ABSTRACT
The regimes of ‘actually existing socialism’ in Eastern Europe did not just fall, they were pushed. Beset as they were by internal contradictions, they might yet have staggered on through another generation were it not for the capacity of ordinary people to conceive of an alternative life and struggle to achieve it. Despite repeated efforts to shore up these systems through egalitarian social and economic policies, they never achieved more than momentary legitimacy. Most commonly the governments of the region were met with active as well as with passive resistance to their efforts to reform society. This case study of Gypsy responses to Hungarian social policy provides one image of the sources of popular resistance to the massive experiment in social engineering undertaken by the socialist governments of the Soviet bloc.1
