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Glossary -- Hungary
- Comecon
- Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Sometimes cited as CMEA
or CEMA. Members in 1989 included Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslavakia,
the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, the
Mongolian People's Republic (Mongolia), Poland, Romania, the Soviet
Union, and Vietnam. Its purpose was to further economic cooperation
among members.
- corvee
- Number of days each week that the serf was required to work for
his lord.
- entail system
- Form of inheritance by which land passed to the owner's male
descendents or, if he had no male heir, to the crown. Entail checked
Hungary's economic development because it prevented the nobles from
selling their land or using it as collateral to obtain credit.
- forint
- National currency of Hungary. As of July 1989, the official
exchange rate was 62.28 forints to US$1.
- gross domestic product (GDP)
- Includes "transferred value" (cost of materials) and "newly
created value" (profits and wages). "Nonproductive" activities
(services) are not included in GDP; thus, it is not comparable with
the Western concept of gross national product (GNP).
- Hofkriegsrat
- Central organ for all military matters in the Habsburg lands.
- International Monetary Fund
(IMF)
- Established along with the World Bank (q.v.) in 1945,
the IMF is a specialized agency affiliated with the United Nations
that takes responsibility for stabilizing international exchange
rates and payments. The main business of the IMF is the provision of
loans to its members when they experience balance of payments
difficulties. These loans often carry conditions that require
substantial internal economic adjustments by the recipients.
- nomenklatura
- From the Latin nomenclature. This Russian word denotes
an enumeration of important positions and the candidates who are
examined, recommended, and assigned to fill them by communist party
committees at various levels.
- palatine
- Originally created in the fifteenth century. Highest
officeholder in Hungary in the eighteenth century; in theory, the
commander in chief of the Hungarian armed forces.
- Pannonia
- Former Roman province west of the Danube in present-day Hungary
and northern Yugoslavia.
- Party Rules
- HSWP document, which can be altered by the party congress. The
Party Rules contain sections on regulations for admission into the
HSWP, the organizational structure of the party, the principles of
democratic centralism, the role of the Basic Organization, the tasks
of the party in state and mass organizations, and membership dues.
- Petofi Circle
- A group formed in 1956 named after the nineteenth-century poet
and revolutionary Sandor Petofi, who symbolized Hungary's desire for
freedom. Made up of liberal writers, intellectuals, and some
communists, the circle generated the ideas that led to the
Revolution of 1956.
- value-added tax
- A tax applied to the additional value created at a given stage
of production and calculated as the difference between the product
value at that stage and the cost of all materials and services
purchased as inputs.
- Warsaw Pact
- Political-military alliance founded in 1955 as a counterweight
to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Members in 1989 included
Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania,
and the Soviet Union. Has served as the Soviet Union's primary
mechanism for keeping political and military control over Eastern
Europe.
- World Bank
- Informal name used to designate a group of three affiliated
international institutions: the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development
Association (IDA), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The IBRD, established in 1945, has the primary purpose of providing
loans to developing countries for productive projects. The IDA, a
legally separate loan fund administered by the staff of the IBRD,
was set up in 1960 to furnish credits to the poorest developing
countries on much easier terms than those of conventional IBRD
loans. The IFC, founded in 1956, supplements the activities of the
IBRD through loans and assistance designed specifically to encourage
the growth of productive private enterprises in less-developed
countries. The president and certain senior members of the IBRD hold
the same positions in the IFC. The three institutions are owned by
the governments of the countries that subscribe their capital. To
participate in the World Bank group, member states must first belong
to the IMF (q.v.).
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