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

3. The settlement structure of Slovakia

Urban structure in Slovakia

of in this category. After 1950, however, it consisted of small ethnic groups. After 1990, new phenomena emerged within the population of Slovakia. A higher number of the Gypsy population dared to declare themselves an independent ethnicity, amounting to almost 90,000 people in 2001. Actually, the percentage of Gypsy people in Slovakia is thought to be much higher. Also, the number of the people of other and unknown ethnicities increased and over 65,000 people were registered in these two categories.

3. 4. 2 Towns as the centres of Slovakization

The new state regarded it as its major task to change the urban Hungarian majority to a Slovak majority. That was the reason why so many settlements were declared towns. Both in existing and new towns it was their ambition to achieve the dominance and exclusive majority of employees with Slovak national ethnicity in administration, the state institutional system and public institutions, as soon as possible. They were therefore eager to prove Slovak predominance by censuses, which produced numerous abuses as a consequence. The Czechoslovak power did not react to the thousands of reports on the aggressive behaviour of census-takers. According to the records, the census-takers refused to register Hungarian ethnicity, saying, for instance, 'those who were born in Košice and are Košice residents cannot be Hungarian.’ (Cited in Popély, 1991, p. 95).

As the figures of Table 18 show, both in 1910 and in 2001 there were about 200,000 people of Hungarian ethnicity in the towns of Felvidék, i.e. of present-day Slovakia. However, there was a huge difference between the two figures, since in 1910 the 200,000 Hungarians lived in 39 towns, whereas in 2001 they lived in as many as 136 towns! This figure refers to a high number of tragic events, because the number of the people of Hungarian ethnicity living in the nation decreased from 935,000 to 319,000. If we also take into consideration that the rural population was chased into towns (after their lands and houses had been confiscated), which was typical of all the socialist countries in the 1950s, then we can see that the figures regarding deportation, removal and exchange of the population, executions and expatriations show actual ethnic cleansing.

The 31.1% proportion of the urban Slovak population in 1910 rose to 88.5% in 2001. During those 90 years the number and population of

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