The Characteristics and Consequences of Historical Development in the 20th Century

Placing this question against a historical background it is obvious that the peace treaty of Trianon (1920) has entailed the most serious consequences. The Hungary that has an area of 93 thousand square kilometres today is one of the well-known consequences of the peace treaty of Trianon, which closed World War I. The new state borders forced out by the peace treaty of Trianon on 4^th July 1920 brought about one of the biggest long-term traumas in the one-thousand-year –old history f the Hungarian People. The sober facts regarding the serious losses imposed on the territory and the population of Hungary are widely known. The technical literature deals with the tragic situation to depth, in the course of which the semi-circular railway line on the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain that extended from Losonc in the north as far as Zombor in the South within the semicircle of the Carpathian Mountains, which also played a decisive role in determining Hungary’s eastern as well as northern and southern borders as if pre-ordaining the borders imposed by Trianon. This, strategically extremely over-valued issue served both as a cause and a reason for the successor states, which aspired for ever larger territories to achieve that this railway line running alongside a line of highly important fair cities should become the direct determinant marking out the Trianon borders. Since the whole length of this railway line stretched along territories inhabited by Hungarians it was almost lawful to disannex these exclusively Hungarian territories as well. The so-called railway-determined borders meant the detachment of about 1.6 million Hungarian natives that lived in these unequivocally Hungarian-speaking territories along the railway borderlines (Erdősi, 1996; Majdán, 2002; L. Nagy, 1965; Palotás, é.n.; Romsics, 2001; Rónai, é.n.).

The Trianon borders set difficulties never experienced before for the mutilated country and the Hungarian nation. One of the gravest consequences of Trianon, which redrew the political map of the Carpathian Basin, was that the newly shaped eastern borders disrupted economic units that had been organically related, integrated and built on one another. One spectacular consequence that still hinders cross-border connections is the broken-up area structure, the dual peripheral situation, which determine almost all the components of the socio-economic system of relations, and the combined evolution of a kind of borderline existence and a multi-disadvantaged situation which reinforce each other. By about the turn of the centuries the core areas of regional development had already starter developing in the Hungary of an evolving capitalist system, which in the case of an undisturbed development might have become real regions. The new political borders intersecting the Carpathian Basin all the way, however, cut the emerging regions taking shape by the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries into pieces (table 7.1). In addition to the fact that the new borders concerned organically shaping regions, made interregional and Hungarian-Hungarian contacts impossible and made border transport extremely complicated (Golobics–Tóth, 1999;

Rechnitzer, 1999; Ruttkay, 1995; Tóth, 1996; Tóth–Golobics, 1996).

The hostile atmosphere in the Carpathian Basin between the two world wars did not help enhancing cross border regional cooperation either. The hostile relationship with the neighbouring countries made economic relations impossible between the big cities “stuck”

outside the borders and their satellites that remained in Hungary after having lost their centres. In the Great Hungarian Plain a lot more regions lost their centres owing to the

changes in the borders as a result of Trianon than in the northern of the western parts of the country. This was a consequence of the fact that in the Great Plain there were fewer but more populous and larger cities with larger satellite areas than in other regions of the country. As a result the integration of Great Plain regions that had lost their centres into new administrative frameworks was very difficult. The political state borders separated earlier economic relationships and cut through natural landscapes and economic-geographical units.

Due to the loss of cities on the edge of the Great Plain and the transversal road and rail links connecting them as well as the centres if gravitation with their advanced provision and service functions, there emerged considerable areas lacking cities along the Trianon borders of Hungary. Within the new territory of the state he over dominant Budapest remained without competition as regards demography, economy, administration, settlement network, etc. since the historically evolved regional centres the quasi competitors, no longer operated. Thus, the regional structure of the states within the political borders in the Carpathian Basin could only improve within political borders that considerably slowed down organic processes and the intensity and texture of the internal relational systems was much higher, stronger and denser than those in the regions along the borders not mentioning the limitations to the development of cross border regional cooperation. In the meantime, the multi-directional peripheral development in the stripe along the borders turned into an intensive process (Hajdú, 2001; Tóth, 1996; Tóth–

Golobics, 1996).

Figure 7.1: Emerging regions in the Carpathian Basin

Source: after the figure by Tóth–Golobics, 1996 (partly re-organised).

Legend: I.–IX.: emerging regions

What concerns the development history of the decades following World War II after a short transitory period of civil democracy (1945 – 1948) the so-called socialist development of about four decades meant radical changes as regards the transformation of the centre-periphery relational system as well. In brief we can say that during the so-called socialist era (1949 – 1989) especially two factors exerted deep and long-lasting effects on the socio-economic processes as regards their consequences. One was the long-inherited, so-called historic division line, which has validly divided the country into two parts as regards regional

development. These are the more underdeveloped East-Hungarian and the historically generally more developed West-Hungarian regions (figure 7.2).

Of course from the point of view of socio-economic advantages and disadvantages, i.e., that of the winners and the losers, this means that owing to its historical development Eastern-Hungary can be called a loser on the whole, while Tansdanubia or the larger half of Western-Hungary, mainly Northern-Transdanubia belongs to the winners from the point of view of regional development. The country can also be divided into parts along a different division line, which is not holly determined historically and is a result of the socialist development of the country. The areas north of this line Northern-Hungary (e.g., Ózd, Kazincbarcika, Salgótarján, Gyöngyös, Mátra-region, Miskolc) and Northern and Central Transdanubia (Veszprém, Győr, Székesfehérvár, Tatabánya) enjoyed advantages rather than disadvantages of the forced industrialisation policy for four decades. The regions belonging here can be mostly considered to be winners. In a peculiar way, however, Transdanubian regions south of this line enjoyed temporary advantages in terms of regional policy, due to mining and industrial activities (Dunaújváros, Komló, uranium mining in Baranya County, etc.). The advantageous situation in the case of Northern-Hungary and Southern-Transdanubia somehow counterbalanced the disadvantageous effects resulting from the historically inherited disadvantages. It is a hopeful sign that as a result of socio-economic modernisation, although slowly but there is an innovative belt of development with a narrow corridor, which covers the north-Hungarian regions of the country in an ever widening stripe over the years, from Northern-Transdanubia, along the line of Sopron–Győr–Veszrprém–Székesfehérvár–

Esztergom–Budapest–Kecskemét–Szeged.

Figure 7.2: Changes in the developmental axes in the area structure of the country

Regions (NUTS level 2): Central-Hungary; Central-Transdanubia; Western-Transdanubia; Southern-Transdanubia; Northern-Hungary; Northern-Great Plain; Southern-Great Plain.

Legend: 1. Division lines of development; 2. Winners; 3. Losers; 4. Development belt.

Source: Faragó, L. 1999.

Due to its historic as well as socialist development, the accumulation of the disadvantaged situation together with all its disadvantageous consequences that fortified one another, best manifested itself in the Large region of the Great Hungarian Plain. What concerns the processes following the changes of the regimes of 1989/90 the situation above was modified or rather made more difficult by the fact that industries bringing considerable advantages despite all the controversies, like the heavy industry and the agricultural processing industry, were terminated first and the so-called rust-belts entailing acute unemployment emerged. The ensuing processes of desindustrialisation equally hit the North-Hungarian and South-Transdanubian regions that had been preferred earlier and relegated the weakening regions and areas to the level of the Great Plain, which had clearly been regarded a periphery before as regards its developmental status, and within our national framework and considering current conditions can be clearly classified among partly or seriously disadvantaged peripheries in the centre-periphery system of relations. As regards their socio-economic consequences past and present can be linked together in this way.