Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
3. The settlement structure of Slovakia
The role of the first independent Slovak state in town planning ‘politically extremely problematic’ era (to put it in the correct Slovak term) that Slovak people became aware of the fact that Bratislava was their capital city, their actual centre. After the fall of the satellite regime the city preserved the imaginary role of a capital city, and only waited for the suitable historical moment for its re-emergence as a capital. After 1945 the Czechoslovak power, which had suddenly emerged on the victorious side and regarded itself as bourgeois, declared the principle of collective responsibility, making the German and the Hungarian people responsible for the collapse of Czechoslovakia. Referring to the Beneš decrees, they expelled them from the city, and, by deportation and exchange of the population, from the state, too. After the communists took over control in 1948, they expelled the people and families that they considered ‘bourgeois’ from the city, after depriving them of their property. While they were ousting people of other ethnicities, there was a continuous inflow of Slovak people, who settled down in the city and gradually took over the leading administrative and managerial posts (from Hungarian people), and economic units, shops and factories (from Jewish and German people). The power of the city, its status of a capital city and its legal, administrative and political weight were rather ambiguous, since the capital city of Czechoslovakia was actually Prague. The establishment and organization of the new state was carried out under Czech control, and centralization was necessary to be able to plan and perform the tasks. This, however, meant pushing Bratislava into the background. True, when the new state was established, Bratislava was regarded as the capital of Slovakia, and this was where they set up the headquarters of the Slovak minister with full powers, who was in fact the government commissioner of Prague. However, its authority was gradually reduced, as a result of which it had become a mere district centre by 1927. This did not change after the war, either. Although in the 1960s certain offices were set up in Bratislava, they did not have actual political influence or any decision-making power. The federation established in 1968 also had Bratislava as its Slovak capital. The Slovak government, ministries and parliament were located there, but in the course of the next three years, which were called the years of ‘normalization’, they were deprived of their actual authority and Bratislava again became a simple mediator of Prague’s instructions. The 40 years of communism were from several aspects disadvantageous for Bratislava as a city, too. Like the capital cities of all the other excommunist countries, Bratislava showed the signs of decline, both func67
