Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Dieter Stiefel, Alice Teichova (Hrsg.): Sonderband 9. „Zarte Bande” – Österreich und die europäischen planwirtschaftlichen Länder / „Delicate Relationships” – Austria and Europe’s Planned Economies (2006)
L'udovit Hallon - Miroslav Londák: Sources and Possibilities of Research on Slovak-Austrian Economic Relations after the Second World War
Ludovit Hallon - Miroslav Londâk which linked Slovakia with the present-day territory of Hungary as well as other regions of former Hungary. However, geographical proximity and unified customs areas created natural conditions for the development of trade with the Cisleithanian area and specifically also with its central part, that is with Austria. Existing knowledge shows that one of the key elements of trade between Slovakia and Austria was agrarian production and food products. More specifically, the Vienna region was supplied mainly with fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, dairy products, poultry and cattle from nearby southwestern regions of Slovakia. These trade activities were of great importance for Slovakia because they represented an economic stimulus for the development of agrarian production for the market.1 The main part of the volume of Slovak agrarian production supplied the nearest areas until the late 20th century. The break-up of the economic area of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy and the customs barriers after the formation of Czechoslovakia resulted in the redirection of agrarian market production in southwestern Slovakia to supplying the Czech regions. However, the tradition of trade between Slovakia and Austria was partly retained. For instance, in the 1920s about 7000 pieces of cattle annually and 18000 liters of milk daily headed to the Vienna region.2 Another significant segment of mutual trade contacts underwent a similar development, which is the delivery of building material, mainly bricks and lime from southwestern Slovakia to Austria. After 1918 the delivery was diminished but the tradition remained also in this case. Exports from Slovakia to Austria before the formation of Czechoslovakia were not limited only to the southwest of the country and the said commodities. For example, the Slovak food industry exported also sugar from sugar refineries and a greater part of starch factory production. The fall in the sale of starch in Austria after the break-up of the Habsburg Monarchy meant long-term problems for the Slovak starch industry. From central and eastern Slovakia to Austria some raw materials and semi-finished products were exported, mainly lumber, charcoal, antimony for the use in metallurgy, wood pulp and paper. Also a part of textile and leather production from the wool, cotton and leather factories in central Slovakia was placed in Austria. In the years between the two wars some of the branches, for instance textile and wood pulp-paper industries, had to limit their exports especially because of new capacities in Austria.3 Other semi-finished as well as some of finished products of the chemical industry were exported, for example from the Hallon, Ludovic Prehfad vÿvoja zahraniCneho obchodu Slovenska v rokoch 1918-1929 (Survey of Slovakia’s foreign trade 1918-1929). In: Historické Studie 36 (1995), p. 158. 2 V e s e I y, Jàn: Zemedelskâ vÿroba bvoCiSna na Slovensku (Agricultural output of animal products 1918-1929). In: Hospodàrsky plan a Slovensko (Economic Plan and Slovakia). Bratislava 1934, p. 85-88, Slovak National Archive Bratislava, Slovak Department of Czechoslovak Ministry of Industry and Trade, License for Milkexport to Austria, Bratislava 1927, Cart. Nr. 167, Inv. Nr. 2 838-27. 3 Hallon: Prehl’ad vÿvoja zahraniêného obchodu Slovenska, p. 165-167, 171. 292
