This contribution aims to evaluate the long-term consequences of the Kádár regime’s stability in the context of recent Hungarian political and social history. The question is: under what conditions did the “good dictator”, who was respected by the vast majority of his fellow citizens, leave the country on the eve of the 1989-90 transformations? Was the Hungary that emerged from Kádárism for real the model pupil of Eastern European démocratisation, or was the “new” Hungary a «democratic bubble» instead, overestimated by international observers and Hungarian scholars themselves? Furthermore, to what extent does the sixth authoritarian experiment in the space of a century, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán since 2010, owe its origins to the social bloc and collective mentality formed during the Kádár period?
