The paper deals with a rather embarrassing problem, namely that while our country wishes to and is forced to join a globalizing world where the weight of agriculture and the people engaged in it has shrunk to its mere fragment during the past century, and while despite our past in state socialism it was this trend that has emerged in Hungary too, yet, after the change of the political system the political elites 'distributed land', thus making masses landowners. The 'land reform' governed by politics is all the more embarrassing because, in the author's view the Hungarian countryside and the villages were already 'after agriculture' at the end of the period of state socialism, that is prior to the change of the political system. In other words, the politicians offered and even forced the massive distribution of land as an alternative of development for the society of the countryside and the villages in the new Hungarian capitalism under conditions that have already been historically overcome. The paper investigates what actually the most recent 'distribution of land' meant for the people of the country by the example of the development of a small region of 'late' industrialisation, that was linked 'late' and 'weakly' to domestic market development and modernisation. The paper draws the conclusion that it has definitely not offered an “alternative of development”.
The paper attempts to interpret the change of the system in the context of modernisation. Its starting point is that one of the significant characteristics of 20th-century Hungarian development is fundamental, rapid, economically and socially unfounded changes by leaps, based on ideology, and system changes have taken place from time to time. One of the characteristics of these ensembles of social phenomena is that the Hungarian society is not getting into a situation forcing it to change its system by its own (organic) trends and dynamics of development but as a result of external periodic changes in world economy, big power and military positions. The unfounded and sudden changes are related to the fact that the Hungarian economy and society have been moving along a developmental track for centuries that significantly differed from the direction and dynamics of development determining world economy for the past couple of centuries, and whenever new trends became dominant in the latter one Hungarian development was also forced to take along a new track. At the time of periodic changes a special situation emerges out of the different type of development, for partly challenges deriving from Hungarian development should be handled, and partly some, successful answers should be given also to the new trends of modernisation. In this sense a 'dual' challenge faced the country in the 80s and 90s: on the one hand the Kádár system producing rapid modernisation within the framework of state socialism got into a crisis by that time, and the processes of global capitalism determining the new direction of modernisation of world economy had become dominant. Though the two challenges had the same roots and appeared simultaneously, they are two different problems. The paper discusses the circumstances of the system change in detail and draws the conclusion that the political class changing the system did not give an adequate answer to this ‘dual' challenge.
The characteristics of Hungarian scholarships have changed in the past nearly twenty years. Besides the national initiatives, there are foreign and overseas scholarships for which there has been an increasing demand and need. The initiatives are excellent, but all this would only fulfil its role in perfectly, if the principle of their social utility would be effective as well. The national educational system makes it necessary to get experience from abroad, to learn the different professional competences as the tendencies in and outside Europe are also essential criteria in the reconsideration of the education system.
The paper attempts to interpret the change of the system in the 90s in the context of modernisation. Its starting point is that one of the significant characteristics of 20th-century Hungarian development is fundamental, rapid, economically and socially unfounded changes by leaps, based on ideology, and system changes have taken place from time to time. One of the characteristics of these ensembles of social phenomena is that the Hungarian society is not getting into a situation forcing it to change its system by its own (organic) trends and dynamics of development but as a result of external periodic changes in world economy, big power and military positions. (Such changes were the times of the first and second world wars, and that of global capitalism.) The unfounded and sudden changes are related to the fact that the Hungarian economy and society have been moving along a developmental track for centuries that significantly differed from the direction and dynamics of development determining world economy for the past couple of centuries, and whenever new trends became dominant in the latter one Hungarian development was also forced to take along a new track. At the time of periodic changes a special situation emerges out of the different type of development, for partly challenges deriving from Hungarian development should be handled, and partly some, successful answers should be given also to the new trends of modernisation. In this sense a 'dual' challenge faced the country in the 80s and 90s: on the one hand the Kádár system producing rapid modernisation within the framework of state socialism got into a crisis by that time, and the processes of global capitalism determining the new direction of modernisation of world economy had become dominant. Though the two challenges had the same roots and appeared simultaneously, they are two different problems. The paper discusses the circumstances of the system change in detail and draws the conclusion that the political class changing the system did not give an adequate answer to this 'dual' challenge.
During the course of our research project entitled 'Youth 2000', eight thousand young people were requested to qualify the financial situation of the family–household they lived in. We used certain statements in the survey that describe and distinguish relatively well certain conditions of the financial, income, consumption and existential position of the given family, sketching a model of the respective realities of present-day Hungarian society. Such statements were the following: there are some who 'live without problems', others 'manage well with economising', next those who 'just manage to make both ends meet', or those who struggle against 'financial difficulties from month to month', as there are others in our society who 'live in privation'. What kind of 'realities' the given specifications and the meaning lent to them present, for instance, what kind of accumulation, living, and reproductive features have those who 'live without problems' out of their income (5%), or those who 'just manage' (38%)? The main finding of the paper is that the majority of the young have qualified the financial and existential condition of their families very realistically. It stresses further on that besides the thin stratum of those 'living without problems', a large part of families (39%) 'managing well with economising' cannot afford the bourgeois 'luxury' of building reserves and of accumulation, though the world they live in would very much require it. In the families of the young who qualify their situation worse, both the balance and the ability of accumulation lag far behind the previous groups, and naturally behind the competitive challenges set by the more developed countries of the European Union. The latter one is interesting because the Hungarian youth rather badly supplied with family and social resources already have to compete the youth of the Union in the similar age group.
In modern Hungary, the period from the second part of the 19th century and the period of faster capitalist development, a relationship of interests based on mutual advantages emerged between politics and leading sportsmen, together with the interest (lobby) groups operating and supplying them. This relationship proved to be so successful that it has exercised an unbroken influence on Hungarian society for more than a century (to this day). The effectiveness of this relationship and of the lobby groups operating it is supported best by the fact that its influence could be made permanent while fundamental changes took place in Hungarian history. Political zigzags, dictatorships and democracies, booms and crises followed one another. It should be remembered for instance, that the territory of the country was reduced to one third by the Trianon decision, its form of state (kingdom, republic etc.) and the form of its social and economic reproduction (feudal, capitalism, socialism, new capitalism) were constantly changing in the 20th century, accompanied by the total replacement of its political elites. The country was either part of a 'medieval' empire, of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, or functioned as an autonomous country, next it belonged to the zone of the Soviet sphere of military and economic influence, and most recently it acceded to the European Union. These conditions modified its international position and competitiveness in modernisation, too. In brief: while in Hungary practically everything underwent fundamental changes in politics during the past century, and mostly political courses of opposite economic, political and ideological content replaced each other, nothing changed in the relationship between politics and leading sports. In the paper an attempt is made to study this issue sociologically, why politics could evolve this extremely intimate relationship with leading sports, what circumstances created it and what needs contributed to its becoming politically indispensable.
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