Modernisation and the change of the system

The paper attempts to interpret the change of the system in the context of modernisation. Its starting point is that one of the significant characteristics of 20th-century Hungarian development is fundamental, rapid, economically and socially unfounded changes by leaps, based on ideology, and system changes have taken place from time to time. One of the characteristics of these ensembles of social phenomena is that the Hungarian society is not getting into a situation forcing it to change its system by its own (organic) trends and dynamics of development but as a result of external periodic changes in world economy, big power and military positions. The unfounded and sudden changes are related to the fact that the Hungarian economy and society have been moving along a developmental track for centuries that significantly differed from the direction and dynamics of development determining world economy for the past couple of centuries, and whenever new trends became dominant in the latter one Hungarian development was also forced to take along a new track. At the time of periodic changes a special situation emerges out of the different type of development, for partly challenges deriving from Hungarian development should be handled, and partly some, successful answers should be given also to the new trends of modernisation. In this sense a 'dual' challenge faced the country in the 80s and 90s: on the one hand the Kádár system producing rapid modernisation within the framework of state socialism got into a crisis by that time, and the processes of global capitalism determining the new direction of modernisation of world economy had become dominant. Though the two challenges had the same roots and appeared simultaneously, they are two different problems. The paper discusses the circumstances of the system change in detail and draws the conclusion that the political class changing the system did not give an adequate answer to this ‘dual' challenge.