Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 5. (Budapest, 2010)

Recenziók

520

Abstracts

ZSUZSA FRISNYÁK

Living without a phone. Telephones in the Kádár Era

In socialist Hungary, the telephone was looked upon as a tool not of production, but of power. By international comparison, the country’s expenditure on telecommunications was about half of what would have been required. The density of telephones was 70% of the European average in 1955, but fell to 50% in 1986. Telephone scarcity in Hungary lasted from 1950 to the 1990s

The spatial distribution and standard of telephone services varied from region to region. The two million inhabitants of Budapest had as many telephones as the eight million in the rest of the country. In the final years of the Kádár era, Budapest was overtaken even by Moscow in terms of telephone density. Even within the city, the level of telephone ownership varied considerably. The level was reasonably high in the inner districts, but only 6-10 per hundred inhabitants in the outer districts. The standard of the telephone system and density of telephones were much lower elsewhere, even in the largest towns. In 1985, there were 263 000 lines in 108 towns (with a total population of 3,9 million). At the top of the list in terms of homes with telephones was Miskolc (25 000 household telephones), and some distance behind them came Pécs, Debrecen, Szeged and Győr. Those best placed in terms of telephones per hundred inhabitants were Szekszárd (29) and Mezőkövesd (26).

The factors associated with higher numbers of telephone lines to private homes in different towns were population, level of industrialisation and presence of the railway. Possession of a telephone was a function of social position, occupation and town category.

MIHÁLY SZÉCSÉNYI

The changing world of prostitution in Budapest in the 1960s

All forms of prostitution were banned in Hungary in 1949. By the mid-1960s, the authorities were beginning to acknowledge that sexual services, far from being