Goulash Communism

Goulash Communism (Hungarian: gulyáskommunizmus) or Kadarism (after János Kádár) refers to the variety of communism as practised in the Hungarian People's Republic, from the 1960s until the Central European collapse of communism in 1989. With elements of free market economics, as well as an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Soviet principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade.

The name is a semi-humorous metaphor derived from "goulash", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and how it no longer strictly adhered to Marxist–Leninist interpretations as in the past. Sometimes described as "the happiest barracks in the socialist camp," Hungary in this particular period enjoyed many amenities not available in the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

In 1962, six years after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the 8th Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party declared the period of "consolidation of socialism" after 1956 to be over and that the "foundations for the establishment of a socialist society" had been achieved which enabled a general amnesty of most people sentenced in connection with 1956. The party, under János Kádár, gradually curbed some of the excesses of the secret police and repealed most of the restrictions on speech and movement enacted in the Mátyás Rákosi era. In their place, the party introduced a relatively liberal cultural and economic course aimed at overcoming the post-1956 hostility toward the Kádár government.

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