APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110037-3
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[bureau]crats and entrenched trade union chiefs have tried to block any takeover of their powers by young, ambitious technocrats. And, in this worker-peasant state, the peasant has complained so bitterly of unequal treatment that the government has had to increase farm wages, farm investments, and farm community amenities. In turn, the peasants have demonstrated their order of priorities to the regime by producing about as much on their small private plots as is produced on all the state farms combined.
Though many are the complaints, the average Hungarian might admit to himself that he had never had it so good. He lives better today than at any time within the lifetime of the oldest living person, whether he appreciates it or not. He is better dressed and better fed than 10 years ago, has sufficient money for an occasional luxury item, and may spend his leisure time at a vacation resort. If he is one of the favored few who has profited heavily from the NEM, he may have developed a taste for "the finer things in life," including a private house and an automobile. These benefits of "goulash communism," as it is derisively called by anti-Kadarists, are largely attributable to a conscious effort on the part of Kadar to enlist the consumer as a prop for his regime.
After long years of deprivation, the Hungarian finds that his government has brought him a considerable array of goods at prices he can afford. And, now that his possessive instinct has been aroused he may demand more than can be offered by a regime caught in the spiral of rising expectation. Adequate housing, for example, is perennially in short supply, and the automobile remains a status symbol in a land where motorcycles outnumber cars three to one. With 2.5 million radios and 1.8 million TV sets available as opposed to 800,000 telephones, Hungarians find it easier to receive than transmit the spoken word. In a nation of hearty eaters, protein-rich foods are still in short supply. And finally, the curative waters of the health spa still take up some of the slack left by inadequate state-sponsored medical facilities.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110037-3
