One of the most visible signs of radical change in Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in 1989 was the demolition of hundreds of statues of Lenin. Each country in the former Soviet Bloc took a different attitude to the monuments erected to celebrate the values and heroes of the communist regime, from cinematic beheadings to discreet removal by council workers. How the newly democratic countries treated the public art of the communist system reflected the depth of the political changes, the level of revolutionary violence, and the strength of public feelings towards the recent past.   

Statuepark, Budapest  

Hungary was on the moderate side of the debate in how to deal with the symbols of a despised regime, with politicians and public opinion favouring a reasonable solution that did not repeat the spectacle of senseless iconoclasm that usually accompanies revolution. Sensitive debates were held in the Assembly of Budapest City Council in the early 1990s, with votes to decide the fate of each communist monument, with the rejects transferred to a new Statuepark on the outskirts of the city. The rule of thumb that emerged was that any statue directly connected to the Soviet occupation, the ideology of the Communist Party or the official story about the (counter)Revolution of 1956 was to be removed.

This actually took care of the most prominent communist era monuments, including several Lenin statues, the giant
striding monument to the 1919 Republic of Councils, the flag-waving Captain Steinmetz and Ostapenko, the memorial to the ‘Martyrs’ of 1956,  as well as the proud Soviet soldier that used to guard the Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill. These can all now be enjoyed in Statuepark, which provides a helpful guide to their original location and chequered history. The remainder, mostly anonymous statues of workers and pre-communist, but vaguely leftwing national figures,  were abandoned to the quiet invisibility that is the destiny of all forgotten monuments.

That is until today. The wider political agenda that seeks to belatedly turn the rendszerváltás or system change of 1989 into a deeper and more inspiring revolution, seen in the recent adoption of a new constitution, is ultimately what is driving the resurgent interest in renaming streets and cleansing public squares of the few remaining monuments of the communist era.  This uncompromising attitude is especially notable with regard to monuments that are connected to the Second World War or are reminders of the loss of the historic territories of Greater Hungary. While the debate as such has been reignited, it is by no means a foregone conclusion as to how far politicians will go in reshaping the monumental history of the capital.

The Soviet War Memorial on Szabadság Square, with its obelisk, red star and Cyrillic inscription, is certainly an anomaly among the office blocks and trendy boutiques of contemporary Budapest. It was one of three similar monuments erected in the Hungarian capital on May Day 1945 to celebrate the victory over Fascism in the Second World War. In the early 1990s the rest of the Red Army monuments were demolished, but the Russians insisted that this one remain as a memorial to the fallen. Plans are now afoot to eradicate the monument and rename the square after Roosevelt, the American wartime president. The most radical voices are even demanding that in its place the Sacred Flagstaff – a controversial monument to the lost territories erected in 1928 that was demolished by the Russians to make way for their war memorial – be reconstructed.

Roosevelt, at the time of writing, is currently a president without a square. On 6 April 2011, Budapest City Council voted to rename his square on the Pest side of the Chain Bridge after Count Széchenyi, because the American lacked historical connections. In another part of the city and the other side of the old Cold War divide, negotiations are in progress to – shock horror - rename Moszkva Square after another nineteenth century aristocrat,  Széll Kálmán, who by a strange coincidence also lends his name to the government’s latest austerity plan. Perhaps to soothe bruised American feelings over Roosevelt and in a surprising twist of fate, Elvis Presley is to also get a square - or at least a traffic junction - named after him. Elvis’s Hungarian credentials come from his vocal support of the Revolution of 1956, when he famously sung a gospel song on the Ed Sullivan Show in honour of the uprising and asked viewers to send in donations.

The trend for removals and renaming is not limited to international figures, there are also loud demands for unwanted Hungarian historical personalities to vacate their pedestals. Next to the Parliament by the Danube you can still find a downcast looking statue of Mihály Károlyi, who made the mistake of declaring himself the first president of the Hungarian Democratic Republic in November 1918. The extreme right has accused this unfortunate aristocrat of being an agent of the global elite and a communist collaborator, recently hanging a sign around his neck that read ‘I am responsible for Trianon’. According to the same logic, the statue of Károlyi should be removed and replaced with a new one of his nemesis István Tisza, Hungary’s belligerent wartime prime minister, who was assassinated at the end of October 1918 and whose Horthy-era monument used to stand on the square.

There is one major post-communist monument that has also been feeling the heat in recent months. The 1956 Monument on Dozsa György út was erected in 2006 to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, unfortunately, for both aesthetic and political reasons, it’s completely unloved.  Hungarian art critic Julianna P. Szűcs found le mot just with her conclusion that the monument ‘was built at the wrong time and in the wrong place’, and indeed, Dozsa György út has a tumultuous and traumatic history where public statues are concerned with previous inhabitants including Stalin, Lenin, and a Godzilla-like monument to the  1919 Republic of Councils. The new 1956 Monument was referred to last year by Budapest Mayor István Tarlós as a ‘heap of rusty scrap iron’ with no artistic value, while the Secretary of State for Culture Géza Szőcs recently suggested in a speech that is should be removed to make way for the rebuilding of the Regnum Marianum church, which was again demolished by the communists.

The prize for the most wacky plan to rewrite the history of Budapest in bronze and stone goes to the Hungarian religious organisation that recently wrote a letter to President Pál Schmitt proposing that in the name of ‘renewal and the closure of the past’ the Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill be removed and a statue of the Virgin Mary be erected in its place. Although this particular idea sounds like science fiction with little chance of being realised, the other removals, renamings and reconstructions are clearly on the cards. There is perhaps no better time to enjoy the remaining communist era monuments of Budapest in situ, before they join their comrades in the peace and quiet of Statuepark.

Reuben Fowkes