The nostalgia is for the period after 1956. While the USSR and Warsaw Pact helpers succeeded in putting down the Hungarian uprising, they had to manage the discontent in the country so that it wouldn’t happen again. (Moreover, the Hungarian uprising was fed by frustration at specifically the Stalinist regime forced on Hungary, but Stalin’s death was eventually followed by a thaw even in the USSR.)

So, for the remaining thirty years of socialism, Hungarians found it easier to travel abroad, publish literature or present art and music that was previously forbidden, and there was even some limited private enterprise. In rankings of which countries had it best in the Eastern Bloc, Hungary is usually at or near the top.