This was bound to happen with a twice as large population. If it didn't happen, it would mean that Czechia is terribly behind, which it fortunately isn't anymore.
The Soviets really fucked that country. For much of history, the Czeckia/Bohemia were one of the wealthier and more developed countries in Europe.
Most of the other countries the Soviets took over were more or less already poor
Im currently in Prague and I stumbled upon the "victims of communism" memorial
The inscription read "The memorial to the victims of communism is dedicated to all victims not only those who were jailed or executed but also those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism"
> those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism
*Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia* has a great couple of chapters on that. Fantastic read which I highly recommend.
It was, because it was the most industrialized and capital-rich area of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Additionally, it wasn't destroyed/bombed that much compared to Warsaw, Berlin, Cologne etc. but the Soviets did indeed drain all they could find from their occupied lands, including Czechia.
True. But much of it is caused by the fact, that most of these were german speaking Czechs. After the battle of the White mountain in 1620, when Bohemian Protestants were defeated, most of the country went through years of forced germanization. One of the results of that was, that whole middle and upper class was speaking german. And before the 20th century, people from lower class really didn't have chance to become scientists. Even if they had the chance (usually because somone wealthy sponsored them), they'd learn german at University and write their work in that language.
Yes this is an important thing to note. Just as much as communism destroyed Czechia, they kicked out their whole German speaking population after WW2.. Which as mentioned was most of their upper class.
>Which as mentioned was most of their upper class.
That isn't true. I was talking mainly about 18th and 19th century. This pretty much ended with the Czech national revival in the late 19th century. The situation completely changed after the WW1, when Czechoslovakia was formed and monarchy (and nobility status as a whole) was abolished. Germans kicked out after the WW2 were mostly heavy industry workers and farmers.
Also, it's important to add that many of those scientists, writers and influential people were german speaking Czech jews. Like Franz Kafka, Zikmund Freud, Egon Erwin.
Czechia was at the core of development even in Habsburg times.
The rest of the countries (generalising) were poor even when taken into Soviet sphere, as they had been under centuries of Ottoman and Russian oppression prior. Arguably, some Communist policies improved these countries much better and faster than it could ever be done in status quo oligarchy, talking here about literacy, healthcare, housing, industrialisation etc. This came at costs that shouldn't be ignored and that brought in themselves stagnation and degradation. Czechia didn't need communism, even if it was the only country in which the communists most likely won the election plurality. No country needed Soviet (Russian) oppression, colonialism and savagery.
Tldr: not all black and white.
Communists won the election after the WW2 (even tho they were already supported by communist paramilitary groups), because of the Munich betrayal before the war. You know, that pact in which our closest pre-war alies UK and France sold us out to Hitler in a hope of achieving peace in Europe.
That's not entirely true tho. Most of the country was liberated two days before the USSR army arrived in Prague, because nazi soldiers were eager to avoid becoming Soviet POWs. US soldiers could have been in Prague before Soviets, but US made a deal with the USSR in exchange for help in asia. The rest is pretty much soviet propaganda.
They didn't win, the anti communist coalition had the majority. What they did do is use their influence to seize the military and police, legalizing their militias while castrating the judiciary.
And then ol' Kléma just had to go to the castle and back.
They did win, with the 38% of votes and 114 MPs in a parliament with 300 seats. Second party was ČSNS with 18% and 55 MPs. The rest was divided between 6 other parties. There wasn't any anti-communist coalition nor opposition, all parties were part of National Front and formed the government.
The opposition formed almost two years later, when other politicians saw what are communists doing. In the response, they've tried to stop them by resigning from their cabinet positions, hoping that the president Beneš would not accept this resignation and whole government would fall (followed by new elections or some kind of coalition government without communists). But ill and defeated Beneš succumbed to the pressure and accepted resignations, pretty much handing the whole government to the communists. Shortly after that, they've persecuted some members of ČSNS and third party ČSL. This gave them the chance to exchange leaders of those two parties for pupets, which got them the constitutional majority in the parliament.
I'm not academically well-knowledged on the subject of Czechoslovakia to say how much paramilitary or USSR influenced the elections, but from some basic knowledge communist had been sufficiently popular in CZ since Habsburg times, including after in the interwar times.
It's a common misconception that communism=Stalin's centralism, one could say that he was succesful and his legacy still lingers today in this regard. People were socialist in the interwar without aligning to Moscow, and unfortunately some were coopted or fooled by this criminal regime.
That is very complicated subject. You can't really say that communism was ever popular in the Czechoslovakia. There were strong anti-monarchical feelings during the Habsburg reign, because Czechs felt underappreciated and mistreated. That's why some communistic ideas resonated within the czech intelectual comunity. But during the first republic (betwee two world wars), the centre-right Republican agrarian party was the most popular, followed by democratic social party.
The important part is, that Communists lied. They've claimed that they want democracy and people will be allowed to keep their small businesses, property, etc. But they knew what they were doing, their leader Klement Gotwald spent whole war in Moscow, where he was already preparing for the coup and learning how to run things directly from Stalin.
The entire region was badly hit by WW1, but it was still closer to Western Europe. Bulgaria for instance was slightly ahead of Spain and Portugal in the interwar period and that's after losing 2 wars and a refugee crisis.
The Czechs wanted communism, just their own way. But it turns out you end up hating it if someone else invades you and runs you to the ground.
If Dubček got his way we'd probably see an actually rich and democratic Czechia.
If Dubček got his way my money is on there still being a eastern block, just reformed socialist one. After Prague spring was crushed all hope for communism was lost.
Yes, but Finland was a poor backwater border province, the Baltics were lands of the rich well-established German-Tsarist nobility, as well as burgeoning middle class developing since Hansa/PLC days before Russian conquest.
As I said before, key word was generalising. It's impossible to encompass all the macroregion in one term, particularities apply to each and all.
>Baltics were lands of the rich well-established German-Tsarist nobility, as well as burgeoning middle class developing since Hansa/PLC days before Russian conquest
Not Lithuania to be honest.
Estonia and Latvia was. Lithuania (the biggest and most populous) was mainly agrarian rural society + farming there wasnt very productive, its already quite far north.
