This concise volume outlines developments in Hungarian foreign policy since the end of the Communist regime and the formation of the country's democratic coalition. After briefly reviewing Hungary's foreign relations between the wars, the Stalinist period, and the foreign policy principles of Prime Minister Imre Nagy during the 1956 Revolution, Joseph Kun discusses the 1990 elections that confirmed the rejection of Communist rule and the formation of a coalition government with Jozsef Antall as prime minister. Kun describes how the new government's foreign policy is oriented toward the West with the primary aim of establishing closer political and economic ties with the industrial nations. At the same time, Hungary is endeavoring to forge regional alliances in Central Europe to protect the large ethnic Hungarian communities who live in the neighboring Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia. The continuing tensions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states demand the formulation of a firm but flexible foreign policy line. This study gives the specialist and student a sense of the achievements of the Antall government during its first years in office as well as an understanding of the disappointements that a new democracy experiences in its search for contacts in a well-meaning but pragmatic world.

Synchrotron radiation as a spectroscopic research tool has undergone a most inter esting and astonishing historical development and has now come to the stage of an exciting boom. The machines which produce synchrotron radiation were built and de veloped exclusively for other purposes in the past, namely high-energy physics. At the same time, however, they involuntarily became better and better light sources for the spectral range from the visible to the hard x-ray region. Now we are at the point that the first few storage rings have gone into operation as machines dedicated to synchrotron radiation and several more are in the stage of construction and planning. All this was brought about by the successful research performed during the past fifteen years in which several groups allover the world haVe participated at dif ferent accelerator centers mostly symbiotic with high-energy physics. As it happens with a young and rapidly developing field, the number of reviews and monographs is still minute. The objective of this book is to fill an apparent gap and to provide a sound basis for those who are interested in synchrotron radiation and its applica tions."