Cseh Valentin szerk.: „70 éve alakult a MAORT” – tanulmányok egy bányavállalat történetéből (2009)
Tamás Magyarics: The United States and the Issue of MAORT's Nationalisation
him with the intent of making an arrest. The then already redred MAORT manager asked Paul Ruedemann to accompany him to the US Embassy to apply for refugee status. Ruedemann did not think this would be necessary - Simon Papp was in turn arrested the next day. The Hungarian oil industry professional was accused of collaborating with the Yugoslavians, furthermore with MAORT "sabotaging" the People's Republic of Hungary's quick economic recovery. Paul Ruedemann and George Bannantine, MAORT's American national Board members ended up in the secret police's detention room on September 18. The two Americans signed their "confessions" as drafted by the secret police relatively quickly, and - allegedly - the Standard Oil Co. paid USD 80 000 each for the two US nationals to be expelled from Hungary on October 1. As soon as they arrived in Vienna, by the way, thev made a declaration according to which their so-called confessions were completely unfounded, and their actions were under duress. Simon Papp was first sentenced to death after a show-trial, then this sentence was changed to life imprisonment on appeal, while also reducing the prison sentences of the rest of the MAORT trial's defendants, and some of them were acquitted. In September 1948, the I lungarian government took over the company's management officially as well, and at the same time nationalized its assets. The United States objected to this step which practically amounted to nationalization - in an memorandum dated November 30,1948, at the same time challenging the soundness of sabotage charges, and the validity of accusations against MAORT's officials. The compensation of American shareholders was concurrently demanded, the Hungarian government, however, was not inclined to pay anything to them. MAORT's ownership was then legally settled in 1949. The company's taking into government management was cancelled on December 31, and taken into state ownership at the same time. This was the end of the expropriation of American owned companies: the Hungarian state grabbed more than half a billion Forint's worth of American property all in all. As a retaliatory step, the United States froze Eastern European - among them Hungarian - possessions in February 1950, and introduced a trade embargo against countries under communist rule the next year. The COCOM (Coordinating Committee) list prohibited the delivery to these countries of all technologies or materials that could have been used in the military domain; what more, it even proscribed the export of what were called dual-purpose (i.e. civilian and military) technologies. This system was in place right up to the end of the cold-war; industrial espionage was one of the core elements in Central and Eastern European intelligence services' activities. The 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s constituted a rock-bottom looking at US-Hungarian bilateral relations. Diplomatic relations degraded to a minimum level; Hungarian authorities persecuted US diplomats in every possible wav, along with the Hungarian employees of the Embassy, several of whom were imprisoned, while US diplomats were repeatedly designated personae non grata. Both parties tightly restricted the room to move of the other side's diplomats, and took every opportunity to prevent their contact with the local population. Under the aegis of what was termed the Spirit of Geneva (US and Soviet leaders met at the four-power talks of Geneva in 1955 for the first time since 1945), less cold(-war) winds also began to blow in Hungarv, insofar as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted a proposal on the guarded and uncertain normalisation of US-Hungarian relations. The 1956 Revolution, however, killed this weak attempt in the egg. The Kádár regime attempted to build its legitimacy exactly on the myth of the "counter-revolution organised" by the United States —even though
