1984 was the last peaceful year of the Kádár era.

˝I present to you now the work program comprising the government´s intentions and aspirations. The starting basis and primary function of this program is to serve the aims drawn up in the resolution of the Twelfth Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, the Patriotic Popular Front´s electoral appeal. I am convinced that this intention of ours coincides with the will of our people.

In working out our program we were able to proceed from the knowledge that the vital prerequisites of constructive socialist effort are assured in our country. The domestic atmosphere is well-balanced, and the workers´ power is robust.˝ The words of György Lázár about the acceptance of the government´s program in 1980 were still very much in the spirit of ˝forward along Lenin´s path˝. The ultimate goal - Communism - seemed, however, increasingly far away and blurred; what is more: utopian, viewed in the mirror of the Eastern Bloc´s dreary reality. The Interior Ministry´s feared and hated Department III/III was in full swing, the Workers´ Militia was distrustfully on the lookout, and the temporary presence of the Soviet occupiers was still very much in force.

However, the edifice of Real Existing Socialism increasingly reminded one of a badly rundown concrete tenement in a housing estate. Because of the increasingly deteriorating decline of the command economy, the Hungarian government decided in 1984 - with Andropov´s approval - to carry on with the reforms. The resolution of the Central Committee declared that the goal to be achieved was the building of a directed market economy, based on mixed - state, co-operative and private - ownership.

Yet under the given circumstances, the reform measures initiated in the first half of the 1980s did not manage to steer the Hungarian economy onto a course of improvement. The country fell into the trap of running into debt, and the system became unfinanceable: between 1980 and 1989 our indebtedness more than doubled, exceeding 20 billion dollars.

The socialist regime did not dare to breach the tacit Kádárian consensus reached with society, whose aim was for the citizens to relinquish all political initiatives in return for a measured fiscal gain.

1984 was the last peaceful year of the Kádár era. Until the middle of the decade it was still possible somehow to maintain the ´post 56´ three decade-long tacit agreement. Still, it became increasingly obvious that the ember of desire for change was smouldering beneath the ashes of the compromises. And it was also evident that in the long run economic prosperity was inconceivable without political freedom. The world of ´economic work teams´, as well as the up-and-coming opposition, represented notions and attitudes pointing beyond the framework of Socialism. And although some of the Party State´ s technocrat leaders attempted to put off  the regime-change by reforms, they eventually either undermined the system itself - by the gradual changes in the banking system - or they remained ineffectual as far as the essence was concerned - as for instance the introduction of dual candidacy for the parliamentary elections.

However, without the rallying of Hungarian society - as experienced in 1989 - these half-measures would have made it only as far as ˝spontaneous privatization˝.

In 1984 the answer to one of the basic questions in Orwell´s famous novel: whether people would choose freedom or happiness, was still meekly unambiguous.

The ensuing years, however, brought not only new answers to the fore, but made the question itself redundant. The countdown began in 1985. Within five years the socialist system collapsed like a house of cards.