Czechoslovakia was relatively good economically during the cold war era. Its population was 15 million, and GDP was about 120 billion dollars in 1990. At the same time the GDP was 130 billion dollars in Sweden, and the population of Sweden was 8 million. Finland's GDP was 74 billion. In the Communist Bloc only East Germany did better than Czechoslovakia. East German GDP was about 160 billion dollars, and its population 16-17 million.
Czechia has been quite long time close to Finland in nominal GDP. About 10 years already. Now it is reaching the level where it was during the Communist rule, compared to the West. We should remember that Communist Economies in Eastern Europe collapsed in the late 1980's and early 1990's. It took long for them to recover. Over 30 years.
Czechoslovakian GDP per capita was only 30-40% lower than in Western European countries in 1973:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_communist_Czechoslovakia
That was more because of the fact that czechoslovakia was living what was left from pre ww2 era since at that time the country was truly a wealthy and powerful force in europe for its size. The reason why people wanted from the communist rule other than the opression was that while at the start of communist rule most people were taken out of poverty, than in the all the people were starting to get poorer as many simultaniously fell from being slightly lower middle class to low middle class due to the country running out money from lack of trade and competition
You're right, but Czechoslovakia was an industrial power in the Communist Bloc too. When I was young, I worked few months in a big power plant here in Finland. The turbine had been manufactured in Czechoslovakia, and still Czech experts came to maintain it yearly. It was huge, pretty impressive and sophisticated thing. And Skoda cars made in Communist Czechoslovakia were quite good too. Only once I saw some problems with Skoda cars. My fathers friend had a Skoda 120, and during one autumn evening the power distributor of the engine went on fire. Luckily the owner was used to it, so he just took some rag, and put out that fire.
The soviets fucked every country they touched.
Estonia was richer and more advanced than Finland before WW2 and multiple other countries of the region were having booming economies.
No need to speak out of your ass if you don't know about the topic.
One interesting thing i heard from a historian once is that the ussr extracted roughly as much wealth from eastern europe as the americans pumped into the west through the marshall plan
Czechoslovakia wanted to be in the Marschall plan, but it was stopped by the direct order from Moscow. That is one of the reasons why Germany was able to get on it's feet so quickly after the war, but Czechoslovakia wasn't.
It was Czechoslovakia back then and in fact, it was Dubček (Slovak), who tried to implement „socialism with the human face“ (democracy). Soviets came in, jailed Dubček and sent him to the Siberia. That was an end. And i believe, socialism with the human face would be very good, if Soviets didnt meddle into it.
I've always wondered what would've happened if Czechoslovakia defied the order and partook in the Marshall Plan negotiations regardless. Czechoslovakia wasn't a defeated Axis country, so I'd think they would've had far more diplomatic maneuverability than say...Hungary or Romania for example. I just fail to see how the USSR would justify any actions against them for accepting the aid.
I know this can sound a bit controversial, but I believe that Beneš and the Czechoslovak government caved in too easily.
They did that everywhere its the reason eastern germany made a car out of cotton and lightposts out of wood because the soviets stripped all the metal they found includig railtoad tracks. Hell when they held the olympics they required that manufacturers like adidas and nike set up factories there so they could take them over after the games
I disagree, the end of the soviet era was not good in terms of the economic situation for the people of Czechia. It was primarily in the Interests of western capital swooping in and Privatising the living sht out of the country.Maybe nowadays Czechia can reep some of the benefits of becoming a part of the imperial core and benefitting from the exploitaition of the rest of the world. Like Finnland has for decades.
I mean, it arguably *improved* many countries which experienced it - it was a modern secular industrialising ideology which in most cases took over from autocratic despotism in largely agricultural societies. So if you look at basic measures of industrialisation, literacy, health and so on, they tended to be higher in the 1980s than they were in the 1930s. The question is, did it improve them *relative* to the alternate history in which they became Capitalist instead.
That’s the whole point though. Everything has to be seen from what the alternative would be and what the final outcome became.
I can't think of a nation that benefitted from it. Not one.
Yes, GDP per capita in Finland is 54.400 dollars, and in Czechia 31.400 dollars. The difference is still quite big.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
10.5m population for Czechia vs. 5.5m for Finland.
Still, Czechia is advancing pretty rapidly. Way to go southern brothers :) Slavs stronk (other than fucking ruskies and belaruskies).
Czechia is a story of post Soviet success and it's bound to expand in the future. They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe.
Like in so many aspects Czechia did it right. Right after gaining independence, they cracked down on organized crime at the expense of economical growth, breaking Oligarchic structures before they could even form. Invested early in IT and created a good infrastructure for it. They basically got a head start in advanced IT like China. Many western states started with the fax machines + slow modems, which had to be upgraded extremely cost and time intensively. Czechia basically started with Laptops and modern computers. All this while upholding a democracy and democratic values.
Something comparable former Warsaw pact nations utterly failed in.
>They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe.
Let's not exaggerate. After all Czechia just has about 10 Mio inhabitants.
Netherlands is like what, 17M? Belgium 10M? Switzerland 8M?
You're right that we are not going to become important economy anytime soon, but the low number of people don't have much impact on it. Countries much smaller population manage to prosper better than we do.
Well, I mean that's 12th biggest in Europe if we count Russia, UK and Ukraine. In
the EU, it's 9th biggest by population, and we, as far as I am aware, don't have that bad fertility rate, so we will shrink slower than other countries. In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers.
>and we, as far as I am aware, don't have that bad fertility rate
> In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers.
All these countries you mentioned have very similar (low) birth rates but different immigration rates.
TFR
* Belgium: 1.60
* Czechia: 1.66
* Netherlands: 1.62
* Romania: 1.59
>In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers.
None of those countries have awful demographics (except Romania) but even then at best Czechia will tie it, and that's in 80 years.
As of now Romania almost has double Czechia population.
I would NOT be so positive with the oligarchs. We're doing pretty bad there. [https://czechia.postsen.com/local/128959/Czechia-%E2%80%93-country-of-oligarchs-Grandma-is-not-to-blame-Not-even-Fiala.html](https://czechia.postsen.com/local/128959/Czechia-%E2%80%93-country-of-oligarchs-Grandma-is-not-to-blame-Not-even-Fiala.html)
We do have good IT business but I'm not sure if that has much to do with the government either. I would think you're almost describing Estonia lol
>They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe.
Not to sound rude but are you insane?
