Fraternity-Testvériség, 1993 (71. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1993-01-01 / 1. szám

FRATERNITY

Page 7

The Convention in 1972 was again held in Ligonier, PA. At this assembly, the age limit for officers was set at age 66; a Student Aid and Loan Fund was established with $50,000; the extension of the Old Age Home in Ligonier, PA with 100 new beds was granted, and Whole Life Policies were made paid up at age 90, thereby saving the member a five-year dues premium.

By 1978 the Orphans’ Home in Ligonier, PA, was closed down; therefore, the 1980-Convention allocated twenty-five cents per month from each dues paying member for altruistic purposes. The same Convention appointed a committee to serve as a fact-finder to explore the issues of consolidation with the William Penn Association. The Convention also gave permission to the Board of Directors of the Bethlen Home to build a retirement village adjacent to the Old Age Home in Ligonier, PA. By the end of 1980, the membership declined to 26,939.

At a Special Convention held in 1982 in Pittsburgh,

PA, the delegates rejected the consolidation with the William Penn Association.

In 1986, the Federation dedicated its fourth Home Office building in Washington, D.C. just off Dupont Circle at the corner of Massachusetts Ave. and 20th Street. During the 1988 Convention, several major decisions were made. It passed a resolution whereby the age limit for officers and members of the board was eliminated. It granted an amount of $25,000 towards the building fund of the Museum and Archives in Ligonier, PA and also a tentative building loan totalling one million dollars for the Bethlen Home of Ligonier/Ohio Project. A social membership program was to be established. In 1989, the Federation concluded a successful negotiations with the St. George Hungarian Greek Catholic Union, whereby the society merged with the Federation with its 600 members.

George Dózsa, President

A VISIT to MOSCOW

One of the central challenges of the post-cold war New World Order is that of creating stable democracies in multi-national states. Nowhere is this challenge more acute than on the territory of the former Soviet Union. This was the timely topic of a three-day conference entitled “Balancing and Sharing Power in Multi-ethnic Societies” which was held in Moscow at the end of January, co-sponsored by the American National Academy of Sciences and by the Russian Institute of Ethnology. Among the members of the American delegation was Elizabeth Kiss, the daughter of Branch 300 Manager Eva Kiss. Elizabeth, who teaches in the Politics Department at Princeton, offered the following impressions of her visit:

Upon our arrival at the airport, it was immediately clear that this was not the old Moscow: a sign above our heads urged us, in English, to rent a cellular telephone to use during our stay. The following morning, when I turned on the television in my hotel room, I was surprised to see the familiar face of Dan Rather anchoring the CBS evening news. The only difference was that, during what would have been the commercials, the Russians broadcast music and a blank screen.

Everywhere there was a curious combination of the old and the new, creating contrasts at times sad, at times ironic. Under the airport cellular phone sign, for instance, was a long line of people. Dressed in peasant clothes and clutching worn suitcases and bags, they stood, black-haired, bronze-skinned men and women surrounded

by their children, waiting patiently for what were announced as “emigrant flights.” Were they fleeing bloody conflict, or simply economic misery? It was impossible tell from their exhausted faces. On Red Square, long lines of people still waited to catch a glimpse of Lenin in his mausoleum, but around the corner were the bright shop windows of Benetton’s and Christian Dior. The average Moscow passerby appeared to regard Lenin’s tomb and the sparkling new stores with equal indifference. The old icons, it seemed, were meaningless, while the new symbols of a consumer society were remote and unattainable. For a typical Moscow resident the free market took a different form. Every night, despite the bitter winter cold, impromptu street markets sprang up, with people lined up holding their modest wares. In the hands of one, a pair of boots; another held a pot and a child’s dress. A Russian explained to me that these were often commodities which people had bought in a state store, where prices are cheap but supplies intermittent.

The effects of inflation could be felt everywhere. For instance, at one restaurant the waiters regarded our hungry group of American academics with almost comic indifference. “There’s no room,” they shrugged. But when we offered them five dollars each, we were ushered to a table in the suspiciously empty-looking dining room with lightning speed. The waiters’ hunger for western currency was not surprising in an economic situation in which the value of the dollar increased from 500 to 600 rubles in one week.

Our conference dealt with the problems and chal-