Levéltári Közlemények, 90. (2019)

Kiss András: Stratégiák, önállósodási kísérletek a Csepel Autógyárban 1956 után

ANDRÁS K

ISS

STRATEGIES, INDEPENDENCE TRIALS IN THE „CSEPEL” AUTOMOBILE FACTORY, AFTER 1956 The deep crisis of the socialist planned economy had been prevented the falling

down of the state-party in October, 1956. During the Revolution of 1956, there was no chance for reforming the socialist economic policy system and economic management. One of the main claim of 1956 was the total revision of the over-centralized state-party economic system, because there was no doubt that the communist economic policy would lead further political crisis. The large investments of the „Csepel” Automobile Factory in the beginnings of the 1950s, ended in 1953. The idea of the independent foreign trade emerged in the middle of the 1950s related to the factory. The reason was the motivation for the perfect and qualitative production through the direct foreign relationships. The 3.5 ton „Csepel” trucks – the emblematic products of the 1950s – were no longer competitive at the end of the decade. Therefore, the company started producing special trucks for domestic and international needs and self-propelled chassis for the „Ikarus” autobus factory. By the conspiration of technoracts, the „Csepel” Automobile Factory had been working permanently on the modernization projects and the widening of the market latitude, with more or less results in the 1960s. The central demands of the renewing products evidently put the factory to a prosperous position, however, with the well-marked technological fallback of the Hungarian industry, the market chances were still limited.

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