serve as the inflection line of phenomena, and often as the line of discontinuity. The previous political border, from before 1918, continued in myriad ways to act as filter, barrier and means of rupture. While it is true that geographic discontinuity was reduced, awareness of its existence remained. It is in this way that a very concrete line can once again come to constitute the boundary of new political territories in which, on a more modest scale, the new attempts are made to put into effect processes of territorial auto-organization which had not been fully successful at the level of Czechoslovakia as a whole. These processes of auto-organization, operating on a reduced scale, have to address two new types of spatial constraints : the residual elements of the former Czechoslovakian spatial construction which had formed a great many ties (how will they affect the territorial configurations to come – as brakes, or as continuous links ?) ; and the particularities associated with a small territory which is nonetheless laden with the symbolic value of an entire nation-state. A new relation between the center and its parts and a reformulation of the degree of centralization/decentralization of the political regime must still be worked out ; already a tendency is developing to subdivide once again the administrative space into numerous small units. We would be wrong to interpret this as simply the desire to undo the fabric of the former regime, nor even to reweave that of the regime which preceded it. Rather, we should also see here the need to manifest broad diversity over the new territory – as the expression of a complete and complex whole.

Recomposition and Auto-Organization : On What Scale ?

14The articles collected here incorporate different theoretical perspectives and are broadly indicative of the range of approaches taken in the social sciences – from quantified modelization to « objective » analyses of cultural markers and finally to more subjective methods involving lived experiences and behaviors. They are mutually concerned with identifying, situating and evaluating phenomena which contribute to geographic differentiation, in order better to understand how concrete differences, which yield mechanisms for territorial auto-organization, maintain and renew themselves.

15The legislative elections of June 1992 flashed out fully what had been more modestly outlined in the free elections of June 1990. In the first series of elections, no political party succeeded in carrying the territory as a whole in a « federal » manner ; both republics of the federation initiated participation in the transition with their own system of political expression. In June 1992, the liberal party headed by the Prime Minister, V. Klaus, won a clear victory in the Czech territories, and the Slovak Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister V. Meciar, did the same in Slovakia. Separation was becoming a concrete reality.

16These studies were conducted between 1990 and 1992 by young scholars who occasionally let their personal sensibilities and preferences show through in their commentaries. They never go so far as to compromise basic scientific rigor, however, which is maintained by verifiable scientific data drawn from sources which were critically examined ahead of time. In this beginning of the transition, we tried to spot localized outcomes, in their aleatory, unstable dimensions, as the seeds of developments which only the future will reveal. These studies also belong, however, to scientific programs which were defined before 1990 relating to questions of the environment and the quality of life, to feelings of identity associated with territories and to methods for the spatial analysis of discontinuities. The articles are divided into three groups.

17The first part bears upon economic transition over the whole of Czechoslovakian territory, on the shift from a centrally-planned economy to a market one including unemployment and large-scale privatization. These are the most precise indicators of the major turning point betweeen two systems. Neither unemployment nor privatization had been seen before by citizens bom after the Second World War, and each is wholly indicative of the new economic direction which the two new countries would take.

18In « Regional Differentiation of Unemployment, » J. Tomes stresses the initial imbalance between the Czech territories, which had been less affected by unemployment, and Slovakia, along with the intensification of this imbalance throughout 1992 and into 1993 and thus the rapid divergence in the evolution of the two countries. When an initial map of unemployment was first drawn, covering 118 districts, certain significant associations became apparent, while other less forseeable relations could not be ruled out. The major factor involved local social situations. Of particular importance was a characteristic and well-known social pathology in the regions which had experienced major settlement traumatisms (the Sudetes) and/or had considerable Gypsy populations. In Slovakia, in contrast, the frequently stressed relation between the high incidence of unemployment and the country’s particular industrial structure (arms and semi-finished products industries) proved to be more complex and less direct than previously thought : unemployment patterns in the two sections do not correspond.

