Bangladesh, April 19 -- The memory is small, almost trivial: a green-or perhaps aquamarine-sleeping mat carried across mountain trails in the 1980s. Yet it captures something larger about a vanished world. In those years, for many Poles growing up under late-stage communism, Hungary represented a curious anomaly within the Soviet bloc-a place where life seemed just a little brighter, freer, more colorful. Goods from Hungary carried a quiet prestige, symbols of a system that, while still authoritarian, appeared less suffocating than Polands decaying Polish Peoples Republic.

That sense of admiration, even envy, was rooted in more than consumer goods. It reflected a broader perception that Hungary had managed to carve out a relatively softe...