Goulash Communism
Encyclopedia
Goulash Communism or Kádárism (after János Kádár
) refers to the variety of communism
as practised in the Hungarian People's Republic from the 1960s until the collapse of Communism in Hungary in 1989. With elements of free market
economics and an improved human rights
record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist
principles Hungary clung to in the previous decade.
The name is a semi-humorous metaphor
derived from "goulash
", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly communistic.
Sometimes described as "the happiest barrack in the Communist camp" (or "in the socialist camp"), Hungary in this particular period enjoyed many amenities not available to other communist countries in the Eastern bloc
.
declared the period of "consolidation of socialism" after 1956 to be over and that the "foundations for the establishment of a socialist society" had been achieved which enabled a general amnesty
of most people sentenced in connection with 1956. The party, under János Kádár
, gradually curbed some of the excesses of the secret police
, and introduced a relatively liberal cultural and economic course aimed at overcoming the post-1956 hostility toward the Kádár government. In 1966, the Central Committee approved the "New Economic Mechanism
" which eased foreign trade restrictions, gave limited freedom to the workings of the market, and allowed a limited number of small businesses to operate in the services sector. Though liberal in comparison to Stalinist socialism, the first relaxation of economic control was far from posing the same threat of the 1956 reforms. Official policy employed different methods of administering the collectives, leaving the pace of mechanization
up to each cooperative
. Additionally, rather than enforcing the system of compulsory crop deliveries and of workdays credit the collectivizers used monthly cash wages. Later in the ‘60s, cooperatives were permitted to enter into related and then general auxiliary businesses such as food processing, light industry, and service industry.
and an increased focus on the present (rather than future) material well-being of the citizens than had been the case in the period preceding 1956. It provided a wider latitude for dissent
than was the case in the rest of the Soviet bloc (in the words of Kádár, "who is not against us is with us"), modified the role of the Communist Party in the development of socialism (now interpreted as "serving" rather than "commanding"), reduced the formality of relations between the party and the populace at large, increased the scope of societal self-expression and self-management, and refined the guiding Marxist-Leninist ideology
with modified means of dissemination. Marxist-Leninist ideology is invoked in the desire to reform as seen in Imre Nagy
’s 'Reform Communism' (1955-6). He argues that Marxism is a “science that cannot remain static but must develop and become more perfect”. He attributes Marx to having created a method, meant to guide yet not entirely encompass socialism or its development. “The theory of Marx - as Lenin stated – gives general guiding principles, which must be utilized in Britain in another fashion than in France, in France differently than…”. This interpretation was not shared by the Soviet leadership, Nikita Khrushchev
’s response to Hungary in 1956 and Leonid Brezhnev
’s to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the resulting Brezhnev Doctrine
stating that though “each socialist country had the right to determine the concrete form of its development along the path of socialism by taking account of the specific nature of their national conditions… the Soviet Union would not tolerate deviation from the principles of socialism and the restoration of capitalism”.
The result was a regime was far more humane than other Communist regimes--and certainly more so than the first seven years of undisguised Communist rule in Hungary. Generally, Hungarians had much more freedom to speak, write and travel than their counterparts in the Soviet bloc. For instance, samizdat
publications were tolerated to some extent, and conversations with foreigners didn't attract much official scrutiny. However, it wasn't a liberal one either. The Communist Party still retained a monopoly of power, with the National Assembly
being little more than a rubber stamp. The media, while having somewhat more latitude than in other Communist regimes, were still subjected to fairly onerous restrictions. The secret police operated with somewhat more restraint than in other Communist states, but were still a feared tool of control.
. Some economic reform measures were introduced to integrate limited market mechanisms into the framework of the planned socialist economy. An unfortunate result of this policy were rising economic stresses and high indebtedness which became evident by the late 1980s. Yet these economic crises were prevalent throughout the collapsing communist world. Hungary’s mild diversity left it slightly better equipped.
Being a comparatively well-organized country in the East bloc, Hungary was the destination for tourists from other communist nations, for whom visits to the West were much more difficult. Queues for groceries, for instance, were virtually non-existent, unlike in other communist countries in the 60s and 70s.
, Hungary
has adopted a Western-style multiparty political system and introduced thorough reforms aimed at establishing a capitalist market economy, enabling European Union
membership and integration into a global market economy.
János Kádár
János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...
) refers to the variety of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
as practised in the Hungarian People's Republic from the 1960s until the collapse of Communism in Hungary in 1989. With elements of free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
economics and an improved human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
principles Hungary clung to in the previous decade.
The name is a semi-humorous metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
derived from "goulash
Goulash
Goulash is a soup or stew of meat, noodles and vegetables , seasoned with paprika and other spices. Originating in Hungary, goulash is also a popular meal in Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania, Scandinavia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia...
", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly communistic.
Sometimes described as "the happiest barrack in the Communist camp" (or "in the socialist camp"), Hungary in this particular period enjoyed many amenities not available to other communist countries in the Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
.
Origins
In 1962, six years after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the 8th Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' PartyHungarian Socialist Workers' Party
The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party was the ruling Marxist–Leninist party of Hungary between 1956 and 1989. It was organised from elements of the Hungarian Working People's Party during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution...
declared the period of "consolidation of socialism" after 1956 to be over and that the "foundations for the establishment of a socialist society" had been achieved which enabled a general amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
of most people sentenced in connection with 1956. The party, under János Kádár
János Kádár
János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...
