Arpad Goncz, a playwright, translator and anti-Communist dissident who became the first president of post-Communist Hungary, died on Tuesday. He was 93.

A family spokesman confirmed the death to the Hungarian news agency MTI, giving no information on where Mr. Goncz died.

Although the Hungarian president occupies a largely ceremonial post, wielding far less power than the country’s prime minister does, Mr. Goncz (pronounced Guntz) was widely credited with helping to ease Hungary’s transition out of four decades of Communist rule.

Elected by a vote of the Hungarian Parliament in 1990, Mr. Goncz served two five-year terms, leaving office in 2000. His reformist aims and literary background made him an admired if less well-known counterpart of his friend Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident playwright who served from 1989 to 1992 as his country’s first post-Communist president.