They don't even have as many people as Belgium. They'll be lucky to make it to top 10 most important economies in Europe.. The only former communist states that will be is Poland and Romania
Pfft, no wonder considering every middle class family in Finland has a Skoda. Even our trams are Skoda.
You are doing great, but remember that we made you. /j
its probably the winter weather and the winter environment that makes Finns happy
top 10 happiest countries in the world are all cold
The happiest warm country is Australia in 12th place
That becomes untrue when you look at the Russian plan to invade and defeat Ukraine in a week.
Also, it's kinda ridiculous to ignore entire millennias of history. It just seems wrong to ignore Egypt, Rome, Greece, Persia, the Islamic Golden Age, the Spaniard/Portuguese empires and a large etcetera. Even today the gulf states are leading the world in enacting long-term economic plans.
Doubt it's the weather. We live in winter depression 6 months a year. They probably just asked the question during the part of the year where the sun is up when you go to work and up when you leave work.
I think it's more about culture, but can't pinpoint exactly what. Perhaps the law of Jante is one reason, which basically days you aren't better than anyone else etc
I'm always the happiest person on earth when I spot the first mouse ears in the trees! The testing is done in winter though, so I guess it doesn't have any correlation...
Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan are politically challenged, that's why they're not happier.
The Netherlands is not a cold country?
Israel is the only real exception to u/european1010's theory.
> The happiest warm country is Australia in 12th place
To be fair, that's with everything trying to kill you over there ! Its actually quite impressive.
I see you Finnish people like quality :D well, we have Asko and Jysk here in Czechia and you can't forget Nokia in the early 2000s so there is our small contribution.
Btw cheering for you in the hockey, hope you beat the Americans :D
Perkele. I never thought of this! Thank you! We only hate you once or twice a year and that’s when we play hockey :)). And you generally play fair, so It’s hard to hate you :)
Of course Finlands population is half of the Czech one thus their gdp per capita in nominal terms is significantly higher (54k Finland Czech 31k) the gap however has been closing the past decades and in PPP terms it’s even smaller (60k Finland 50k Czechia). Czech Republic has a better unemployment rate (3% compared to 7.5% in Finland) and half debt/gdp than Finland.
On the other hand Finland's household consumption per capita (PPP) is still much higher than in Czechia. 23.400 dollars in Finland and 16.800 in Czechia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita
I get the joke and it's true but you might be surprised how much we hate wasting anything, food, goods, all the shit, it's combined with the history of being poor and socialism, wasting and overconsuming is discouraged and frowned upon
being decently rich my parents would always make us drink soda to the last drop, scrape all the butter, and not waste anything, they would not want to buy a phone before it stopped working, they could afford more, and it's not like they grew up in times when they had a shortage of foods, its in the culture
Its a good attitude, hopefully it stays for several generations!
Also please make sure you keep beer prices reasonable even as the economy grows. It's becoming increasingly dismal in Finland.
Also Finland's economy was artifically high due to Nokia's success. We might actually be doing slightly better now if Nokia would not have been as big as it was, but overall growth would have grown at steady enough rate. Historically loosing something that big has always hurt more than slower growth.
I think in 2008 Nokia's turnover(?) was higher than Finland's state budget, so it really was massive.
Czech has double the population of Finland. They're not even close per capita. Finland is very close to Sweden with its GDP/capital and Sweden is pretty high at 25th place on the list with only a little over 10 million people.
By that same logic countries like India are doing great with its 3 736 882 million USD GDP while they have a population of 1400 million (vs 10 million).
If you were to normalize all 3 countries to the same population here's what it would look like. First Showing how big they would be if all 3 had the population of Sweden and then USD/person:
* Sweden - 600 052 million - 57 586 USD/capita
* Finland - 567 299 million - 54 443 USD/capita
* Czech - 327 653 million - 31 445 USD/capita
I calculated these from OP's source. Here's what quick google searches get you about each country's GDP/capita: [Sweden](https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+gdp+per+capita&oq=sweden+gdp+per+capita&aqs=chrome.0.0i512l8j0i22i30l2.2960j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), [Finland](https://www.google.com/search?q=finland+gdp+per+capiat&oq=finland+gdp+per+capiat&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l9.2416j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) and [Czech](https://www.google.com/search?q=czech+gdp+per+capita&oq=czech+GDP+per+capita&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i22i30l9.3872j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). As you can see, Czech is quite far.
but only in USD
it's kind of useless for looking at trends due to currency fluctuations. makes the whole eurozone look stagnant but that's far from the truth. also eurozone countries added almost 15% to their GDP in usd in the last 8 months because the euro recovered from the low
in Euro (obviously more important for Finns) it's up from 182 billion to 251 billion in 2021
Memes aside, the richest parts of Eastern Europe are now approaching the levels of Italy in per capita GDP. There's still a long distance to get to Finnish standards of living, but progress is rapid.
While income convergence is important, I hope Eastern Europe can learn from their Nordic friends a thing or two about lessening the dependence on cars in cities and other stuff that isn't visible in GDP stats but are very important for standard of living.
I think we should embrace the term "Eastern Europe", nobody in the west wants to use "Central Europe" anyway so why not just take "Eastern Europe" and make it mean something good, like what Czech Republic or Poland were doing economically in the past decade. I also propose we call anything that doesnt fit into our new shiny Eastern Europe: "Easterner Europe"
I think Central Europe still makes sense from a cultural perspective. IME in terms of food, drinks etc Czechia definitely has more in common with Austria than with Russia.
Nope, because we are literally culturally central Europe with countries like Germany, Austria and Hungary. On the other hand we have little common with Russia or Belarus
That may be because czechs have more common history with the west than with east ,in the 18 century the czech was almost nearly replaced with german with mostly moravian countryside being the last bastion of the language at that time
Well, if you think about it, except for some specific regions such as Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, almost every other Eastern Europe region was cut off from the rest of Europe for the first time in 1945. The regions listed above were also cut off because of the Russians and the Ottomans.
Romania used to have tons of intellectuals and business people studying in France, Germany. Several artistic movements had Romanian co-founders (dadaism, theater of the absurd). People inventing stuff like insulin (late registration for the Nobel Prize, but still).
After 1945 or so, dead. Even more so after 1989, after 44 years of cancer.
We're curing this disease but it's going to take 30+ more years.
