Hungarian party elites built covert personal networks with opposition that Poland lacked

Evidence

By 1987, party leaders agreed the government would leave alone opposition organizations such as the Hungarian Democratic Forum so long as they served the “interests of socialism,” at least on paper. Several lowerlevel party elite members supported these dissident groupings, and even attended their meetings, forming numerous personal ties to opposition leaders and networks of mutual support between party and opposition reformists, in stark contrast to the public suspicion between the two groups in Poland. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 321

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s comparative project: explains WHY Hungarian successor party could credibly rebrand as democrats while the Polish party could not — early elite-level ties to civil society became usable political capital. — connects to: Polish party members openly practiced religion and joined the opposition by the 1970s. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 259; Hungarian party tolerated constructive opposition and real contested elections internally — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 314; Polish communist party members themselves joined the opposition en masse — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 255

Broader Connections

• Polish communist party members themselves joined the opposition en masse #contradicts (0.78) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 255