Külpolitika - A Magyar Külügyi Intézet elméleti-politikai folyóirata - 1986 (13. évfolyam)
1986 / 1. szám - KÖNYVEKRŐL - A külpolitika 1985. évi tartalommutatója
Gyula Horn Détente and confrontation in East-West relations The international events and processes ot the past forty years testify to the fact that the development of East-West relations is of decisive significance as concerns the fate of world peace. The relations between the socialist and capitalist countries. are strained by fundamental social, political and ideological contradictions. The countries ot socialism and capitalism have at their dispodal such a military force, a nuclear weapons arsenal that would be sufficient for the destruction of the world. At the same time, it is a great achievement of our age that it is not world-wide armed confrontation but the policy of peaceful coexistence where the principal international contradictions gain a form of motion. The policy ot peaceful coexistence, considering its essence, has continuously asserted itself, ever since the Second .World War. As a characteristics of the relations between the two world systems, the elements ot confrontation are constantly present in them. An objective constant soil of this is the clash of contrasting international aspirations due to the antagonistic differences of proprietorship and political power. As regards its forms of manifestation, dimensions and depth however, confrontation in East-West' relations asserts itself in differring ways and degree of intensity in different periods of time. These are affected, first of all by the socioeconomic processes of the individual countries, by changes that are taking place in regions outside the sphere of contacts between the socialist and capitalist countries and, last but not least, by the subjective side, the attitude of different political factors and their reaction to internal and international processes, respectively. The internal and external evolutionary processes-though differing in nature—have a great influence on the international policies of all countries, independent of their social system. . Béla Kádár Hungary’s economic relations with the GDR and GFR The intensity and characteristics of economic cooperation between given countries are from time to time influenced, in a changing degree, by geographical, structural, historic and political factors and by factors pertaining to the system of institutions. In 1913, 17 per cent of Hungarian exports went to the former Germany, while in 1922, it amounted to 14 per cent and in 1938 to 28 per cent. At present, a total of one sixthth of Hungarian exports are shared by the two, Germanies. The structural parameters and forms of cooperation are indicating the intensification of up-to-date industrial division of labour. The GFR is Hungary’s second, while the GDR is Hungary’s third most important foreign trade partners. The trends of Hungary’s economic development, foresche- duled for the second half of the 1980s, are expected to strengthen Hungary’s interestedness in deepening cooperation with the GDR and the GFR. Ever since the Middle Ages, the dynamics, direction and degree of efficiency ot Hungary’s long-term economic growth- has shown close relations with the development trends of the Central European region, as well as with the characteristics of external economic ties developed with the Central European countries. The parts of the countries that are forming the territories of the GFR and the GDR are inseparable, also in international comparison, from the closer division of labour that has been developed with the Central and East European countries. The slackening of this historic division of labour also contributed to the fact that in the 1980s the growth and the relative world economic positions of the European region weakened. This explains that from the point of view of FIungary?s socio-economic development, a general improvement in East- West relations and the rerpoval of political- economic tensions from the Central European region, are of vital importance and, within this it is of similarly vital importance to develop the relations between the two German states and between Hungary and the two German states-. / István Pataki The development of Poland’s international situation in the first half of the 1980s In the course of the past forty years, the Polish People’s Republic attained consideVII