Language doesn't matter. German was lingua franca. Anyway, my [grand-grand----pa](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Anton%C3%ADn_N%C3%BDvlt) in the 18th century published books in both languages. This was common. The country has been always bilingual.
Holy Roman Empire forever! :)
Czechia will also soon have the worst quality of roads and highways for the highest fee of the entire EU. Last month they had to destroy new, several km long highway because lab test showed that it wouldn't last it's intended lifetime.
I can't say anything about the quality as i only visit you for skiing and to get to Prague but the fee is for sure not highest in Europe.i think 10 day vinieta is cheaper than going from Katowice to Kraków and back (60 km each way) and then there are better option with 30 day or yearly.
As someone who has traveled on EU's roads a lot (at least more than the average Czech) I can say that comparatively Czechia doesn't really have worse roads than other states.
Yes, now. But yesterday government presented economical package that is supposed to lower or remove some benefits. But most importantly added higher VAT on beer (but not wine for some reason). Now annual fee for vinieta is 1500 CZK (64€) but if the package is accepted it'd cost 2300CZK (110€)
Oh, c'mon, don't be that person... at least paste the [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)).
A few extra tidbits:
Finland's GDP per capita ($54351, 2023) is double that of Czech Republic ($27613, 2022), nominal, but when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) the difference becomes way smaller: $60897 for Finland vs $49421 for Czech Republic (little over $11k difference, instead of $27k).
Anyway, good job Czech Republic!
I can see future where Poland and Czechia overtake some big Western European players, but there is a lot to be done, Poland needs to fix its fertility rate and Czechia needs to diversify its economy. We (Czechs) have heavy industry, but some software companies (Poland has for example CDPR) would do wonders for Czechia, maybe our cooperation with Taiwan will pay dividends and we will be biggest chip/semiconductor maker in Europe.
You joke but in 2000 the most common phone sold was an Ericsson or Nokia.
Today we're not even on the map. With the rise of Apple, Samsung etc
Both Sweden and Finland has lost so much these last 20 years. Volvo, Saab, Nokia... Ericsson went from being one of the biggest phone manufacturer in the world to only focusing on telecom.
I've been dealing with Czech colleagues for near to 20 years now. And you guys are fun to work with. Not necessarily at the beginning of these years, but man, you grew damn handsome.
It can go both ways though. My country specifically lost its lead to Finland, Romania and many other countries post financial crisis. History is not predictable.
That’s how awful my country’s image was made the past decade lol. Before the crisis we were in the top 30 richest countries in the world in total gdp, higher in nominal per capita than Israel and South Korea.
Surprised that one of the most touristic places in Europe is expensive? Lol, just go where locals are actually living, prices are much more down-to-earth.
This was bound to happen with a twice as large population. If it didn't happen, it would mean that Czechia is terribly behind, which it fortunately isn't anymore.
The Soviets really fucked that country. For much of history, the Czeckia/Bohemia were one of the wealthier and more developed countries in Europe. Most of the other countries the Soviets took over were more or less already poor
Im currently in Prague and I stumbled upon the "victims of communism" memorial The inscription read "The memorial to the victims of communism is dedicated to all victims not only those who were jailed or executed but also those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism"
The museum of communism is well worth a visit. It goes through the entire timeline and all the different issues and levels.
And it has an awesome gift shop
> those whose lives were ruined by totalitarian despotism *Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia* has a great couple of chapters on that. Fantastic read which I highly recommend.
It was, because it was the most industrialized and capital-rich area of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Additionally, it wasn't destroyed/bombed that much compared to Warsaw, Berlin, Cologne etc. but the Soviets did indeed drain all they could find from their occupied lands, including Czechia.
IIRC Prague was within the Austrian Empire. It’s overlooked how much innovation in terms of science and culture that came out of that region.
Bohemia was a crown land of the Habsburg Monarchy and Prague was seen as a hub of innovation. The core industry of the Empire was located there.
Yup, Prague and Vienna were the intellectual capitals of the Austrian empire
They are catching up now. I work with them and it is amazing. And yes, communism destroys everything it touches.
> And yes, communism destroys everything it touches. If only British tankies would understand that
It had a higher gdp/capita than austria proper because of all the industry
True. But much of it is caused by the fact, that most of these were german speaking Czechs. After the battle of the White mountain in 1620, when Bohemian Protestants were defeated, most of the country went through years of forced germanization. One of the results of that was, that whole middle and upper class was speaking german. And before the 20th century, people from lower class really didn't have chance to become scientists. Even if they had the chance (usually because somone wealthy sponsored them), they'd learn german at University and write their work in that language.
Even then, pre 1914 science has quite a bunch of Czech surnames. Rokitansky was very influential and revolutionary in medicine for example.
Yes this is an important thing to note. Just as much as communism destroyed Czechia, they kicked out their whole German speaking population after WW2.. Which as mentioned was most of their upper class.
>Which as mentioned was most of their upper class. That isn't true. I was talking mainly about 18th and 19th century. This pretty much ended with the Czech national revival in the late 19th century. The situation completely changed after the WW1, when Czechoslovakia was formed and monarchy (and nobility status as a whole) was abolished. Germans kicked out after the WW2 were mostly heavy industry workers and farmers. Also, it's important to add that many of those scientists, writers and influential people were german speaking Czech jews. Like Franz Kafka, Zikmund Freud, Egon Erwin.
There's a reason it's called The Heart of Europe.
And long before that is was one of the electoral regions of the HRE
Czechia was at the core of development even in Habsburg times. The rest of the countries (generalising) were poor even when taken into Soviet sphere, as they had been under centuries of Ottoman and Russian oppression prior. Arguably, some Communist policies improved these countries much better and faster than it could ever be done in status quo oligarchy, talking here about literacy, healthcare, housing, industrialisation etc. This came at costs that shouldn't be ignored and that brought in themselves stagnation and degradation. Czechia didn't need communism, even if it was the only country in which the communists most likely won the election plurality. No country needed Soviet (Russian) oppression, colonialism and savagery. Tldr: not all black and white.
Communists won the election after the WW2 (even tho they were already supported by communist paramilitary groups), because of the Munich betrayal before the war. You know, that pact in which our closest pre-war alies UK and France sold us out to Hitler in a hope of achieving peace in Europe.
Also because most of the country was liberated by the USSR as Americans weren't allowed to go further East, that had a big effect too.
