Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1985 (13. évfolyam, 43-46. szám)
1985 / 43-44. szám
HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER No. 43-44 ISSN: 0194-164X SPRING-SUMMER, 1985 Published quarterly by the Hungarian Research Center of the American Hungarian Foundation: Winter, Spring (two numbers included), and Autumn. Founder and editor: Bela Charles Maday; Communications concerning content should be addressed to the Editor, 4528-49th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20016. Communications concerning subscriptions, advertising, and circulation should be addressed to American Hungarian Foundation, 177 Somerset Street, P.O. Box 1084, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. Annual Subscription in the U.S.A. $5.00. Abroad $7.00. Current single copy $3.00; back issues $3.50 each. BOOKS (Continued) into an abstract, complex system for his own compositional language.” Benjamin Suchoff, a Bartók scholar himself, said that these findings were verified on the basis of the author’s intensive studies of the MSS at the Barto'k Archives in New York. The author is prof, of musicology at the U. of Texas, Austin, and recipient of the Bela Barto'k Memorial Plaque and Diploma by the Hungarian Government. Augusztinovics, Maria ed., LONG TERM MODELS AT WORK. Budapest: Akade'miai, 1984. 385 pages, tables, diagrams, biblio. $36.00 cloth. (A translation of Népgazdasági modellek a távlati tervezésben by the same editor. Trsl. by György Hajdú.) Planning for a centralized economy involves the generation of short and long-range perspectives. The eight authors of this well integrated volume attempt to present a description of long-range models used in Hungarian economic planning. Long-range, nation-wide planning is a new and complex venture. It started in Hungary in 1968. “The integrated use of mathematical-economic models, organically built into practical planning in an operative and continuous manner was first attained.” It was suggested that during the period covered by long-term planning, i.e., between 1976 and 1990 “the rearrangement of the macrostructure will slow down, differences in growth rates will diminish and the growth potential will be essentially stabilized.” The book will be useful reading for specialists and to individuals with background in theoretical and applied economics, planning, mathematical modeling, and in the “system of quantitative synthesis.” The editor and the authors are on the staff of the Department for Long-Term Planning of the National Planning Office of Hungary. Banac, Ivo and Paul Bushkovitch eds., THE NOBILITY IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE. Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, distributed by Slavica Publishers, P.O. Box 14388, Columbus, OH 43214, 1983. Yale Russian and East European Publications, No. 3. 221 pages. $18.50 cloth. Nobility denotes here a socio-political stratum of a society usually existing between the supreme power of a monarch and his aristocracy on the one hand and the majority of the people on the other. The eight chapters of this volume concern themselves with the various historical positions and roles the nobility has fulfilled in Russia, the Ukraine and some 2 East Central European countries such as Hungary, Poland/ Lithuania, and Croatia. “The landowning position of the nobility is apparent in the very earliest Middle Ages, as soon as the nobility begins to play a role in history.” What distinguished West European from East European nobilities was the large number of peasants in East and East Central Europe, who remained “outside all noble, royal, and ecclesiastical estate throughout the medieval period and in some areas (Russia) into modern times.” The political role of the nobility was frequently that of a buffer between the monarch and the peasantry. “The 19th century nobility of Poland, Hungary, and Croatia increasingly represented an atavistic resistance to centralism and homogenization, rather than a special type of class hegemony.” István Deák (Columbia U.) in his essay on Progressive Feudalism: The Hungarian Nobility in 1848, says that “the nobles were not alone in forming the political elite of Hungary, in theory at least, the free royal towns and the Catholic clergy shared in the rights and privileges of the nobility.” The editors are assoc, professors of history at Yale U. Bell, Peter D. PEASANTS IN SOCIALIST TRANSITION; Life in a Collectivized Hungarian Village. U. of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720,1984. ix + 322 pages, tables, figures, maps, illus. $27.50 cloth. A growing appreciation of central European societies in recent scholarly publications produced about a dozen anthropological monographs on Hungarian culture in change, mostly written by American and British anthropologists. The objective of this book is “to describe and analyze the effects on the countryside [the] of postwar events and processes by examining their impact on the people and social institutions of one Hungarian village.’’The study begins with a description of the pre-World War II social and economic hierarchy in the village, then it goes on describing economic and social interaction; this is followed by an analysis of family structure and of the role of kinship in village life; prewar political, religious, social, and economic institutions are compared with their contemporary counterparts; the relationship between social stratification and power, authority, and leadership is detailed and the collectivization process and the development of “socialist agriculture” receive due attention. The reader is informed about the central role of the collective farm and the kinship system, and about the resurgence of the former middle peasantry, and how “categories of the past are viewed as retaining great importance in today’s social perception.” All this is augmented by a chapter on the impact of some 100 Gypsies, who settled in the village recently. Though the volume is a village-specific study, the observations and conclusions may be characteristics of the countryside in general and provide an insight into directed change in action. Of particular interest may be the author’s attempt to compare how older forms of social organization take on many of the requirements of the new social forms, and how the new social organization is built on elements and groups of the old order. The author is engaged in research on occuptional safety and health. BIBLIOTHECA UNITARIORUM is the title of a series of publications which will appear under the auspices of the Center of Renaissance of the HAS. Sponsored by the Bibliotheca Unitariariorum Foundation, the purpose of the publication is to promote the publication and studying of NO. 43-44, SPRING-SUMMER 1985 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
