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Agricultural Economics and the Agrarian Lobby in Hungary Under State Socialism

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Agricultural Economics and the Agrarian Lobby in Hungary Under State Socialism east central europe 44 (2017) 284-308 brill.com/eceu Agricultural Economics and the Agrarian Lobby in Hungary under State Socialism Zsuzsanna Varga Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest [email protected] Abstract Following the revolution in 1956, Hungary’s agrarian policy went through changes and reforms unprecedented within the socialist block. The most important reform was the abolition of the system of compulsory delivery. This article aims to outline how the political change affected agrarian economics and also highlights the signifi- cant role played by some scholars, with their latent presence and their policy sugges- tions, which the Kádár Government had the courage to support in November 1956. With the emergence of the so-called Agrarian Lobby, of the intertwining networks of politicians, administr ators, and scientists of the agrarian sector, the personal and intellectual preconditions had already been in place before 1956. Institutionalization, however, could only come about after the partial rehabilitation of market economy. The post-1956 political leadership could only meet the challenge of re-defining the relationship of the state and the agricultural cooperatives with the contribution of professionals. At the same time, the shape and nature of Kádár era agrarian eco- nomic research were also affected by the alliance between the practitioners of the field and the emerging network of agro-politicians and administrators, the Agrarian Lobby. Two key figures, Ferenc Erdei and Lajos Fehér, shared the responsibility for the better performance of agriculture. This paper also pays attention to the way their cooperation on this reform policy-oriented research was realized and the key role it played in the Hungarian agricultural cooperatives’ emancipation from the bonds of the kolkhoz model in the 1960s. Keywords agrarian economics – agrarian lobby – Hungary – socialism – revolution of 1956 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18763308-04402003Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:06:45AM via free access <UN> Agricultural Economics 285 By the turn of 1956–57, it was decided that the Kádár government,1 whose rise to power had been strongly supported by the Soviet Union, should extend the reprisals not only to the participants of armed struggle but also to intellectuals involved “in the preparation of the counter-revolution.” The functioning of the Hungarian Writers’ Association was suspended on 17 January 1957. The same was the case with the National Association of Hungarian Journalists three days later. Simultaneously, they launched a campaign to put well-known writers and journalists involved in the revolution under arrest (Standeisky, 1996: 191–212). The government applied a wide range of reprisals in several groups of in- tellectuals between 1956 and 1963. György Péteri provides a detailed analysis on the mechanism of the “purges” using the example of the Institute of Eco- nomics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Péteri 2004a). In the same period, representatives of a closely related academic area, agrarian economics, experienced an entirely different process. To them, an opportunity presented itself to revitalize their discipline. My attention was drawn to this discrepancy between the two scholarly fields while conducting my research on the socialist agrarian lobby (Varga 2013). In the present study I shall explore how the political changes of 1956 led to the revitalization of the agrarian economics. From the late 1940s the Stalinist academic regime expected agrarian economic research to provide help in the practical problems of the newly established socialist cooperatives.2 To evoke the historical context, I shall discuss the conditions in both the agrarian sec- tor and this special scholarly field in the period between 1953 and 1956. In the central part of the study I am giving an overview of the personal as well as the institutional conditions of this revitalization based on the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (in Hungar- ian: Agrárgazdasági Kutató Intézet=aki). I pay special attention to the political struggles that surrounded the emancipation of this discipline. Finally, a case study from the 1960s will be integrated to offer some insight into the coopera- tion between agrarian economists and the agrarian lobby (leading party and 1 The official name of the Kádár government was the Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government. 