This study described the evolution and functioning of a totalitarian political entity in the middle of the twentieth century. It aimed to make understandable how a totalitarian regime came into existence, how it operated, and ultimately how it fell apart. It is based on the assumption that revolutions occur when, on the one hand, an existing regime loses its legitimacy (or as in the Hungarian case never had any legitimacy), and on the other, those in the leadership elite cannot go on suppressing the population by the same means.