19In contrast to Hungary and Poland, which are already a good deal more involved in the internationalization of their economies (joint ventures) and in competitive practices, the Federal State of Czechoslovakia developed an original method of privatization : the sale of stock coupons, initially distributed equally to all adult citizens. This model carries a strong social connotation and has even served as a model for other Eastern countries. This, then, is the first step of the « Great Privatization* discussed by S. Rehak and V. Rey. On the basis of an analysis of the characteristics of 1,491 large companies which were auctioned off, the authors determine the extent of participation by various parts of society. The levels of participation are a direct function of the different sectors of economic activity as well as the geographic areas involved : the Czechs participated to a greater extent, especially in the case of companies located in Czech territory (80 % of purchases). At that particular moment in the disassembly of the economic monolith of the State, the authors put forth the hypothesis that the geography of privatization at its outset will greatly determine the industrial configuration of the future.

20The initial diffusion of the two principal manifestations of economic transition – unemployment and the great privatization – highlight the hard and fast rule of the gradient of economic slowdown oriented from West to East ; this spatial gradient issues from the mechanisms of interaction within Europe which can be interpreted according to a « center/periphery » model. Bohemia has regained the advantages it once possessed – thanks to its geographic position as a neighbor to Germany – and which, of course, are unavailable to Slovakia.

21The second part bears on phenomena which existed before the change in system and political disunion. Factors of religion and migration are studied over time. An imbalance between social and spatial time appears, one which is too often neglected and often represents a source of errors in evaluations of events and in the dimensions attributed to them.

22In « Emerging Boundaries of the Past », P. Danek addresses differentiation along religious and ethnic lines. The subject had been taboo under the socialist regime, which had eliminated religious affiliation from censuses, though it had constituted a primary element of social group identity in the past. Now, the religious dimension is once again taken into account in all interpretations of the changes at work in the East. The religious factor is in fact the example par excellence of a cultural phenomenon which takes place over time and which is susceptible to relatively dormant periods and periods of significant recovery. Covering the entire period of the twentieth century, P. Danek describes the differentiated evolutions within which other.latent forms of social fragmentation, resulting from adhesion to different systems of values can be traced. He shows, for example, that Catholic homogenization, which had peaked at the beginning of the twentieth century (95 % in 1910) after three centuries of active Counter Reform which strove to eliminate the Hussite movement from Bohemia, saw its base begin to erode once Habsburg control ended (78 % in 1930). In the 1991 census, declared atheists outnumbered declared Catholics by a small margin (40 % versus 39 %). Nothing in these dynamics, however, refers back to spatial configurations which extend beyond the bounds of the territorial framework of the State, as is the case with the economic transition. Rather a lateral division becomes apparent between North Bohemia, which has more atheists, and the more Catholic South Bohemia – suggesting that a rereading of the Reform of the sixteenth century along spatial lines might be necessary.

23In a relative sense, the inverse is the case in Slovakia, so often identified as Catholic and yet which proves to have a more diverse composition of religious affiliations. In Central and Eastern Europe, ethnicity and religion are so closely tied together as to appear as a specific characteristic of their societies ; in Czechoslovakia, they function in two ways. Slovakia has remained faithful to its past, with a usually Calvinist Hungarian minority and a Ukrainian minority which is Greek-Catholic or Orthodox. The ethnic homogenization which took place in the Czech territories in the present century (the elimination of the German minority) was accompanied by religious re-diversification. A particularly surprising development was the emergence of a demand for recognition of a Moravian ethnicity (1.3 million or 33 % of the population of Moravia). This was indeed a new development, and not simply a renewal from the past ; it was an integral part of the process of transition/decomposition of the former political system. Seizing upon the moment of major change, and using the current respect for minorities to its advantage, this Moravian attitude speaks of a wish to return to the tradition of autonomous local management, which predated the creation of the Czechoslovak State (1918), when there was no need to « stand up to Prague ».

