Its origins lay in the illegal Democratic Opposition under the communist rule of János Kádár. The party initially suggested a radical agenda for changing the political, social and economic system in the country. It suffered a close defeat at the first free general elections of the Third Republic in 1990, thus becoming the leading opposition force in the first free National Assembly.After the fall of the conservative government at the following 1994 parliamentary election, SZDSZ surprised many by entering into a coalition with the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), legal successors to the communist Hungarian Socialist Workers Party. Thus began a strategic alliance between the two parties that lasted for 14 years, ending only in 2008.