Opposition and Para-Opposition: Critical Currents in Hungary, 1968–78

Abstract

The definitions of opposition in East European societies have tended to be derived from Polish, Czechoslovak and Soviet experience. They assume the existence of groups of individuals, acting in a more or less organised fashion, who have mounted direct or indirect challenges of their governments by seeking to exert pressure on these governments for specific policy objectives. The aim of constraining these governments to abide by their own legality seems to be one of the characteristic features of opposition in the 1970s. Equally significant is that this opposition prefers generally to act outside the functioning of the system and to bring pressure on the system from outside. The use of western media as a significant lever is, again, one of the striking features of the modus operandi of the opposition. In this context, the free and untrammelled distribution of information has played a central role in the self-generation and self-sustaining aspects of the opposition. Mutual example — encouragement from one opposition group to another — and also imitation are a further feature of opposition. Comparatively little of this is applicable to Hungary.¹