Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1976 (4. évfolyam, 9-12. szám)

1976 / 10. szám

Garam, É(va), I. Kovrig, J. Gy. Szabó, and Gy. Török. AVAR FINDS IN THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.

Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó", 1975. 368 pages, maps, illust. $35.00. Vol. I of I. Kovrig, CEMETERIES OF THE AVAR PERIOD (567-829) IN HUNGARY.

This richly illustrated volume containing 152 figures and 37 plates, is the first in a series describing the archaeological finds of the Avar period. The Avar Empire existed for about two and a half centuries in the Middle Danube Basin where more than a thousand sites have been catalogued. Most of the cemeteries were excavated between the two world wars. Only a few of them have been completely uncovered and many graves had been destroyed purposefully or accidentally. The unearthed material is of extreme importance for the study of the Avar period primarily because it includes more than 15,000 graves and because it embraces the entire period from the Avar conquest in 567 A.D. until the end of Avar rule, some time early in the 9th century. A map showing all sites will be published in volume five. This volume includes studies of twelve cemeteries in the following localities: Homokme'gy- Halom; Szebe'ny; DeVaványa; Szob; Tiszaderzs; Pilismarót; Kiskoros Pohibuj-Mackó dűlő; Kiskó'rós Cebe-puszta; KiskóVós Szucsi-duló; Visznek. The book is primarily meant for archaeologists, but it is also useful to historians and interested laymen.

Granick, David. ENTERPRISE GUIDANCE IN EASTERN EUROPE; A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies.

Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ 08540. 1975. 505 pages, tables, figures. $27.50 cloth, $9.75 paper.

In this comparative study of industrial management, the different directions taken by reform in the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and Yugoslavia are examined against the pattern shown by Romania, in which no significant reform has occurred. The author focuses on the methods used to coordinate enterprises in the early 1970s. To accomplish this volume, the author interviewed a good number of persons in all four countries. Those interviewed were mainly middle and upper level managersof enterprises, officials of ministries, banks, trade unions, planning commissions, and of the Communist parties. The resulting data made new interpretations of enterprise management in Eastern Europe possible. Part III deals with Hungary (pages 234-322) in three chapters. The first chapter (Chapter 8 in the book) delineates objectives of decentralized planning and the constraints on the system. The author gives a survey of the Hungarian economy, conception of the reformed system, implementation, and of the attitudes developing toward the reform in the country. The next chapter describes the reform mechanism in practice, giving particulars on pricing policy, material incentives for enterprises, subsidies, tax exemp; tions, loans, and controls. The last chapter describes enterprises in further detail, giving data on material allocation, subcontracting, product mix and costumer types, stimulation of worker and management effort, observed macroeconomic results of the reform, and an evaluation in which the author says that the “reform cannot be expected to operate with markedly greater effectiveness so long as the system is constrained by policy decisions which impose a sellers’ market and a fairly rigid income policy.”

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Dr. Granick is Prof, of Economics at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison.

Kovács, Martin Louis. ESTERHAZY AND EARLY HUNGARIAN IMMIGRATION TO CANADA. Canadian Plains Studies. Canadian Plains Research Center, U. of Regina. Regina, Sask. S4S OA2. 1974. 170 pages, $4.95 paper. (Canadian Plains Studies, no. 2.)

Paul Oscar Esterhazy was born in Esztergom in 1831. He fought with Kossuth in the abortive war of independence, and left Hungary at the age of eighteen. By the mid-1850s he joined the British Army, and in 1885 he arrived at Winnipeg, Canada to begin a settlement which later adopted his name. Esterházy became a businessman under the pressure of economic circumstances (he had eight children) and served as an immigration agent for the U.S. Government in New York. He founded, with Geyza S. Dory, the First Hungarian- American Colonization Company and persuaded immigrants to go on to Saskatchewan where such settlements thrived as Esterház (some 120 miles east from Regina), Kaposvár, Be'kevár, Székelyföld, MaViavó'lgy. In the course of his immigration scheme he arranged with the Canadian Government that he will prepare a pamphlet describing the conditions and potential of Esterház. This prompted another visit to Esterház in 1902. The pamphlet bore the title THE HUNGARIAN COLONY OF ESTERHÁZ, ASSINIBOLA, NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES, CANADA; Letters from the Settlers and Illustrations from Photographs taken on the Spot in the months of July 1902. The text begins with a subtitle THE ESTERHÁZ COLONY AS IT WAS, AND IS NOW, 1885- 1902. The 80-page pamphlet was published by the Canadian Government Printing Bureau in 10,000 English and 25,000 Hungarian copies.

Kovács rightfully points out that “It is fundamental, for an adequate interpretation of the history of Hungarian- Canadian settlements to study the relationship and interaction between three things: the phase of development of the Esterház Colony, the person of Paul Oscar Esterházy, the immigration agent, and the events connected with the compilation and publication of the Esterházy pamphlet.” And this is what the book is all about. It even includes a facsimile of the title page of the pamphlet and its entire text.

The author, a historian at the U. of Regina, is also Chairman of the Ethnic Research Section, Canadian Plains Research Center at the U. of Regina.

Laping,Francis and Hans Knight,eds.REMEMBER HUNGARY 1956. Alpha Publications, 1079 De Kalb Pike, Center Square, PA 19422, 1975. 381 pages, illustr., biblio. $30.00 cloth.

This is a volume dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. It comprises a wealth of textual and pictorial documentary material previously scattered in scores of publications the world over. Orchestrated into one oversized (9x12 inches) and impressive volume, it presents a step-by-step history documented by transcripts of radio broadcasts and a reprint of the summary of the U.N. report, facsimiles of proclamations, correspondence and addresses of both, Hungarian and foreign statesmen, writers, and reporters. There are opinions about the fact and consequences of the uprising by such persons as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert

(Continued on page 5) NO. 10, 1976, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER