Hungary was also the best part of the Soviet Bloc to live in for the people.
So it’s not just that modern Hungary is worse: communist Hungary is more miss-able than communist East Germany.
Nigel Swain’s two books on the subject are good:
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Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
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Hungary: The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1992)
He’s writing from the perspective of a non-red English academic who’s like… “wait… this works?? how do we explain the anomaly?”
Hungary had full shelves, booming agriculture, available consumer goods.
It is standard in Westoid discourse, e.g. the Wikipedia page on “authoritarianism” probably does it idk didn’t read it.
People who use words like “authoritarianism” equate the two.