The fall of the dictatorship can be followed via linguistic changes. The Kádár régime attacked dissident opinions and the opposition by "administrative means". These included observation, withdrawing passports, spending a couple of nights in a police cell. Administrative means could include denying grants for study abroad and breaking up circles of friends.

"Politics" was a suspect term under the dictatorship. Though "reforming the political institutional structure" was a frequent phrase in periodicals with a limited readership in the 1980s, even the party elites were cautious about using the word. Supporters of the Kádár dictatorship made sure that nobody overstep the line dividing the communist dictatorship and its sworn enemy: pluralism. Under Kádár's soft dictatorship, totalitarianism came to an end, but even after 1956, state power was based on suppressing "enemy forces". Suppression was based on the application of "administrative means". The Kádár dictatorship considered "political life" to be superfluous, since it implied diversity. The Kádárists argued that once a workers' government had been established there was no need to reconcile different interests. Until 1986-87 it was considered inappropriate to mention "politics" as an independent sphere.

"Politics" entered into the vocabulary of the highest echelons when Károly Grösz became prime minister in 1987. Though the practice of administrative methods remained, under Grósz, the Communist Party moved into the field of "politics", and the party had to find "political answers" to problems that arose. Use of the word signified a rejection of the Kádár dictatorship. The growth of intellectual life in the 1980s rehabilitated politics. The reform of the political institutions allowed divergent interests to emerge. Politics became the opposite of force. Gyurcsány's use of the phrase "political means" meant that non-violent, non dictatorial means should be used.

At the same time, the nature of power did not change. Party workers calling for reform had no wish to lose power. They wished to develop more modern power structures. They had their own enemies, in the form of civil society organisations. Enemies, one wanted to squeeze out the other. But with the rehabilitation of politics, this no longer brought about the continuation of dictatorship but the emergence of a democratic order.