The political parties in the media during the taxi drivers’ blockade

Abstract

From 26th through 28th of October, 1990, a disobedience movement arose in the wake of an unexpected and drastic raise of petrol prices in Hungary. Taxi drivers and transporters blocked the most important traffic crossings in the country, making it ungovernable for three days. The action did not remain the issue of a single occupational group, since a significant part of the population approved of it. In Hungary, no such large-scale, spontaneous action had occurred since 1956. Apparently, people were dissatisfied with the direction of changes in the political system, with the replacements within the political elite, and with the party pluralism that had just begun to develop. Their dissatisfaction, building up but suppressed for long years, hit the elected representatives of the new political system. The paper studies the reactions of the political parties to th is situation in their media statements by asking whom they made responsible for the crisis, how they classified the movement, what their attitudes were to possible violent measures by the authorities, what solutions they proposed, and what lessons they drew from this crisis.