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
FINAL THOUGHTS - TRAPPED IN THE NETWORKS of the ideology of peaceful coexistence. This pacification, however, not only prevented open armed conflicts from turning into global crises, it also overrode ideological dividing lines. In the countries of the Eastern Bloc, the communist takeover was legitimised by the occupying Soviet forces through the fight against fascism and Nazism. Meanwhile, party members established economic ties with high-ranking representatives of the Nazi power without batting an eyelid. With the onset of the Cold War, the threat posed by fascism and Nazism dwindled considerably, although the fight against fascism can be regarded as a valid political motto in leftist circles to this day, with the exploitative’ system of western imperialism becoming the arch enemy. No matter what ideological rhetoric was fed to the masses, it was little more than window dressing. This book demonstrates in great detail the continuity spanning periods and systems, and the collaboration between Nazism and communism, behind which the helping hand of the West can be clearly felt all along.513 513 The US used the scientists of Nazi Germany without hesitation, just as it had no qualms in supporting the business activities of former Nazis. See: Hunt 1991.; Crim 2018. In light of the above, we can conclude that exploring these economic and financial networks put Hungary’s post-war role in a new light. One may rightly ask to what extent the construction of these systems of nexuses was intentionally assigned to the country, to what extent the point was only to serve Soviet interests, whether all this was taking place under direct instruction from the Soviets, and if the Hungarian members of the network had any room for manoeuvre. We need to understand the underlying interests more thoroughly to determine how important Hungary’s role was in the global political arena. Considering the extent of the intermediary trade revealed so far, this role was anything but minor. However, it is hard to tell who actually controlled and benefited from the mechanism. We have found it challenging to unveil the Hungarian nodes of the network (or networks) in question, all we can say is there was a financial-economic interest group in Kádár ’ s Hungary that was capable of influencing economic policy decision-makers, and of imposing its will even on the government. I have chosen to call this interest group the ‘foreign trade lobby’. The joint venture scheme and the network of offshore firms behind 189