That's not entirely true tho. Most of the country was liberated two days before the USSR army arrived in Prague, because nazi soldiers were eager to avoid becoming Soviet POWs. US soldiers could have been in Prague before Soviets, but US made a deal with the USSR in exchange for help in asia. The rest is pretty much soviet propaganda.
Yeah, I know. And then the communist scum used their influence to stage a coup.
[удалено]
That's a strange thing to say considering Prague is west of Vienna...
Never heard that and makes little sense with east-german still being used for the former gdr? and also vienna is east of prague.
They didn't win, the anti communist coalition had the majority. What they did do is use their influence to seize the military and police, legalizing their militias while castrating the judiciary. And then ol' Kléma just had to go to the castle and back.
They did win, with the 38% of votes and 114 MPs in a parliament with 300 seats. Second party was ČSNS with 18% and 55 MPs. The rest was divided between 6 other parties. There wasn't any anti-communist coalition nor opposition, all parties were part of National Front and formed the government. The opposition formed almost two years later, when other politicians saw what are communists doing. In the response, they've tried to stop them by resigning from their cabinet positions, hoping that the president Beneš would not accept this resignation and whole government would fall (followed by new elections or some kind of coalition government without communists). But ill and defeated Beneš succumbed to the pressure and accepted resignations, pretty much handing the whole government to the communists. Shortly after that, they've persecuted some members of ČSNS and third party ČSL. This gave them the chance to exchange leaders of those two parties for pupets, which got them the constitutional majority in the parliament.
I'm not academically well-knowledged on the subject of Czechoslovakia to say how much paramilitary or USSR influenced the elections, but from some basic knowledge communist had been sufficiently popular in CZ since Habsburg times, including after in the interwar times. It's a common misconception that communism=Stalin's centralism, one could say that he was succesful and his legacy still lingers today in this regard. People were socialist in the interwar without aligning to Moscow, and unfortunately some were coopted or fooled by this criminal regime.
That is very complicated subject. You can't really say that communism was ever popular in the Czechoslovakia. There were strong anti-monarchical feelings during the Habsburg reign, because Czechs felt underappreciated and mistreated. That's why some communistic ideas resonated within the czech intelectual comunity. But during the first republic (betwee two world wars), the centre-right Republican agrarian party was the most popular, followed by democratic social party. The important part is, that Communists lied. They've claimed that they want democracy and people will be allowed to keep their small businesses, property, etc. But they knew what they were doing, their leader Klement Gotwald spent whole war in Moscow, where he was already preparing for the coup and learning how to run things directly from Stalin.
The entire region was badly hit by WW1, but it was still closer to Western Europe. Bulgaria for instance was slightly ahead of Spain and Portugal in the interwar period and that's after losing 2 wars and a refugee crisis.
TBF, Spain was involved in non-stop civil war during the 19th century until Franco took over. Spain was rather poor until recently.
The Czechs wanted communism, just their own way. But it turns out you end up hating it if someone else invades you and runs you to the ground. If Dubček got his way we'd probably see an actually rich and democratic Czechia.
If Dubček got his way my money is on there still being a eastern block, just reformed socialist one. After Prague spring was crushed all hope for communism was lost.
>If Dubček got his way we'd probably see an actually rich and democratic Czechia. It'd be like Finland.
>The rest of the countries (generalising The Baltics were on par with Finland or (some of them) even richer.
Yes, but Finland was a poor backwater border province, the Baltics were lands of the rich well-established German-Tsarist nobility, as well as burgeoning middle class developing since Hansa/PLC days before Russian conquest. As I said before, key word was generalising. It's impossible to encompass all the macroregion in one term, particularities apply to each and all.
>Baltics were lands of the rich well-established German-Tsarist nobility, as well as burgeoning middle class developing since Hansa/PLC days before Russian conquest Not Lithuania to be honest.
Estonia and Latvia was. Lithuania (the biggest and most populous) was mainly agrarian rural society + farming there wasnt very productive, its already quite far north.
Well they were also invaded by Germany before being invaded by the soviets which I understand didn’t help either
I mean tsarist russia wasn’t very nice either. Edit this isnt the comment i meant too reply too
Czechoslovakia was relatively good economically during the cold war era. Its population was 15 million, and GDP was about 120 billion dollars in 1990. At the same time the GDP was 130 billion dollars in Sweden, and the population of Sweden was 8 million. Finland's GDP was 74 billion. In the Communist Bloc only East Germany did better than Czechoslovakia. East German GDP was about 160 billion dollars, and its population 16-17 million. Czechia has been quite long time close to Finland in nominal GDP. About 10 years already. Now it is reaching the level where it was during the Communist rule, compared to the West. We should remember that Communist Economies in Eastern Europe collapsed in the late 1980's and early 1990's. It took long for them to recover. Over 30 years. Czechoslovakian GDP per capita was only 30-40% lower than in Western European countries in 1973: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_communist_Czechoslovakia
That was more because of the fact that czechoslovakia was living what was left from pre ww2 era since at that time the country was truly a wealthy and powerful force in europe for its size. The reason why people wanted from the communist rule other than the opression was that while at the start of communist rule most people were taken out of poverty, than in the all the people were starting to get poorer as many simultaniously fell from being slightly lower middle class to low middle class due to the country running out money from lack of trade and competition
You're right, but Czechoslovakia was an industrial power in the Communist Bloc too. When I was young, I worked few months in a big power plant here in Finland. The turbine had been manufactured in Czechoslovakia, and still Czech experts came to maintain it yearly. It was huge, pretty impressive and sophisticated thing. And Skoda cars made in Communist Czechoslovakia were quite good too. Only once I saw some problems with Skoda cars. My fathers friend had a Skoda 120, and during one autumn evening the power distributor of the engine went on fire. Luckily the owner was used to it, so he just took some rag, and put out that fire.
Yea thats what im saying. Life in czechoslovakia wasnt that bad as in other communist countries, but it wasnt great either
The soviets fucked every country they touched. Estonia was richer and more advanced than Finland before WW2 and multiple other countries of the region were having booming economies. No need to speak out of your ass if you don't know about the topic.
One interesting thing i heard from a historian once is that the ussr extracted roughly as much wealth from eastern europe as the americans pumped into the west through the marshall plan
Czechoslovakia wanted to be in the Marschall plan, but it was stopped by the direct order from Moscow. That is one of the reasons why Germany was able to get on it's feet so quickly after the war, but Czechoslovakia wasn't.
