In this book Rudolf Tökés offers a comprehensive overview of the rise and fall of the Kadar regime in Hungary between 1957 and 1990. The approach is interdisciplinary, reviewing the regime’s record with emphasis on politics, macroeconomic policies, social change and the ideas and personalities of political dissidents and the regime’s ‘successor generation’. The study provides a fully documented reconstruction of the several phases of the ancien régime’s road from economic reform to political collapse, based on interviews with former top party leaders and transcripts of the Party Central Committee. Tökés gives an in-depth account of the personalities and issues involved in Hungary’s peaceful transformation from one-party state to parliamentary democracy, and a comprehensive assessment of Hungary’s post-Communist politics, economy and society.

• This is the first fully documented study of the rise and fall of a communist regime (interviews, Party documents) • The first comprehensive explanation of the transfer of power from communist to democratic political leadership • Looks at the political, economic, and social consequences of communist rule

Contents
Introduction; Part I. Systemic Change: Adaption and Transformation: 1. From vanguard to rearguard: the rise and decline of a ruling party, 1957–1980; 2. Economic reforms: from plan to market; 3. Social change: from latent pluralism to civil society; Part II. Elite Politics: the Insurgents and the Incumbents: 4. Opposition ideas, personalities and strategies; 5. Party elites in transition: the successor generation; Part III. From Postcommunism to Democracy: 6. Political succession in the HSWP: issues, personalities and strategies, 1984–1989; 7. Negotiated revolution: from the opposition roundtable to the national roundtable; 8. The road to power: political mobilization, party formation, and free elections in Hungary, 1989–1990; 9. Democracy in Hungary: toward a new model?