Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1985 (13. évfolyam, 43-46. szám)
1985 / 45. szám
P.O. Box 2877, University, AL 35486. 1982. xv + 162 pages, biblio. $16,95 cloth. This book of the holocaust domain is a select anthology of translations (by the editor) from the Hungarian. Part I, contains ten literary pieces written before 1945 displaying a range of feelings toward the unalterable fate of Hungarian Jewry. Part II, written by survivors after the end of World War II, presents some responses as their authors try to come to grips with the past and attempt to look into the future. Most of these accounts appear for the first time in any language save Hungarian. Translations, introductions, notes to the volume and to its subdivisions, assist the reader in putting the tragedy into historical perspective. In spite of this noble attempt, the complexities of research, and the scarcity of primary sources make it doubtful if a definitive history of the holocaust might ever be written. The editor points out one major difficulty: the isolated nature of the Hungarian language. He says “Hungarian Jews were long isolated from the mainstream of European Jews by language barriers, assimilation, and ideological differences. As did Jews elsewhere in Central and Western Europe. Hungarian Jews adopted the local language at the expense of Yiddish and Hebrew and became active in all aspects of national culture. The Hungarian language forms a barrier that prevents easy access to and notice from the rest of Europe, and Hungarian Jews could therefore enter the modern Jewish mainstream only by leaving Hungary. For much the same reasons the World has taken little note of the Hungarian Jewish experience in the Holocaust until very recently.” The editor is prof, of history at the U. of Miami, Florida. Kertesz, Stephen. THE LAST EUROPEAN PEACE CONFERENCE: PARIS 1946-CONFLICT OF VALUES. University Press of America, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706, 1985. xii + 192 pages, documents. Vol. 10 in The Credibility of Institutions, Policies and Leadership series of the Hewlett Foundation. $22.00 cloth; $11.25 paper. Kenneth W. Thompson, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, provided a preface and an introduction to the volume, which contains the edited transcripts of three lectures theauthordelivered atthe U. of Virginia in 1983. Recently, the authorpublished Between Russiaandthe West; Hungary and the Illusions of Peacemaking, 1945-1947 (U. of Notre Dame Press, 1985), reviewed in HSN no. 43/44, p. 4. The two volumes are complementary. Of great value are the some 30 documents which illustrate important policies and events, many of which were published for the first time. The author’s principal interest is in the conflict of values between the East and the West, which had a decisive impact on the peace making process. While the Western world expected some restraint in Soviet demands, “Stalin had other plans and in April of 1945 he told Milovan Djilas: This war is not as in the past: whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his system as far as his army can reach.” The author opens the discussion by reviewing various peace plans, then analysing the patterns of peacemaking, and concludes by describing the unfortunate fate of those countries to whom the designation “exenemy” had been attached. Of special interest may be the discussion and documentation of Czechoslovakian efforts to expel 200,000 Hungarian ethnics from Czechoslovakia. The concluding writing is a reprint of the author’s essay on The Expulsion of the Germans from Hungary, “a scholarly source of a dismal chapter of postwar diplomacy concerning the interaction of NO. 45, AUTUMN 1985, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER IN MEMÓRIÁM Tivadar Thienemann 1890-1985 Soviet and Western representatives and an example of the struggle between Communists and Smallholders on foreign policy questions.” The author is prof, emeritus of the U. of Notre Dame. Max, Stanley M. THE UNITED STATES, GREAT BRITAIN, AND THE SOVIETIZATION OF HUNGARY, 1945-1948. East European Monographs no. 177, Boulder, Col. Distributed by Columbia U. Press, 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025, 1985. vii + 195 pages, biblio. $20.00 cloth. The study seeks to compare and contrast British and American policy toward the sovietization process in Hungary. “Although both Western governments were opposed to the growth of Soviet control in Hungary, the United States resisted the sovietization process much more aggressively than did Britain. Washington tried to counter most Soviet and Communist moves in Hungary through diplomaticdemarche or public confrontation. London, on the other hand, generally chose not to challenge such moves.” Hungary was chosen as a case study because “Hungary was particularly resistant to the establishment of a Communist government, and was the last to adopt the constitutional form of People’s Republic.” The U.S. and Britain became involved in Hungarian affairs in 1944 and established formalities with an anti-German opposition government created at Debrecen while the war was still in progress. Hungary remained a subject of Western diplomatic meetings, the foreign ministerial discussions of 1945, and the 1946 Paris Peace Conference. “Washington and London also paid close attention to matters pertaining to economic assistance for the country. Throughout this period, the major challenge facing the British and Americans as well as pro-Western forces within Hungary, was the growing influence of Hungary’s Communist Party, supported politically, economically, and militarily by the Kremlin.” By 1948 the Communists acquired political control, which virtually ended Western influence. Rupp, Kalman ENTREPRENEURS IN RED; Structure and Organizational Innovation in the Centrally Planned Economy. State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246, 1983. xvii + 260 pages, tables, figures biblio. $44.50 cloth; 16.95 paper. (In the SUNY series on Organization.) “The onset of the 1980s witnessed a series of reforms in Hungarian economic organization that culminated in new laws and regulations creating a potentially substantial legal scope for private and semiprivate enterprises... This book is a causal analysis of the striking economic success of semiprivate enterprises, and of the conditions conductive to administrative support for such ideological ‘disrespectable’ entrepreneurial organizations.” Semi-private plans operate not only in Hungary but also in other socialist states, but in Hungary they have emerged long ago. The newly mushrooming enterprises were neither designed nor officially supported by central planners, the sudden expansion of the semiprivate sector was actually a byproduct of regulatory (Continued on Page 4) 3
