WERE the stories of the death of communism a little premature?

Hungary's former Communists are back in business, following the

precedent set in Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. The Hungarian result is

particularly striking because this was the country, after all, that led

the way towards the market economy in Eastern Europe. What is more the

former Communists have won a really thumping victory. Their renamed

Hungarian Socialist Party has polled so strongly that it can now go its

own way without needing to form a coalition with the liberal Alliance of

Free Democrats. This has disappointed the Socialist Party's own liberal

wing, which would have preferred the old guard in the party to have had

rather less of a free hand. The calculation is that the Free Democrats,

with their greater enthusiasm for market forces, would use their weight

to ensure that the Socialists honour their commitment to continuing

economic reform.

But although the former Communists are back in power, with a very free

rein, communism itself has not made a comeback. The Hungarian electorate

has not suddenly developed a taste for totalitarianism. It has developed

a strong distaste for declining living standards and double-digit

unemployment, and a desire for some at least of the security that it

knew in the past. The result looks more like a protest vote against the

centre-right Democratic Forum, which won Hungary's first modern free

election in 1990, than an ideological statement. Although Democratic

Forum stood for economic gradualism rather than for short, sharp shocks,

the pain of declining living standards has -- as in Poland -- brought

about widespread disenchantment. The electorate obviously hopes that

life will be a little easier under the Socialists, although they, too,

are committed to economic reform and have warned that it will be at

least another couple of years before any appreciable improvement in

living standards can be expected. The Socialist Party, though full of

familiar faces, has been reformed as well as renamed, though some of its

members may be more reformed than others. Although it is committed to

putting more emphasis on social welfare it has also drawn up a programme

of economic liberalism which includes spending cuts, wage restraint, and

social welfare targeting. The question now is whether the extent of the

party's victory will put so much power into the hands of the hardliners

that the programme will be abandoned. A hopeful sign is that although

the Socialist Party is now in a position to govern singlehandedly it

says it may ask the Free Democrats to join it in a coalition to tackle

the country's economic problems.

The reappearance of the old Communists in Budapest reinforces and

dramatises an already distinct trend in the former Soviet bloc. The

Czech Republic, whose right-wing Government remains popular despite the

stringencies of economic shock therapy, is an important exception which

owes much to the low unemployment rate as well as the voucher system of

privatisation which has encouraged mass participation. Elsewhere, it is

not greatly surprising, after the high expectations that accompanied the

fall of communism, that the privations of economic reform would produce

disillusion. It is none the less something of a shock to see the old

faces back, even with new labels and new policies. Gyula Horn, the

probable new Prime Minister, served in the militias that suppressed the

1956 uprising, although in the 1980s he became a reformer and as

Communist Hungary's last Foreign Minister allowed thousands of East

German refugees a means of access to the West. After the hardships of

the past few years it seems that the voters are attaching more

importance to experience, and few voters doubt the Socialist Party's

commitment to democracy. The antithesis of the old authoritarian rule,

after all, is not economic shock therapy: it is pluralism.