hungarian studies - EPA - Országos Széchényi Könyvtár

SOME QUESTIONS ON HUNGARIAN-SOVIET RELATIONS 19
investment, out of which almost 50% went to industry (including construction)
and only 14% to agriculture. 91 This percentage of national income invested in
Hungary was higher than the rates of investment under the first Five-Year Plans in
Bulgaria (19,6), Czechoslovakia (22,3), Poland (21,6), or for the Soviet Union
(21%) between 1946 and 1950. The share of industry in investment was also higher
in Hungary than in the abovementioned people's democracies and the Soviet Union.
The same was true for the share of heavy industry and construction in all
industrial investments, which was over 90% in Hungary, 83% in Bulgaria, 78% in
Czechoslovakia and 75% in Poland during the same period. 92 Just as in the Soviet
Union beginning in the early 1930s resources were diverted from agriculture to
industry. This was done by decreasing the share of the national resources spent on
agricultural development, by drastically reducing the price paid for agricultural
products, coupled to an artificial increase in the price of the industrial products
that were sold to the agricultural sector. In this way the government killed two
birds with one stone. It carried out its economic program and made progress in the
liquidation of the peasantry as a social class. The impact of the government's
economic policy on the standard of living was disastrous. In 1952 the price index
of consumer goods was 166% higher than that of capital goods. The price of
clothing was seventeen times, that of foodstuffs twelve times higher than in 1938.
At the same time services were cheaper. The purchasing power of the Hungarian
forint diminished by 40% between 1946 and 1949, and by another 27% until 1955.
The year 1951 saw the introduction of rationing for meat, bread, lard, sugar, flour
and soap. This was lifted after seven months, but with a simultaneous increase of
prices by 40% and a general pay rise of only 20%. Chiefly due to the compulsory
deliveries, the peasantry's income actually went down as compared to the pre-war
period. During the years between 1949 and 1953 the level of consumption for all
important foodstuffs, save for wheat and sugar, was lower than in the last year of
peace. The deterioration of the quality of consumer goods added another 10% to
the consumer price index, which in 1955 was 35% higher than at the beginning of
the decade. 93 The Poles experienced similar hardships. In Poland by 1953 the
level of meat and sugar consumption had fallen below that of 1949. 94 Hungary,
which had been one of the continent's major exporters of wheat, now had to import
this formerly abundant commodity from the Soviet Union and elsewhere
because its own production was used to service the country's ever growing foreign
debt. Hence in January 1956 the Hungarian leadership had to turn to the
USSR for the shipment of 100 thousand tons of wheat, while in September 1956
another 350 thousand tons were requested for 1957. Such requests could only
increase Hungary's subordinated position vis-à-vis its hegemonic neighbor. Because
of the acute shortage of wheat extraordinary, terroristic methods were employed
to curb consumption. In January 1953, for example, a certain Ferenc Reisz
was sentenced to two years in prison and the confiscation of a thousand forints for