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The series of events that began in early 1989 and culminated in the free elec tions in March 1990 have been characterized as "revolution" of one of four kinds. According to the British journalist T. G. Ash, it was a "resolution" suggesting that what happened in Hungary was more than reform but less than a revolution. Though intended as a clever oxymoron, the term is grossly misleading as it ob scures and trivializes the qualitative difference between the point of departure and the point of arrival, that is, the difference between dictatorship and democracy Acccording to the former democratic oppositionist ideologue Janos Kis and several others who chose this formulation, the Hungarian events amounted to a "lawful revolution." The term stresses the notion of legal continuity and the non violent and non-confrontational nature of events. In my view, it is a misnomer as it deliberately overlooks the essentially politicsand power-driven substance of the process and, by design, fails to make any kind of moral distinction between the "before" and "after" spirit and normative content of laws and institutions. "Constitutional revolution" was the label chosen by Andras Bozoki and his fellow editors and contributors to an 8-volume documentary collection and ana lytical commentary to characterize the outcome of the National Roundtable talks of the summer of 1989 which paved the way to free elections and the change of the political regime in March-April 1990. The formulation is attractive, yet it is still an oxymoron which fails to reconcile, in terms legitimacy and cognitive con sonance, the yawning gap between the means, that is, an improvised legal artifact in the form of a modified constitution, and the ends, that is, revolution and the customary epistemological connotations of this term. "Negotiated revolution," is my formulation, that depicts the events as a series of elite pacts which culminated in public endorsement of the outcome by free elections in March-April 1990. Such pacts, by the nature of the enterprise, tend to incorporate the negotiators short-term political and economic interests and hide their personal beliefs, ethical choices, and moral preferences. The point is that real revolutions are meant to be fought and won on the barricades rather than behind closed doors at the negotiating table. Moreover, real revolutions are ex-

REVOLUTION RECONSIDERED: INSTITUTION-BUILDING IN A MORAL VOID