Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
ATTACK ON THE OMFB - The Siemens lobby
FABULOUS SPY GAMES he knew well personally, for help, but they turned their backs on him.446 The decision to foist the whole affair on Endre Simon was probably made to dissipate the storm clouds over the heads of the members of the interest group. 446 ÁBTL 3.1.9 V-160121/3, p. 100 Report, 3 August 1973 447 The fact that the Standing Military Committee of Comecon announced, at its meeting in May 1973 in Budapest, its intention to develop and manufacture a variety of equipment and components (small and micro-computers, data communications equipment, cathoderay-tube visualisation tools, punched tapes, magnetic memory, cassette magnetic tape peripheries and information storage devices, automatic detectors and data communications and display equipment), clearly illustrates Hungarian interests. Germuska 2010, p. 154 448 Bodnár 2002 The Siemens lobby By the late 1960s, computer technology had become the cornerstone of technological development: the Eastern Bloc started to work on a joint strategy in order to harmonise the work of the scientists in the sister states’.447 The OMFB, of course, played a pivotal role in fulfilling the tasks given to Hungary. When it came to purchases and concluding cooperation agreements, it was impossible to circumvent the advisory body, which continued to clearly favour Siemens. Regarded as the start of computer technology, punched card data storage technology had already spread in Hungary between the wars, when IBM’s predecessor opened a subsidiary in Hungary in 1936.448 The company’s building burned down during the war, but it was rebuilt soon thereafter. Essentially, IBM continued to store and process statistical data in Hungary using IBM’s machines. As a consequence, the American firm was spared the fate of the western companies that fell victim to nationalisation: IBM was allowed to operate undisturbed in Hungary during the times of the full-blown one-party state dictatorship. This is all the more surprising as this technology was used to process the country’s data of strategic importance: the Central Statistical Office used such machines, while the officials at the Ministry of Interior and the analysts 160
