Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1976 (4. évfolyam, 9-12. szám)
1976 / 11. szám
Europe and the Impact of Detente, by J.F. Brown (Free Europe); European Cooperation and Ideological Conflict, by C. András (Free Europe); Economic Impulses toward De'tente by H. Schaefer; The Military Dimension by L.L. Whetten (U. of Southern California); East Germany: The Special Case by J. Dörnberg Foreign Policy Perspectives and European Security; Poland and Czechoslovakia by R.IV. Dean; Hungary and European Security; Hunting with the Hounds by W.F. Robinson, (Free Europe); Rumania: The Difficulty of Maintaining an Autonomous Foreign Policy by R.R. King (Free Europe); Yugoslavia: Ideological Conformity and Political Military Nonalignment by S. Stankovic (Free Europe); and European Security and the Probelm of Balkan Security by F.S. Larrabee. Lauter, Géza P. and Paul M. Dickie. MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND EAST EUROPEAN SOCIALIST ECONOMIES. Praeger Publishers, 111 Fourth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, 1975. 137 pages, tables. $14.00 cloth. Multinational corporations are increasing their participation in East-West industrial cooperation, in spite of the fact that East European governments considered them as “the prototype of aggressive Western business organizations that were developed for the sole purpose of furthering the imperialist aims of Western, especially American, capitalists throughout the world.” This book examines the reasons and conditions of the newly developed “close economic ties.” The authors describe the multinational corporation, the East European economies, the interrelationship of the two, and their problems. Illustrations include a good number with Hungarian involvement, such as the joint venture of Siemens (West Germany) and Intercoop, in the field of consulting engineering. Siemens owns 49% and Intercoop 51% of the equity. Volvo (Sweden) and Csepel vehicle manufacturing enterprise, and Mogurt foreign trade enterprise formed an equity-based joint venture for the production and marketing of four-wheel drive automobiles. The appendix contains a sample of a legal statute regulating cooperation with foreign companies in the form of joint economic associations, a decree of the Hungarian Minister of Finnance. Dr. Lauter is on the faculty of the George Washington U., and Dr. Dickie is a senior economist with the International Monetary Fund. JAHRBUCH DER WIRTSCHAFT OSTEUROPAS - YEARBOOK OF EAST-EUROPEAN ECONOMICS. Vol. 4. General editor: Franz-Lothar Altmann. Günter Olzog Verlag, 8000 Munich, Thierschstrasse 11, West Germany, 1973.528 pages, charts, tables. DM 110 cloth. Published in the series of the Osteuropa-Institute of Munich, with the cooperation of Hans Raupach et al. The volume contains 18 papers in English or German, each with English, German, and Russian abstracts. One-fourth of the papers were written by authors from Eastern Europe. Two authors discuss the workers’ self-management system of Yugoslavia; three articles treat Polish economic problems; two essays concern the consequences of the economic reform in Hungary. Other articles address Soviet economic problems and development in the framework of COMECON. The first of the two Hungarian articles is on The Main Features of Applying Mathematical Methods in Planning in Flungary (pp. 43-67), by Sándor Ganczer. He describes BOOKS (Continued) several mathematical methods as they are applied in planning in Hungary. He presents a survey on how planning tasks are solved with the aid of mathematical methods, and explains two models in detail. The direction of further research and application of results are treated as a conclusion. The second article An Evaluation of the Hungarian Economic Reform of 1968 (pp. 369-395) is by Julius Rezler (Loyola U., Chicago). Rezler examines the conceptual and structural foundations of the economic reform in Hungary, and evaluates its performance. He describes the inefficiencies of centralized planning which made a radical reform necessary. He also outlines the contributions of certain theoretical concepts and applied policies, borrowed from abroad, and analyses the theoretical and ideological framework in which the reform was born and is operating now, as well as its impact on overall economic policies. The paper concludes with an attempt to evaluate the performance of the reform on the basis of preliminary results of 1968-71. A brief review of the first five volumes of the Jahrbuch appeared in the June 1975 issue of The Economic Journal (pp. 438-440) by Michael Kaser (St. Antony’s Coll., Oxford). Miska, John P. THE SOUND OF TIME; Anthology of Canadian-Hungarian Authors. Canadian-Hungarian Authors’ Association, 3206 South Parkside Drive, Lethbirdge, Alta., Canada. 1974. $8.00 cloth. The Canadian-Hungarian Authors’Association (established in 1969) tries to provide a forum for authors writing in Hungarian. This volume is a collection of “current fiction and poetry written by authors of Hungarian descent” and translated into English. Writings by Hungarian Canadians, no matter how good, would be of little interest to us if it were not of Hungarian related content. The editor succeeded in including a good number of pieces in which the plot takes place in Hungary, or the episodes are taken from the Hungarian past, or their actors are Hungarians. Themes reflect on the life of Hungarians in Hungary, in Germany, in Canada, and even where the focus is on a non-Hungarian theme, frequent references to Hungarians, childhood memories of immigrant authors, makes one suspect that the frame of reference of the writer was influenced by Hungarian culture. It is noteworthy that all that was said above is more true for the prose than for the verse most of which reveals little concern with Hungarian topics. Miska, who is a writer in his own right and a librarian by profession, states that the 27 authors constitute but a small fragment of writers and poets writing in Hungarian for the some 50,000 Canadians who know the language. Rehfish, Farnham, ed. GYPSIES, TINKERS AND OTHER TRAVELLERS. Academic Press, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003. 1975, tables, figures, glossary. 303 pages, $15.25 cloth. This is a collection of twelve papers written on general characteristics of Gypsies and other traveling peoples of Europe and America. No specific chapter is devoted to Hungarian Gypsies, which is surprising because of the abundance of the available material, but much of the data on the social organization and social dynamics of European Gypsies is applicable to the Hungarian scene. Chapter 8, Ways of Looking at Roms: The Case of Czechoslovakia by Willy Guy makes Hungarian references when discussing (Continued on page 5 4 NO. 11, 1976, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
