Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1986 (14. évfolyam, 47-50. szám)

1986 / 47-48. szám

other institutions, the communist party has undergone significant changes as well. After having relied exclusively on the control of the party, it appears now to have accepted a posture in which a variety of activities and initiatives are taking place outside of the party’s control. Groups, technically not in the party “have begun to exercise influence in combinations with it, such groups as local or regional coteries or representatives of such functional interests as health, transport, economies or ethnic groups.” Few people expect that any reform introduced would go far enough to meet the more thoroughgoing need of the area. “At most, the chances were that the Soviet Union would assume, as it had so often before, that whatever reform was appropriate for itself would be sufficient for Eastern Europe, too.” This reference work will prove a useful addition to those interested in social change and East Central Europe as an area.

The editor is lecturer at the London School of Economics, and author of numerous studies on political institutions.

U.S. Senate, Committee on Finance, Flearing before the Subcommittee on International Trade. MFN STATUS FOR HUNGARY, ROMANIA, AND AFGHANISTAN. U. S. Government Printing Office, 1986. N. p.

This 586 page long transcript of oral and written testimonies presents arguments for and against the extension of Most Favored Status to four countries. Of these China, Flungary, and Romania are the only non-market economy countries which have been granted nondiscriminatory MFN trade treatment under the authority of the Trade Act of 1974. This source book of over 100 statements by members of Congress, government executives, leaders of educational, religious, and civic organizations, and concerned plain citizens also provide the reader with source material and documentation of conditions as far as human rights are concerned. The volume includes the papers published separately on Violation of Human Rights in Hungary, Spring 1985. and Culture and Freedom in Hungary, Fall 1985, reviewed in HSN no. 46, p. 3.

Wolchik, Sharon L. and Alfred G. Meyer eds., WOMEN, STATE, AND PARTY IN EASTERN EUROPE. Duke U. Press, 6697 College Station, Durham NC 27708, 1985. xiv + 428 pages, tables, figures, index, notes. $42.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.

The twenty essays in this volume by as many social scientists examine various political, economic and social cultural aspects of women’s status through East Central Europe. Following a brief foreword by Jane S. Jaquette (Occidental Coll.) and a general introduction by Wolchik, Part One explores the “theoretical basis of support for women’s equality found in Marxist theory . . . and often uneasy relationship between Marxism and feminism.” Wolchik discusses other factors that influence the lives of women in the region today. Essays of the second and third parts deal with women’s movements and national policies in the precommunist period, and with the current relationship of Albanian, Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Romanian women to political power on the national and the local levels. There is useful general information about Flungary throughout the volume, and two chapters are devoted entirely to the situation of contemporary Hungarian women. Rózsa Kulcsár (Central Statistical Office) attempts to discuss and analyze the contemporary economic situation of Hungarian women. The study is based primarily on aggregate and attitudinal data that were gathered by a research team of the Statistical

NO. 47-48, SPRING-SUMMER. 1986 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

Office. Ivan Volgyes (U. of Nebraska) “presents statistical data concerning women at work in general . . . [then] deals with the relationship of income to other variables in the female workforce ... [as well as] with women in poverty status . . . [and finally] offers some explanations for the phenomena examined and suggests some reasons for the existence of structured discrimination against women and specifically against women in poverty.” Renata Siemienska (U. of Warsaw) and Gail Kligman (U. of Calif., Berkeley) and Dorothy Rosenberg (Colby Coll.) discuss “popular attitudes toward women and women’s roles as these are reflected in survey research, folklore and ritual, and popular literature.” This comprehensive volumeshould be substantial interest to social scientists in general and to students of East Central Europe in particular. Scholars concerned with cross-cultural women’s studies will also welcome these essays. The work would have been more useful with separate sections for notes and for bibliography.

Wolchik is assoc, prof, of international affairs and political science at the George Washington U., and Meyer is prof, of political science at the U. of Michigan. (Eva V. Huseby- Darvas, U. of Michigan).

CROSS CURRENTS, A YEARBOOK OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN CULTURE, vol. 4 (1985). Michigan Slavic Materials, no. 25. Ladislav Matejkaand Benjamin Stoltz, eds. Dept, of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Center for Russian and East European Studies, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ml 48109. 452 pages, tables, figures, illus. $15.00 paper. Available from Michigan Slavic Publications, U. of Michigan.

Six of the thirty-one studies deal with Hungarian-related topics. Eugene Ionesco, in “The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Forerunner of a Central European Confederation?” hopes to see some day a formation of a central European confederation comprising Austria, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and Czechoslovakia, that would be “a defense against the vast Russian peril.” He dreams of “a just entity respectful of differences and traditions . . .” while musing about the relationship between complex sociopolitical circumstances of past and present. “The criminal misunderstanding that existed between Romania, Transylvania, and Hungary" on the one hand, and what he calls a common spirit in the literature, music, and the art of Mitteleuropa. Mary Hrabik Sanal describes and analyzes the widely publicized “case of Miklós Duray” in a brief essay of the same title. She suggests that “Duray’s example and the solidarity of his friends, Czechoslovaks and others, are clearly an attempt to overcome the traditional hostilities among the nationalities of Central Europe, for which they all have and are paying so dearly. These noble actions may yet to prove to be a fissure at the edge of history — a good omen of things to come.” Emery George’s “István Bibó” the Jewish Question in Hungary after 1944, a review essay,” combines solid, scholarly analysis with poignant personal/anecdotal catharsis. The author critically explores key points in Bibo’s work, then discusses the same issue as applied to the present. In the concluding paragraph the author contends that “whether Bibo himself betrays certain misconceptions of his own, whether he typologizes ad nauseam instead of treating concrete instances, whether his essay is written in a clumsy and repetitious style, are asides. What matters is that his essay exists and that it is made available to many to whom it may well cause as much discomfort to read it as it manifestly caused its authorto write

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