Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993

The effect of geopolitics on the urban network

The establishment of the second independent Slovak state was made possible by the collapse of the Soviet Union and then the Slovak secession from Czechoslovakia. It turned out to be impossible to unite peoples or nations in the name of the so-called Slav brotherhood, or the bilingual (Czech and Slovak) nation (the Czechoslovak nation), or the monolingual (Czechoslovak) two nations (Czech and Slovak), because the individual features determined by their historical past and the differences between them are stronger than their similarities

In 1993 Slovakia emerged as a new state of Europe. Slovakia’s selfinterpretation brought important aspects to the surface, and their recognition, interpretation and reception determined public political actions and development plans.

It became a generally recognized fact that Slovakia belonged to Central Europe, i.e. it was a country that could be found between the former Soviet Union and Western Europe, but at the same time it was also one of the countries between Scandinavia and the Balkan states. However, it was a focus of debate which cardinal point it was closer to. The first Slovak nationalistic governments emphasized the importance of the east, which called forth closer relations with the new Russia. Nevertheless, the European Union made Slovakia understand that, by this forced alliance, it would exclude itself from an integrated Europe. The 1998 change of government meant both a break with the eastern orientation and a clear-cut espousal of tending westwards. This made it possible for Slovakia to become a member of the European Union.

East-west orientation is of utmost importance for Slovak policy and public life, which can also be seen in the fact that the Slovak people regard Slovakia as a country of the Carpathians. This statement also expresses negation, because it means that it is not a Carpathian Basin country, in the sense that Felvidék was considered an integral part of the Basin in the Hungarian geographical and historical approach. A consequence of this idea is, for instance, the way that the Slovak road network has been implemented. They speak about eastern-western valleys between the mountain ridges of the Carpathian country. The valleys of the rivers Váh, Hron and Hornád make east-west communication corridors. That the rivers flow southwards and flow into the Danube, and the rivers Sajó and Tisza, is regarded as a secondary fact. This idea serves as a basis for the political and geographical interpretation according to which the river valleys connect two central regions, the Eastern Slovak and the Western Slovak regions. The Bratislava-Košice axis runs in the

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