Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interethnic spaces
146 László Szarka The Hungarian-Slovak border as a research subject On both sides of the 679 km long Hungarian-Slovak state border we find cultural and economic small regions, influence spheres around towns and market districts which are geographically, historically, ethnographically and ethnically very close to one another, and which once belonged to the same administration government. There is an often heard phrase in Hungary: Hungary, at least in the ethnic sense of the word, is adjoining itself: on the opposite side of its borders there are communities inhabited by the same population, by the Hungarians. This statement contains much truth but in present days it is also becoming more and more distant from reality. Below, I would like to describe some ideas about the historical creation and the ethnic peculiarities of this contact zone between the state border and the language border and about the mediatory and contact-creating role of the local Hungarian and non-Hungarian population. In the last decades, intensive changes of ethnic character were taking place in these regions. These changes are continuing even in present days. I would like to introduce one element of these changes and through it to draw consequences regarding the ethnic background of the dynamism and particular contactcreating potential hidden in this border region. I intend to briefly analyse the ethnically mixed contact zone in the Southern Slovakian border regions. The state border between Czechoslovakia and Hungary was defined in 1918-1919 and finally ratified in 1920. In the past eight decades, the regions, divided by the state border, developed particular characteristics. On the one hand, the zones on the two sides of the border differ from each other; on the other hand, compared with the internal zones of the countries which include them, they have peripheral features. The once centrally located and important regions, such as Esztergom, Nógrád, Gömör and Abaúj-Torna, now divided by the state border, have been gradually degraded to peripheries on both
