Word: czechoslovakia
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...have an astonishingly poor view of their nation. In a 2006 study based on polling by the International Social Survey Program, for example, Slovakia ranked as the fourth least patriotic nation out of 33 countries surveyed -the U.S., not surprisingly, was number one. Slovakia's angst began when Czechoslovakia split up in 1993 and Vladimir Meciar became Prime Minister of the new Slovak nation, ushering in four years of autocratic and isolationist rule. The country was considered such a backwater during those days that then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once famously referred to it as "the black hole...
...secretary-general of the 1936 Berlin Games, pitched the event as a way to infuse the Games with pageantry and buff the mythic image of the Third Reich. That year, on its way from Greece to Germany, the flame passed through Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia - all of which would be annexed or occupied within a few years. (See a timeline of the 2008 Olympic-torch relay...
...shrewd face-saving plan which allows him to still emerge a winner - at least in the public eye. He has demanded that an exemption be added to the treaty to protect Czechs from potential property claims by the families of ethnic Germans who were expelled from the former Czechoslovakia after World War II. Klaus claims that the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is part of the Lisbon Treaty, could become the basis for such property-restitution lawsuits. (See 10 things to do in Prague...
...snow on the trees. In the 16th century, Germans settled alongside Czechs in the town and built flourishing factories, one of which is said to have produced a carpet for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City that was deemed the world's largest in the 1920s. But Czechoslovakia's German minority suffered greatly in the Depression on the eve of World War II and many threw their support behind Konrad Henlein, leader of the country's pro-Nazi ethnic German party. As punishment, the Czechoslovak government ordered most German-speaking citizens in the country to be deported after...
...treaty demands - including one that relates to a long buried dispute that goes back to World War II - are bewildering, say E.U. officials. While in exile between 1940 and 1945, the Czechoslovak government led by Edvard Bene? ordered that all German speakers in the Sudentland region of Czechoslovakia should be deported and their property seized. Klaus now claims that the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is incorporated in the Lisbon Treaty, might become the basis for property restitution lawsuits by descendants of those German-speakers. He says he wants a clause in the treaty guaranteeing that the Bene? Decrees...