Századok – 2004
Tanulmányok - Honvári János: A mezőgazdasági nagygépek állami monopóliumának kialakulása I/39
88 HONVÁRI JÁNOS central pressure of course, to the state. It was sometime in the spring of 1949 that the leaders of the Communist Party decided not to allow the cooperatives to acquire agricultural big machines. They could not buy new tractors and threshers for nearly a decade, but continued to possess, although in decreasing numbers, old machines, despite constant efforts by the Party leaders. The mechanization of the cooperatives remained very limited until 1957, although they were allowed to buy some hundreds of lorries from 1952. Basically they could only possess more primitive horsedrawn machines and, in very restricted numbers, those used for the preparation of fodder. The conditions of the use of argicultural machines (power machines, threshers, sowing-machines, elevators, harvesters, tractor-drawn machines) which remained in private ownership after the land reform became utterly difficult after 1948. The privately owned tractors were asigned obligatory ploughing work, the payment for the fieldwork with horse or tractor was maximised, the individual farmers were denied the access to special-price lubricant in 1948, and finally, the free commerce of fuel was suspended some month later. In 1949-50 the owners were obliged to repair their tractors and threshers, and from 1951 all their engine-driven agricultural instruments by deadlines set by official orders. The mechanical condition of the bigger machines was revised by committees before the peak of agricultural activities, and the unrepaired machines (or those declared as such) were confiscated and transported to the machine-stations. In many cases the machine-stations, state farms and cooperatives simply borrowed or leased privately owned equipment, which they later „forgot" to return or failed to pay the fixed rent. Between 1950 and 1952 other committees tried to buy up the big machines still in private ownership, but the effort yielded little result because of the limiter prices and the unfavouralbe paying conditions. Consequently, the Council of National Economy ordered at the end of 1951 and in the summer of 1952 the confiscation of all the remaining privately owned agricultural machines. From January 1952 the main means of the process was the pressure of taxation increased at will, and the consequent levy on account of the unpaid amounts. A proposal by the Agricultural Department of the Central Leadership of the Communist Party from 4 January 1952 reveals that always those machines were preferred whose deficiency was most conspicuous. By the end of 1952 the privately-owned machines virtually disappeared from the Hungarian agriculture, all of them having been transferred to the sector directly controled by the state. Cooperatives were allowed again to buy tractors in 1956, whereas individuals were denied this possibility until as late as 1982.
