Think of the Czech Republic, and what springs to mind? Anyone who has not been there in the last few years will probably conjure up images of a country dominated by austere Soviet architecture, the legacy of a repressive communist regime. Although the reality of the Czech Republic as we move towards the millennium is a far cry from this, its recent past history is never far away. The political upheavals that have taken place since the end of 1989 have transformed what was a centrally planned, former Soviet bloc state into a thriving market economy. The speed and apparent ease with which this transition has taken place has led, within six years, to a stable currency with relatively low inflation. However, despite the fact that the so called "Velvet devolution" was relatively peaceful and the level of civil disruption low, the flipside to this is that in some respects there was no revolution at all.
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