This book aims to reconstruct the activities of enterprises and individuals over two decades in one developing country (Hungary), within and across four politico-economic domains (agriculture, infrastructure/construction, commerce, and manufacturing), from the initial Stalinist obsession with heavy industry through later reforms paying greater attention to profitable farming and the provision of abundant consumer goods. It provides hundreds of grounded, granular stories for reflection, as reported by actors and direct observers, ranging from innovation and improvisation to obstruction, failure, and fraud. Further, it offers an otherwise-unobtainable close encounter with another world, familiar in some respects while amazingly peculiar in others.The social history of enterprise and work in postwar Central European nations "building socialism" has long been underdeveloped. Through extensive macro-level research on planning and policy in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Bloc countries, a grand narrative has been framed: reconstruction and breakneck industrialization under Soviet tutelage; then eventual mismanagement, stagnation and crisis, leading to collapse. This book seeks to explore what socialism actually looked like to those sustaining (or enduring} it as they faced forward into an unknowable future, to assess how and where it did (or didn't) work, and to recount how ordinary people responded to its opportunities and constraints.
This study will appeal to readers interested in a understanding how businesses worked day-to-day in a planned economy, how enterprise practices and technological strategies shifted during the first postwar generation, how novice managers and technicians emerged during rapid industrialization, how peasants learned to farm cooperatively, how organizations improvised and adapted, how political purity and practical expertise contended for control, and how the controversies and convulsions of the postwar decadesshaped a deeply flawed project to "build socialism."
這本書旨在重建一個發展中國家（匈牙利）在兩個十年期間的企業和個人活動，涵蓋四個政治經濟領域（農業、基礎設施/建設、商業和製造業），從最初的斯大林主義對重工業的迷戀，到後來更加關注有利可圖的農業和豐富的消費品供應的改革。它提供了數百個具體的故事供反思，這些故事是由參與者和直接觀察者報告的，範圍從創新和臨時應變到阻礙、失敗和欺詐。此外，它還提供了一次與另一個世界的近距離接觸，這個世界在某些方面很熟悉，但在其他方面卻非常奇特。
在戰後中歐國家“建設社會主義”的企業和工作的社會歷史長期以來一直不夠發展。通過對匈牙利、波蘭、捷克斯洛伐克和其他東方集團國家的計劃和政策進行廣泛的宏觀研究，形成了一個宏大的敘事：在蘇聯指導下的重建和高速工業化；然後是最終的管理不善、停滯和危機，導致崩潰。本書旨在探索社會主義對那些維持（或忍受）它的人來說實際上是什麼樣子，他們面對著一個未知的未來，評估它在哪些地方起作用（或不起作用），並講述普通人如何應對其機遇和限制。
這項研究將吸引那些想要了解計劃經濟下企業日常運作方式的讀者，想要了解第一個戰後一代期間企業實踐和技術策略的變化，想要了解在快速工業化過程中新手經理和技術人員的崛起，想要了解農民如何學會合作耕作，組織如何應變和適應，政治純潔和實際專業如何爭奪控制權，以及戰後數十年的爭議和動盪如何塑造了一個嚴重有缺陷的“建設社會主義”項目。
Philip Scranton is University Board of Governors Professor Emeritus, History of Industry and Technology, at Rutgers University, USA. He also directed the Hagley Museum & Library's research arm, the Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society, 1992-2012, with responsibility for a seminar series, twice-yearly conferences, grants-in-aid and annual fellowships in support of dissertation research and writing. His publications include fourteen books and seventy scholarly articles, multiple contributions to exhibit catalogs, and numerous reviews of books and conferences.
