Beating capitalists at their own game? Foreign traders and western negotiation studies in late-socialist Hungary

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the history of regime changes and the eventual embrace of pro-market reforms in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s is well-known, we know little about the socialist bureaucrats who implemented and often modified abstract party declarations on the relationship of socialist states to the West or to market reforms. Equally underexplored are the cultural stereotypes that guided East-West negotiations and the training of Eastern European technocrats who became negotiators with Western governments and corporations. Through the examination of the personal archives of socialist Hungary’s key “negotiation expert” and leading foreign trade advisor, János Nyerges, this article documents the attempt of Hungarian policy elites to beat Western corporations, banks, and governments at their own game – capitalism – by importing and adopting Western business negotiation practices, while leaving the communist party’s monopoly on power intact.