Reform egy országban? (könyvismertető)

Feitl István: Talányos játszmák. Magyarország a KGST erőterében 1949–1974. Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 2016. 392

Military and Defence Expenses in Hungary between 1949–1979

The study presents the development of the military and defence expenses during the period of 1949 to 1979, based on so far unknown, formerly top secret sources. It describes the decisional mechanisms, the party and state organisations having the competence to determine the mentioned expense, as well as the international circumstances and internal events influencing the volume of the military expense. From 1949 till 1956 a dual budgetary system was in application in Hungary as well: beside the official, public budget existed a secret budget containing the military expense and state dotations to be dissimulated. Concerning the military expenditure, as from 1956 another hiding technique was also in use: the budget line of the Ministry of Defence contained exclusively the operational costs, while the cost of investments and weapon acquisitions was placed among the items of the national economy investments and the trade expenditure

Balancing between the COMECON and the EEC : Hungarian elite debates on European integration during the long 1970s

Published online: 22 January 2019This article intends to uncover the internal disputes about foreign and trade policy between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, and to highlight the Hungarian motives in both Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) internal discussions and Hungary’s talks with the European Economic Community (EEC). The issue of concluding an agreement with the EEC became a home-front battlefield between the ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’ of the political leadership at the turn of the 1970s. The article argues that from the early 1980s, the genuine initiator of a foreign trade policy shift was the reform wing of the party, while the foreign trade apparatus remained firm on its standpoint of non-recognition.The PanEur1970s project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement n. 669194

Kaddafi ’s „Ears”. Manufacture of Intelligence Radio Equipment in Hungary 1965–1985

According to a popular legend in the military world, colonel Moamer el-Kadhafi could owe his life solely to Hungarian radio reconnaissance stations. In April of 1986 the United States of America intended to kill the Libyan dictator by a quick and unexpected air-strike. It is alleged that the maintenance brigade of the Hungarian manufacturer were just doing regular maintenance works of the radio reconnaissance instruments, when they noticed and decoded the communication of the American attackers, and they alarmed Kadhafi who could this way survive the bombing. Although, the trustworthiness of some elements of the story can be questioned, it would only proper to ask how an East-Central European country could produce such kind of reconnaissance instruments and why they were placed out in an Arabian country. This study attempts to give additional information through presenting a special company of the national telecommunications industry about the socialist system of the 1970–80s. Countries of the Soviet block broke away fi nally from the technologically highly developed world during these two decades, because they were unable to keep up with the changes following the computer revolution. At the same time, the story of the production of radio reconnaissance instruments modulates this commonplace to a certain degree: it introduces the technological challenges Hungarian industry had to cope with, the international trends it tried to adopt, the efforts made in the fi eld of (military) research and development, and the changes what an East-Central European company could have in the market of high technology