The book focuses on the description and analysis of the historical formation of the Czechoslovak and Czech positions in the international system during the course of the 20th century. The first part of the book presents a brief outline of the history of Czechoslovak foreign policy between the First World War and the end of the Cold War. The authors focus on the key periods and turning points in the role of the small Central European state in the international system as well as on the significant actors formulating Czechoslovak foreign policy from the inside and influencing it from the outside. The second, analytical part of the book focuses on the key issues connected to the change of the position of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after 1993 in world politics, and on the formulation of Czech foreign policy priorities and strategies in the globalized world after the end of bipolar confrontation. The authors analytically investigate the activities of the Czech Republic in (Central) European regional integration processes and the integration of the state in the global system of development cooperation. A great deal of attention is paid to the key political actors of the Czech foreign policy discussion and their impact on the formulation of foreign policy goals. Special attention is paid to the dilemmas of Czech foreign policy: the hesitation between the role of a small state and a medium power and also the span of Czech foreign policy between Atlanticism, anti-Americanism and Europeanization.

This clear, objective introduction to the politics of Czechoslovakia and the successor Czech and Slovak Republics provides a comprehensive analysis of Czechoslovakia in the postcommunist period. Carol Leff builds a framework for understanding the dynamics of the "triple transition": democratization, marketization, and a national transformation that has reconfigured the dynamic between state and nation. She shows how the interaction of these three transformational agendas has shaped Czechoslovakia's development, ultimately culminating in the paradoxical disintegration of a state that most of its citizens wished to preserve. The book offers a valuable case study of a country coming back to Europe, but it also provides an opportunity for analyzing the influence of communism on what had been a significant interwar European state. The book's strong comparative element will make it invaluable as well for those seeking to understand contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.

Czechoslovakia has captured the nation's 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 thereafter was brought down almost magically in 1989. Czechoslovakia added to the international political vocabulary the term, 'Velvet Revolution', and the velvet metaphor has characterised 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 identity, this book not only applauds the successes of the Czech Republic since 1993, but also uncovers the frayed edges of the velvet nation.

Czechoslovakia as a political entity did not come into being until 1918, but the lands comprising modern-day Czechoslovakia have a rich history reaching back many centuries. This text offers at look at the historical background, the geopolitics and Czechoslovakia’s international position, it’s government and politics, economy, education and cultur

In the aftermath of World War Two, approximately three million Sudeten-Germans were expelled from their homes in the former Czechoslovakia because of their part in the dismemberment of the Czechoslovak Republic by Nazi Germany in 1938-39. For many years their representatives, the Sudeten-German Association, attempted in vain to redress the wrong done to their people. However, the end of the Cold War has given a new impetus to their campaign. Currently they attempt to block Czech entry into the EU unless there is restitution of confiscated properties. Jürgen Tampke tells the story of the Sudeten-Germans from the beginning of their settlement seven hundred years ago in what is now the Czech Republic to current times.

Frances Starn is a writer living in Berkeley, California. --Book Jacket.

Looks at the history of the borders in the Czech Republic as a result of political, territorial, and economic disputes, and discusses the Velvet Revolution.