The success of a play does not only depend on the efforts of actors and directors, but also whether the public sentiment is receptive to the ideas presented from the stage or not. Shaw's drama as well as Lerner's and Leowe's musical became successful in periods when emancipation was an the agenda – class and gender in Britain, and race and gender in the USA. Emancipation in any sense is far from the political concerns in Hungary, which explains why a recent attempt failed.

The governments led by the right of centre, nationalist József Antall and Péter Boross (1990-1994), produced a fragmented and unviable structure in Hungarian agriculture. This sector now represents a heavy burden on the government budget. It also makes more difficult to modernize other sectors of the economy, and also to integrate the Hungarian economy into the European Union. A major task is for the left to present an alternative in the agricultural sector.

Inequalities emerging in the sphere of education, and particuarly higher education, illustrate strikingly the dramatic changes that have taken place within the structure of Hungarian society. Recent reform initiatives do not improve but if possible deteriorate the situation of those excluded from quality and higher education. (The article is a written version of a lecture at College for Social Theory, April 1997.)

One of the current tasks of the Hungárián government is to teach the people how to love NATO. The article gives an overview of the often astonishing instruments of this PR-strategy.

A book written by Erzsébet Szalai is a first attempt to present a comprehensive volume about the transformation of employee representation in Hungary, starting with the movement of workers' councils. The reviewer was part of the movement that launched the workers' councils, and comments the volume from the point of view of the eyewitness and the historian.