Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1985 (13. évfolyam, 43-46. szám)

1985 / 45. szám

shortage of teachers, on the other hand, is a valid argument against immediate expansion of American English courses. The author presents the following suggestions: (a) Give American English the same official recognition British English enjoys; (b) Teach American English at least to a level of acquiring passive skills in all courses; (c) Give recognition to American English in dictionaries (Országh 1981), which record representative pronounciations of both American and British English; and finally (d) prepare examinations which would permit the use of either dialects. The author is on the faculty of the English Department of the Eötvös L.U. □ Kovács, András. ‘‘The Jewish Question in Contemporary Hungary,” TELOS 58 (Winter 1983-84)55-74.

“The evil logic which has reproduced the Jewish question in Hungary has not been broken after 1945. Modern developments in modern Hungarian history, such as the peculiar Hungarian nationalism, left Jews with a choice: if they chose to be Hungarians, their Jewishness could only be religious. Hungarian Jews accepted this alternative and followed a course of mass assimilation. This assimilation, however, remained superficial and its failure resulted in a deep Jewish identity crisis. After 1944, Jews could not close their eyes to the fact that they had been only seemingly accepted in society and there was no other way of remaining Jewish in any sense other than religious. The situation is awkward: while politics, society and Jews alike insist on the barely reformulated thesis of assimilation, the historical background has shifted and all parties are aware of the fact that the old recipe is inadequate. In the literatum discussing the Jewish question, two alternatives are elaborated. The most widespread one before and after the war is rooted in the spirit of assimilation. The other, more recent view, however, searches for a sol útion that would relieve tension caused by the Jewish question by making it possible for Jews to acknowledge a Jewishness more substantial than in the religious sense without, however, risking being labelled ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘alien.’ In any rate, Jews and non-Jews still distinguish themselves from each other, but they do so with a guilty conscience. □

Racz, Barnabas “Recent Developments in Hungarian Enterprise Democracy” Soviet Studies, 36:4 (October 1984) 544-559.

The 1980 Hungarian Trade Union Congress (TUC) proposed specific changes in the area of worker participation in management for the purpose of enlarging the scope of democratic participation. These measures were a Kadarisque response to the growth of Solidarity in Poland hence the importance of this study in assessing the effectiveness of enterprise democracy in the period between 1980-1983. The analysis shows that the TUC resolutions have been implemented, but that they fell short of the original scope and intention of the Congress. New measures counteracted the reforms and the directors' council and the supervisory committees partially neutralize the extension of the workers’ input through the steward system. The evidence indicates that the exuberant mood and drive of the TUC vanished with the disappearance of Solidarity in Poland and the policy implementation was limited to minimum objectives. There is some dissatisfaction even by the party and government with the conditions of enterprise democracy, while workers related to the question with considerable apathy; the author takes the position that worker apathy is not entirely justified by the empirical data. However, enterprise democracy shows limited

NO. 45, AUTUMN 1985, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

progress during the period but compared to pluralism it is merely tokenism. The Hungarians make the best of their difficult situation and unlike Solidarity in Poland try to avoid political confrontation and attempt to mold the system to their advantage. The future perspective of enterprise democracy is uncertain; predictions for change in the post-Kadar era are hard to make and long run developments will depend heavily on the general lines of East European politics. The author is prof, of political science at Eastern Michigan U. □

Sakmyster, Thomas. “A Hungarian Diplomat in Nazi Berlin: Döme Sztójay.” Hungarian History — World History, ed. by György Ránki.

Sztójay was a military officer and diplomat who served as Hungary’s ambassador for nine years in Berlin. When the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, he became prime ministerforfour months. Nevertheless, in this short period of time Hungary was subjected to the kind of brutal Nazi practices most of the rest of Europe had been experiencing for several years. As prime minister, Sztójay not only tolerated but abetted the policies imposed by the Germans. Asa result, his place in history is a most unsavory one. The focus of this paper, is on his earlier career as the Hungarian minister in Berlin. During World War I there had developed in Sztójay a deep respect and admiration for the German officer corps and for the society and culture from which these officers had sprung. When Hitler came to power, he believed that Nazi Germany represented the wave of the future, and that Hungary’s salvation lay in close cooperation with the Third Reich. He represented the group which admired Hitler because he seemed rejuvenating Germany and facilitating the spread of German culture and institutions. Not all Germanophiles in Hungary became pro-Nazi. Many who in the 1920s shared Sztójay’s right-wing political views became strongly anti-Nazi after 1933. Because of his Serbian family background, Sztójay became a man of ethnic marginality in Hungary, to share the views and fate of many of his countrymen. The author is prof, of history at the U. of Cincinnati. D

Vassady, Bela, Jr. “Themes from Immigrant Fraternal Life: The Early Decades of the Hazleton Based Hungarian Verhovay Sick Benefit Association,” In: Hard Coal, Hard Times: Ethnicity and Labor in the Anthracite Region, ed. by David L. Salay, Scranton, Pennsylvania: The Anthracite Museum Press, 1984. pp. 17-33.

This study is an welcome addition to the growing number of research papers on the small and local ethnic mutual aid associations. It discusses selected aspects of that process through the early history of the Verhovay Sick Benefit Association during the “new immigration” period (1880- 1920). Emerging from modest beginnings in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, the Verhovay became the largest national organization of its kind by 1914, and a successful life insurance association by 1924. The themes selected for investigation and analysis point to important patterns in immigrant institutional history, e.g. the mixture of interethnic conflict and cooperation, or the relationship between early fraternalism and its later preference for anthracide-rooted national leadership as demonstrated by the selection of its name “Verhovay,” or the rejection of its small intellectual stratum. Characteristically, Slovak and Hungarian immigrants from multiethnic Hungary were indiscriminately lumped together as “Hungarians" by the American public. Such

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