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5. The Fake Goulash Communism - The 1970s

Driving around Siófok and Enying on a beautiful late summer
night, Kati and I were horrified to see how many tanks and
combat vehicles flooded the country roads in the dark, without
the use of lights. We later learned that they may have been
headed to Czechoslovakia to end a dream in Czechoslovakia.
The people hoped for change with us, the power obeyed
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Moscow. The member states of the Warsaw Pact invaded
Czechoslovakia and put an end to their attempt to secede the
communist bloc. The small countries that had become
playthings of the former empire played the role imposed on
them now routinely, and this time Czechoslovakia became the
"separate way" country in the world media, until Ceausescu's
Romania reappeared on the media market for a temporary
period. It was 1968-69, when Hungary's leaders were already
thinking about a new economic mechanism to repair socialism,
but they were misled, because it quickly became clear that
Brezhnev's world would not allow this. Having traveled to
BudaPest, Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Russian
Communist Party, sped through the streets of the capital with
his motorcycle entourage - because the people were not
interesting for him - and quickly put an end to Hungarian ideas
and the new economic mechanism. But Hungary was more
livable, and the opportunities were better. It was a visible
consequence of 1956 without being acknowledged. On the other
hand, they forced the country to burden its future with loans, so
the authorities were able to pay for the relative prosperity of the
false "goulash communism". It was a catchphrase for the

29 Goulash Communism or Goulash Socialism is the name given to the politics
characteristic of Hungary since the 1960s. The term reflects that the country was
characterized by general prosperity and variable but continuous socio-economic
development. In the meantime, the country financed this with ever-increasing loans
from abroad.
30 The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty established by the Soviet Union as
an answer to the NATO.

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