, gradually curbed some of the excesses of the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, and introduced a relatively liberal cultural and economic course aimed at overcoming the post-1956 hostility toward the Kádár government. In 1966, the Central Committee approved the "New Economic Mechanism
New Economic Mechanism
The New Economic Mechanism was a major economic reform launched in the People's Republic of Hungary in 1968.- Reform :The period from 1956–1968 was one of reform in Eastern Europe...
" which eased foreign trade restrictions, gave limited freedom to the workings of the market, and allowed a limited number of small businesses to operate in the services sector. Though liberal in comparison to Stalinist socialism, the first relaxation of economic control was far from posing the same threat of the 1956 reforms. Official policy employed different methods of administering the collectives, leaving the pace of mechanization
Mechanization
Mechanization or mechanisation is providing human operators with machinery that assists them with the muscular requirements of work or displaces muscular work. In some fields, mechanization includes the use of hand tools...
up to each cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
. Additionally, rather than enforcing the system of compulsory crop deliveries and of workdays credit the collectivizers used monthly cash wages. Later in the ‘60s, cooperatives were permitted to enter into related and then general auxiliary businesses such as food processing, light industry, and service industry.
Ideology
Goulash Communism showed a far greater concern for public opinionPublic opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
and an increased focus on the present (rather than future) material well-being of the citizens than had been the case in the period preceding 1956. It provided a wider latitude for dissent
Dissent
Dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or an entity...
than was the case in the rest of the Soviet bloc (in the words of Kádár, "who is not against us is with us"), modified the role of the Communist Party in the development of socialism (now interpreted as "serving" rather than "commanding"), reduced the formality of relations between the party and the populace at large, increased the scope of societal self-expression and self-management, and refined the guiding Marxist-Leninist ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
with modified means of dissemination. Marxist-Leninist ideology is invoked in the desire to reform as seen in Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
’s 'Reform Communism' (1955-6). He argues that Marxism is a “science that cannot remain static but must develop and become more perfect”. He attributes Marx to having created a method, meant to guide yet not entirely encompass socialism or its development. “The theory of Marx - as Lenin stated – gives general guiding principles, which must be utilized in Britain in another fashion than in France, in France differently than…”. This interpretation was not shared by the Soviet leadership, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
’s response to Hungary in 1956 and Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
’s to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the resulting Brezhnev Doctrine
Brezhnev Doctrine
The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September 26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the...
stating that though “each socialist country had the right to determine the concrete form of its development along the path of socialism by taking account of the specific nature of their national conditions… the Soviet Union would not tolerate deviation from the principles of socialism and the restoration of capitalism”.
The result was a regime was far more humane than other Communist regimes--and certainly more so than the first seven years of undisguised Communist rule in Hungary. Generally, Hungarians had much more freedom to speak, write and travel than their counterparts in the Soviet bloc. For instance, samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
publications were tolerated to some extent, and conversations with foreigners didn't attract much official scrutiny. However, it wasn't a liberal one either. The Communist Party still retained a monopoly of power, with the National Assembly
National Assembly of Hungary
The National Assembly or Diet is the parliament of Hungary. The unicameral body consists of 386 members elected to 4-year terms. Election of members is based on a complex system involving both area and list election; parties must win at least 5% of the popular vote in order to enter list members...
being little more than a rubber stamp. The media, while having somewhat more latitude than in other Communist regimes, were still subjected to fairly onerous restrictions. The secret police operated with somewhat more restraint than in other Communist states, but were still a feared tool of control.
Economy
Hungary's economic resources were mobilized to better satisfy consumer demand by providing a more extensive assortment of consumer goodsGood (economics and accounting)
In economics, a good is something that is intended to satisfy some wants or needs of a consumer and thus has economic utility. It is normally used in the plural form—goods—to denote tangible commodities such as products and materials....
. Some economic reform measures were introduced to integrate limited market mechanisms into the framework of the planned socialist economy. An unfortunate result of this policy were rising economic stresses and high indebtedness which became evident by the late 1980s. Yet these economic crises were prevalent throughout the collapsing communist world. Hungary’s mild diversity left it slightly better equipped.
Being a comparatively well-organized country in the East bloc, Hungary was the destination for tourists from other communist nations, for whom visits to the West were much more difficult. Queues for groceries, for instance, were virtually non-existent, unlike in other communist countries in the 60s and 70s.
Transition to capitalism
Since 1989, after the general disintegration of communist control in Central EuropeCentral Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
has adopted a Western-style multiparty political system and introduced thorough reforms aimed at establishing a capitalist market economy, enabling European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
membership and integration into a global market economy.
See also
- Market socialismMarket socialismMarket socialism refers to various economic systems where the means of production are either publicly owned or cooperatively owned and operated for a profit in a market economy. The profit generated by the firms system would be used to directly remunerate employees or would be the source of public...
- Barracks communismBarracks communismBarracks communism is the term coined by Karl Marx to refer to a 'crude', authoritarian forced collectivism and communism, where all aspects of life are bureaucratically regimented and communal...
- History of HungaryHistory of HungaryHungary is a country in central Europe. Its history under this name dates to the early Middle Ages, when the Pannonian Basin was colonized by the Magyars, a semi-nomadic people from what is now central-northern Russia...
- Eastern Bloc economiesEastern Bloc economiesAfter the Soviet Union's occupation of much of the Eastern Bloc during World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin implemented socioeconomic transformations of each of the Eastern Bloc economies that comported with the Soviet Communist economic model...