In this book, first published in 1996, 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 a history of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and its aftermath. The book sets the revolutionary events in their full context, both nationally and internationally.

Professor Berend presents a comprehensive inside account of Hungary's economic reforms since the 1950s. Working from Communist Party archives, which have hitherto partially remained closed to scholars, Berend situates the history of these economic reforms within their political context, looking in particular at the role of the Soviet Union. He examines the theoretical background to reform, the obstacles that arose during implementation and the gradual realisation that minor reforms of the old system could no longer work. The Hungarian Economic Reforms 1953-1988 comes at a time when many centrally planned economies are examining their performance and structure and seeking suitable forms of change. The Hungarian reforms have attracted those countries wishing to rid themselves of their Stalinist command economies. Thus the book indirectly sheds light upon Chinese economic reforms and on Gorbachev's Soviet perestroika. It will be of interest to specialists and students of East European studies, with special reference to the EMEA, planned economies and economic reform.

Study of the pattern of reform of the economic system in Hungary from 1953 to 1972, with particular reference to economic policy and social policy - covers political aspects of policy reform, the forerunners of and preparations for the present reform, the operation and development of the reform, social reform, political leadership, pluralism and cultural change, the socialist society, etc., and considers future prospects. References and statistical tables.

The essays in this volume document the serious shortcomings of the Hungarian economic reform, which in two decades has brought deteriorating economic performance, declining real wages, a fiscal deficit and severe inflationary pressures. It has proved unexpectedly difficult to substitute a regulated market economy for a centrally planned one. The authors of these essays argue that the problems stem from the incompleteness of the reforms and their compromise character. Today, as the Hungarians prepare to implement more radical measures, constraining the Communist party and rolling back state ownership, they do so under economically difficult conditions.

This volume analyses the important structural changes and mobility that occurred in Hungary from the middle of the 19th to the end of the 20th centuries by using rich statistical and narrative sources, sometimes reaching to certain social stata. The period extending to WWI was the time of the establishment of the capital market economy, which went with the change of the occupational structure, the hierarchy of the status, and the culture. During the period between the two world wars, the territory and the population of the country greatly diminshed. This was also a reason of the slackening of the social mobility and the rigidity of the structure. After WWII, especially during the period of socialism, the political-led change of structure became determinant. All of these made possible the so-called "goulash communism," a change of life-style, from the sixties. From 1989 on, the return of the market capitalism has been forming the structure.