Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1982. január-június (36. évfolyam, 1-25. szám)

1982-01-14 / 2. szám

2

Thursday, Jan. 14. 1982.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ

Hungary Is Building a Lively Economy

On the Crisis in Poland

A leading New York newspaper published this thought-provoking letter on the situation in Poland.

TTie following interesting analysis appeared in a recent edition of the N.Y. Times.

The abundance that Hungary enjoys is not found in the other countries of Eastern Europe.

Poland's economy is struggling, with idle factories and empty stores. Romania has introduced food rationing, and Czechoslovakia may do the same. The Soviet Union is buying foreign grain to see Ha citizens through the winter. And even East Germany, the Communist bloc’s perennial economic powerhouse, is feeling the impact of rising energy prices and a widening trade gap.

Poland, in a desperate bid to ease its chronic economic difficulties, is now trying to duplicate Hungary's growing use of profit incentives. But the reform process is still in its infancy in Poland, and it has become bogged down in the power struggle between the Solidarity trade union movement and the ruling Communist Party.

^Yugoslavia, long the maverick of the Eastern bloc, once enjoyed remarkable prosperity, thanks to an economy based on principles of free enterprise. But in recent yean its success has been eroded- by galloping inflation and unemployment.1 Ambitious Reform Program

The tempo of change is quickening in Bungary as the Communist leadership series to push through an ambitious package of reforms that would create a kind of market-oriented socialism similar to what President Francois Mitterrand is trying to intro- ducein France.

Although big state-owned enterprises moult ' '’•-<tary,8

economy, they would be expected to pay their own way and compete In world markets. There would still be room for new small and medium-size private concerns. The quest for profit and efficiency would replace bureaucratic planning as the key force behind the country's industry and agricul- ture.

Within the last few months Hunapplied to join the international Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In Mai cow’s eyes both of those institutions are bastions of the Western capitalist system. Next year Hungary plans to strengthen its monetary ties with the non-Communist industrial world by making its currency, the forint, partly convertible into American dollars, West German marks and Japanese yen.

Domestic prices in Hungary, fixed arbitrarily by bureacrats in the days of centralized planning, are now being aligned with those that prevail in Western markets. New private businesses are beiig encouraged. The planning bureaucracy has been pruned. Monolithic state industries are being split 19, and managers are being told to make profits—or else. Hungary*« Five-Year Plan

As a Commmunist state, Hungary dutifully publishes a five-year economic plan. But its latest plan, for 1981 through 1985, sounds quite Western. Top priority goes to balancing foreign trade; controlling the money supply, eliminating subsidies, and “encouraging the creative powers of the citizens by increasing individual responsibility and decision making in industry.’* While Hungarian businessmen are learning to stand On their own feet, the five-year plan warns that there will be no room for further Increases in living standards.

Western diplomats offer various explanations for Hungary's decision to step up its pace of economic liberalization. At age 69, Mr. Kadar is nearing the end of his political career, and the reformers are believed eager to get the country committed to a freé-mar- ket economy while he is still in power.

The darkening international economic outlook also encourages change. “We have to reform precisely because we need to become more competitive in today's world,” Mr. Timar said.

But Prof. Ivánt Berend of the University of Economic Science speaks for many when he also ascribes the quickening pace of Hungarian reform to the Polish crisis. In his view, the failure of old Soviet-style centralized planning to produce enough goods in Eastern Europe makes it difficult for the Kremlin to resist pressure for change. “Poland shows we have to change direction to survive,” he said.

Hungarians often ascribe their relative prosperity today to q steady if slow Westernization of the economy that has been under way since the 1956

revolution. The movement away from centralized Stalinist planning came in a series of fits and starts, suggesting its vulnerability to changes in economic fortune and shifts in the balance of political power in the Government.

The country's economic chaos at the time of the 1956 uprising, Hungarians agree today, gave the new leadership room for experimenting once orthodox Communist rule had been re-established. In 1957, profit sharing was Introduced in state industry to encourage harder work.

Later, farming, which had been partly returned to private ownership in 1956, again became collectivized, but on a cooperative basis, with farmers dividing the profits and retaining large private plots. The result was a big rise in output that has made Hungary the world’s fifth-largest producer of meat and grain on a per-capita basis. One-third of Hungary’s farm output is now exported.

Hungary’s first major experiment with industrial reform came in 1968 when state factory managers were given greater personal responsibility for the performance of their factories and the old Stalinist system of centrally set goals was abolished.

Gauging Extent of Reform

The greater flexibility this introduced into the economy helped give Hungarians an average rise in income of about 5.7 percent a year until the first oil-price shock in 1974. Miyhali Simái of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences argues, however, that the reform was essentially a “micro change.” Although it sought to make factory managers more entrepreneurial, he said, it did not greatly change the bureacratic structure in which they operated. The state still fixed prices while all the institutions of a centrally planned economy remained intact.

