The Changing Role of Villages based on Village Surveys from the Past 150 Years

Abstract

In the last century, because of the socio-economic changes in Hungary, the network of settlements has changed significantly, and thus the traditional role of villages has also changed.
According to contemporary interpretations, the village was the scene of traditional peasant society and of agricultural production, however, over the decades, it was gradually transformed into a new, functionally more diverse, and different form of settlement. The formula "village = agricultural settlement" became invalid before the change of regime,2, 3 but the process intensified after that. This can be explained by the drastic decrease in the proportion of agricultural employees: in 1900 three-fifths (61%) of all employees, in 1990 less than one-fifth, and in 2001 only 6% of all employees worked in the agricultural sector.
Under socialism, the most important sector of the economy was industry, and in terms of employment, 10-15% of the villages in 1970 was industrial and a third was mixed. The transformation of villages was also significantly influenced by the effects of rural and social policy: the development of the socialist economy (collectivisation, industrialisation) gave some areas a locational advantage, and the principles of developing the network of settlements also increased the disparities in supplies, so that the more disadvantaged areas became more and more marginalised due to insufficient technical infrastructure networks and the poor state of housing.
The 1990 Act on Local Government revalued local government, municipalities were "liberated" from the subordination to the spatial level, and the principle of local government considered the institution of local government as the foundation of the democratic system. At the same time, the framework for the development of the network of municipalities was radically changed. The number of local authorities rose to over 3 000, and competition between municipalities intensified as the market economy developed. Suddenly, a large number of municipalities entered a 'market' of free competition between municipalities, where their relative position was determined by their geographical location, the local characteristics and the local policies that took advantage of them.
The development and survival of villages have special relevance these days. In 2018, the Hungarian government aimed to increase the capacity of small settlements to retain and increase their population, as well as to promote the retention of young population, and the repression of migration from villages. It is part of the long-term plans of the government to make villages attractive again for younger generations, families, and those who wish to have their new home in the countryside. For this purpose, the government announced the Hungarian Village Programme in 2018, and from 2019 to 2021 it will announce calls for applications for the third year in a row. Our research examines the development and survival of villages. In this paper we are looking for the answer to the questions of which internal resources the development of villages was based on, which local and locational energies determined their development, and how did they change during the last centuries.
Although our analysis has focused on changes in the resources of villages, we cannot ignore the fact that current spatial policies have also influenced the development potential of villages. Under socialism, settlement policy became a matter of ideology, economic development and structural policy, and some argue that the 1971 National Programme on the Development of the Settlement Network was merely an urban development concept, which put most villages in the category of villages without a function – i.e. not to be developed – and thus made their development impossible. In contrast, the 2005 National Spatial Development Programme made the region-based development of rural areas a national objective, primarily through economic diversification (not exclusively agricultural), while the 2014 spatial development programme gave villages a kind of spatial policy incentive by targeting local economic development and the population retention capacity of small settlements – which, however, can only counterbalance the economic and urbanisation transformation processes to a limited extent.