The Austrian author of the article analyses the nature of the emergence of the debt system after the Second World War. She pinpoints how the debt dependence developed in accordance with the interests of the capi­talist centres and which was the point when it turned into a debt trap as soon as those interests required that. In an indirect way, the article ques­tions the well known, even fashionable allegation that the indebtedness which developed during the Kadar era is a "crime of the communist regime against the nation".