The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland: From Communism to the European Union by Anna Seleny (review)

Abstract

reviews 747 tomention this,nor the fact thatKuusinen had also been active in the politics of a second parliamentary extreme Left party in Finland in the early 1920s, the Socialist Workers' Party. Under Khrushchev, Kuusinen now spoke for the referendum, once an important feature ofWestern-style Marxist parties, borrowed perhaps from Switzerland. It is true, however, that even before the 'reform platform' some faint suggestions of interest in thismechanism had occasionally surfaced in Soviet thinking, notably in paragraph 49 of the 1936 Stalin Constitution. But then, thiswas 'top-down' politics at the behest of the initiative of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet or at least 'on the demand of one of the Union Republics'. As a fullmember of the Supreme Soviet himself, the aged Kuusinen had, at last, lost some of his hesitations and began to talk in favour of grass-roots initiative and in general for the introduction of elections even into the state machinery as well as for a greater role for the social organiza tions in the Soviet state.All thiswas meant to fitthe ending of thedictatorship of the proletariat and the creation of an 'all people' state, the transition to which Khrushchev did not seem fully to understand. Renkama has painted a wide canvas with depictions, too, ofwhat had been going on in other professedlyMarxist-Leninist states,being particularly good on Imre Nagy. Renkama also shows thatKuusinen was critical of the Soviet system's inability to get more out of the Western progressive forces, realizing, in this connection, that the pauperization of the Western proletariat was not just around the corner either. Though the author does not say this, the sneaky thought arises that, considering the troubles the other Marxist-Leninist states were giving the Soviet power, theremight have been a lotmore sense in Kuusinen's suggested tentatives towards Western political forces than meets the eye. UniversityofTurku George Maude Finland Seleny, Anna. The PoliticalEconomy ofState-Society Relations in Hungary andPoland: From Communism to theEuropean Union. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2006. xiii + 277 pp. Tables. Notes. Index. ?48.00. This is a book about recent historical factors which have prefigured the transformation of Hungary and Poland, reputedly the most successful of the transitional economies, along with the Czech Republic, inmaking the shift from Stalinist totalitarian Communism to democratic, free-market capitalism. The author seeks to explain why Hungary was themore stablypragmatic and trouble-free of the two inmaking the transition and assimilating the norms of modern Western liberal capitalism. Alas, forher, the recent experience of the Gyurcsany Government inHungary in coping with popular unrest and its seeming inability to fulfil Brussels' expectations in restraining public indebted ness somewhat weakens the strength of her argument. Since the major focus of the book ison Hungary, with Poland receiving a much less comprehensive 748 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 treatment, this could be a serious shortcoming indeed, especially in view of her attempt to apply modern political science jargon to construct a highly structured theoretical explanation forwhy Hungary succeeded, and Poland largely failed, tomake the transitionwithout major backsliding. Fortunately for Seleny, the insights she provides into the nature of the Hungarian political economy and the symbiosis between the private and socialist sectors that emerged from the introduction of theNew Economic Mechanism of 1968 to the property-rights legislation of 1982 and its sub sequent elaboration until the collapse of theCommunist system in 1989make the book worthwhile. Her in-depth interviewswith a number of (basically three) private entrepreneurs in chapter six gready help toflesh out the nature of and opportunities for the growth of theprivate sector and themyriad ways, both legal and quasi-illegal, itand the socialist sector lived off each other to the overall benefit of both and, ultimately, of theHungarian consumer. Stripped of the jargon of 'principal-agency' relations and 'political discursive' rationale, her basic argument is that in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the severe crackdown which followed, Hungarian economists and politicians developed a modus vivendi which fostered prag matic changes to the management of the economy which were camouflaged by political-ideological dialogue which was regarded as non-threatening to the major part ofJanos Kadar's Communist establishment. She treats...