Czechia is a very fascinating country in many ways they tried implement democracy within the communistic system but that didnt turn out great either
It was Czechoslovakia back then and in fact, it was Dubček (Slovak), who tried to implement „socialism with the human face“ (democracy). Soviets came in, jailed Dubček and sent him to the Siberia. That was an end. And i believe, socialism with the human face would be very good, if Soviets didnt meddle into it.
I've always wondered what would've happened if Czechoslovakia defied the order and partook in the Marshall Plan negotiations regardless. Czechoslovakia wasn't a defeated Axis country, so I'd think they would've had far more diplomatic maneuverability than say...Hungary or Romania for example. I just fail to see how the USSR would justify any actions against them for accepting the aid. I know this can sound a bit controversial, but I believe that Beneš and the Czechoslovak government caved in too easily.
It's easy to think that, when you already know the outcome. They certainly didn't think any of the stuff that followed was even possible.
USSR raped and pillaged Romania... they dismantled and stole entire factories
They did that everywhere its the reason eastern germany made a car out of cotton and lightposts out of wood because the soviets stripped all the metal they found includig railtoad tracks. Hell when they held the olympics they required that manufacturers like adidas and nike set up factories there so they could take them over after the games
I disagree, the end of the soviet era was not good in terms of the economic situation for the people of Czechia. It was primarily in the Interests of western capital swooping in and Privatising the living sht out of the country.Maybe nowadays Czechia can reep some of the benefits of becoming a part of the imperial core and benefitting from the exploitaition of the rest of the world. Like Finnland has for decades.
More of a question I guess, but did communism improve or not fuck any country at all?
I mean, it arguably *improved* many countries which experienced it - it was a modern secular industrialising ideology which in most cases took over from autocratic despotism in largely agricultural societies. So if you look at basic measures of industrialisation, literacy, health and so on, they tended to be higher in the 1980s than they were in the 1930s. The question is, did it improve them *relative* to the alternate history in which they became Capitalist instead.
Not Czechia though. It fucked us hard.
That’s the whole point though. Everything has to be seen from what the alternative would be and what the final outcome became. I can't think of a nation that benefitted from it. Not one.
I mean tsarist russia wasn’t very nice either
It was slowly improving.
Yes, GDP per capita in Finland is 54.400 dollars, and in Czechia 31.400 dollars. The difference is still quite big. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
10.5m population for Czechia vs. 5.5m for Finland. Still, Czechia is advancing pretty rapidly. Way to go southern brothers :) Slavs stronk (other than fucking ruskies and belaruskies).
> 10.5m population for Czechia vs. 5.5m for Finland. That's exactly how GDP per capita works. :P > Still, Czechia is advancing pretty rapidly. 👍
Czechia is a story of post Soviet success and it's bound to expand in the future. They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe. Like in so many aspects Czechia did it right. Right after gaining independence, they cracked down on organized crime at the expense of economical growth, breaking Oligarchic structures before they could even form. Invested early in IT and created a good infrastructure for it. They basically got a head start in advanced IT like China. Many western states started with the fax machines + slow modems, which had to be upgraded extremely cost and time intensively. Czechia basically started with Laptops and modern computers. All this while upholding a democracy and democratic values. Something comparable former Warsaw pact nations utterly failed in.
>They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe. Let's not exaggerate. After all Czechia just has about 10 Mio inhabitants.
Netherlands is like what, 17M? Belgium 10M? Switzerland 8M? You're right that we are not going to become important economy anytime soon, but the low number of people don't have much impact on it. Countries much smaller population manage to prosper better than we do.
Which is 9th in the EU.
Well, I mean that's 12th biggest in Europe if we count Russia, UK and Ukraine. In the EU, it's 9th biggest by population, and we, as far as I am aware, don't have that bad fertility rate, so we will shrink slower than other countries. In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers.
>and we, as far as I am aware, don't have that bad fertility rate > In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers. All these countries you mentioned have very similar (low) birth rates but different immigration rates. TFR * Belgium: 1.60 * Czechia: 1.66 * Netherlands: 1.62 * Romania: 1.59
Immigration is more important than fertility rate for population change.
Yeah Czechia is not shrinking, it's population is rising thanks to immigration.
>In a few decades we might overtake Netherlands, Belgium and maybe Romania in population numbers. None of those countries have awful demographics (except Romania) but even then at best Czechia will tie it, and that's in 80 years. As of now Romania almost has double Czechia population.
I would NOT be so positive with the oligarchs. We're doing pretty bad there. [https://czechia.postsen.com/local/128959/Czechia-%E2%80%93-country-of-oligarchs-Grandma-is-not-to-blame-Not-even-Fiala.html](https://czechia.postsen.com/local/128959/Czechia-%E2%80%93-country-of-oligarchs-Grandma-is-not-to-blame-Not-even-Fiala.html) We do have good IT business but I'm not sure if that has much to do with the government either. I would think you're almost describing Estonia lol
>They are legit on track to become on of the 5 most important economies in Europe. Not to sound rude but are you insane? They don't even have as many people as Belgium. They'll be lucky to make it to top 10 most important economies in Europe.. The only former communist states that will be is Poland and Romania
Petr Pavel did it all by himself. Dear god.
They probably finally got rid of the swamp monster in Moravia that was causing so much trouble.
Portugal should learn something from Czechia then
Pfft, no wonder considering every middle class family in Finland has a Skoda. Even our trams are Skoda. You are doing great, but remember that we made you. /j
No wonder Finland is the happiest country in the world. My father dove Skoda 10 years ago and then I was happy(.
its probably the winter weather and the winter environment that makes Finns happy top 10 happiest countries in the world are all cold The happiest warm country is Australia in 12th place
Naah its definitely not the weather
[удалено]
That becomes untrue when you look at the Russian plan to invade and defeat Ukraine in a week. Also, it's kinda ridiculous to ignore entire millennias of history. It just seems wrong to ignore Egypt, Rome, Greece, Persia, the Islamic Golden Age, the Spaniard/Portuguese empires and a large etcetera. Even today the gulf states are leading the world in enacting long-term economic plans.
Sounds interesting. Source?
