Moravians (ethnic group)
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 |
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| Moravians |
|---|
| Total population |
|
373,000 |
| Regions with significant populations |
| Czech Republic: 380,474 (2001) |
| Languages |
| Moravian dialects of the Czech language Standard Czech language |
| Religions |
| Related ethnic groups |
| Czechs, Slovaks, other Slavic peoples |
- This article deals with the modern national/ethnic group. For other meanings see Moravian.
Moravians (Moravané or colloquially Moraváci in Czech) are the West Slavic inhabitants of modern Moravia, the easternmost part of the Czech Republic, also in Moravian Slovakia. They speak Moravian dialects of the Czech language and standard Czech.
1,363,000 citizens of the Czech Republic declared Moravian nationality in the 1991 census. However, the number dropped to 380,474 in the 2001 census - many persons previously declaring themselves as Moravians declared themselves as Czechs in this census.
For far-off historical reasons, both the Czech expression for a Czech and that for a Bohemian are the same ('Čech'). Then theoretically it may not be clear which category is meant. This leads some people (politicians, etc.) to address Bohemians, Moravians and sometimes even Silesians in their speeches.
Southern and central Moravia is more religious than western, northern and middle Czechia and is a bastion of the Roman Catholic Church and the Christian democrats. Culturally, historically and linguistically, these Moravians are closer to Slovaks then to Bohemians around Prague.[citation needed] These historic connections reach back to the time of Great Moravia, a kingdom of Slovaks and Moravians that ruled central Europe in the late 800s.[citation needed]
Only in the first years after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 did a few Moravian political parties seem to be able to gain some success in elections. However they lost much of their strength around the time of the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 when Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
To the north of Moravia borders with a small historical part of Silesia which belongs now to the Czech republic; therefore, a Moravian-Silesian Region (Kraj moravskoslezský) was created in the 1990s.
