General Information . Area: 35,919 square miles (93,030 square kilometers). Pop-
ulation: 10,600,000. Distribution of population: 59.2 percent urban, 40.8 percent
rural dwellers. GNP: 28 billion Hungarian forints. Exchange rate: 103:1 dollar and
fluctuating. Distribution of work force: 41.6 percent in industry and trades, 18.8 agri-
culture, the rest in service industries and the bureaucracy. Railroad network: 8,226
kilometers; 1,290 kilometers of it is electrified. Road network: 140,000 kilometers.
Ethnicity: 94 percent Magyars, 5 percent Gypsies, scattered groups of Slovaks,
Romanians, Germans. Major cities: Budapest, the capital; Szeged, Kecskernet,
Kiskunhalas in the south; Pecs and Kaposvar in the southwest; Gyor and Szombathely
in the west; Miskolc-Diosgyor, Debrecen, Szolnok in the east. Geography: the center
of the country consists of flatlands, the European extension of the steppes of Central
Asia; the northeast and the north are mountainous, including the famous wine-pro-
ducing region of Tokay; the western and southwestern parts of the country are hilly
regions. Borders: Hungary borders on Austria in the west, on Slovakia and Carpatho-
Ukraine in the north and northeast, on Romania in the southeast, and on Serbia,
Croatia, and Slavonia in the south and southwest. Communist party membership:
800,000 card-carrying members in 1988.
Fejto François, The History of the People's Democracies ( Paris, 1979); Hanak Peter, "Hungary on a Fixed Course: An Outline of Hungarian History," in Joseph Held, ed. The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century ( New York, 1992); MaCartney, Carlisle A. , A History of Hungary, 1929-1945 ( New York, 1957); Seton-Watson, Hugh, Eastern Europe Between the Wars ( London, 1945).
| 1944 | March. The German army occupied Hungary because Adolf Hitler believed that its government was contemplating the conclusion of a separate peace. May. The extermination of Hungarian Jews in rural communities was begun by Adolf Eichmann Einsatzgruppen. The Hungarian gendarmerie fully co- operated with Eichmann by herding Hungarian Jews into makeshift concen- tration camps from which they were shipped to the death camps in Poland. |
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Dictionary of East European History since 1945.
Contributors: Joseph Held - Author.
Publisher: Greenwood Press.
Place of publication: Westport, CT.
Publication year: 1994.
Page number: 231.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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