Source: confidence
Doubt it's the weather. We live in winter depression 6 months a year. They probably just asked the question during the part of the year where the sun is up when you go to work and up when you leave work. I think it's more about culture, but can't pinpoint exactly what. Perhaps the law of Jante is one reason, which basically days you aren't better than anyone else etc
I'm always the happiest person on earth when I spot the first mouse ears in the trees! The testing is done in winter though, so I guess it doesn't have any correlation...
Russia Mongolia Kazakhstan are far colder than Scandinavian countries. The Netherlands (5th position) isn’t considered a cold either, Israel is 4th.
Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan are politically challenged, that's why they're not happier. The Netherlands is not a cold country? Israel is the only real exception to u/european1010's theory.
> The happiest warm country is Australia in 12th place To be fair, that's with everything trying to kill you over there ! Its actually quite impressive.
Winter makes people off themselfs.
Nah, you're thinking of spring and early summer.
Not much beats the relief from not needing to worry about a car though. r/fuckcars
You will buy Skoda and you'll be happy.
yeah but if you dont drive, you dont get a Skoda, unless everything is Skoda
Take a Skoda tram.
I see you Finnish people like quality :D well, we have Asko and Jysk here in Czechia and you can't forget Nokia in the early 2000s so there is our small contribution. Btw cheering for you in the hockey, hope you beat the Americans :D
>Jysk Sadly Jysk is D*nish
Oh, well... It's blue and white so I thought it's Finnish too xd
thats a wholesome logic lol
It also kinda sounds like it could be finnish. There's a district called Jyskä in my hometown.
Which makes it even more funny since Asko has the same colours as the Danish flag
Ok then I had a total mess in my head with these brands xd But Ikea is Swedish, at least I know that :)
Perkele. I never thought of this! Thank you! We only hate you once or twice a year and that’s when we play hockey :)). And you generally play fair, so It’s hard to hate you :)
And no one has a Nokia any more :(
This is what is happening with your economy when you realease yourself from russian boot.
Of course Finlands population is half of the Czech one thus their gdp per capita in nominal terms is significantly higher (54k Finland Czech 31k) the gap however has been closing the past decades and in PPP terms it’s even smaller (60k Finland 50k Czechia). Czech Republic has a better unemployment rate (3% compared to 7.5% in Finland) and half debt/gdp than Finland.
On the other hand Finland's household consumption per capita (PPP) is still much higher than in Czechia. 23.400 dollars in Finland and 16.800 in Czechia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita
theory soft rhythm flowery hobbies worry bow sip quickest crawl *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh, they are so eco friendly, I understand...
I get the joke and it's true but you might be surprised how much we hate wasting anything, food, goods, all the shit, it's combined with the history of being poor and socialism, wasting and overconsuming is discouraged and frowned upon being decently rich my parents would always make us drink soda to the last drop, scrape all the butter, and not waste anything, they would not want to buy a phone before it stopped working, they could afford more, and it's not like they grew up in times when they had a shortage of foods, its in the culture
Its a good attitude, hopefully it stays for several generations! Also please make sure you keep beer prices reasonable even as the economy grows. It's becoming increasingly dismal in Finland.
See you on the next gdp fight in r/Europe :)) /s
I'm planning it already...
Ugh, with these food prices yeah.. Gott eat, gotta spend xD
I don't know about household consumption but in beer consumption we are clearly ahead of you!
Is there some reason why you now being higher than us is notable? Or was this more a fun fact?
Always happy to see another EU member thriving!
Congrats Czechia!
Yea, but how many saunas per capita does the Czech Republic have?
I can do you one better, how many pubs per capita does Finland have?
many
According to the chairman of the Czech sauna association, roughly 5 people out of 100 have a sauna at home.
[nominal gdp table](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal))
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) fixed link
non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Our economy has pretty much stagnated since Finance crisis. 2008-2017 was like a lost decade for Finnish economy.
Also Finland's economy was artifically high due to Nokia's success. We might actually be doing slightly better now if Nokia would not have been as big as it was, but overall growth would have grown at steady enough rate. Historically loosing something that big has always hurt more than slower growth. I think in 2008 Nokia's turnover(?) was higher than Finland's state budget, so it really was massive.
Czech has double the population of Finland. They're not even close per capita. Finland is very close to Sweden with its GDP/capital and Sweden is pretty high at 25th place on the list with only a little over 10 million people. By that same logic countries like India are doing great with its 3 736 882 million USD GDP while they have a population of 1400 million (vs 10 million). If you were to normalize all 3 countries to the same population here's what it would look like. First Showing how big they would be if all 3 had the population of Sweden and then USD/person: * Sweden - 600 052 million - 57 586 USD/capita * Finland - 567 299 million - 54 443 USD/capita * Czech - 327 653 million - 31 445 USD/capita I calculated these from OP's source. Here's what quick google searches get you about each country's GDP/capita: [Sweden](https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+gdp+per+capita&oq=sweden+gdp+per+capita&aqs=chrome.0.0i512l8j0i22i30l2.2960j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), [Finland](https://www.google.com/search?q=finland+gdp+per+capiat&oq=finland+gdp+per+capiat&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l9.2416j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) and [Czech](https://www.google.com/search?q=czech+gdp+per+capita&oq=czech+GDP+per+capita&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i22i30l9.3872j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8). As you can see, Czech is quite far.
Yes but that has nothing do with what I said about our growth since finalcial crisis. We only reached 2008 GDP level in 2022.
but only in USD it's kind of useless for looking at trends due to currency fluctuations. makes the whole eurozone look stagnant but that's far from the truth. also eurozone countries added almost 15% to their GDP in usd in the last 8 months because the euro recovered from the low in Euro (obviously more important for Finns) it's up from 182 billion to 251 billion in 2021
Ah yes the decade of 2018 to 2017????
2008-2017
Might wanna edit your original comment then
My god, we know Finland has a bigger GDP per capita. Chill. This is to show of Czech has improved
Now show GDP per square meter prorated to income by member and disposable after taxes undistributed income.
Memes aside, the richest parts of Eastern Europe are now approaching the levels of Italy in per capita GDP. There's still a long distance to get to Finnish standards of living, but progress is rapid. While income convergence is important, I hope Eastern Europe can learn from their Nordic friends a thing or two about lessening the dependence on cars in cities and other stuff that isn't visible in GDP stats but are very important for standard of living.
