Hungarian Socialist Party

Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP), left-wing Hungarian political party. Although the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP) was founded in 1989, its origins date to 1948, when the Hungarian Social Democratic Party merged into what was first called the Hungarian Workers’ Party and then, following the attempted revolution against the communist government in 1956, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. In 1989 the party renounced Marxism. The MSzP contested the general election of 1990—the first free multiparty elections in Hungary in more than 40 years—but it fared poorly, winning 33 seats in the National Assembly (parliament). In 1994, however, the MSzP won a majority in the National Assembly and formed Hungary’s government.

The MSzP continued the previous government’s austerity measures, which were intended to deal with the economic problems that had developed under communist rule and to introduce elements of a market economy in Hungary. However, these policies were unpopular with the public and alienated more-radical members of the MSzP, deepening factional disputes within the party. As a result, the party lost the 1998 election to Fidesz and its allies. In 2002 the MSzP and its ally, the Alliance of Free Democrats, won a narrow majority in the legislature and formed a coalition government; the coalition was reelected in 2006. Later that year a political scandal erupted as a result of a “secret speech” by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány to MSzP in which he admitted to the party’s failure to address the country’s economic problems and to its mendacity in process. After the Hungarian economy was perched on the brink of disaster in 2008, Gyurcsány resigned in 2009, and the MSzP was swept out of power by Fidesz in the 2010 elections.