Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party

The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (Hungarian: Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt, MSzMP) was the ruling Marxist–Leninist party of the Hungarian People's Republic between 1956 and 1989. It was organised from elements of the Hungarian Working People's Party during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, with János Kádár as general secretary.

The party initially supported the revolution, but turned against Imre Nagy's government after he denounced the Warsaw Pact. The party formed a 'Revolutionary Peasant-Worker Government' that took over the country, with Soviet support, on 4 November 1956.

Gradually, however, the Kádár regime instituted goulash Communism, a somewhat more humane way of governing than had prevailed under Mátyás Rákosi. Under Kádár's mantra of "he who is not against us is with us," Hungarians generally had more freedom than their Eastern Bloc counterparts to go about their daily lives. The government also gave limited freedom to the workings of the market. However, it retained a monopoly of political power, and subjected the media to censorship that was fairly onerous by Western standards. The National Assembly, like its counterparts in the rest of the Soviet bloc, did little more than rubber-stamp decisions already made by the MSzMP.