Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
FINAL THOUGHTS – TRAPPED IN THE NETWORKS
FABULOUS SPY GAMES were laid down by a hierarchy, which also means that societies regarded the prevalence of order as most desirable. The increasing influence of networks, however, always brings about disruption to order, anarchy, and the weakening of the power of the hierarchy. Looking at world history in the 20th century, we can conclude that the first half of the century inevitably had to be dominated by hierarchies, because military organisations working to a strict order prevailed during the wars, and state administration also has much more of a role to play than in peace time. Dictatorships that played a pivotal role in a given period also show the strictest hierarchical structure. According to Ferguson, networks took the initiative in the world sometime around the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. This was illustrated most brilliantly perhaps by the wave of rebellions triggered by the student movements in 1968. This tendency also manifested itself in Hungary at this time, which is evidence that the Iron Curtain not only failed to shield the country from the consequences of the oil price shock, but that networks also started to rise in parallel to the same tendency happening in the world. The power of the financial-economic interest group defined as the foreign trade lobby began to grow around the turn of the 1960s and 1970s: the issue of the decree stymieing the new economic mechanism and simultaneously allowing the establishment of joint ventures proves that this group was able to exert its will by this time. All of this highlights once again that we should not attribute too much significance to the dichotomy of the world, and this also demonstrates that the networks appearing in Hungary can be linked to the webs of relationships in western countries. But how is this possible if one of the cornerstones of the theory is that hierarchy is clearly dominant in dictatorships? Why did the hierarchy of the communist dictatorship leave room for networks? The simplest explanation is that the system was being corrupted even then, so the strengthening of the networks was one of the earliest signs of the processes leading up to the change in political regime. The answer, however, is not that simple, because this book is precisely about how these networks were supported directly by both superpowers immediately after the war. In other words, the system of economic relationships in question was built by hierarchies, and that this occurred parallel to the communist dictatorship being built in the satellite states. If it was a conscious move on 186
