Csáki Krisztina (szerk.): A Magyar Műszaki és Közlekedési Múzeum Évkönyve 2. 2012 (Budapest, MMKM, 2013)

Janovszki Tamás: „A szocializmus játékszerei" 1945-1989

Janovszki Tamás THE TOY INDUSTRY OF THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES Toys are talkative witnesses of the given historical epoch, of its material civilization. The multi-coloured, and sometimes surprising world of the toys manufactured in the socialist countries is an eloquent proof of this. As after WW II the Western Allies gave Stalin essentially a free hand in the regions east of the river Elba, the transformation of the countries affected immediately began according to the demands of the occupying power. The system of the states calling themselves peoples' democracies was established. This served, using the resounding slogans of communism, social progress and world piece, in reality, great power interests and aims of the cold war. The political leaders attributed an outstanding importance to propaganda and re-education, their most important subjects being the children. The quotation from Makarenko: "We will not bring up active people by weaning them from playing but by organizing the latter in a way that it still remains a game, and at the same time develops the characteristics of the future's working citizen in the child" - and this was proper to be taken seriously. The states of the "Peace Camp" had different social and cultural traditions, thus their industrial capacities were considerably different as well. While the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Czech-Moravian industrial region tied to it by innumerable links had at their disposal an important background of designing and organization, Hungary and Poland could show only a fraction of it, not to speak of the toy industries of Romania and Bulgaria linked to handicraft traditions and in need of imports. In the early 1950s toy design institutes were brought into being after the Soviet sample, in Czechoslovakia there were even several of them. The co-operation, however, did not prove lasting as the competent organs of the higher developed countries and the Soviet Union - being concerned for their business interests - did not want to hand over their knowledge and experience to the less developed ones. At the same time they were permanently demanding production information and data from the latter. Owing to the lack of raw material and high prices, every country had been experimenting, at the beginning, with autarchy; later export from the higher developed countries started gradually, and German, Czech and Polish goods were appearing, one after the other, in the Christmas shop-windows of Bucharest, Sofia, and Budapest. At the same time some Hungarian products appeared in the toy trade of the Netherlands, Egypt and France. The Comecon was harmonizing industrial and commercial activities. However, even in toy manufacture it rather proved harmful: a good example of this is stopping the manufacture of toy trains produced at the Hungarian State Mint as well as dismantling the pertinent tools, at a time when these toys were exported even to the USA.

.. The quantitative demands for toys of the socialist countries could be finally satisfied by the appearance of the Chinese People's Republic on the market by dumping products of satisfactory quality and acceptable prices. These could be ordered by the representatives of foreign trade companies travelling there - however, they had to be paid in dollars... 137