At 5:30 PM on December 10th, the 2018 VERITAS Yearbook is introduced to the public. Judit Hammerstein, Director-General of the National Széchényi Library, shares her thoughts on the new volume.
Following the book premiere, we host the forty-eighth installment of the VERITAS Debate Nights series at the VERITAS home office on Zsil Street. The title of the debate is Geopolitics, Economic Policy and the System Changeover (The Privatization of the Hungarian Sugar Industry after 1989: Dilemmas and Alternatives). Professor Csaba Lentner (National University of Public Service) and our colleague Péter Bertalan familiarize the audience with the topic, while VERITAS Deputy Director Endre Marinovich leads the discussion.
A few days after the event, photography and video of the event will be made available on the VERITAS website. Please be informed that photographs and videos of earlier VERITAS Debate Nights may also be accessed in archived format on our website.
Location: VERITAS Research Institute and Archives, Zsil utca (Street) 2–4, Budapest
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Hungarian privatization drastically impacted Hungarian industry. The traditionally strongest industry and most important contributor to GNP has been food production, which is highly correlated with the performance of the agricultural industry, another major contributor of the Hungarian economy. Analyzing the privatization of the food industry helps us form an adequate picture of the circumstances surrounding the privatized Hungarian economy. One of the most important branches of the food industry is sugar production. Since nearly every level of the food industry has some kind of affiliation with the sugar industry, the study thereof provides us a constructive look at the System Changeover and its unique characteristics.
The participants attempt to answer the following questions: What economic causes prevented Hungarian owners from maintaining possession of their production facilities? Were there any coordinated efforts made to save one of the most important segments of the Hungarian economy? Do we see any connections between the general process of privatization and that of the sugar industry with special regard to questions of economics?
Because of its size, the death of the Hungarian sugar industry by privatization has led to important questions related to economic policy and economic history. Thus the debate offers us an opportunity to shine a light on certain relations in economic history that the professional literature has hitherto neglected.
