Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border
Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border After World War II, leaving the country enforced by the Czechoslovak power was replaced by complete lack of mobility and strict defence of the frontiers. As late as the 1960s, people were not even allowed to visit anybody in the friendly country, except within the official system of relations of the party state, on an invitation basis. It was in these years that the model of controlled cooperation permitted by party centres appeared. After the 1960s it was this model that gave an increasing number of opportunities for the development of economic relations, such as the exchange of agricultural machines, meanwhile tight control was slackening. From the 1980s on, it was price differences between the two countries that regulated the intensity of border crossing. It was mainly adjusted to the changes in petrol prices, which was now called tourism. The change of regime in 1990 did not bring drastic changes, either. It simply strengthened shopping tourism, since, in the beginning, the better assortment of goods attracted the citizens of the neighbouring countries to Hungarian stores, whereas cheap petrol attracted Hungarians to Czecho/Slovakia. The deeper meaning of the 1990 change of regime, i.e. getting rid of Soviet control, the communist political system and dictatorship as well as the reorganization of democratic conditions made the re-establishment of the municipality system possible. The fact that local interests and goals could be worded and translated into deeds brought a new quality into the relations between the countries. The cross-border relations that were established, organized, institutionalized and developed into a network expressed the wish and goals of the population along the border. The ambitions and the demands of individuals to cross borders as well as the activities of the institutions of municipalities are becoming concerted. The aim and activities of municipality institutions are beginning to express individuals’ ambitions and wishes. This institutionalized expression of the intentions of the population is what gives the most important content of recent events, i.e. democratization. In dictatorships, it is the task of institutions to transmit the political will from above, to enforce the enacted laws, decrees and instructions and to force them on the population. In actual democracies, on the other hand, the task of institutions is exactly the opposite and this is due to the popular representation by elections, i.e. transmission of the popular will to the functional order of institutions and legislative organs. We can witness this process, which has been going on in the new, reviving stage 154
