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Managing Communist Enterprises: Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2018

PHILIP SCRANTON
PHILIP SCRANTON*
Affiliation:
Philip Scranton is Professor Emeritus, History of Industry and Technology, at Rutgers University, and is drafting a monograph focused on enterprise management and experimentation in the People’s Republic of China, ca. 1950–1975, a follow-up to research on communist enterprises in Central Europe. E-mail: scranton@rutgers.edu
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Abstract

Business history for three generations has focused almost exclusively on capitalist firms, their managers, and their relations with markets, states, and rivals. However, enterprises on all scales also operated within communist nations “building socialism” in the wake of World War II. This article represents a first-phase exploration of business practices in three Central European states as Stalinism gave way to cycles of reform and retrenchment in the 1960s. Focusing chiefly on industrial initiatives, the study asks: How did socialist enterprises work and change across the first postwar generation, given their distinctive principles and political/economic contexts, and implicitly, what contrasts with capitalist activities are worth considering.

Type
Symposia
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 492 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Carden, Philip. “New Range of Machine Tools from Czechoslovakia.” Steel Times, November 1974, 693.Google Scholar
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Ránki, György. “Problems of the Development of Hungarian Industry, 1900–1944.” Journal of Economic History 24 (1964): 204–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wende, W., and Ehrlich, A.. “The National Management Centre in Warsaw.” International Labour Review 91 (1965): 420–426.Google Scholar
Wyka, Kazimierz. “The Excluded Economy.” In The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism, edited by Wedel, Janine, 23–61. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Joint Publication Research Service Reports, U.S. Department of Commerce, available through NewsBank, Inc. http://www.infoweb.newsbank.comGoogle Scholar
Open Society Archives, Radio Free Europe files, http://www.osaarchivum.org/archivesGoogle Scholar
Adam, Jan. Economic Reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the 1960s. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alton, Thad Paul. Polish Postwar Economy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Berend, Ivan. Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berend, Ivan. The Hungarian Economic Reforms, 1953–1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Bethell, Nicholas. Gomułka: His Poland, His Communism. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.Google Scholar
Borhi, László. Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Buruma, Ian. Year Zero: A History of 1945. New York: Penguin, 2013.Google Scholar
Chao, Kang. The Construction Industry in Communist China. Chicago: Aldine, 1968.Google Scholar
Feiwel, George. New Economic Patterns in Czechoslovakia: Impact of Growth, Planning and the Market. New York: Praeger, 1968.Google Scholar
Germuska, Pál. Unified Military Industries of the Soviet Bloc. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015.Google Scholar
Gibney, Frank. The Frozen Revolution. Poland: A Study in Communist Decay. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959.Google Scholar
Hanson, Philip. Advertising and Socialism. White Plains, NY: IASP, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hruby, Peter. Fools and Heroes: The Changing Role of Communist Intellectuals in Czechoslovakia. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Kenez, Peter. Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kenney, Padraic. Building Poland, Workers and Communists, 1945–1950. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Kometsky, George, and Yue, Piyu. The Economic Transformation of the United States, 1950–2000. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Kornai, Janos. The Economics of Shortage, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1980.Google Scholar
Kornai, Janos. Overcentralization in Economic Administration: a Critical Analysis Based on Experience in Hungarian Light Industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Lavigne, Marie. International Political Economy and Socialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Lewis, Flora. A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland’s Peaceful Revolutions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.Google Scholar
Los, Maria, ed. The Second Economy in Marxist States. London: Macmillan, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Keith. Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. New York: Picador, 2012.Google Scholar
Michal, Jan. Central Planning In Czechoslovakia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Myant, Martin. The Czechoslovak Economy, 1948–1988. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Raff, Daniel H. G., and Scranton, Philip, eds. Emergence of Routines. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Reszö, Nyers. Economic Reform in Hungary: Twenty-five Questions and Twenty-five Answers. Budapest: Pannonia Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Selucký, Radoslav. Czechoslovakia: The Plan That Failed. London: Thomas Nelson, 1970.Google Scholar
Shephard, Ben. The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War. New York: Knopf, 2010.Google Scholar
Šik, Ota. Czechoslovakia: The Bureaucratic Economy. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Šik, Ota. Plan and Market under Socialism. Prague: Academia, 1967.Google Scholar
Simatung, Batara. The Polish Economic Crisis: Background, Causes and Aftermath. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Stevens, John. Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1985.Google Scholar
Swain, Nigel. Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism. London: Verso, 1992.Google Scholar
Teichova, Alice. The Czechoslovak Economy, 1918–1980. London: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Woodall, Jean. The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power, 1958–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bajomi, D. “Deratization of Budapest and Five Years of Follow-up Control Measures.” Proceedings of the 9th Vertebrate Pest Conference, 1980. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=vpc9Google Scholar
Bajomi, D., Kiss, Z., and Nagoi, Y.. “Forty Years of Rat Control in Budapest.” International Pest Control, June 15, 2013.Google Scholar
Berend, Ivan. “The Historical Background of the Recent Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe: The Hungarian Experience.” East European Quarterly 2 (March 1968): 75–90Google Scholar
Bomberger, William, and Makinen, Gail. “The Hungarian Hyperinflation and Stabilization of 1945–46.” Journal of Political Economy 91 (1983): 801–824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bossányi, K. “An Interview with János Kornai.” Acta Oeconomica 48 (1990): 315–328.Google Scholar
Čakrt, Michal. “Management Education in Eastern Europe: Toward a Mutual Understanding.” Academy of Management Executive 7, no. 4 (1993): 63–68.Google Scholar
Campbell, Robert. Review of Planning, Profit and Incentives in the USSR. Slavic Review 27 (1968): 669–671.Google Scholar
Carden, Philip. “New Range of Machine Tools from Czechoslovakia.” Steel Times, November 1974, 693.Google Scholar
Freeze, Karen. “Innovation and Technology Transfer During the Cold War: The Case of the Open End Spinning Machine.” Technology and Culture 48 (2007): 249–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeze, Karen. “Unlikely Partners and the Management of Innovation in Communist Europe: A Case Study from the Czechoslovak Textile Machine Industry.” Business and Economic History Online, 5 (2007). http://w.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/freeze.pdfGoogle Scholar
Jirasek, Jaroslav. “Engineering/Forklift Trucks—Desta.” In Restructuring and Privatization in Central Europe: Case Studies of Firms in Transition, edited by Estrin, Saul, Brada, Josef C., Gelb, Alan, and Singh, Inderjit. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 1995.Google Scholar
Nuti, Domenico Mario. “The Contradictions of Socialist Economics: A Marxist Interpretation.” Socialist Register—1979, 228–273.Google Scholar
Ránki, György. “Problems of the Development of Hungarian Industry, 1900–1944.” Journal of Economic History 24 (1964): 204–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wende, W., and Ehrlich, A.. “The National Management Centre in Warsaw.” International Labour Review 91 (1965): 420–426.Google Scholar
Wyka, Kazimierz. “The Excluded Economy.” In The Unplanned Society: Poland During and After Communism, edited by Wedel, Janine, 23–61. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Joint Publication Research Service Reports, U.S. Department of Commerce, available through NewsBank, Inc. http://www.infoweb.newsbank.comGoogle Scholar
Open Society Archives, Radio Free Europe files, http://www.osaarchivum.org/archivesGoogle Scholar