ABSTRACT
Just a bit more than a year after the establishment of a first democratic government a pro-democracy movement appeared on the scene which enabled the rise of a new group of activists, the movement intellectuals. 1 This initiative reflected on the disappointment of liberal intellectuals concerning the performance of the conservative Antall government and post-transition politics in general. Representatives of the Democratic Charter movement, initiated in the autumn of 1991, were afraid that the government would be captured by the radical Right, and they wished to confront that with basic democratic values to keep democracy alive. This movement intended to present a universal democratic position but at the end it helped left and liberal parties to come to power. Therefore, the Charter is an ambivalent legacy in Hungarian politics which reflects on the ambivalent stance of intellectuals on politics itself. The rise and fall of Democratic Charter represent the closing period of exceptional political influence of the intellectuals.
