ABSTRACT
In the first years of the stay of the ‘Budapest scholars’ in Australia, György Márkus, Ágnes Heller, and Ferenc Fehér made efforts to restore the School in exile. The culmination of these endeavours was their joint study Dictatorship over Needs: not only an attempt to develop an original critical theory of Soviet totalitarianism but at the same time the ultimate, also in individual terms, settling of accounts with that system. Already with the publication of Dictatorship over Needs in 1983, it was evident that this would be the last study prepared under the joint label of the Budapest School. In the present essay, I would like to analyse the causes of this situation. I am interested in why the Budapest School ceased to exist when its members were finally free to work and publish, and when they presented one of their most original theoretical proposals: a critical theory of Soviet totalitarianism.
