The Hungarian Socialists in Opposition: Stagnation or Renaissance

Abstract

After the Soviet military intervention in the October 1956 anti-communist revolution, First Secretary Janos Kadair re-established the Communist Party by large scale repression.' Beginning in the late 1960s, however, the government moved toward gradual changes and the Kadar reforms opened up the way to economic decentralisation, limited market orientation, Western contacts, increased living standards and reduced political tension. Hungary became a shop window generating rejection in the CMEA-WTO countries2 and skirting the limits of possibilities in the constant shadow of Soviet intolerance. Reacting to the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s the winds of change began to blow progressively more strongly and Kadair and his immediate entourage were removed from power in the party in 1988. The fastgrowing dissident movement, from within and from without the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP), pressed for system replacement, while the party tottered only on the verge of 'system-reforms' in the Gorbachevian sense. Events bypassed the stalling efforts of the party elite and the mass pressure and opposition groups forced the HSWP to negotiate a modus vivendi. The lengthy roundtable discussions in 1989 eventually led to system replacement and the transformation of the ruling party into an (intended) social-democratic/socialist party: the 'newly' founded Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP).3 The sequence of events between 1956 and 1989 seems to indicate that the left was rejected by society not only in its extreme form but also in the centre-left variant. Western reports on the first pluralist elections in 1990 were headlined as 'the defeat of the left', and the victorious right-conservative parties in Hungary also thought that the left was basically dead and had no future in the long run; it was the end not only of communism but of all left currents.4 This perception was the product of the euphoria over the collapse of one of the most repressive systems in world history. Under the surface, however, this assessment was contradicted both in society in general and in the political process in particular. Even though the HSP was behind three other parties in parliamentary mandates, with 10.9% of the votes it remained a relatively viable opposition force. Taken together with the other left votes in the 1990 elections, the overall strength of the left was well over 20%, and considering also the