Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
3. The settlement structure of Slovakia
Urban structure in Slovakia 3. 4. 3 Subordination of the economy to Czech interests Due to the change in the state, i.e. the establishment of Czechoslovakia, Felvidék lost its economic relations. The new power urged the Slovak economy to turn to new markets, the parts of the country beyond the river Morava. However, it did nothing to protect the underdeveloped Slovak economy and its peripheral position, which goes back to the 19th century, from competition with the strong Czech economy. Therefore, the Slovak and Sub-Carpathian parts of the country lagged behind the strong Czech, Moravian and Silesian economies. This subordinated situation was severely criticised by both contemporary Hungarian historians (Polyánszky 1939, pp. 151-166), and, later, by Marxian Czechoslovak economic history (Kazimour 1981, pp. 55-60). In the 19th century, when coke started to provide fuel for the steel industry, the brown coal mines in Gömör [Gemer] lost their importance. This was when the crude iron that was mined in Tiszolc [Tisovec] began to be transported to Lopér [Podbrezová] in the valley of the Upper river Hron, where the largest iron-rolling mill of contemporary Hungary was built, after the Besztercebánya [Banská Bystrica]-Breznóbánya [Brezno] railway line had been completed. By closing down most factories, the Czech capital did away with the Central Slovak industrial area in the 1920s. When the workers’ strike in Korompa [Krompachy] broke out, this was where Czech soldiers fired at Slovak iron workers for the first time. In Slovakia, 200 factories were liquidated. However, the number of those employed decreased on an even larger scale. At the time of the 1910 census, 83,596 companies in Felvidék were registered, with 160,256 employees. In the Slovak part of the new state, however, production and the employment rate declined dramatically and only rarely were the factories operating at full capacity. There were sectors where the utilized capacity was as low as 10%. Slovak iron ore production fell to two-thirds and manganese ore mining to one-third. Four out of the five blastfurnaces that were in operation in 1921 stopped working in the following year. The timber industry, the most highly developed industry, was ruined; the only activity was timber transportation abroad. In 1923 the number of those employed in industry fell to half of the rate before the war. In 1930 it rose to 92,200. The number of emigrants increased again. At the time of bourgeois Czechoslovakia 220,000 people left the Slovakian province. After the war years the state-controlled economy that had been introduced during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was maintained. Grain 61
