Tabiczky Zoltánné: A Magyar Vagon- és Gépgyár története 2. 1946-1972 (Győr, 1977)
Harmadik fejezet. Új utakon az újraegyesítés után (1964-1972)
Summary On the 28th of March, 1945 the Red Army liberated the town of Győr from the Hitlerist fascist rule. This day brought decisive changes not only in the life of the country and town, but also in that of the nearly half-century old Carriage and Waggon Works. In the place of the once-famous engineering factory the liberating army found buildings mostly bombed to the ground, a production system ruined by the transfer of machines to Germany and paralysation of production in many other ways, and empty workshops. Among the ruined buildings, however, there were resolute workers and people — returning in ever growing number — who had been daring enough to hinder the production of war equipment and carrying away of the valuable machinery to the West in the midst of the arrow-cross terror. From the very first days the workers did their best to help the factory in providing the liberating forces with an ever quicker and greater supply of service parts and war materials and in satisfying their needs for vehicle repair. On the basis of the armistice agreement, the factory was under Soviet military control up to June 30, 1945, and from the first days of April it manufactured goods to meet the needs of the military forces. In the launching of production and removal of ruins a great part can be attributed — as a sign of the changing times — to the factory committees elected in the wake of the directions of the new democratic Hungarian government, which ensured the factory workers a possibility of interfering with the control of production. Owing to the activity of the factory committees in the field of control and management, the workers — side by side with the administrative machinery of the capitalist owners — themselves began to become owners as well, this phenomenon being the first result of the revolutionary and socialist development of the country. In 1945, the losses of the factory in capacity were assessed and found to be about 70 per cent as against the average 36—40 per cent of the machine industry as a whole; the summer production in 1945 amounted to about 10 per cent of that recorded earlier. The reconstruction of the factory was all the more pressing as its products were indispensable in the reorganization of the totally ruined network of traffic in the country. Apart from the quick and 125 numerous repairs on rolling stock, bridge construction became exceptionally significant and the factory took a great part in the reconstruction of nearly all the ruined bridges of the country, with the highly important Kossuth bridge of the capital among them. In this very important period of the factory's operation, the workers solved a double task successfully, viz. they fulfilled their daily duties parallel with the continuous work of reconstruction. The growing industrial output made financial stabilization possible by the summer of 1946 and, as a result of the struggle for breaking the economic power of the capitalists and as a second step after the nationalization of coal mines, the most important factories of the metal and engineering industries — with the Győr Waggon Works among them — were nationalized in November, 1946. The First Three-Year Plan tending to re-establish the national economy of Hungary was launched on the 1st of August, 1947. The Waggon Works got significant targets to achieve: it had to produce thousands of railway carriages, freight waggons, bridges and other kinds of ironwork, screws, rivets, miner's trucks, agricultural machines, cookers, stoves, electric trolleys and engines. Success was largely promoted by the fact that the MÁVAG plant in Győr was incorporated into the Waggon Works and also that the directorate was transferred from Budapest to Győr. New machines and other equipments, to the value of 100 million forints, were put into operation. From economics point of view the last phase of the three-year plan was characterized by nationalization in 1948 and 1949, a new order of the administration of industry, as well as by realization of planned economy. From political point of view its landmarks were the unification of the workers' parties and the decisive victory of socialist powers over the reactionary capitalist forces. Owing to the efforts of workers, technicians and engineers, the plan period saw outstanding results in production: in two years and a half it grew to 719 million forints. This meant that 2,248 railway carriages and waggons, 1,442 lorries, buses, axles and numerous other products were manufactured by the 7,500 workers and employees. As a consequence of the successful plan period not
