Making a capital city: National identity and the post-socialist transformation of Bratislava (Slovakia)

The geography of national identity and nationalism are important factors in the post-socialist transformation of East Central Europe in general and Slovakia in particular. Slovakia presents a unique opportunity in that it is simultaneously undergoing the standard "triple transition" of post-socialist ECE (Democracy; Market Economy; Civil society) as well as the process of "nationalizing" its newly acquired sovereign political space. National identities are based in part on identification with particular places understood and contextualized in particular ways. From this assertion, this dissertation involves the post-socialist transformation of Bratislava and the development and changing role of Slovak national identity in relation to that process. Important questions throughout the dissertation are: How practical (geographically, historically, economically, politically, and symbolically) is the Slovak capital city? How successful have been the efforts to invest the urban landscape with a post-Czechoslovak/Communist narrative of Slovak nationhood? How does a "nation" that has recently acquired a "state" go about transforming a city, which has had little relevance to their national identity in the past, into "their" capital, "their" seat of government as well as a reflection and symbol of "their" national pride? And conversely, how does Bratislava, and the imaginings of it as a capital and post-socialist city, located on the western margins of the political territory and overtly leaning toward the "West", condition Slovak national identity.; Capital cities are an easily defined yet poorly understood class of cities. I argue throughout the dissertation that capitals in general and Bratislava in particular are more than political administrative centers but also in varying degrees symbolic theaters for national ideology, reflections of the larger national stance towards urbanism and modernity, catalysts of national economic development, and links between local culture and the imagined community of the nation-state. Further, capital cities are highly politicized places that simultaneously structure and condition national identity and are structured by nationalist praxis. Bratislava's unique multi-cultural history and demographic experience combined with contemporary Slovak nationalization efforts provide an important study for post-socialist nation-state and city transformation as well as post-socialist national identity evolution.