Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1982 (10. évfolyam, 31-34. szám)
1982 / 33. szám
/V I I /VII AM€RKAN HUNGARIAN FOUNDATION HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER BOOKS Lundestad, Geir. THE AMERICAN NON-POLICY TOWARDS EASTERN EUROPE 1943-1947; Universalism in an Area not of Essential Interest to the United States. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo; distributed by Columbia U.P., 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025,1978. 654 pages. $23.00 paper. This comprehensive study is concerned with Eastern Europe during the early phases of the Cold War. The author investigates U.S. relations with five East European countries in an attempt to find the origins of the mutually hostile attitudes. He asks certain underlying questions, such as “What part did the U.S. expect to play in East European affairs? Which kind of regimes were acceptable to U.S. policy makers and. . .how did these regimes suit Soviet interests? What did the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations do to further American objectives in the area?” He attempts to find answers to the questions in terms of a modified form of universalism as applied to U.S. policies. The chapter on U.S. policy toward Hungary examines basic American objectives especially in the field of economics. As a result of military events, U.S. forces were not to participate in the occupation of Hungary. Nevertheless, the U.S. hoped to maintain Hungary as a non-communist country. However, the Soviet military predominance was shortly transformed into Soviet political dominance endangering U.S. interests. “With the exception of the Finnish Government, the Smallholder regime seems to have been the one in Eastern Europe most favored by Washington.” The study is well documented. Notes occupy some 150 pages. The appendix contains a discussion on the USSR and Eastern Europe, 1943-1947. A useful bibliography concludes the volume. The author is assist, prof, of history at the U. of Troms<J>, Norway. Dezső, László ed.CONTRASTIVE STUDIES HUNGARIANENGLISH. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1982. 122 pages, diagrams, tables, biblio. $6.50 paper. Vol. 2 in the Studia Comparationis Linguae Hungaricae. It would be a mistake to judge intellectual products by their size, though we remember places and times when a scholar’s achievement had been measured in pounds or reams of paper. This small volume contains six powerful essays and an introduction on the history, development and present status of contrastive linguistic research in Hungary. József Csapó writes on English denominál adjectives and their Hungarian equivalents; Katalin E. Kiss on Hungarian and English: a topic-focus prominent and a subject prominent language; Béla Korponay studies A double-faced case category; Adam Nadasdy compares Relative pronouns in English and Hungarian. Éva Stephanides-Diósy writes of The generic use of the article in English and Hungarian; and László Varga presents an essay on Differences in the stressing of re-used nouns in English and Hungarian. The booklet is in the true tradition of Hungarian contrastive linguistics as initiated by János Lotz, Lajos Tamás and others. Now in the second stage of development this field is now characterized by the emergence of English linguistic studies in Hungary, much needed since the emphasis of learning a foreign language has shifted from German to Russian and English. The editor believes that “contrastive linguistic research will extend far beyond the framework in which it started.” The volume is intended primarily for teachers of English in Hungary who are interested in structural and grammatical differences between English and Hungarian. Janos, Andrew C. THE POLITICS OF BACKWARDNESS IN HUNGARY 1825-1945. Princeton U.P., Princeton, NJ 08540, 1982. xxxvi + 370 pages, tables, maps, diagrams, biblio. $27.50 cloth; $12.50 paper. The principal purpose of this study is to examine the validity of Marxist and othertheories of social and economic modernization, and to elaborate them further by reexamining the political history of modern Hungary. According to the author, conventional historiography, both nationalist and Marxist, has treated the general subject inadequately. Modernization is conceived as comprising two distinct processes, that of innovation, and that of diffusion. The dynamics of these processes are well demonstrated in the revolutionary technologies of transport and production. However, it is frequently forgotten that while technology advancement had a decisive influence on the evolution of western “core” countries, in such “peripheral” areas as Hungary and the Third World, the modern state “came into being not as a product but as a potential instrument of social change.” This reversal of the Occidental experience “was responsible for the ascendancy of the state over all aspects of social life.” What emerges in the Hungarian case, “is not a western-style Gesellschaft but a fusion between the patterns of a Gemeinschaft and a Gesellschaft, with elements of the former predominating.” “Hungary was a dispossessed proletarian country of the periphery, where the socialist call for the sharing of international wealth made as much sense as in Russia, or in the Balkan countries. On the other hand, the country had a heroic tradition and was occidental in cultural makeup, an impoverished cousin of the West, so to say, for whom the idea of saving the Occident from its own decadence had a natural appeal.” Whether the framework in which all this is discussed is the best possible vehicle available for analyses and the formulation of new hypotheses, will be seen from critical reviews in professional journals. We seem to be fairly certain that regardless of ideological commitments, the reader will find this volume refreshingly original. The author is prof, of political science at the U. of California, Berkeley. NO. 33, AUTUMN 1982, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER (Continued on Page 2)
