Viktor Pal: Socialist Environmentalism in Cold War Hungary

Online-lecture by Viktor Pal, University of Helsinki. July 30, 16:10 (Moscow time, GMT 3). This presentation discusses state-socialist Hungary’s approach towards environmental protection from theoretical, institutional and practical perspectives. It discusses the genesis of a holistic and complex scientific approach to the environment in the 1950s and 1960s and its impact on the formation of the country’s environmental protection system (including environmental legal framework; environmental institutional system; and daily practices of environmental protection). Its aim is to find out why the teachings of the holistic and complex school of environmentalism were implemented only vaguely in Hungary, instead, the government turned away from Soviet science and gradually implemented Western methods of environmental protection (pollution levy fee; discharge permit system; subsidies for energy saving products; and end-of-pipe solutions) beginning from the 1960s. Cover image source: / M