Going Against The Flow – Dammed If They Don’t: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros (The Lost Lands #29)

The lands that Hungary lost due to the Treaty of Trianon did long lasting damage to the national psyche. Overnight, Hungary went from being an equal partner in a sprawling empire to a landlocked, mid-sized country surrounded by lots of foes, and virtually no friends, in the heart of Europe. The land Hungary lost was viewed as an inseparable part of the country. Hungarians felt the loss on a spiritual level as much as a geopolitical one. To add insult to injury, the Hungarian economy was cut off from invaluable natural resources, markets, and transport links. Post-Trianon, Hungary became a more geographically homogenous, agrarian nation. The lands that now constituted the country were the historic core from the Magyar conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 890’s.

Everything else that had been collected under Hungarian rule since then was now part of neighboring nations. Gone were the mountains and mines. Henceforth, fertile land would be Hungary’s greatest natural resource along with two sizable rivers, the Danube and Tisza, which still surged through the new republic. Hungary would have to make the most of the lands and rivers left to them. When it came to the Danube, this could not be done unilaterally. A long stretch of Hungary’s new border with Czechoslovakia ran through the middle of the river. From Trianon until well after the end of World War II, the enmity was too strong for Hungary and Czechoslovakia to work together. In fits and starts that began to change. In 1977, the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam on the Danube was proposed. This would be an opportunity for Czechoslovakia and Hungary to work together for their mutual benefit. It did not go well.

Taking Control – Creating Gabcikovo

Gabcikovo is a strange place to stop on my itinerary for the lost lands beyond Hungary’s borders. If not for its proximity to the Danube and the dam nearby, I would not have given the town a second thought. That would be a shame because Gabcikovo is much more interesting than I initially imagined. The town’s current name is not that much older than the nearby dam. Since the Middle Ages, Gabcikovo had gone by its Hungarian name, Bos. Nine hundred years of history hardly mattered in the aftermath of World War II. Southern Slovakia had been taken back by Hungary from 1938 – 1944. Czechoslovakia was keen to reassert its authority at the expense of ethnic Hungarians by putting an indelible stamp on places by renaming them. Preferably by using references to national heroes. This would reinforce who was really in charge no matter the ethnic composition of regions such as southern Slovakia.

Bos became Gabcikovo in 1948, in honor of Josef Gabcik, an ethnic Slovak who was one of the soldiers that carried out the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the top Nazi administrator of Bohemia and Moravia, in 1942. Thus, Bos was officially out and Gabcikovo was in despite Hungarians making up 80% of the population. ?The town’s new name would likely have been forgotten by everyone except its inhabitants if not for it gracing the dam that was built to harness the power of the nearby Danube River. During the communist era, the Danube was an untapped resource for both Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The problem was how to control it.

Taming the Danube took humans thousands of years and hundreds of dams. Despite all the blood, sweat, and toil that went into the endeavor, it is just a temporary solution to an eternal problem. The river can only be tamed for the life cycle of all those dams, and sometimes not even that long. The Danube has a mind of its own. It is prone to follow its own course, rather than one that humans have laid out for it. Because the Danube is a big, strong, and swift river, attempts to control it are never fully successful. Eventually the river will defeat those who try to inhibit its progress. Time is always on its side. Human efforts can only impede the river’s natural course for so long. That was not going to stop the communist regimes that ruled Czechoslovakia and Hungary from trying.

Peak Power – Going For Broke

The proposed Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam would attempt to control the uncontrollable Danube. First and foremost, the dam(s) would provide flood control which had always been a problem along the Danube between Bratislava and Esztergom. The river’s flood waters spill over onto the Kisalfold (Little Plain), inundating the surrounding flatlands. Flooding had been wreaking havoc with agriculture for centuries. Of even greater benefit would be the production of up to 720 KW of hydroelectric power at Gabcikovo, which would provide for a sizable share of Czechoslovakia’s power needs. A share of the electricity would also go to Austria. This explains why much of the funding was coming from Austrian sources.

One hundred kilometers downstream the smaller Nagymaros Dam would be constructed. Its main purpose was to control the river’s rate of flow. This would allow Gabcikovo to operate as a peak power facility, those that produce electricity during periods of highest demand. There would also be benefits for navigation. This part of the Danube, with its many branching channels, had been a nightmare for commerce. The river could now be linked in with the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal System allowing for navigation from the North Sea all the way to the Black Sea. The project sounded like a win-win on multiple levels. Relations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary would improve. Austrian financing would alleviate pressure on the cash strapped communist governments. Electricity would help power further industrial development. Disastrous floods would not be mitigated. The dam almost sounded too good to be true. What was there not to like? As it would turn out, many things.

Reengineering Nature - Brave New World

Communist governments loved large public works projects. The Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam fed into the idea of reengineering nature to create a brave new world. By the late 1970’s communist governments should have been disabused of this notion. Centralized control led to less innovation and poor construction. The inefficiency of such projects was a drain on the state’s resources. Both Czechoslovakia and Hungary were not economic powerhouses. The fact that they had to rely on a capitalist country for much of the financing spoke volumes about their economic situations. Still the project went forward. It was not long before the problems started.