From East to West. The Secret Money of the Communist Parties

Szilágyi Gábor’s article describes an outline of the Hungarian party’s role in the international financial and economic cooperation between Communist parties. It’s divided into three parts, each of them deals with another way of support for the Western European „comrades”.

The most important way was the „International Solidarity Fund” ran by the Soviet leadership. The article focuses obviously on the Hungarian participation, thus, it can’t deliver an analysis about the Fund’s history as such. The known documents show that the Fund was a Soviet initiative but Hungary followed the directive without contradiction. The Fund’s history in later years can be characterized by the word „continuity”. The only thing which had changed was the amount to be delivered. The author also tries to decide which party or state officials were involved in this issue. Based on the known facts, mainly the First Secretary of the party dealt with this. The last paragraphs of this chapter are about how the Hungarian participation ended.

The next part deals with the bilateral financial support provided by the Hungarian party. In this dimension, both continuity and changes were characteristic. Mainly before 1956 the system worked in a very spontaneous way but during the Kádár Era it became more and more formalized. On the other hand, decision making within the party remained almost the same until the transition period. The annual amount of Hungarian aid usually was rather low compared to the support via the Solidarity Fund.

Last but not least, the author also deals with the ways of indirect support. Hereby, the most important role was the foreign trade companies’ one. According to the knowladge we now have Hungary’s main Western partners were party enterprises from Austria, Italy and France. However, it’s always difficult to distinct between normal deals and secret party funding.

Stefano Bottoni’s article deals with the informal side of the economic relation network established during the Cold War between Italy and Hungary, through an analysis of the cooperation between the Hungarian import-export company Terimpex, which played a key role in the Hungarian socialst economy, holding the monopoly on life-stock and cannon fodder, and his Italian counterpart, the trading society Soresco, controlled by the Italian Communist Party with the tacit approval of the Italian authorities. The extensive documentation examined shows that Italy constituted since the 1950s a special case in East- West relations, as suggested by the presence of the largest and most influential Communist Party of the Western bloc. At the same time, companies specializing in the import-export business with the countries of the Soviet bloc formed throughout Europe of the Cold War a parallel but not truly secret economic system, that was well known to the main political players and the internal security organs, albeit widely tolerated.