24The dynamics of domestic migrations over the thirty-year period from 1960 to 1990, as seen by N. Cattan and C. Grasland, raise the question of the collapse of social relations between Bohemia and Slovakia at the end of the socialist era. Since international mobility was essentially impeded during this time, only domestic migrations and unequal natural population growth were factors in the differentiated evolution of population densities and the formation of concentrated population zones and depopulation zones. In the decades following the Second World War, coincident with increasingly urban industrialization, significant internal migrations led to the repopulation of the regions Germans had been chased out of and underlay the development of industrial centers. Displacements from rural areas to cities, from one region to another and from one category of city to another : these are the forms of a domestic mobility whose « natural laws » have been dissected by numerous studies – which have also translated their interaction into models. Discussing these tools of model construction, the authors have put forth the hypothesis that political affiliation is a powerful factor in the modification of patterns and trajectories of migration. They have created a model which allows simple effects of spatial interaction (the gravity model) to be dissociated from effects of political interaction. The model reveals the extent to which migrations increasingly took place within the two political sub-groups of Bohemia and Slovakia over a thirty-year period in which mobility was generally declining, essentially reducing contacts between the two territories. This autonomous reorganization of flow patterns thus participates in the continuing process of recomposition of spatial differences.

25The third part bears upon the local level, not in order to provide examples, but rather because it is there that elementary social patterns of behavior are established. It is on the local level that, through a complex game of adaptation, resistance and innovation, individuals define the bounds of their territoriality on a daily basis. So elementary a level of analysis is particularly important in these early stages in the transition from communism, while the totalitarian yoke is still being broken, as individuals become free once again to define their own attitudes and as private enterprises are bom.

26In her article on « Transition and Geographic Contexts : Czech Rural Areas, » G. Zrinscak chooses not to consider the question from the usual angle adopted in case studies – monographs of villages or businesses in the early stages of transition. Rather, she approaches it from the angle of the geographic context : that set of localized conditions, at once constraints and advantages which the potential new rural actors will have to take into account. We will recall that transition in rural areas refers to the transformation of a socialist agricultural system, constituted by giant, bureaucratic production units in which tasks were minutely parceled ; a plethora of individual, independent enterprises in which a spirit of initiative and so many « spontaneous » areas of competency – agronomic know-how, management abilities, commercial talents – have to take the place of the previous giant ones and of obedience to Ministerial orders concerning production and organization. However, no rush to become involved in private and independent agriculture was recorded. It quickly became clear that the simple restoration of the status of private landowner does not suffice to give birth to a farmer or a entrepreneur when the financial means to build a new economic business are not also provided and when there has been no insertion into networks of information and relations. In an overall context in which incertitude weighs so heavily and so much has been inherited from the previous system, the slowdown in the emergence of new farmers reflects the absence of real alternative models which potential farmers could use to orient new undertakings. The hypothesis that future farmers will conduct with a certain rationality (already expressed on a macro level by the slow responses to privatization) supposes that they will quite decisively take into account the potentials of the local geographic contexts within which their agricultural activities will necessarily be based. Hence is the need for a critical analysis of the content of these geographic contexts, for which priority of observation is given to levels of populations density, degrees of pluri-activity and types of ownership structures inherited from the socialist system. Everything leads one to believe that the agricultural and rural transition will first of all be a phenomenon of rapid spatial redifferentiation, resulting in more heterogeneous local territories.

27The final two articles begin with an evaluation of the geographic contexts within which attitudes and patterns of behavior are established. They then look at the perceptions of the contexts themselves and at the potential structure of spatial behavior which can result. The studies are most directly concerned with how the inhabitants of particular localities evaluate and respond to the properties of their immediate environment ; individual economic factors were not solicited. Indeed, economic initiative is such a new element in the equation that its contours are just beginning to be defined, while the dream of a better place of residence and the eventual realization of that dream had already become increasingly fervent matters under the old system as a result of the accelerated deterioration of the environment. Throughout Central Europe, of course, pollution and its effects on the quality of life had become a problem of extraordinary magnitude : on maps of Europe which show pollution indicators, the epicenter is always somewhere between Bohemia and Silesia. Consequently, it should hardly be surprising that questions of the environment and of the quality of life are central for many Czech and Slovak geographers or that one of their first projects they accomplished as scientists and as citizens of the post-communist era was the production of an Atlas of the Environment (1992) intended as a tool for analysis and decision-making.

