Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Budapest in the First Twenty Years of the Council System (1950-1970)
area of Budapest 94 homes out of a 100 had running water and sewerage, but in the new districts of the capital the figure was only 1 in 35, and only 1 in 10 for electricity, more expensive than in the city. The sinking of new wells and the extension of the distribution network, increased the water supply but the consumption of water for industrial uses doubled causing new headaches for the municipal administration. Public transport problems—in need of modernization in any case—also increased with the need to bring the services in the industrial and dormitory suburbs up to the level of the capital, both as regards the local services in the outlying settlements, which badly needed renewal, and the connection with the city centre. For the increasing industrial demand for labour required better amenities for the inhabitants of the outer districts, easy transportation, facilities for better training. At the beginning of the fifties, which was a period of large-scale industrialization, government investment was concentrated on the development of industry, at the expense of housing and infrastructural needs. The difficulties were increased by the fact that there was less building in areas already supplied with public utilities and linked to city transport, for the main objective was to open up new suburbs. The result was that while financial input increased considerably precisely because of the development of public utilities and transport, the service, cultural and accompanying urbanization were not properly fulfilled. What the Hungarian capital was witnessing was a genuine take-over by the people, as evidenced, for instance, by the housing estates built on the outskirts of the old city in the 10th, 11th and 14th districts, and later in the 13th, 15th and 22nd districts; the out-patient clinics in the 11th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 22nd districts, the Karl Marx University of Economics, founded in 1949 with an intake of over 3,000 students. Achievements of the first Five-Year Plan included the housing estate named after Attila József, the great Hungarian proletarian poet, the Cultural Centre also named after him, as well as the People’s Stadium, built to take 90,000 spectators, which is still an impressive sports centre. In 1952, at the time of its foundation it marked the beginning of sports for the masses in Hungary. The transformation of Greater Budapest into a modern socialist metropolis became something of a principle which the Hungarian People’s Republic felt as a moral obligation. The counter-revolutionary Horthy regime had done everything over its twenty-five years of power to maintain a division between the city centre and the working-class districts, and all its town-planning projects and investment policies, its health and educational schemes were directed to the same end. The people’s regime, on the contrary, was anxious to integrate the two in every possible way. But the new socialist Government was faced with the task of liquidating an economic and social backwardness of several decades, and a planned economy and the creation of new property relations demanded new economic resources. To this the enthusiasm and public spirit of the workers, now in power and taking part in public life, made a great contribution. The urgent desire for reconstruction, to repair the damage caused by the war, was also a powerful incentive. Today it is possible to estimate very exactly the achievements of the first Five-Year Plan; Hungarian industry expanded by 210 per cent, heavy industry—and particularly the extractive and metallurgical industries—took a leading place in the industrial structure. By 1959 the population of Budapest had increased by 60.4 per cent and the number of workers in employment by 80 per cent drawing in the process on new sources of labour, mainly women, and others leaving the land. This necessarily led to a massive expansion of schooling for 68
