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What Can We Learn from the Business History of Communist Enterprises?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2018

PÁL GERMUSKA
PÁL GERMUSKA*
Affiliation:
Pál Germuska is head of the Department of Government Organs and Workers’ Parties’ Documents after 1945, at the Hungarian National Archive. He is also an external researcher of the ERC-funded project, Looking West: The European Socialist Regimes Facing Pan-European Cooperation and the European Community, at the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy. ORCID ID: ID 0000-0002-0097-5778. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This comment challenges two main points of Phil Scranton’s article: his periodization, and the adequacy of the utilized sources. His interpretation neglects the efforts of the de-Stalinization attempts in Eastern European socialist countries during the mid-1950s, though these measures established all subsequent reforms. He based his argumentation on contemporaneous articles from the 1950s and 1960s while an expanding fresh literature is available on socialist economies, thanks to the large-scale declassification of formerly top-secret documents. However, his article is an extremely important contribution to the business history of communism and a delightful point of departure for many kinds of future research in this field.

Type
Symposia
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 538 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Germuska, Pál, and Honvári, János. “The History of Public Vehicle Production in Győr from 1945 until 1990.” In Industrial Districts and Cities in Central Europe, edited by Somlyódyné Pfeil, Edit, 130–157. Győr: Universitas-Győr Nonprofit Kft., 2014.Google Scholar
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Pittaway, Mark. “The Revolution and the Industrial Workers: The Disintegration and Reconstruction of Socialism, 1953–58.” In From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present. Selected essays by Mark Pittaway, edited by Fabry, Adam, 156–214. Boston: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “The New Stage of the Reform Process and the Large Enterprises.” Acta Oeconomica 29 (1982): 25–46.Google Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “The Structural Reasons for Anti-Reform Attitudes (Comments on András Hegedüs’s Article and the Subsequent Debate).” Eastern European Economics 25 (1986, Autumn): 106–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “Integration of Special Interests in the Hungarian Economy: The Struggle between Large Companies and the Party and State Bureaucracy.” Journal of Comparative Economics 15 (1991): 284–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Between East and West: A Cultic Place of the Hungarian Agriculture—Bábolna Farm.” In Cultic Revelations: Cult Personalities and Phenomena, edited by Halmesvirta, Anssi, 161–180. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2011.Google Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Economic Show Trials in Hungary in the 1970s.” In Show Trials, Concentration and Labour Camps and the Fate of Political Refugees Before and After World War II, edited by Maruzsa, Zoltán, 201–211. Budapest: ELTE BTK, 2011.Google Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Opportunities and Limitations for Enterprise in the Socialist Economy: The Case of the Budapest Agricultural Cooperatives.” Hungarian Historical Review 4 (2015): 928–963.Google Scholar
Almquist, Peter. Red Forge: Soviet Military Industry since 1965. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Berend, Ivan T. The Hungarian Economic Reforms, 1953–1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Rainer, János. M. Imre Nagy: A Biography. London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009.Google Scholar
Hegedűs, András B., and Wilke, Manfred, eds. Satelliten nach Stalins Tod. Der “Neue Kurs”. 17 Juni 1953 in der DDR, Ungarische Revolution 1956. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000.Google Scholar
Barta, Györgyi. “Spatial Impacts of Organisation Change in Hungarian Industrial Enterprises.” In Industrial Change in Advanced Economies, edited by Ian Hamilton, F. E., 197–207. London: Croom Helm, 1987.Google Scholar
Bódy, Zsombor. “Enthralled by Size: Business History or the History of Technocracy in the Study of a Hungarian Socialist Factory.” Hungarian Historical Review 4 (2015) 964–989.Google Scholar
