Szabolcs-Szatmár-Beregi levéltári évkönyv 13. (Nyíregyháza, 1999)

Helytörténeti tanulmányok - Irodalomtörténeti tanulmányok - Tálas Anikó: Czóbel Minka és Büttner Helén barátsága

opportunity to relive our memories and traditions, and to draw the conclusions that come from this period of intensive development. Zsuzsanna K. Nagy THE AGRICULTURE OF SZABOLCS-SZATMAR-BEREG COUNTY BETWEEN 1948 AND 1953 The year of 1948 brought a radical change in Hungarian economy. The year, often referred to as "the turning point," was the beginning of building up a socialist industry and a socialist agriculture. The Communist Party intended to implement the large-scale development of industry by a complete subordination of agriculture. They found collectivization as a major means of achieving these goals. The party published its political principles regarding the new cooperatives in 1948. Originally they intended to create combined cooperatives of production and distribution, taking into consideration Lenin's ideas of "voluntary and gradual progress." After the declaration of the Information Office issued in June 1948, condemning Yugoslavia, no mention was made of "voluntary" and "gradual" actions any more. Large-scale and forced organization of agricultural cooperatives began in autumn 1949. The speed at which this work was going on is well exemplified by the following figures: in the autumn of 1948 there were only 19 agricultural cooperatives with a total of 116 members in Szabolcs County and in Szatmar-Bereg County, whereas in 1952 the total number of cooperatives type III in the united county was 424, that of type I was 78, and the total number of the members of the two cooperatives reached 51,000. Any radical transformation of agriculture would have required a significant increase of central government funds. This was, however, not the case. What is more, the resources allocated for developing heavy industry were increased several times at the expense of agriculture. The disproportional development of economy resulted in a drop of living standards and disturbances occurred in supplying the population with basic goods. The rural population of the county was not in favour of collectivization. The government had a variety of means to "convince" agricultural workers to join the common cooperatives. Such was contraction of lands, compulsory delivery, taxation in money and political excommunication, to mention but a few. Resistance against it manifested in a variety of forms, from spontaneous verbal protests to well-organized actions. A large proportion of income extracted from agriculture through the hated compulsory delivery of produce was reallocated to the development of heavy industry. In addition to this, a peculiar method of extracting money from agriculture was the system of Peace-Loan Bonds. During Rakosi's dictatorship nobody was able to feel secure — an accidental remark had sometimes tragic results. One of the most absurd cases in the county was that of Istvan Simon Papp. He happened to make a critical remark at a well, and he received his