István Friss

Born May 31, 1903, in Nagyvárad, now Oradea; died Oct. 13, 1978. Hungarian economist and political figure. Academician of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1960). Member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party from 1922.

As an active member of the workers’ movement since 1919, Friss was repeatedly subjected to repression. From 1936 to 1939, while in Prague, he was a member of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Hungary. During World War II he was in the USSR. From 1945 to 1954 and from 1956 to 1961 he was engaged in party work, and he held a seat in the National Assembly from 1945 to 1967.

Between 1954 and 1974, Friss served as director of the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, chairman of the academy’s economics and law section, and head of the Hungarian delegation on the Permanent Commission on Economic Questions of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In 1975 he was named chairman of the Hungarian section of the Soviet-Hungarian commission on cooperation in the social sciences. Friss worked on the theoretical and practical problems of postwar restoration of the country’s economy, national economic planning, and reforms in economic management. His writings include works on the political economy of socialism, national economic planning and management, and technological progress. Friss was awarded the State Prize of the Hungarian People’s Republic in 1970.