kosovohp Semi-Pro
Posts : 900 Join date : 2010-09-06
| Subject: The Third Hungarian Republic (1989–present) Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:34 pm | |
| In June 1987, Károly Grósz took over as premier. In June 1988, 30,000 demonstrated against Romania's communist Regime plans to demolish Transylvanian villages. In March 1989, for the first time in decades, the government declared the anniversary of the 1848 Revolution a national holiday. Opposition demonstrations filled the streets of Budapest with more than 75,000 marchers. Grósz met Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, who condoned Hungary's moves toward a multi-party system and promised that the USSR would not interfere in Hungary's internal affairs. In May, Hungary began taking down its barbed wire fence along the Austrian border – the first tear in the Iron Curtain. June brought the reburial of former Prime Minister Imre Nagy, executed after the 1956 Revolution, drawing a crowd of 250,000 at the Heroes' Square. The last speaker, 26-year-old Viktor Orbán publicly called for Soviet troops to leave Hungary. In September Foreign Minister Gyula Horn announced that East German refugees in Hungary would not be repatriated but would instead be allowed to go to the West. The resulting exodus shook East Germany and hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall. On 23 October, Mátyás Szűrös declared Hungary a republic. At a party congress in October 1989 the Communists agreed to give up their monopoly on power, paving the way for free elections in March 1990. The party's name was changed from the Hungarian Workers' Party to simply the Hungarian Party (MSZP) and a new programme advocating social democracy and a free-market economy was adopted. This was not enough to shake off the stigma of four decades of autocratic rule, however, and the 1990 election was won by the centre-right Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) synthetic oil vs regular oilamsoil | |
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