Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘FABULOUS’ IN HUNGARY - End game
FABULOUS SPY GAMES to the information it held. It was Presto who placed all the ads for Hungarian foreign trade, thus obtaining indirect information that made it possible to draw fairly accurate conclusions regarding the turnover of every Hungarian foreign trade company. To compile the annual propaganda plan, Presto also forwarded a questionnaire to the companies and foreign trade offices in which they had to indicate what, where and for how much a given company wanted to advertise over the following year. This way they learned about production preferences, the markets for the products, and even the financial situations of the individual companies as the exact percentage of the annual budget that had to be spent on advertising was precisely defined.378 For the record, however, we must also point out that the individual companies were trying to safeguard their own business interests and to protect their often corruption-based system of nexuses, so they did not necessarily provide Presto with all the information requested. Circumventing the advertising agency, they also gave direct orders to printing houses to print their advertising materials even though the paper quota determined for foreign trade companies was far from sufficient to do so; the printing houses, however, provided them with ‘black’ paper and capacity. All they needed was the ‘right’ connection.379 Altogether, however, it was still Presto as Hoffman’s informant who used its own information to paint a fairly precise picture of industrial companies through the volume and structure of their trading activities. Given the new privileges of the company, Presto’s top job could have been attractive to the foreign trade circles discussed in this book, since a renewed possibility for corruption was clearly created by the monopoly of the advertisements, not to mention the supervision of the commissions system. The intention of the legislators was in vain, the rate of commissions ending up in people’s pockets failed to drop either on the side of the advertising agency, nor with the other foreign trade companies. Previous research has provided ample evidence of this.380 378 ÁBTL 3.1.5 O-12344/7-a p. 156-157 Report, 17 April 1963 379 Jávor 1965, p. 218 380 On the abuses, see: Borvendég 2017; Borvendég 2018 142
