Background
The Communist system in Czechoslovakia fell in November 1989. But in 1990, the official name of the country was still the "Czechoslovak Socialist Republic" (in Czech and in Slovak Československá socialistická republika, or ČSSR). President Václav Havel proposed merely dropping the word "Socialist" from the name, but Slovak politicians wanted a second change. They demanded that the country's name be spelled with a hyphen (e.g. "Republic of Czecho-Slovakia" or "Federation of Czecho-Slovakia"), as it was spelled from Czechoslovak independence in 1918 until 1920, and again in 1938 and 1939. President Havel then changed his proposal to "Republic of Czecho-Slovakia".
Read more about this topic: Hyphen War
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question What is truth? is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“... every experience in life enriches ones background and should teach valuable lessons.”
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)