Abstract

On August 21, 1968, Hungarian dissenters experienced their most important turning point. The Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia marked the end of the Hungarian intellectuals' “reformism,” the end of all hopes in the possibility that progressive forces could win a place within the communist parties in power in countries with “actually existing socialism.” An authentic process of democratization turned out to be incompatible with the present East European regimes: when it went beyond the sphere predetermined by the ruling elite, this process was immediately branded as counter-revolutionary.

Hungarian intellectuals have subsequently undergone a profound crisis which resulted in a redefinition of the “Budapest School” as compared to that provided by Lukacs in his 1971 letter to The Times Literary Supplement.