Cseh Valentin szerk.: „70 éve alakult a MAORT” – tanulmányok egy bányavállalat történetéből (2009)
Lajos Srágli: Hungary's Economy, Politics and MAORT
In their contradiction laden reports, inspectors dispatched by the Alinisterial Commissioner for petroleum management were already looking to serve up justification for MAORT's nationalization 1 " , and if that was not possible, then to increase the state's share of production (in other words the quantity of oil for which it did not have to pay). Transferring MAORT into state ownership and increasing the share of production would have equally provided the opportunity' for hiking up the Hungarian in kind contribution to the creation of the SovietHungarian crude oil producing joint venture that was just around the bend. Rebuilding and going forward assumed the state's playing a significant role in the reorganisation of the economy. The state's intervention in economic processes can indeed be detected strongly from the very beginning, and it just became more resolved, more violent, and was pointing towards the development of a centralised system in parallel with political changes. The substantial upsurging of left-wing political forces, and putting the economy in the service of political objectives foreshadowed the intensive restricting, then complete elimination of the private economy. Crude oil as an energy carrier, as well as one of the - almost general - equivalents in the exchange of goods on the foreign market, played a great role in making the objectives of the three-year plan achievable. Although the plan prescribed the increasing of mineral oil production, after the treasury's crude oil production stopped at Bükkszék, the Hungarian-Soviet Crude Oil Limited Company (MASZOVOL) nevertheless practically relied on MAORT's production next to its hardly fledgling own production. 1 ' 6 The resolving of MAORT's legal situation, in other words the termination 1 ' of use by the treasury, even more open questions remained: production volume and possibility of increasing it, the price of oil, the repayment of debts to MAORT, intervention in the company's business which was in excess of what the Accord and Agreement made possible, and in contradiction with the things articulated in the ceasefire treaty. As time passed, however, question marks kept on getting larger, and their resolution appeared increasingly less possible. For these reasons, 1946 and 1947 became the years of ongoing disputes between MAORT's management which protested against illegitimate intervention and unrealistic production stipulations - and crude oil production's state controllers. Besides Soviet military criteria, economic constraints - and political ones in connection with them - manifested themselves more and more in the unrealistic demands for crude oil production as of August 1945, towards which the Hungarian state was driven by restitution, as well as economical and trade agreements that tailed to take the Hungarian economy's load-bearing capacity into consideration. The state controllers of Hungary's crude oil production also represented Soviet interests, which were disguised as national interest. The economic treaty concluded on August 27, 1945 served as the basis for the SovietHungarian oil industry cooperation treaty that was signed in April, 1946, which established the Soviet-Hungarian joint ventures in the oil industry. Several officials at the Ministry of Industry objected against it as early as the drafting phase, together with the managers of the affected companies.' 18 1 OLXIX-t"-l-oo4.d. I4..X1X-I-l-19.d.27.0I.XIX-F-l-oo I .d.2., OL Z 356. pack. 1. 4., MOIM Arch. Gy. 26/4. (July 3, 1947) '* For more details on oil mining's three-year plan see: SRÁGLI 1986, 295-307. IS The termination of use bv the treasury could only be realised on November 24, 1945, when the Russian military command consented to returning the plants to their original ownership. M( )IM Arch. PS. 29/6., 42/4.,Gv. 46/2., MAORT weekly reports 1945. hs OLXDC-F-1-ooS.d. 1".
