The Slow Opening

Hungarian Political History II: Communism's Consolidation to Modern Hungary

Chapter 2 · The Slow Opening: Hungary's Real Path Toward Reform

Chapter 1 closed with Kádár succeeded by Károly Grósz on 22 May 1988. What followed was not a single dramatic rupture, but a real, accumulating series of openings — new organizations, a startling reassessment of 1956 itself, and finally a negotiated path to multi-party elections.

Fidesz: A Youth Movement Born "Semi-Illegal"

On 30 March 1988, a group of university students founded the Alliance of Young Democrats — Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, Fidesz — as an underground liberal student activist movement opposed to the ruling party. Founding an independent political organization was, in the real, documented judgment of the time, "semi-illegal." The new movement capped its own membership at age 35 and positioned itself on the political center-left. Its founding members included Viktor Orbán, Gábor Fodor, László Kövér, and several others who would go on to shape Hungarian politics for decades.

Finding: a striking real reversal still to come Fidesz began as a left-of-center liberal youth movement, formed at genuine legal risk to itself, with an upper age limit meant to keep it a genuinely young organization. That age cap was abolished in 1993. This course's own later chapters trace the same party's real transformation into the very different political force that would win a supermajority in 2010 — a reversal this chapter deliberately does not resolve, since it hadn't happened yet.

Pozsgay's Real Reversal

Imre Pozsgay, a leading figure in the party's own reformist wing, had personally called the events of 1956 "pure counter-revolution" back in 1957. On 28 January 1989, he reversed that same judgment publicly, becoming the first member of the ruling party to describe 1956 instead as a genuine "popular uprising" — directly validating the real events Hungarian Political History I's own Chapters 8 and 9 already traced in full. The statement helped legitimize the opposition's own historical narrative and became a real, documented catalyst accelerating the country's transition. Pozsgay later took part personally in Nagy's own 16 June 1989 reburial.

The Round Table Talks

Formal National Round Table talks began on 13 June 1989 between the ruling MSZMP and a real Opposition Round Table bringing together Fidesz, the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), and the Independent Smallholders' Party — the same real party, per Chapter 7 of the sibling course, that had won 57.03% of the vote in the genuinely free 1945 election, now returning to the table forty-four years later. An agreement was signed 18 September 1989, producing six real draft laws: a constitutional overhaul, a Constitutional Court, rules for party functioning, multi-party National Assembly elections, and penal code reform. The real electoral system settled on a hybrid compromise — roughly half of deputies elected proportionally, half by majoritarian vote.

Finding: blocking an election specifically to stop one man from winning it How Hungary would elect its own president remained genuinely contested through the talks. Pozsgay had, by this point, become perhaps the country's most popular politician — and anti-communist parties, recognizing this directly, successfully pushed for a real constitutional rule preventing a directly elected presidency at all, resolved instead by a 26 November 1989 referendum favoring parliamentary election of the president. A real, concrete piece of political calculation: change the rules of the game specifically because of who would otherwise win it.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why Fidesz's own real 1988 founding as a left-of-center liberal youth movement is a genuinely important detail for accurately understanding the party's later political history, rather than an irrelevant footnote.

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Exercise 2

Explain why Pozsgay's own personal history — having called 1956 "pure counter-revolution" himself in 1957 — makes his 1989 reversal more politically significant than if a different, uninvolved party member had made the same statement.

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Exercise 3

Explain why blocking a directly elected presidency was a rational strategic choice for the anti-communist parties, given what this chapter establishes about Pozsgay's own real popularity.

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Quick Reference

  • 30 March 1988: Fidesz founded as a liberal youth movement, membership capped at age 35
  • 28 January 1989: Pozsgay reverses his own 1957 judgment, calling 1956 a "popular uprising"
  • 13 June – 18 September 1989: the National Round Table Talks — MSZMP vs. the Opposition Round Table (SZDSZ, Fidesz, MDF, the Smallholders)
  • Real electoral compromise: roughly half of deputies elected proportionally, half majoritarian
  • 26 November 1989: referendum settles a parliamentary, not direct, election method for the presidency