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In-Depth Information
needed. Happily, this coincided with the advent of Gorbachev, which made it much easier for
the reform Communists to shunt Kádár aside in 1988.
The
endofCommunism
washeraldedbytwoeventsthefollowingsummer:theceremonial
reburial of Imre Nagy, and the dismantling of the barbed wire along the border with Austria,
which enabled thousands of East Germans to escape to the west while “on holiday”. In Octo-
ber 1989, the government announced the legalization of other parties as a prelude to free
elections, and the People's Republic was renamed the Republic of Hungary in a ceremony
broadcast live on national television. Two weeks later this was eclipsed by the fall of the Ber-
lin Wall, closely followed by the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the overthrow of
Ceaušescu in Romania on Christmas Day.
The post-Communist era
Hungary's first
free elections
in the spring of 1990 resulted in a humiliating rejection of
the reform Communists' Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP), and the installation of a centre-
right coalition government dominated by the
Hungarian Democratic Forum
(
MDF
) under
Premier
József Antall
. Committed to a total break with Communism, the MDF aimed to re-
store the traditions and hierarchies of prewar Hungary and its former position in Europe.
After Antall's premature death in 1993, his successor failed to turn the economy around and
the 1994 elections saw the
Socialists
(under the
MSzP
) return to power. To allay fears of a
Communist return to power, they included the
FreeDemocrats
(
SzDSz
) in government, and
reassured Hungary's foreign creditors with austerity measures that angered voters who had
expected the Socialists to reverse the growing inequalities in society. It soon became obvi-
ous that they were riddled with corruption; some party members became millionaires almost
overnight.
The 1998 elections were narrowly won by the
Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party
of
Viktor
Orbán
, a figure of undeniable charisma who repositioned his party to the right, stressing the
need to revive national culture and using the buzz-word
polgári
(meaning “civic”, but redol-
ent of bourgeois middle-class values) to appeal to a broad constituency. The youngest prime
minister in Hungarian history, the Oxford-educated Orbán promoted a conservative Christian
agenda with an acute understanding of national and religious symbolism.
With an expanding economy, falling inflation and low unemployment levels - plus the
achievementofsteeringHungaryintoNATO-Orbánanticipatedvictoryintheparliamentary
elections of 2002. Instead, after a vitriolic campaign, his Fidesz-MDF coalition was ousted,
the electorate preferring a return to the centre-left alliance of Socialists and Free Democrats,
whose most important achievement was to preside over Hungary's accession to the
European Union
in 2004.
