Hungary’s Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change and Political Succession

In this book Rudolf Tokes 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 regime’s road from economic reform to political collapse, based on interviews with former top party leaders and transcripts of the Party Central Committee. Tokes 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.