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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 30-5-183
TITLE:             Socialism Proclaimed: Hungarian Writer Describes Methods Used in Collectivization Drive
BY:                Leason
DATE:              1959-3-25
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  General Desk No.672
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--Literature, Collectivization--Hungary

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RFE NEWS & INFORMATION
EVALUATION & RESEARCH
GENERAL DESK No. 672

News Background

SOCIALISM PROCLAIMED; HUNGARIAN WRITER DESCRIBES METHODS
USED IN COLLECTIVIZATION DRIVE

MUNICH, March 25 (Leason) -- An article in the Hungarian literary
weekly "Elet es Irodalom" of March 13 presents a very revealing but
obviously expurgated description of the methods used by the regime
in its January-February collectivization campaign.

The authoress, Erzsebet Galgoczi, in explaining why the
"socialization" of agriculture is "inevitable", and expressing
apparent approval of the progress made in her native country, Gyoer,
at the same time very frankly states her opinion "that not a single
peasant would have joined the cooperative of his own free will --
without being won over or organized".

She then describes the methods employed to "win" the peasants
over:
The feeling of the campaign was "in the air, like oxygen".
Rumors spread. It was recognized that "sooner or later this village
too would have to take its turn".

"In other places, I was told, council members were summoned to
the Council Hall, taken to Gyoer to the Red Star Hotel where they
were offered drinks. Toward dawn every council member signed the
application form to join the cooperative". When they returned home
"in high spirits", they were welcomed by a "cooperative village"
since "in the course of the night the whole population joined the
cooperative because they feared that the council members had been
imprisoned".

Workers from the factories were sent to their home villages on
unpaid leave and told not to come back to work until they could
certify that their parents had joined a cooperative. "They were also
told to use persuasion and that if their parents decided to remain
outside another five years, the workers too should stay home for
five years".

In one of the villages, it was "simply announced by the roll of
a drum that from that day onward the village was a cooperative village
and that everyone was to behave accordingly. Socialism was proclaimed".

* * *

Having described the methods in this unusually candid manner,
the authors then proceeds to make her points on the inevitability
of "socialization".

The peasants finally agreed to collectivization because the
collective "provides a basis and possibility for mechanization" and
because it has become evident "and was proved that the socialist social

[page 2]

GENERAL DESK NEWS BACKGROUND REPORT, No. 672 

order was to remain in Hungary"; in "that case agriculture was to
be socialist. This is sure and everybody knows it". 

It appears that the agitators' main argument was not that
peasants would be better off in collectives but that collectivization
was inevitable. Again, she manages another quite frank statement:
"It is possible to explain to them why the cooperative is inevitable...
peasants are sly. They can calculate. In county Gyoer, the peasants
have worked it out not that they will be better off in the cooperative
from one day to the next but that it will not be worse in the first
year than it was in the past." (See Hungarian Press Survey No. 524,
March 25, for a full version of this article.)

* *  *

This article confirms other reports from Hungary on the methods
used by the regime to achieve what it claims was a doubling of the
collective sector, bringing the total arable land collectivized
roughly to 2k per cent. The article, however, only hints at the degree
of pressure employed.

What really happened at least In county Gyoer, however, should
be clear to the Hungarian reader. When the authors writes that
council members were taken to the Red Star Hotel in Gyoer and that
"toward dawn" they had all signed themselves into the collectives, it
will be clear to the reader that the council members were evidently
told they would not be allowed to return home until they had signed.
The villagers who signed up because they "feared" the council members
would be sent to prison were probably warned that this would, in
fact, happen unless they signed up.

End

  OSA / Guide / RIP / 1956 / RFE/RL Background Reports : Subjects | Browse | Search