Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top

2017 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary

An Economic History

Author: Dr. Viktor Pál

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Login to get access
insite
SEARCH

About this book

This book explains how and why the state-socialist regime in Hungary used technology and propaganda to foster industrialization and the conservation of natural resources simultaneously. Further, this book explains why this process was ultimately a failure. By exploring the environmental pre-history of communist Hungary before analyzing the economic development of the Kádár regime, Pál investigates how economic and environmental policies and technology transfer were negotiated between the official communist ideology and the global economic reality of capitalist markets. Pál argues that the modernization project of the Kádár regime (1956–1990) facilitated ecological consciousness – at both an individual and societal level – which provoked great social unrest when positive environmental impact was not achieved.

Today, global issues of climate change, urban pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation transcend political systems, but economic and environmental discourses varied greatly in the twentieth century. This volume is important reading for all those interested in economic and environmental history, as well as political science.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
In this chapter Pál provides a general overview on the human–nature and human–society relationships in authoritarian regimes in a historical context. He also introduces the reader to the key problems of economic and environmental history and the history of technology in East-Central Europe and briefly explains the concepts of his book: economical shift, energy shift, and environmental shift. The author provides a historiographical overview on the environmental historical research of East-Central European countries and Russia/USSR.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 2. Economy, Technology and the Environment in Europe and in Hungary, 1800–1945
Abstract
In this chapter Pál places the economic and environmental history and history of technology of Hungary in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century in a global economic, environmental, and technological context. Firstly, Pál explains the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution in Western and Central Europe, especially in Britain and Germany. Then he concentrates on the economic, technological, and environmental changes in East-Central Europe. At the end of this chapter Pál explains the economic, technological, and environmental role of pre-World War II rearmament in Germany, and in East-Central Europe.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 3. Economy, Technology and the Environment in Europe After World War II
Abstract
In this chapter Pál concentrates on the economic history and history of technology of post-World War II Europe from human–nature, society–nature perspectives. He focuses on the postwar pollution issues of Great Britain and the Rhine river. Pál points out how postwar reconstruction led to the acceleration of pollution problems in Western Europe. He also focuses on the societal change caused by economic shifts and new technologies, and how these events contributed to the growth of the environmental movement in Western Europe. Lastly, Pál explains how locally discussed environmental problems evolved to be national and later global environmental discourses.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 4. Stalinist Vision for Economy and Environment in Hungary in the 1950s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál explains the economic and technological context of Stalinist industrialization in Hungary. He concentrates on the First Five Year Plan in Hungary, and points out the environmental aspect of that rapid economic and industrial program. Pál focuses on local impacts of Stalinist industrialization and he analyses the economic, technological, and environmental changes in Hungary’s primate industrial district built by the communists in the Borsod Basin, Northeast Hungary. He analyses the dynamics of water shortage and water pollution in the Borsod Basin. At the end of this chapter Pál analyzes the communists’ economic and technological measures to curtail pollution issues by focusing on the Lenin Metallurgical Plan in Diósgyőr, one of Hungary’s largest steel mills.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 5. Economic Reforms and Environmental Protection in Hungary the 1960s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál explains how did the communists react to mounting environmental problems in Hungary in the 1960s. He explains the major elements of environmental crisis nationally and in the industrial region of Borsod Basin. There, the use of resources accelerated to a critical level causing water shortage and environmental pollution on a dramatic scale the 1960s. Pál explains how economic reforms were used to modernize the technological basis of the Kádár regime in the 1960s. He analyzes how the environmental and economic performances of the state-socialist system were intertwined.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 6. Technological Reform and Environmental Performance in Hungary in the 1960s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál explains the role of new technologies in the environmental performance in Hungary in the 1960s. He concentrates on the buildup process of Hungary’s massive chemical complex and analyzes the country’s primate plastics producer, the Borsod Chemical Combine. Pál points out the positive role of the economical shift and the energy shift in Hungary’s environmental performance. Despite progressive changes in economy and energy supply, the overall amount of pollution skyrocketed in the 1960s, due to rapid capacity building in Hungary’s chemical complex.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 7. Capacity Building in Environmental Services and the Environmental Shift in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál analyzes the role of capacity building in environmental services in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s. He focuses on sanitation, water supply, and sewage disposal in industrial and urban areas. Pál analyses the case of the city of Miskolc, Hungary’s largest city and industrial center outside of Budapest. He points out how capacity building was enforced with state environmental propaganda that combinedly led to a state-sponsored environmental shift. Pál also analyses the intensive methods used to improve sanitation in and around Miskolc.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 8. Economic Stagnation and Failed Environmental Reform in the 1970s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál explains the environmental protection reform plans and the limits of the environmental shift in Hungary in the 1970s. He concentrates on the interconnection among economics, technology, and environmental performance. Pál points out that Hungary’s failure to adjust to global structural change inevitably contributed to the underperformance of the country’s reformed environmental protection system in the 1970s. In this chapter, he concentrates on both the metallurgical and chemical industries and takes the Lenin Metallurgical Plant and the Borsod Chemical Combines as case studies.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 9. The Environmental Movement and Political Opposition in the 1980s
Abstract
In this chapter Pál explains how did the Hungarian state’s control of environmental discourses evaporate during the 1980s. He focuses on the accumulation of state sponsored environmental values and environmental attitudes propaganda (environmental shift) in the 1980s, and points out the source of very high environmental consciousness levels society-wide in Hungary in the 1980s (ecological turn). Pál explains how state-sponsored propaganda contributed to an independent, mass environmental movement by the second half of the 1980s.
Viktor Pál
Chapter 10. Epilogue
Abstract
In this chapter Pál takes a look at Hungary’s recent history and current political situation. Since 2010, the Orbán administration has dismantled democratic institutions step-by-step to build an autocratic, hybrid regime modelled by Putin’s Russia. Environmental activism has returned as a form of opposition against centralization attempts, however it is hypothesized that environmentalism remains of a lesser importance than in the 1980s.
Viktor Pál
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Technology and the Environment in State-Socialist Hungary
Author
Dr. Viktor Pál
Copyright Year
2017
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-63832-4
Print ISBN
978-3-319-63831-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63832-4