Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1977 (5. évfolyam, 13-15. szám)

1977 / 13. szám

Party, up to Nicolae Ceausescu, under whom the reapportionment of the territories with heavy concentration of Hungarians has been carried out. The bibliography represents the Hungarian point of view, but has major works listed for the Romanian case.

The author received her Master’s degree from Tufts U., and now lives in Boston.

Pastor, Peter. HUNGARY BETWEEN WILSON AND LENIN: The Hungarian Revolution of 1918-1919 and the Big Three.

Columbia U. Press, 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025. 1976. 191 pages, $13.00 cloth.

Based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, this study concerns itself with the turbulent years of 1918-1919, when Hungary was seeking the best of bad choices, a peace treaty which offered to take away more of its people and of its territory than what it proposed to leave to her. The internal and external political, military, and ideological forces playing on the decision makers were enormous. The traditional elite tried to maintain the political and social status quo. Some even hoped in the status quo ante. The opposition saw a golden opportunity to assert itself along both, political and nationality lines; however, both were united in refuting the terms of the proposed peace treaty. The external forces also were ideologically apart but united in the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The author concludes that minimal adjustment was made or even proposed during the years of accommodation on all sides".. .the Horthy leadership refused to accept the Treaty from the moment it was signed. This intransigence doomed all hopes for international stability in East Central Europe.” Prof. Pastor is at Montclair State College, N.J.

Rothenberg, Gunther E. THE ARMY OF FRANCIS JOSEPH.

Purdue U. Press, South Campus Courts D, West Lafayette, IN 47907, 1976. 298 pages, notes, $12.00 cloth.

George Barany says in his review of this unique volume: “The originality of the work lies, above all, in its comprehensiveness and synoptic approach. There is nothing comparable to it in English.. .and no single volume in any language, to my knowledge, which would attempt to examine the role of the military against the background of political, diplomatic, economic, and social history.” Thus, this volume is not only a history of an army but that of an empire and its struggle to maintain its unity in the presence of strong centrifugal forces and strains. “In the kaiserlich und königliche Armee, as it was designated after 1889, there remained a common language, common ideals, and a common loyalty, and it was in the army alone that the concept of a great empire headed by an emperor was at least partially translated into reality,” says the author.

Viewing the history of the Habsburg army seems to provide ample evidence that the military establishment is part and parcel of a society and its culture, “and reflects in sharp focus the political system, the social structure, and the economic and technological vigor of a state.” These observations become quite clear in the passages where the author discusses Hungarian separatist movements and demands for a completely independent army of their own. They wanted to recreate in organization, uniform, and drill the revolutionary Honvéd of 1849, not just a second-line home guard. Though these controversies were never completely resolved, they did not seriously affect the loyalty and the strength of the

BOOKS (Continued)

army. In fact “the balance sheet of the Austro-Hungarian forces during the long years of World War I speaks in ... favor” of cohesion. “Not only did the army preserve the empire from external enemies and provide it with considerable weight in the affairs of Europe, but it was also an important pillar of the dynasty as a reliable instrument against foes within the empire.”

The author is Prof, of Military History, specializing in Austro-Hungarian military affairs, at Purdue U.

Shapiro, Jane P. and Peter J. Potichnyj eds. CHANGE AND ADAPTATION IN SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS. Praeger, 111 Fourth Avenue, New York, NY 10003. 1976. 238 pages. $16.50 cloth.

The volume contains 12 essays selected from the papers presented at the First International Slavic Conference, Banff, Canada, 1974. The essays raise a number of “questions related to rapid social change, industrialization, and modernization, and the capabilities of political leadership to manage or restrict these changes.” The first section of the book deals with political culture, and includes an article by Joseph Held, who “inquires into the nature of modernization Hungarian society by analyzing its impact on the peasantry, blue- and white-collar workers, and the bourgeoisie.” He

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DISSERTATIONS (Continued)

majority of Romanians and a minority of Germans, the latter having larger properties than the former until World War II.

The study treats aspects of village organization from the late nineteenth century to the present. Major subjects analyzed are marriage patterns, residence norms, inheritance, forms of the domestic group, labor organization, socioeconomic mobility within the village, outmigration, and local prestige ranking. In many of these spheres, village Romanians and Germans traditionally adhered to different customs. Most of the differences are explained as consequences of each group's class position both in the rural stratification system and in the system of class relations in Austria-Hungary and Transylvania, where Romanians had long been restricted to the lower class and Germans constituted the main element in the regional middle class. Much of what differentiated the two ethnic groups - in their overt characteristics, their intravillage relations, and their mutual stereotypes - resulted from non-competitive placement in the regional social system.

The village saw considerable diversity across time in the patterns of marriage, mobility, and migration of its Romanian segment. Changes in these patterns are closely linked to influential policies initiated by one of the three principal elites whose actions impinged on the community - the Hungarian elite, the interwar government of the Romanian kingdom, and the present communist leadership. The policies with the greatest impact on villagers’ behaviorwere the land reform of 1921, the societal reorganizations following World Wars I and II that radically altered the chances for upward mobility, and the collectivization of agriculture in 1959 coupled with the communist drive to industrialize the countryside. The conclusion is that the use of history and of amacrosystemic view deepens understanding of local-level phenomena, as well as advancing the achievement of a fully integrated picture or agrarian social organization. Dr. Verdery is Assist. Prof, of anthropology at Johns Hopkins U.

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NO. 13, 1977 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER