The Czechoslovak socialist republic of the 1980s provided any number of contrasts with the Czechoslovak Republic, the multinational Central European state formed in 1918 from the dismantled Austro-Hungarian Empire. Large communities of ethnic minorities, some with strong irredentist leanings, were a major force in the First Republic’s social and political life. As a result of the expulsion of most of the Germans after World War II and the ceding of Carpatho-Ukraine to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia had become predominantly a nation of Czechs and Slovaks, with small minorities of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Ukrainians. Even though Czechoslovakia’s ethnic makeup was simplified, the division between Czechs and Slovaks remained a potent social and political force. During the 1950s and 1960s, planners had put intensive efforts into redressing the economic imbalance between the Czech lands and Slovakia.

Interwar society in Czechoslovakia was a complex amalgam of large landholders, farmers, tenants, landless laborers, and specialists in the nationside and of many major entrepreneurs, a large industrial proletariat, hundreds of thousands of small-scale manufacturers, a various intelligentsia, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and craftsmen in the city. Nevertheless, extremes of wealth and poverty then typical in so much of Eastern Europe were largely absent.

Because of the post-World War II nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture, private ownership virtually became a thing of the past in communist Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia’s much-simplified contemporary social spectrum is made up of collective farmers, workers, the intelligentsia, the communist party elite, and a few private farmers and tradesmen. The reform movement of the late 1960s, popularly dubbed the “Prague Spring,” was an effort mainly by the Czechs to restructure Marxist-Leninist socialism in a way more suitable to their respective historical,cultural, and economic circumstances. “Normalization,” the official label for the government’s efforts to stamp out the remnants of this “counterrevolutionary” movement, was essentially a series of carrot-and-stick measures: far-reaching flushes of those who might have been active in the reform era or remotely dissident in the 1970s, coupled with a concerted effort to placate the majority of the populace with relative material prosperity. In the 1980s, the emphasis remained on stifling dissent while trying to prevent further economic deterioration.

With Prague’s eminence as a beacon of European high-culture, it’s no surprise that its influence spreads throughout the Czech Republic. Have your awe struck by the architectural splendour of castles, squares and old towns. Get a belly-full of the Czech Republic’s finest beer and dumplings and stroll through an old town square, relishing the echoes of a busker’s violin.

Czech art and architecture is famous, but Czechs have also excelled at less noticeable art forms, such as illuminated manuscripts, religious sculpture, and marionette and puppet theatre. The latter was officially approved even in the communist era, and the Czech performances rank among the best in the world.

The most famous Czech writer is undoubtedly Franz Kafka, who, with a circle of other German-speaking Jewish writers in Prague, played a major role in the literary scene at the beginning of this century. Internationally renowned ‘modern’ Czech novelists include Milan Kundera, Ivan Klima and Josef Skvorecky. Much less well-known is the Czech poet Jaroslav Siefert, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1984. The the dissident-turned-president playwright Vaclav Havel now operates on a somewhat larger stage. Several of his books offer an ‘inside’ view of Czech history and politics. Disturbing the Peace is a collection of recent historical musings. Living in Truth is a series of absorbing political essays. Milan Kundera is one of the Czech Republic’s best-known authors-in-exile, who wrote about life under the Communist regime. His best novel is probably The Joke; two other notable works are The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Other good reads are Cowards by Josef Skvorecký, The Ship Named Hope by Ivan Klima and anything by Bohumil Hrabal.

Most travellers are impressed by the Czech Republic’s architectural splendours, which include some of the finest Baroque, Art Nouveau and Cubist buildings in Europe. Especially appealing is the unique ‘Czech Renaissance’ style, with ornamental stucco decorations that often feature legendary or historical scenes.

Czech cuisine is basically central European, with German, Hungarian and Polish influences. Meat is a huge feature, along with big portions of dumplings, potatoes or rice topped with a thick sauce, and a heavily cooked vegetable or sauerkraut; the standard quick meal is knedlo-zelo-vepro (dumplings, sauerkraut and roast pork). Caraway seed, bacon and lots of salt are the common flavourings. Vegetarians and cholesterol sufferers beware!

Czech music runs the gamut from classical to jazz and punk. Apprentice butcher Antonín Dvořák is generally regarded as the most popular Czech composer. He is noted for his symphony From the New World, composed in the USA while lecturing there. Czech jazz musicians were at the forefront of European jazz after WWII but this came to an end with the communist putsch. Keyboardist Jan Hamr, who escaped to the USA, became prominent in 1970s American jazz-rock under the name Jan Hammer and penned the theme to the popular ’80s TV show, Miami Vice. Since the Velvet Revolution, the jazz scene in Prague has been especially lively. The grim industrial north, particularly Teplice, is the hub of the Czech Republic’s punk movement.

The Czechs are a plain-spoken, even-tempered people, revealing a spectrum of cultural, religious and political influences that is surprisingly broad for such a small country - German and Austrian to Polish and Hungarian, liberal to deeply traditional, global-thinking to fiercely nationalistic.