28The method of choice for these studies concerning the environment is the opinion survey, a technique quite new to Eastern Europe, depending, as it does, on freedom of speech. V. Ira’s study on « The Environment as a Factor in Perceptions of the Quality of Life in Industrial Regions » and D. Kollar’s study of « Perceptions of the Quality of Life and Geographic Migrations : The Case of the Rural Population Around Bratislava » take a direct look at the attitudes and behavior of individuals. They attempt to determine the degree to which inhabitants’ perceptions of the quality of life in certain localities rationally influence their decisions about where to reside. The structure of responses allows for an identification of forces leading toward spatial differentiation/segregation and those contributing to more uniform appreciation of the quality of life. In the mining region of Homa Nitra, V. Ira has determined that health is the first-priority consideration in inhabitants perceptions of the quality of life, followed by the environment ; manifestations of environmental deterioration, such as air and water pollution, are considered as more significant than their causes or than longer-term manifestations ; perceptions of environmental deterioration tend to result in potential mobility more than in actual changes of residence, which are generally impeded by other factors which tie inhabitants to their localities.

29In D. Kollar’s study of rural areas around the Slovak capital of Bratislava, « topophilia » and « topophobia » have revealed the great extent to which birthplace and family networks are considered to be principal factors in perceptions of the quality of life (... hence a propensity to maintain stability of residence), as are mistrust and rejection of large cities. Increasingly important considerations, with respect to the question of residential mobility, include a natural and unpolluted environment and a peaceful social climate – of the same ethnic composition : these factors can affect changes in residential mobility and help shape a more heterogeneous social space. The article makes apparent the complexity of the phenomenon of socio-spatial change, caught between forces which maintain present configurations and those of a potential social mobility.

30Transition, fragmentation, recomposition... a generation hence, what will become of the two States of Cechy and Slovensko, if the century-long discontinuities between the territories of Slovakia and of Bohemia-Moravia are consolidated into an irreversible structural reality ? The formal logic of Systems Dynamics reminds us that the initial conditions of change are decisive in the shaping of the modalities of the construction that succeeds bifurcation. If we are to understand the rest of the transition, a thorough understanding of the distinct properties of the Slovak the Bohemian-Moravian systems remains fundamental.

Bibliographie

Bibliography

Atlas of the Slovak Socialist Republic, 1983, Academy of Sciences, Bratislava.

Atlas of the Environment and Health of the Population of the C.S.F.R. 1992, 1992, Academy of Sciences, Brno.

BIBO (I.), 1986, Misere des petits Etats de l’Europe de l’est. [Destitution of the Small States of Eastern Europe] (writings from 1942 to 1948, translated from Hungarian), Paris, L’Harmattan, 462 p.

BRUNET (R.), 1967, Les phenomenes de discontinuity geographique. [Phenomena of Geographic Discontinuity] CNRS, Memoires et Documents, 110 p.

HAMPL (M.), GARDAVSKY (V.), KUHNL (K.), 1987, Regionabu struktura a vyvoj systemu osidleni CSR [regional structures and development of the settlement system of the Czech socialist Republic], Prague, University Charles, 250 p.

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REY (V.), 1994, Temps piege et espace geographique dans l’Europe de 1’Entre-Deux [Geographic Space and the Trap of Time]. Que fait le temps a l’affair ? [What’s Time in the Matter ?], Paris, L’Harmattan.

Notes

1 As a matter of fact, the most commonly-used new appellation since 1993 is « Ceskà Republika », especially under its shortened-form CR, and rarely Cechy (Bohême, for Bohemia) or Cesko (Tchequie, For Czecia). Both terms « Pays Tchdques » (Czech Lands) and « Slovaquie » (Slovakia) seem to be the most suitable french appellations.

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