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.
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