2 In the literature dealing with the socialist agriculture, “cooperatives” and “collective farms” are usually used as identical terms. However, we should be aware on the one hand of the fundamental difference from the Western-type cooperatives (for example Dutch or German ones), and on the other hand of their different meanings in various countries in different periods. In my paper I prefer to use “cooperative” or “cooperative farm,” since this term was generally used in the contemporary sources. east central europe 44 (2017) 284-308 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:06:45AM via free access <UN> 286 Varga state functionaries actively promoting the divergence from the Stalinist model in agriculture). i The Historical Context The issue of the Stalinist modernization of agriculture in East Central Europe was put on the agenda in 1948. This meant more than mere collectivization; it actually involved subordinating the agricultural sector to the interests of forced industrialization (Swain 2014: 499–502). Before the launch of collectiv- ization, at the turn of 1948–1949, there was an important theoretical debate in Hungary within the leadership of the communist party.3 In the course of the debate, the policy of Mátyás Rákosi (the first secretary of the hwp) and Ernő Gerő (the secretary responsible for the economic policy), who were willing to satisfy Soviet demands even at the price of radical moves, clashed with the stance taken by Imre Nagy, who was the leading communist agrarian expert (Rainer 2009: 48–52). Nagy warned of the dangers and negative consequences of rapid and aggressive collectivization. He stressed that the vast majority of the Hungarian peasants were skeptical about the idea of Soviet-type collec- tive farming. In order to avoid economic and social disturbances, he recom- mended a long and gradual multi-sectoral transition. For his views Imre Nagy was labelled as right-wing and revisionist, and in 1949 he was expelled from the Politburo of the hwp (Rainer 2009: 48–52). I discuss this antecedent because after Stalin’s death, Soviet leaders con- fronted Rákosi and Gerő with the fact that the economic sector most severely affected by crisis was agriculture. They referred back to the aforementioned debate and recommended Imre Nagy for Prime Minister (Varga 1992: 234–269). It is true that he was the only one among the Muscovite leaders of the hwp who was considered an agricultural expert owing to his family background, his studies, and experiences as a researcher in agricultural economics. The background of the severe agricultural crisis was the following. Regard- less of the scope of violence applied by the communists, they did not manage to break the peasants’ resistance towards the kolkhoz. By the turn of 1952–1953, the first campaign of collectivization, launched in 1949, had failed (Ö. Kovács, 2014: 215–221). Meanwhile the agrarian sector had been completely disrupted: the standard of production did not reach that of the period before the war 3 The name of the communist party in Hungary between 1945 and 1948: Hungarian Commu- nist Party (hcp), between 1948 and 1956: Hungarian Workers’ Party (hwp), between 1956 and 1989: Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (hswp). east centralDownloaded europe from 44 Brill.com09/28/2021(2017) 284-308 10:06:45AM via free access <UN> Agricultural Economics 287 except for the year 1951 when weather conditions were extremely favorable (Pető and Szakács 1985: 204–212). Hungary was in need of imported food. In Hungary by 1953 the new socialist cooperatives had been cultivating a little short of 40 percent of all arable land (Pető and Szakács 1985: 212). In or- der to overcome the crisis, the government led by Imre Nagy had to rely on individual farms which at the time provided the bulk of agricultural products. The first steps of the New Course agrarian policy reflected the recognition of this reality. It was even further accentuated in the medium-term resolution concerning agricultural development adopted by the government in late 1953. It was preceded by the establishment of a scientific committee initiated by Imre Nagy in the autumn of 1953 (Romány 2006b). He was not only the master- mind behind this comprehensive project, but he continued his control over it. He drew up a detailed schedule and took part in the discussions whenever he could. He called together 150 agrarian experts to work out a long-term program for developing agricultural production. Many were invited who were not party members (Dénes Penyigei, János Mócsi, János Erdei, Imre Rázsó, etc.), so he invited scholars whose main “sin” was their “reactionary” past, which meant that they gained their knowledge and experience in the interwar period, in the “Old regime.” This was the first sign of the rehabilitation of expertise stigma- tized as “bourgeois” until then. Prime Minister Imre Nagy asked the participants “to work out those mea- sures the government should carry out using their knowledge, scientific prepa- rations and practical experience” (Nagy 1954: 402). The goal was to work out a three-year long agricultural development program which could encourage private peasant farms to increase their production, as they were still the most important factor of the agrarian sector. To achieve this, the categories of mar- ket economy should be used instead of those used in planned economy. The one month that the young communists who held the leading agricultural posts of the nomenklatura spent with this sundry company on Szabadság Hill was like an intensive training for them (author’s interview with Imre Dimény, 17 October 2011).
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