Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1976 (4. évfolyam, 9-12. szám)
1976 / 9. szám
HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER BOOKS Howell, David R. HUNGARIAN ETHNOGRAPHY: A Bibliography of English Langauge Sources. New Brunswick, N.J.: Hungarian Research Center, American Hungarian Foundation, 1975. 24 pages, index. $1.80 paper. This is the first publication of the HUNGARIAN REFERENCE SHELF, a series initiated by the HRC and made possible by a development grant from the ACLS, matched by funds from the Edmund Vasvary Publication Fund of the American Hungarian Foundation. The latter fund is the creation of a score of concerned individual donors in honor of Rev. Edmund Vasvary. The necessarily small publication lists 319 entries, encompassing bibliographies, books, articles, and papers delivered at meetings. Organized alphabetically by author it also has a handy subject index. The author is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the U. of Virginia. The second volume in the Hungarian Reference Shelf series will be Gabor Horschter’s extensive bibliography on the New Economic Mechanism, and should become available early in 1976. Endrey, Anthony. SONS OF NIMROD; The Origin of Hungarians. Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 601 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne 3000, Australia, 1975. 116 pages, notes, illust. $6.50 cloth. The author proposes “a new direction to the search for truth in Hungarian prehistory.” He says that “our historians have been looking in the wrong direction. They have tried to find the Magyars in places where they have never been.” With some 325 refences to scholarly secondary sources he then sets out to chart the prehistory of the Magyars as follows. The first clues about the existence of the Hungarians go back some 10,000 plus years when “they lived in an area also occupied by the ancestors of the Finno-Ugric peoples and the Sumerians.” I n the 4th mil leni um B.C. they “appear as part of the Subarians living in Upper Mesopotamia and the region between the Tigris river and the Zagros mountains.” They then moved to Transcaucasia where they lived “under the rule of a Hurrian upper class.” After a period of independence they again came under Hurrian rule in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. Around the 6th century the Magyars mixed with Turkic people, and from the 3rd century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. they lived and mixed with the Huns achieving pre-eminence among other peoples of the area. In the 5th century the Hun-Magyar “amalgam splits into three parts: one remains in Transcaucasia, one shifts gradually to the north, and the main body sets out in a western direction, ending its journey in present-day Hungary at the end of the ninetn century.” Endrey admits that there are “many details which require further investigation” but feels that new historical and archaeological data disproved many of the sacrosanct theories of Hungarian genesis. The author is one of the founders of the Hungarian Institute of Melbourne and is a practicing attorney-at-law in the same city. Mieczkovski, Bogdan. PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CONSUMPTION IN EASTERN EUROPE; Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany. New York: Praeger, 111 Fourth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10003, 1975. 344 pages, tables, biblio., $21.50 cloth. In the wake of William Robinson’s The Pattern of Reform in Hungary (for review see HSN no. 4) it has been expected that studies will follow and encompass other areas of Eastern Europe and focusing on specialized aspects of politicaleconomic development. Mieczkovski’s volume focuses on consumption and four countries of the region. With ample documentation (there are 134 tables in the volume) he attempts to look at change in the context of consumption, admitting that this unconventional approach may carry the seeds of severe criticism. Nevertheless, he seems to be able to show the underlying causes and results of economic policies of the last 30 years in terms of human want. He says that earlier policies were found faulty and gradually “social compromises” were achieved between various political and economic goals, especially between investment and consumption.After setting a theoretical frame for his consumption approach, he devotes three general chapters to consumption in Eastern Europe, and five chapters to consumer experience in specific countries. The chapter on Hungary gives relevant historical highlights on economic development since 1945, and concludes that “Hungary shaped its postwar consumption history in the crucible of dramatic changes...” behind which “lie economic forces that have determined the course of consumption: high rate of investment. . . rising labor force participation.. .agricultural stagnation.. .loss through export of many consumer goods.. .dynamic growth of Hungarian industry.. .fairly satisfactory growth of national income.. .rising per capita consumption.. .increasing savings.. .rising real wages.” Rath, John R. AUSTRIAN HISTORY YEARBOOK, Vol. IX-X, 1973-1974. Houston, Tex.: Rice U., Houston, TX 77001,1975. 526 pages, $13.50 paper. This yearbook is published annually by Rice U. in cooperation with the Conference Group of Central European History, (Continued on page 2)