Case, Holly. “Reconstruction in East-Central Europe. Clearing the Rubble of Cold War Politics.” Past & Present 210 (2011, January): 71–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eyal, Gil, and Townsley, Eleanor. “The Social Composition of the Communist Nomenklatura: A Comparison of Russia, Poland, and Hungary.” Theory and Society 24 (1995): 723–750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Germuska, Pál, and Honvári, János. “The History of Public Vehicle Production in Győr from 1945 until 1990.” In Industrial Districts and Cities in Central Europe, edited by Somlyódyné Pfeil, Edit, 130–157. Győr: Universitas-Győr Nonprofit Kft., 2014.Google Scholar
Hegedüs, András. “Large Enterprise and Socialism (Thoughts While Reading Erzsébet Szalai’s Book).” Eastern European Economics 25 (Autumn 1986): 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegedüs, András. “Questions Waiting for Answers (In the Aftermath of a Debate).” Eastern European Economics 25 (Autumn 1986): 113–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimann, Mary. “The Scheming Apparatchik of the Prague Spring.” Europe-Asia Studies 60 (2008, December): 1717–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klement, Judit. “How to Adapt to a Changing Market? The Budapest Flour Mill Companies at the Turn of the Nineteenth and Twenties Centuries.” Hungarian Historical Review 4 (2015): 834–867.Google Scholar
Kövér, György. “Crossroads and Turns in Hungarian Economic History.” In Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History, edited by Boldizzoni, Francesco and Hudson, Pat, 242–257. New York: Routledge, 2016.Google Scholar
Milánovics, Szvetozár. “The (Large) Enterprises and Socialism (Thoughts about András Hegedüs’s Thoughts).” Eastern European Economics 25 (1986, Autumn): 26–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitrovits, Miklós. “The First Phase of De-Stalinization in East-Central Europe (1953–1958): A Comparative Approach.” In Influences, Pressures Pro and Con, and Opportunities: Studies on Political Interactions in and Involving Hungary in the Twentieth Century, edited by Ripp, Zoltán, 181–212. Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2014.Google Scholar
Péteri, György. “New Course Economics: The Field of Economic Research in Hungary after Stalin, 1953–56.” Contemporary European History 6 (1997, November): 295–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Péteri, György. “Purge and Patronage: Kádár’s Counter-Revolution and the Field of Economic Research in Hungary, 1957–1958.” Contemporary European History 11 (2002, February): 125–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pittaway, Mark. “The Education of Dissent: The Reception of the Voice of Free Hungary, 1951–1956.” Cold War History 4 (2003): 97–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pittaway, Mark. “Building Socialism.” In From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present. Selected essays by Mark Pittaway, edited by Fabry, Adam, 35–60. Boston: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Pittaway, Mark. “The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary.” In From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present. Selected essays by Mark Pittaway, edited by Fabry, Adam, 94–120. Boston: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Pittaway, Mark. “The Revolution and the Industrial Workers: The Disintegration and Reconstruction of Socialism, 1953–58.” In From the Vanguard to the Margins: Workers in Hungary, 1939 to the Present. Selected essays by Mark Pittaway, edited by Fabry, Adam, 156–214. Boston: Brill, 2014.Google Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “The New Stage of the Reform Process and the Large Enterprises.” Acta Oeconomica 29 (1982): 25–46.Google Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “The Structural Reasons for Anti-Reform Attitudes (Comments on András Hegedüs’s Article and the Subsequent Debate).” Eastern European Economics 25 (1986, Autumn): 106–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szalai, Erzsébet. “Integration of Special Interests in the Hungarian Economy: The Struggle between Large Companies and the Party and State Bureaucracy.” Journal of Comparative Economics 15 (1991): 284–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Between East and West: A Cultic Place of the Hungarian Agriculture—Bábolna Farm.” In Cultic Revelations: Cult Personalities and Phenomena, edited by Halmesvirta, Anssi, 161–180. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2011.Google Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Economic Show Trials in Hungary in the 1970s.” In Show Trials, Concentration and Labour Camps and the Fate of Political Refugees Before and After World War II, edited by Maruzsa, Zoltán, 201–211. Budapest: ELTE BTK, 2011.Google Scholar
Varga, Zsuzsanna. “Opportunities and Limitations for Enterprise in the Socialist Economy: The Case of the Budapest Agricultural Cooperatives.” Hungarian Historical Review 4 (2015): 928–963.Google Scholar