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Czechoslovakia EARLY HISTORY
First Political Units
Although a Czechoslovak state did not emerge until 1918, its
roots go back many centuries. The earliest records of Slavic
inhabitants in present-day Czechoslovakia date from the fifth
century A.D. The ancestors of the Czechs settled in present-day
Bohemia and Moravia, and those of the Slovaks settled in presentday Slovakia. The settlers developed an agricultural economy and
built the characteristically circular Slavic villages, the
okroulice.
The peaceful life of the Slavic tribes was shattered in the
sixth century by the invasion of the Avars, a people of
undetermined origin and language who established a loosely
connected empire between the Labe (Elbe) and Dnieper rivers. The
Avars did not conquer all the Slavic tribes in the area, but they
subjugated some of them and conducted raids on others. It was in
response to the Avars that Samo--a foreigner thought to be a
Frankish merchant--unified some of the Slavic tribes and in A.D.
625 established the empire of Samo. Although the territorial
extent of the empire is not known, it was centered in Bohemia and
is considered the first coherent Slavic political unit. The
empire disintegrated when Samo died in 658.
A more stable polity emerged in Moravia. The Czech tribes of
Moravia helped Charlemagne destroy the Avar Empire (ca. 796) and
were rewarded by receiving part of it as a fief. Although the
Moravians paid tribute to Charlemagne, they did enjoy
considerable independence. Early in the ninth century, Mojmir--a
Slavic chief--formed the Moravian Kingdom. His two successors
expanded its domains to include Bohemia, Slovakia, southern
Poland, and western Hungary. The expanded kingdom became known as
the Great Moravian Empire. Its importance to Czechoslovak history
is that it united in a single state the ancestors of the Czechs
and Slovaks.
The Great Moravian Empire was located at the crossroad of two
civilizations: the German lands in the West and Byzantium in the
East. From the West the Franks (a Germanic people) conducted
destructive raids into Moravian territory, and German priests and
monks came to spread Christianity in its Roman form among the
Slavs. Mojmir and his fellow chiefs were baptized at Regensburg
in modern-day Germany. Rostislav (850-70), Mojmir's successor,
feared the German influence as a threat to his personal rule,
however, and turned to Byzantium. At Rostislav's request, Emperor
Michael of Byzantium dispatched the monks Cyril and Methodius to
the Great Moravian Empire to introduce Eastern Christian rites
and liturgy in the Slavic language. A new Slavonic script, the
Cyrillic alphabet, was devised. Methodius was invested by the
pope as archbishop of Moravia. But Svatopluk (871-94),
Rostislav's successor, chose to ally himself with the German
clerics. After the death of Methodius in 885, the Great Moravian
Empire was drawn into the sphere of influence of the Roman
Catholic Church. As a result, the Czechs and Slovaks adopted the
Latin alphabet and became further differentiated from the Eastern
Slavs, who continued to use the Cyrillic alphabet and adhered to
Eastern Orthodoxy.
Data as of August 1987
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