The only names missing from the list were the students who went on to form Fidesz, Hungary's main conservative Christian Democratic party. They were there, lurking in meetings, but were too callow, yet, to step into the light.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, things aren't so different in Hungary. The country is being buffeted by the economic turbulence, but the mood, in a nation where melancholy and whingeing are art forms, isn't so down. As the poet András Gerevich put it to me: "We're quite used to being in the shit."

The buccaneers and carpetbaggers of the MSZMP have done well for themselves. The salubrious hills of Budapest's XII and II districts are where the rich live and curiously most of them were members of the MSZMP, their spouses or tennis partners. Rebranded as the Socialist Party, the former communists have been in government since 2002, and have a stranglehold on wealth and power. This 15 March, a national holiday on the anniversary of the 1848 revolution (another failed revolution), two people were arrested. The reason? They were carrying a banner with the slogan "Responsible government in Budapest" (word-for-word, one of the demands of 1848). Even the tame Hungarian media found this a bit much, but the police have reverted to the role of regime thugs. In October 2006, in particular, elements of the police force went berserk, attacking anti-government demonstrators and anyone unlucky enough to be out in Budapest's streets.

Hungary has an unfortunate record in leadership. This April saw one of the most embarrassing scenes in Hungarian political life, after the Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány stepped down. Despite strong competition from the throng of swamp-things who have held office in Hungary, Gyurcsány had achieved the lowest ever approval ratings for a politician. He will be remembered for drawing the world's attention to Hungary with his colourful speech in which he stated "we have f****d things up" and "we lied around the clock, from dawn to dusk".