In Hungary, Orbán practices ‘goulash dictatorship’

Janos Kadar, the Communist leader of Hungary, responded to the Revolution of 1956 with a softer kind of regime that came to be known as “goulash Communism.” Almost seven decades later, his successor, Viktor Orbán responded to the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with a regime that merits the name of “goulash dictatorship.”

Goulash communism consisted of several components. Kadar permitted small-scale private entrepreneurship, encouraged the production of consumer goods, relaxed secret police controls and permitted some Hungarians to travel abroad. He changed the Stalinist dictum, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” to “If you’re not against us, you’re with us.”

All these measures made Hungary a comparatively more open and prosperous society that, unsurprisingly, was the first of the East European states to abandon Communism in 1989.

Goulash dictatorship is well short of the kind of muscular fascism that Italy’s Benito Mussolini would have endorsed. True, Orbán does appear to aspire to life-long tenure, and he hopes to project some degree of virility and charisma, but he’s obviously no Mussolini — at least not yet.

But Orbán has revanchist aspirations in Romania and Ukraine, for example. He shamelessly manipulates the historical record to emphasize his nation’s greatness. He exerts illiberal influence on the media, the electoral system and the courts. He seeks the closest possible relations with openly tyrannical states such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China. And he does all this while excoriating European democracies and their values.

Freedom House gave Hungary an impressive democracy score of 77 out of 100 in 2010 when Orbán came to power, and a miserable score of 43 out of 100 in 2024. To be sure, the Hungarian secret police doesn’t practice terror or use castor oil in its interrogations, but that’s exactly what we would expect from a goulash dictatorship. Less reassuring is the fact that, in February, China’s Minister of Public Security and Hungary’s Interior Minister agreed to have police officers from the two countries go on patrol together.

Soviet Communist leaders always regarded Kadar and his experiments with skepticism. They grudgingly accepted his concessions to the popular will because the alternative — a mass uprising — was unacceptable. Orbán’s friends in Moscow and Beijing (and Mar-a-Lago?) probably view him as one of their own, but not without some reservations. After all, Orbán clearly has delusions of grandeur and could easily implicate his elder brothers in some crazy scheme. On the other hand, both Putin and Xi appreciate Orbán’s anti-EU and anti-NATO posturing and his promotion of disunity within the ranks of both institutions.

The wily Orbán wants to eat his goulash and have it too. He obviously hates the EU and all that it stands for, while being more than happy to take its money. Orbán also hates NATO and its policies toward Ukraine, while fully appreciating that membership in the alliance gives him the kind of leverage that a small state such as Hungary could never have on its own.

His recent junkets to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Mar-a-Lago have less to do with any genuine search for peace — after all, could any of these interlocutors take Orbán seriously as a negotiator? — and more to do with his need for self-affirmation, publicity and acclaim.

In the meantime, Orbán is doing his best to help Russia defeat Ukraine, albeit in the long run. As America’s ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, put it in March: “Does Hungary truly believe that if our partners and allies stop our military support for Ukraine as it fights on its own territory for its very survival that Russia would then come to the negotiating table? Or would Russia do what it has done elsewhere and seize more of their land, pillage more of their property, deprive more of their people of freedom, kidnap more of their children? The Hungarian policy is based on a fantasy that disarming Ukraine will stop Putin.”

Given Hungary’s history with Russia — it was Russian troops who crushed Hungarian rebellions in 1848 and 1956 — one would expect Orbán to be on Ukraine’s side, all the more so as a Russian occupation of all of Ukraine would extend Russia’s borders to Hungary’s. Many suspect that Orbán is more than just Putin’s pliant pal. At the very least, the Kremlin may have some serious compromising material that’s encouraged Orbán to make such a geopolitically suicidal choice as to align himself with the Kremlin.

Unfortunately for Orbán, goulash dictatorship may be a winning formula for a while at home, but it is a losing proposition abroad. The U.S. and Europe have lost patience with Orbán. Being a persona non grata in the West may appeal to Putin and Xi, but it’s alienating many Hungarians, galvanizing the opposition and compelling the West to do something about the Hungarian bull in Europe’s china shop.

Poland’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Władysław Bartoszewski got it just right: “I don’t really understand why Hungary wants to remain a member in the organizations it doesn’t like that much and which allegedly treat it that poorly. Why does he not just create an alliance with Putin and some authoritarian states of that type? There is a principle that if you don’t want to be a member of some club, you can always leave.”

Kadar’s successors realized that one can have either goulash or Communism; in 1989, they opted for the former. Sooner or later, Orbán will have to make a similar choice.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”