Conflicts of Eastern and Western Technology Transfer: Licenses, Espionage, and R&D in the Hungarian Defense Industry during the 1970s and 1980s

The article first tracks the process of disillusionment in Soviet technology transfer, and the conflicts between indigenous R&D and production under licenses. Next are examined the main technological questions of the 1970s and 1980s: How could a socialist state legally or illegally acquire state-of-the-art technologies? How did Hungary endeavor to procure Western licenses? The article's final section demonstrates the impact of the transferred technologies and the R&D efforts by means of three brief case studies from different branches of the Hungarian defense industry.