ABSTRACT
Of course there are problems also in Hungarian agriculture. Thus some critics argue that the farms have grown too big, with the chairman out of touch with the rank-and-file peasants. Costs are high. Peasant incomes have risen faster than productivity. But all these seem minor in comparison with the achievements. These contrast not only with the situation in the USSR, but also with what occurred in Hungary itself when Soviet-style collectivisation was crudely enforced upon the peasants in the first half of the 1950s. Surely there are morals to be drawn: peasants can be persuaded to work, management can genuinely manage, within co-operative agriculture. The better-off peasants, instead of being labelled kulaks and persecuted, were drawn in, and given responsibilities, in the second (more flexible) wave of collectivisation which began in 1958 (the peasants had largely dismantled the earlier Soviet-style collectives in 1956). Let there be no mistake: the second wave of collectivisation could not be described as voluntary. Perhaps it could be described as a sugared pill. Be this as it may, it was swallowed, and the subsequent arrangements worked to the reasonable satisfaction of the peasantry and of the urban consumer of farm products (though some of the latter complained about both the ‘excessive’ incomes of the peasants and the price of food; you cannot please everyone!).
