Drawing on narrative sources, the study examines the experiences of Hungarian professionals working in Algeria during the 1960s and 1970s. Following a brief overview of methodologies in global history, it explores reports by state security agents and memoirs about the work of Hungarian specialists who lived in Algeria. The analysis demonstrates how narrative sources can broaden the perspective of historiography focusing on the elite’s global navigation, while adding social historical depth to studying the interactions between state socialist countries and the Global South. Solidarity between state socialist countries and the “Third World” was ostensibly grounded in their joint opposition to the West and shared peripherality relative to core states. However, both retrospective personal accounts and reports collected by state security authorities show that this solidarity functioned more as an element of ideologically framed political discourse. Bringing narrative sources into the analysis reveals that Hungarian professionals did not interpret their Algerian experiences through this ideological matrix. Instead, their perceptions were shaped by prior knowledge, as well as their typically Central European life trajectories and identities. Highlighting local experiences, the study adds a hitherto unexplored social-historical layer – shaped by longer-term dynamics – to our understanding of Hungary’s relationship with the Global South.

Through the foundation and early history of the National Committee for Technical Development, the study examines the roles of technocratic experts embedded in global trends but operating in socialist Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s. The approach is based on the newest trends in the history of technocracy, which posits that the face of modern societies in the twentieth century was shaped more by technocratic expert knowledge than the various incumbent political systems. The technocratic thinking that largely defined mid-century and later modernity and identified itself as science-based rather then ideology-driven, was global and rested on the same baselines in the Eastern Bloc as in the rest of the world.The Eastern Bloc, in this respect, did not subscribe to a model fundamentally different from global technocracy even during the era of military opposition in the Cold War. In fact, around 1960, the Hungarian party state, relinquishing the ideology of revolution, expected the broad establishment of technocracy to promote its further consolidation. For this reason, Hungarian technocrats were given more maneuverability and discretion through the National Committee for Technical Development, which undertook the remit of a ministry for research and development and technology import, while resolutely remaining outside the state administration and assuming the necessity of an autonomous and collaborative space for technocratic experts.

The study reflects on the unrest that broke out on a payday at the Ikarus plant on Christmas 1951. Based on the analysis of this event, the paper presents how the laborers, especially the skilled workers, experienced party ambitions that were increasingly affecting their workplace after the nationalization of the factory, permeating decisions made about manufacturing processes and delimiting their discretion regarding wages – one of the reasons for the tensions emerging on the factory floor. The skilled workers, however, faced more than just the factory's leadership. As the study demonstrates, besides the party-dependent nationalized economic governance, technocratic groups played an independent role in the vehicle industry, specifically in the Ikarus plant. From the beginning, nationalized economic governance necessitated a technocratic layer of society, which had emerged long time before the 1960s. The first professional organizations and the specialized public of the engineering sector were formed as early as the end of 1940s. Based on these, technocrats became independent and self-governing factors in the industry. The study shows that after nationalization some of the entrepreneurial functions in the factory were taken over by the technocratic leadership, which meant that their influence increased compared to the former period of market economy. In order to limit the power of the party in their plant, the technocrats cooperated with the skilled workers who were dissatisfied with their worsening position but were indispensable for the given technological manufacturing processes.

The study surveys publications on the twentieth-century history of residential architecture and policy primarily in German-language publications. The subject of homes is a complex research area, which encompasses various disciplines including the economic history of residential development and the real estate market, the social history of patterns of unequal residential circumstances specific to social strata, cultural historical approaches to the history of homes and home-making, residential development as a social issue in political discourse, and modes of residential practice in the study of everyday life. The diversity of possible analytical approaches make the history of homes a challenging, but fascinating research area. The present survey provides a summary of recent scholarship in this field.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

The study discusses the history of one of the most important predecessors of Ikarus, the Uhri Brothers’ Chassis and Vehicle Manufacturing Company, from the beginning of the Second World War to the time of its nationalisation. During the industrial prosperity of the war the originally family-owned company remained a private enterprise but obtained state capital to develop its new company profile in chassis and plane manufacturing. After the war the company was involved in the war compensation transports and rebuilding works. However, unionisation, worker councils and party units (both Communist and Social Democrat) supported by the new regime meant that the private directorial position held by the Uhri family members in the company was losing ground. The state’s restrictive loan policies after the launch of the new Hungarian Forint ended the company’s inflation-stimulated boom and the company entered a difficult financial phase. Due to debts and insolvency, the family was forced to allow the state to take over the company before the general nationalisation of industries. However, divided by their association with either the Social Democratic Party or the Communist Party, there was an increasingly sharp competition for the company’s leadership between factions of the expanding state apparatus governing the country’s economy. This also divided all the company workers who belonged to either of these so-called workers’ parties. With the establishment of the one-party system, the conflict ended with the victory of the workers and organisations associated with the Hungarian Communist Party. Until a major capital investment in the 1960s, Ikarus’s manufacturing capacity, with regard to human resources and machinery, remained essentially the same as it had been established during the years of wartime prosperity. The development of the monocoque body for buses, which was the company’s impressive innovative achievement in the 1950s, was also largely based on the resources inherited from wartime investment and development.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

The essay analyses a publication by the Budapest Statistic Office on the income and outlay structure of hundred households in 1929. The investigated publication differentiates between workers and members of the middle-class, and analyses the internal differences within the latter. The publication alsó identifies beside the older middle-class a new and broader middle-class with new consumption habits. The present essay interprets this phenomenon as the emergence of the lifestyle characterizing consumer society.

The 1891 Workers’ Mandatory Health Insurance Law and the 1893 Accident prevention and The Factory Supervision Acts of Hungary followed similar ones in Austria and Germany. The article deals with the development of these laws, presenting the alternatives, which were considered during the process. The weakening of the Hungarian workers’ movements was not among the goals of the law, in spite of Germany. They more likely wanted to eliminate problems of the growing Hungarian economy. Experts of the Ministerial Office acted more like reformers of the society, dealing with theoretical problems. Documents of the developing talks with different business federations show that the insurance could not be expanded to agriculture (in spite of Germany), because there was a great political opposition against it. It was also obvious, that the handicraft entrepreneurs were against any accident isnsurance act. Finally instead of this, a mandatory health insurance law was accepted, combined with an accident prevention, a factory supervision and a Sunday rest act. This law covered all industrial workers, and formed new regional bursaries by the existing insurance bursaries.