Splinters of a Collapsing Empire

At the end of World War I, the new country of Czechoslovakia was carved out of the losing Austro-Hungarian Empire.. During WW II it was swallowed up by Nazi Germany, and after the war by Soviet Russia. In 1989 it became an independent republic with the retreat of Russia from Eastern Europe. In 1992 the country amicably split along the Vltava River, with the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia forming today’s Czech Republic.