Czech Republic

There's a land-locked nation in Central Europe with the name of the Czech Republic (or simply "Czechia"). Czech Republic is bounded by Austria to the south, to the west, to the north, to the northeast, and to the southeast by Poland and Slovakia. The climate of the Czech Republic is largely temperate continental and oceanic, with a mountainous terrain covering an area of 78,871 square kilometres (30,452 square miles). Brno and Ostrava are two of the country's most populous cities; Plze and Liberec are two of the country's biggest cities.

In the late 9th century, Great Moravia established the Duchy of Bohemia. During the reign of the Holy Roman Empire, it was legally acknowledged as an Imperial State and later became a Kingdom. As a result of the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Bohemian Crown came under the control of the Habsburgs. The Thirty Years' War was sparked by the Protestant Bohemian Revolt. The Habsburgs tightened their grip on Europe with the Battle of White Mountain. As part of the Austrian Empire, Crown lands were part of the Holy Empire's breakup in 1806.

Czech territories grew highly industrialised in the 19th century and became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 with the fall of Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Central and Eastern Europe's sole parliamentary democracy during the interwar era was Czechoslovakia. The Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia began soon after the Munich Agreement of 1938. Once recovered in 1945, Czechoslovakia was an Eastern Bloc communist state until its overthrow in 1948. Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviet Union during the Prague Spring of 1968, thwarting any attempts to reform the government or economy. The Velvet Revolution ended communist authority in the nation in November 1989, and on January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia was dissolved, resulting in the separate republics of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The Czech Republic is a democratic, unitary parliamentary republic with an advanced social market economy with a high level of personal income. Universal healthcare and free university education are part of a welfare state that adheres to the European model. It is ranked 12th in the UN's Human Development Index and 24th in the World Bank's Human Capital Index for human development. As the ninth safest nation in the world, it is also the 31st most democratic. As a NATO member and an EU member and an OECD member, as well as a member of the OSCE and EU, the Czech Republic has a strong international profile.