Janos Kadar, the Communist leader of Hungary, responded to the Revolution of 1956 with a softer kind of regime that came to be known as “goulash Communism.” Almost seven decades later, his successor, Viktor Orbán responded to the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with a regime that merits the name of “goulash dictatorship.”

Goulash communism consisted of several components. Kadar permitted small-scale private entrepreneurship, encouraged the production of consumer goods, relaxed secret police controls and permitted some Hungarians to travel abroad. He changed the Stalinist dictum, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” to “If you’re not against us, you’re with us.”

All these measures made Hungary a comparatively more open and prosperous society that, unsurprisingly, was the first of the East European states to abandon Communism in 1989.

Goulash dictatorship is well short of the kind of muscular fascism that Italy’s Benito Mussolini would have endorsed. True, Orbán does appear to aspire to life-long tenure, and he hopes to project some degree of virility and charisma, but he’s obviously no Mussolini — at least not yet.

But Orbán has revanchist aspirations in Romania and Ukraine, for example. He shamelessly manipulates the historical record to emphasize his nation’s greatness. He exerts illiberal influence on the media, the electoral system and the courts. He seeks the closest possible relations with openly tyrannical states such as........

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