The New Hungarian Quarterly Autumn 1976. [antikvár]

CULTURE, ECONOMY AND BABIES The General Meeting of the Hungarian Writers' Association took place after this issue went to press. The already overburdened printers kindly agreed to the necessary changes in schedule. As a result these pieces, which describe Hungarian cultural policy as a whole, are now placed at the head of our present number. For centuries literature has had greater social weight in Hungary than in the English-speaking countries. As a result writers have had greater social responsibilities as well. The relationship between writers and the country's political leadership has always been a reliable measure of the mood of the country as a whole, and not only of intellectuals. This relationship today is sound, constructive, and based on mutual trust, as repeatedly stated by both parties at the General Meeting of the Hungarian Writers' Association on May 17th and 18th 1976. Three hundred and sixteen of the four hundred and sixty-seven members turned up and took part in the election of the new executive. Proceedings were opened by the poet Gabor Garai, the Deputy General Secretary, later elected General Secretary by the meeting. Those present remembered writers who had died since the last meeting, including Jozsef Darvas, the President, by a minute's silence. The novelist Imre Dobozy, General Secretary later elected President, in his report surveyed the literary life and works of the years since the last General Meeting, going on to present problems and future prospects. "What should we demand of ourselves?. . . What does the generation to which we belong expect from us, a generation which determined to carry out the largest and most far-reaching enterprise in the history of Hungary, the construction of socialism, a generation which thinks of us not only as their contemporaries but as their very own writers? Who else should then express and record theri own struggles in an authen- tic and high-standard way?" he asked. As the relationship of writers and power in a socialist country periodi-