In a few years, Hungary’s communist strongman, Mátyás Rákosi, would coin a colorful term to describe the methods used to bring him and other Soviet allies to power in Eastern Europe: “salami tactics.” Also known by the more graphic “death by a thousand cuts,” it is the strategy of tearing away at an existing political framework from so many different and seemingly unrelated angles—the appointment of an unqualified but loyal functionary to a sub-ministry here, the annulment of a legal protection over there—that it leaves the opposition overwhelmed and flummoxed and unsure of where to make a
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