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

3. The settlement structure of Slovakia

The settlement structure of Slovakia

The world-famous Tomáš Bata, shoe manufacturer, is still generally known in Slovakia. Besides having been an excellent businessman, as a humanitarian he also had the ambition to ensure the best possible conditions for his workers and employees. Therefore he had houses built around the factories he established. In 1934, he founded the town Sviť, so that the workers of the factory could live close to it. There is another town with a similar story. The only difference is that the factory and the houses around it were built within the administrative boundary of the town Simony. In 1948, in commemoration of the founder shoe manufacturer, the name of the town was changed and it became Bat’ovany. The old Simony could not keep this name after 1949, since the new communist power replaced the bourgeois capitalist name and named it Partizánske as a reward for the Slovak residents of Simony for their participation in the national uprising. The town has been called Partizánske ever since.

3. 4 The most important steps in the (Czecho)Slovak conquest

3. 4. 1 Census as a means of statistical Slovakization

‘Bohemia was typically the land of language conflicts. Nowhere in Europe were there so bitter struggles for the language of an office or a street sign, and nowhere else was more intelligence wasted to make laws to solve the issue of languages than here.’ Flachbarth (1935)

The most important task between the two World Wars was the Slovakization of towns. In historical Hungary the social composition, i.e. the complementary character of civil occupations and cultural characteristics were much more important than language or ethnicity. The towns in Felvidék were mostly founded by residents of German ethnicity, who had been settled there by Hungarian kings. For centuries, though, especially from the age of the Reformation, religion played the primary role *

* The word ‘Sviť is the abbreviation for Slovenské vizkózové továrne (Slovak Viscose Factory). It is also a pun, since the abbreviation means ‘light’, ‘beam of light’ in the Slovak language.

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