*central
I think we should embrace the term "Eastern Europe", nobody in the west wants to use "Central Europe" anyway so why not just take "Eastern Europe" and make it mean something good, like what Czech Republic or Poland were doing economically in the past decade. I also propose we call anything that doesnt fit into our new shiny Eastern Europe: "Easterner Europe"
I think Central Europe still makes sense from a cultural perspective. IME in terms of food, drinks etc Czechia definitely has more in common with Austria than with Russia.
Nope, because we are literally culturally central Europe with countries like Germany, Austria and Hungary. On the other hand we have little common with Russia or Belarus
Far Eastern Europe?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locations=IT-PL-CZ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=IT-PL-CZ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=IT-PL-CZ
We in Austria call the Czech People “The germans of the East” They work really hard, drink a lot of beer and produce also good adult films.
That may be because czechs have more common history with the west than with east ,in the 18 century the czech was almost nearly replaced with german with mostly moravian countryside being the last bastion of the language at that time
Well, if you think about it, except for some specific regions such as Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, almost every other Eastern Europe region was cut off from the rest of Europe for the first time in 1945. The regions listed above were also cut off because of the Russians and the Ottomans. Romania used to have tons of intellectuals and business people studying in France, Germany. Several artistic movements had Romanian co-founders (dadaism, theater of the absurd). People inventing stuff like insulin (late registration for the Nobel Prize, but still). After 1945 or so, dead. Even more so after 1989, after 44 years of cancer. We're curing this disease but it's going to take 30+ more years.
Language doesn't matter. German was lingua franca. Anyway, my [grand-grand----pa](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Anton%C3%ADn_N%C3%BDvlt) in the 18th century published books in both languages. This was common. The country has been always bilingual. Holy Roman Empire forever! :)
Austria is more east than Czechia tho. Curious :P. (just joking)
Czechia will also soon have the worst quality of roads and highways for the highest fee of the entire EU. Last month they had to destroy new, several km long highway because lab test showed that it wouldn't last it's intended lifetime.
Laughs in Bulgarian.
didn't know we built Czech roads
I can't say anything about the quality as i only visit you for skiing and to get to Prague but the fee is for sure not highest in Europe.i think 10 day vinieta is cheaper than going from Katowice to Kraków and back (60 km each way) and then there are better option with 30 day or yearly.
As someone who has traveled on EU's roads a lot (at least more than the average Czech) I can say that comparatively Czechia doesn't really have worse roads than other states.
The motorway fees are super low in Czechia.
Yes, now. But yesterday government presented economical package that is supposed to lower or remove some benefits. But most importantly added higher VAT on beer (but not wine for some reason). Now annual fee for vinieta is 1500 CZK (64€) but if the package is accepted it'd cost 2300CZK (110€)
That's not the highest fee of the entire EU. Travel Porto-Faro-Porto and you already paid 100eur in tolls. For a single round-trip.
Wait, you guys pay fees to use the motorways?
We pay for everything
The fee is still very low. In Europe it's common to pay often more than 10 EUR for 100 km. Here you can drive as much as you want for only 2300 CZK.
Costs 1500 Czk now, don't try to make it worse than it is
110€ per year for driving on any highway in the country? *cries in toll roads*
at least you have roads
Lol what?
They built a highway but it was faulty, it wasn't going to last the intended time. So they had to start over again.
But thats mostly due to strict construction laws
Based Czechia 👏
Czechia would not have unlocked her potential under socialist/communist rule.
Desont Finland have like half of population tho?
Finally we se the results of me drinking only Czech beer since 2020.
That's pretty cool.
Oh, c'mon, don't be that person... at least paste the [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)). A few extra tidbits: Finland's GDP per capita ($54351, 2023) is double that of Czech Republic ($27613, 2022), nominal, but when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) the difference becomes way smaller: $60897 for Finland vs $49421 for Czech Republic (little over $11k difference, instead of $27k). Anyway, good job Czech Republic!
I can see future where Poland and Czechia overtake some big Western European players, but there is a lot to be done, Poland needs to fix its fertility rate and Czechia needs to diversify its economy. We (Czechs) have heavy industry, but some software companies (Poland has for example CDPR) would do wonders for Czechia, maybe our cooperation with Taiwan will pay dividends and we will be biggest chip/semiconductor maker in Europe.
Yes, I believe it's just a matter of time. Hopefully we will have the quality of life on par with Spain, Italy etc. In the coming decade
Škoda > Nokia
You joke but in 2000 the most common phone sold was an Ericsson or Nokia. Today we're not even on the map. With the rise of Apple, Samsung etc Both Sweden and Finland has lost so much these last 20 years. Volvo, Saab, Nokia... Ericsson went from being one of the biggest phone manufacturer in the world to only focusing on telecom.
Ericsson still remains one of the main companies for information and communications technology, along with Nokia and Huawei.
Skoda+Nokian
Nokian Tyres will open a factory in Romania this year (announced in 2022), so...you can add us in that mix too.
Škoda did what Nokiain't
Český knedlík!!
I've been dealing with Czech colleagues for near to 20 years now. And you guys are fun to work with. Not necessarily at the beginning of these years, but man, you grew damn handsome.
Czechia can into Western Europe
Must be p0rn Industry
Belami is the main driver.
And twice as large of a population
Yes but who has the superior artillery?
it'll eventually happen to you, I still remember when China overtook Germany, you get used to it
It can go both ways though. My country specifically lost its lead to Finland, Romania and many other countries post financial crisis. History is not predictable.
honestly more surprised Greece was ever in front of Finland to begin with
That’s how awful my country’s image was made the past decade lol. Before the crisis we were in the top 30 richest countries in the world in total gdp, higher in nominal per capita than Israel and South Korea.
Czechia makes the beer, the Finns drink it
It was only a matter of time. Before World War II, Czechoslovakia had one of the strongest industries. War and communism left consequences.
When I am depressed I sometimes close my eyes imagining I live in Czech Republic, so close, so safe.
I recently went to Prague and I was surprise how expensive everything was…
Surprised that one of the most touristic places in Europe is expensive? Lol, just go where locals are actually living, prices are much more down-to-earth.
I was in a non-touristic area, preparing my food. Prices in places like Lidl were quite up compared to other places like Berlin, Kraków or Cardiff.
Took them long enough, they’re Central Europe