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Published by: Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Fathers of Budapest, Daughters of the Countryside:
Recontextualizing Cultural Change in Fin-de-Siècle Hungary

Ábel Bede

Durham University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 623-654 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.623

There is a historiographical consensus that there was a cultural paradigm shift in the first decade of the twentieth century in Hungary, though its exact characteristics have not been clearly defined. This article will demonstrate that there was a unifying theme in the works and philosophy of the generation that came to cultural relevance around 1905 which transcended ideological boundaries. The members of the new generation had a negative image of Budapest and idealized rural areas and rural communities. This essay will examine newspapers of the period, such as the Catholic Alkotmány (Constitution), the feminist A Nő és a Társadalom (Woman and Society), and the liberal Nyugat (The West) and argue that anti-Budapest sentiments and the idealization of the countryside were present in writings published in all of them. It will also show that novels from the period by Margit Kaffka and Terka Lux all revolve around criticism of Budapest and praise of the rural world.

Keywords: fin-de-siècle Hungary, anti-urban sentiments, cultural change, literature, journalism, Budapest

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From Pioneer to Latecomer:
Relations between Austria and the Soviet Union (Russia) in the Oil and Gas Sector

Walter M. Iber and Christoph Huber

University of Graz

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 596-622 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.596

Cooperation between Austria and the Soviet Union and then Russia in the oil and gas sector has a long history. When Austria fell under Soviet occupation after World War II, the Soviets confiscated the Austrian oil fields and founded the Soviet Mineral Oil Administration (Sowjetische Mineralölverwaltung, SMV). Most of the Austrian oil produced was exported to communist Central and Eastern Europe. Through agreements within the framework of the State Treaty, Austria was able to bring the Soviet mineral oil complex under its administration. Austrian Mineral Oil Administration (Österreichische Mineralölverwaltung AG, ÖMV) was founded in 1956. In 1968, Austria became the first Western European country to import Soviet natural gas from the other side of the Iron Curtain. The steel producer VÖEST supplied pipelines to the Soviet Union for this purpose. The gas contract was extended several times and is now valid until 2040.

Keywords: Austria, Soviet Union, Oil, Gas, OMV, Soyuznefteksport

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A Unique Path to Monopoly: The Case of the Hungarian Insurance Sector, 1945–1952

Gyula Horváth

Eötvös Loránd University, Corvinus University of Budapest

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 575-595 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.575

This paper presents the nationalization and monopolization of the private insurance industry in Hungary after World War II. In all the socialist countries save one private insurance was prohibited. In the insurance sector, only one (or technically sometimes two) state-owned insurance companies handled the insurance business with an essentially monopolistic position after the process of nationalization had ended. This uniformity, however, masks the fact that these countries took differing paths towards this end. This was particularly true of the events in Hungary. This article suggests possible explanations for these differences.

Keywords: private insurance industry, nationalization, Central and Eastern Europe, post-World War II, monopoly

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The Politics of Business: (Failed) Economic Initiatives of Slovene Liberals in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century

Ivan Smiljanić

Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 559-574 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.559

Slovenian politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was strongly divided along ideological lines, with the conservative and liberal camps in particular engaging in never-ending cultural struggles through their various outlets. This was also evident in the economic sphere, where the conservative camp held a strong position with a network of cooperatives across the predominantly agricultural areas of Slovenia. The liberal camp tried to gain greater influence and also founded a number of cooperatives in order to exert greater economic and thus also political influence. For reasons such as rashness, inexperience, negligence, and outright corruption, these projects were mostly unsuccessful and ended in a series of bankruptcies or financial scandals.

Keywords: economic nationalism, Slovenia, liberals, Kulturkampf, bankruptcy

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Živnostenská Banka (Trades Bank) and Its Participation in the Banking Consortia/Syndicates of Interwar Czechoslovakia

Eduard Kubů and Barbora Štolleová

Charles University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 4 (2024): 533-558 DOI 10.38145/2024.4.533

One of the characteristic features of the development of the Czechoslovak economy in the interwar period was its progressive concentration and increasing organization, whether initiated from above (the persistence of a higher degree of state interventionism) or from below in the sense of voluntary cooperation and clustering across the business environment. In addition to the traditional associations for carrying out business, such as joint-stock companies, public companies, limited liability companies, and others, which were legal entities and were usually established for an unlimited period of time, new instruments of cooperation were becoming more and more common. These were networks of cartels, conventions, gentlemen’s agreements, and syndicates which restricted the free market. The study sheds light on characteristic forms of bank-to-bank cooperation, namely consortia/syndicates, using the example of the largest and most important Czechoslovak bank of the interwar period, Živnostenská Banka pro Čechy a Moravu v Praze (the Trades Bank for Bohemia and Moravia in Prague). It points out the relatively large number of consortia and offers a typology derived from their functions.

Keywords: banking consortium/syndicate, Czechoslovakia, interwar period, Živnostenská Banka (Trades Bank)

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The Incomes and Expenditures of Agrarian Family Enterprises in Interwar Hungary

Róbert Bagdi

University of Debrecen

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 471-508 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.471

Hungarian statistics in the era of the Dualism and the Interwar period did not go below the settlement level and did not provide any information on the number of livestock and the income from them. Therefore, we do not have exact data on the main problem of the period – whether the large estates or the smallholding showed better yield/ha values, and on the minimum viable size of small farms. Although the movement of ethnographic writers has depicted a dark overview of many settlements, in most cases these do not provide quantifiable data. The surveys organised by the OMGE or the agricultural schools provided statistically relevant quantitative data on certain layers of the peasantry, but the poorest, daily wage-earners remained under-represented in the studies. Therefore, sources that record the incomes and expenditures of these strata in detail (which is the focus of agricultural economists), together with their living conditions (which is the focus of the village researchers’ movement), is particularly valuable. At the University of Debrecen, under the supervision of Rezső Milleker, professor of geography, dozens of theses were written on this topic - though not all of them were conducted according to the professors’ pre-written guidance. In this paper, we try to shed light on the distribution of income and expenditure of the smallholder-peasant class, which was also hit by the recession of the Great Depression, by analysing one of the best, but unpublished work. Beside revenue sources, strategies of survival, techniques of tax-evasion, the profits compared to loan interests are also discussed.

Keywords: smallholders, farm profitability, tax, loans, peasant account books, Interwar Hungary, demographic conditions

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The Export Potential of Hungarian Agriculture and the Issue of Added Value between the two World Wars

András Schlett

Pázmány Péter Catholic University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 446-470 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.446

This study presents developments concerning Hungarian agricultural exports during a period when the production structure changed significantly and the international agricultural market changed fundamentally. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, the market and logistic networks developed over the previous centuries had changed significantly, and new actors came to play increasingly prominent roles in trade relations in the Danubian Basin. Hungary, with its small consumer market but significant agricultural potential, had been fundamentally dependent on the value of its agriculture produce on foreign markets. However, the reorganization of the international market quickly brought to the surface the contradictions and structural imbalances of Hungary’s massive agricultural production. Analyses of the agricultural history of the past century repeatedly revealed the problematic nature of the low value-added production of Hungarian agriculture.

Keywords: Hungary, agriculture, trade, export potential, added value

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