ABSTRACT
The evolution of the Eastern European socialist countries, as is well known, was characterized after the war by accelerated accumulation and industrialization. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was around US $150 to 300 a year. A rapid increase in this level seemed possible only by severe limitation of current consumption. Between the two world wars in Hung ary, only about 5 to 6 per cent of the GDP, for instance, was invested yearly, with an accordingly low growth-rate.1 From 1948 until the end of the sixties the rate of accumulation in Hungary increased gradually from 15 per cent to 20 per cent and then to 25 per cent. Thus, with a great effort the growth-
rate in fact accelerated, surpassing that of developed capitalist countries. Hungary’s growth-rate was, incidentally, relatively low compared with the other socialist countries. None the less in Hungary too there was a rapid evolution, and the gap between the growth-rate of current consumption and that of accumu lation increased more than in the developed capitalist countries. Later, from around the mid-fifties, the rate of growth of the socialist countries slowed down and the gap between con sumption and accumulation lessened.
