Hungarian Constitution of 1949

The Hungarian Constitution of 1949 was a communist state constitution adopted on 20 August 1949, and it was Hungary's first permanent written constitution. It underwent two major revisions, in 1972 and in 1989, with the 1989 amendment transforming it from a communist charter into a liberal democratic constitution in what has been described as the first thoroughgoing constitutional transformation in the Soviet bloc, reshaping the document through nearly 100 amended provisions. After the fall of communism, Hungary was the only former Eastern Bloc country that did not immediately replace its communist-era constitution outright, instead amending it substantially and keeping it in force. The 1949 document, as amended, was finally superseded in 2011 by the Fundamental Law of Hungary, whose preamble states that Hungarians do not recognize the communist constitution of 1949 because it served as the basis for tyrannical rule.