Moreover, even the limited progress made toward a free-market economy was put on ice tor several years after the 1974 surge in oil prices when inflation reached 20 percent and opinion swung back in favor of centralized L state control. “In a crisis the temptation in the East is always to go back to orthodoxy,” one Western ambassador in Budapest commented.

WASHING

I’d like to send some clothes [linen] to the wash <laundry).

How much do you charge for a shirt?

Do you know anybody who takes in washing?

Can I have my shirts washed?

When ccn you let me have the washing back?

When will my washing be ready?

I must have it by Thursday.

Can this cloth be washed?

This material cannot be washed.

Be careful with the washing of my silk dress.

Can you iron my dress [or me?

This is non-iron material.

(Don’t) starch my shirts.

Let me haue the laundry list, please.

; !:is handkerchief does

not belong to me.

: Sat's not my mark.

Hine is marked A. L.

his isn’t washed

projterly.

/

MOSATAS

Szeretnék néhány ruhi: [fehérneműt] mpsásh (mosodába) adni.

Mennyit kér egy ingért’

Ismer valakit, aki válls mosást?

Kimosathatom az ingeimet?

Mikorra kapom meg a kimosott ruhát?

Mikor kapom meg a kivasalt ruhát?

Csütörtökre meg kell kapnom.

Mosható ez a szövet’

Ez az anyag nem mosható.

Ügyeljen a selyemruhám mosására I

Ki tudná vasalni a ruhámat?

Ezt az anyagot nem kell vasalni I

(Ne) keményítse (ltérni- nyiccse)k\ az ingeimet

Kérem a mosócédulát'

Ez a zsebkendő nem az enyém.

Ez nem az én monogramom.

Az enyémen A. L. monogram van.

Ez nincs rendesen kimosva.

For the third consecutive year, the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S.A. more than doubled in 1981, according to a survey released by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

AMERIKAI ,

MAGYAR SZO

USPS 02^-980 ISSN 0194-7990

Published Weekly, exc. last week in July and 1st 2 weeks in August by Hungarian Wordene.

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Ent. as 2nd Class Mattét, Dec. 31. 1952 under the Act oHMareh 21. 1879, at the P.O. of New York, N.Y.

Szerkeszti a Szerkesztő Bizottság Előfizetési árak az Egyesült Államokban egy évre $ 18.— félévre $ 10.—

Kanadában és minden más külföldi országban egy évre $ 20.— félévre $ 12.—

PostmasterjSend address changes to; Hungarian Word, I ne. 130 E 16 St.

New York, N.Y. 10003.

In assessing the declaration of martial law in Poland, political analysts have displayed a tendency to ascribe pure democratic principles to a very different social and political structure. By doing so, they may have been misleading the American public and offering poor advice to U.S. policy-makers as well as private business and financial interests.

Since the now-historic meeting in Gdansk between the Polish Government and Solidarity, the world has been constantly on the alert for direct Soviet military intervention while the imminent internal danger posed by both extremes of the Polish political spectrum has been ignored or minimized. It was Solidarity’s own radicals (who even called Cardinal Wyszinski a traitor) who, despite their genuine patriotism, were in fact working to sink the national ship.

This happened at a time when an exceptional international situation gave the Polish independence movement a unique opportunity, what with the Soviets deeply engaged in Afghanistan and with too much still at stake in Iran and the Middle East, and with the West - first the U.S. alone and later NATO- in strong support of Polish independence developments (very much unlike the West’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia in 1968). What was needed, was more patience and realistic goals. Instead the movement was pushed further and further toward the unachievable, which created a situation in which it was only a matter of time before Poland would collapse politically, economically or both.

Solidarity’s extreme radicals probably fail to realize even now that it was they who dug the grave for the unprecedently strong and independent trade unions, which, in present and foreseeable circumstances, could exist only by wisely cooperating with the Communist authorities. Those who expected and worked for more were either naive idealists or police provocateurs.

Now most of that opportunity has been lost. And the West is considering drastic moves, such as curbing trade relations or even food and aid programs, to punish the military junta. Such measures cannot work any better than did the grain embargo after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They may impress U.S. public opinion, but no thinking person can expect that they will undermine Poland’s strongman, his military regime or the country’s Communist system. They can only make the Polish people suffer more.

Karel Pravec /New York/

SEAGATE IN WINTER

Snow covers the small island town like tattered quilt dug from grandmother's trunk Lasers from the sun penetrate the glass panes. The grass glitters in their light.

Icicles stabbed hy the rays

fall with a clinking sound

from the eaves and branches,

tike the sharp silvery daggers

from the hands of duellers

struck by the poinards of expert fencers.

Anca Vrbovska-Saitta

(Ms. Vrbovska-Saitta is a member of the Press Committee of the Hungarian Word.)

let n* learn Hungáriáit