Economic Reforms in the Kádár Era
Economic Reforms in the Kádár Era

Summary/Abstract: János Kádár ruled over Hungary for thirty years, from the suppression of the revolution of 1956 until a few months before the country’s transition to a post-Communist regime in 1989. Unlike Mátyás Rákosi, his heartily loathed Stalinist predecessor, Kádár all along set an improvement in living standards as one of his chief aspirations. As a pragmatic politician who had once known what it was like to struggle as a pariah at the very edge of society, he was fully aware that “For a significant portion of the working masses, the main issues are not questions of politics but decent remedies for the economic and cultural issues that affect their everyday lives.” That was why he did more than simply tolerate efforts to improve the efficiency of the economy, shackled by Soviet expectations and by central planning based upon the state ownership of all major resources: he also usually, and up to a certain limit, actively supported these efforts.

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