Hungary

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Dec, 2000  by Balazs Konya

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

In the chaos and upheaval of the post-war years, it is scarcely surprising that Pikler's successes were reversed. Two of the cities that had adopted a measure of land-value taxation were annexed to Romania. In 1921, the conservative majority on the Budapest City Council, without rescinding the ordinance, suspended the collection of the tax indefinitely. In other cities, land-value taxation was either suspended or abolished outright.

II

Land Reform, 1921-1947

THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT did try to solve the land question in the twenties, but its endeavor failed because it only meant the dividing up of some large estates. The new laws aimed only to increase the ability of certain special groups (e.g., war orphans and war widows) to acquire land, without making the fulfillment of their claims obligatory. Nevertheless, under the law of 1920-- which was further amended in 1922 and 1924--about one million acres were distributed to landless peasants and 400,000 acres more were given in tenure and lease.

In the years that followed, nowhere was any determined move made for a revival of the land-value taxation system. The idea might indeed have died but for a group encouraged and taught by Dr. Pikler through whose efforts the re-establishment of land-value taxation in the cities and its general introduction were several times proposed in Parliament.

Up to the end of World War II, Hungary was a land of large estates; dominant among the owners were the descendants of aristocratic families whose properties had come down to them in entail from the Hapsburg monarchs. The need for a sweeping land reform became again the most urgent question to solve in the country. [8]

The provisional National Assembly in 1945 passed Law Number 6 which was promulgated on the 15th of March, the most important Hungarian national holiday since 1848. In two years, four million acres changed ownership with the result that approximately 650,000 landless peasants with their families became owners of plots of seven acres on average. The land reform affected all the communities of the country. Simultaneously, some three million acres of forests, fisheries, and large estates were nationalized.

III

Land Policies Under Communism

WHEN, IN MID-1947, the Communists (who had won only about 22 percent of the popular vote) menaced many influential parliamentary members of his Smallholders Party (FKgP), Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy, who was abroad, decided not to return home. A new coalition government was formed with Communist participation, and came gradually to operate under Soviet directives. This process was facilitated by the presence of Soviet troops. The following year, with the forced resignation of President Zoltan Tildy, Communist power was fully consolidated.

The goal of the Communist Government's land policy was to "dispose of" the new dwarfholders by the forced collection of their agricultural products so that they might be unable to survive outside the agrarian cooperatives (kolkhoz). While the majority of Hungarian peasants stood firm against the kolkhoz despite the heavy pressure which was exerted on them, by the end of 1952, 25 percent of the arable land had been forced into the cooperatives and the state became owner of another 12.7 percent.