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

4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993

Towns in Slovakia after 1993

Figure 14. The regional and district (obvod) division of 2004

1 - headquarters of the regional office (8 kraj); 2 - headquarters of the district office (50 obvod); 3 - permanent office branch (33); 4 - temporary office branch (31) Sourcexompiled by István Mezei based on Návrh samosprávnych krajov. ErasData-Pro, spol. S.r.o., Odbor informatiky SVS MV SR. 2003, drawn by Máté Mády.

The confirmation of the regional boundaries of 1996 excluded the resources that could have led to the self-governance of the Hungarian population. The ‘distribution’ of the Hungarian ethnicity among the Bratislava, Trnava and Nitra districts, as well as the decision to ignore Lučenec, Rimavská Sobota, Rožňava, Kráľovský Chlmec and their districts and their attachment to the regions and districts with Slovak majority to the north are signs of the conquerors being unfair. In legal terms, this could be considered refusal of the right to self-determination, or in political terms, the survival of national oppression. This was how the interests of the governing parties in keeping their own positions were interwoven with the interests of all nationalist Slovak political forces, governing and opposition, in keeping the nation-state aim in mind continuously.

It is a typical feature of the changes in the regional system of administration that there was an increasingly strong concentration for long decades after the 1918 establishment of Czechoslovakia. The initial number of 16 counties had been reduced to three in 1960. This con106