News flash: Czech Republic is not Chechnya
April 19, 2013
With news of the Boston marathon bombers being of Chechen descent, Petr Gandalovič, the Czech Ambassador to the United States, feels it is necessary to explain that the Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya in an official statement:
As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect. The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.
Apparently, Ambassador Gandalovič does not have a very high view of American understanding of basic European geography.
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BLT 
I think there is good evidence that his “not … very high view” is justified. But then how many Europeans (and I include my fellow Brits) would do much better on American geography? How many would know that Washington DC is not in Washington state?
It is also an indictment of the educational value of television. In the US, we had saturation news coverage of the hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers, but apparently, despite extensive coverage, there are still problems with people knowing where Chechnya is.
I remember reading somewhere (maybe in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death) that shortly after the 444-day “Iranian hostage crisis,” the majority of adult Americans could not locate Iran on a map, despite the fact that virtually all Americans saw at least some television news coverage with a map of Iran.
I think there is at least some excuse for people my age to be confused. I did very well in geography in school– but countries like Chechnya didn’t exist back then. I really need a new course in Asian geography now that the Soviet Union no longer exists!
Kristen, I know what you mean: I still stumble sometimes and want to say “Czechoslovakia” instead of saying “Czech Republic.”
What kind of name is “Czech Republic” anyway? We almost always ignore “Republic” when giving the name of countries — we say “Germany” and not “German Federal Republic” or we just abbreviate — we say “PRC” instead of “People’s Republic of China.” And why do we say “Slovakia” instead of “Slovak Republic”? But it somehow sounds wrong to say the name of the country as “Czech” (that seems like an adjective) or “Czechia” (that just sounds wrong!) I personally wish we could call it “Bohemia,” but that is definitely a minority view.
(The only other examples I can think where people say “Republic” instead of a short name are “Central African Republic” and “Democratic Republic of the Congo” [since it is politically incorrect in some circles to say “Zaire” and since it is a different country than “Congo”].)
The related news here in Texas (in Central Texas specifically where a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant has resulted in the deaths of 15 people and injury for 200 others and displacement from homes and businesses for countless others) is the following:
US President Barack Obama will be at nearby Baylor University today, attending a memorial service for the explosion’s victims. He has declared the explosion site in West, Texas a federal disaster area, calling for emergency protective measures to be 75 percent funded through Federal Emergency Management Agency. // In April 2009, the president and first lady visited Prague, The Czech Republic, for a much less somber reasons.