Stalin Monument In Budapest

Stalin Monument In Budapest

Monument

The monument was erected on the edge of Vrosliget, the city park of Budapest. The large monument stood 25 meters tall in total. The bronze statue stood eight meters high on a four meters high limestone base on top of a tribune eighteen meters wide. Stalin was portrayed as a speaker, standing tall and rigid with his right hand at his chest. The sides of the tribune were decorated with relief sculptures depicting the Hungarian people welcoming their leader. The Hungarian sculptor, Sndor Mikus, created the statue and was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the highest distinction that can be attained by a Hungarian artist.

Background

The Stalin monument was built during the classical period of Socialist Realism, the official art of Stalinism, which was a tool to instill the ideology of the Party into the people.

This realistic and didactic aesthetic style celebrated the hard working proletariat and especially the cult of personality surrounding figures like Lenin, Stalin and other Eastern European Communist leaders.

Stalin statues sprung up everywhere in Eastern Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were cult objects that demonstrated the almost mystical powers of Stalin. Upon the completion of the Stalin statue, a journalist in Budapest said:

“Stalin was with us earlier; now he will be with us even more. He will watch over our work, and his smile will show us the way. I have been told that in Moscow it is customary to pay a visit to Comrade Lenin in Red Square before beginning, or after finishing, an important task, either to report or to ask his advice.

Undoubtedly the same will occur here with the state of Comrade Stalin.”

The monument not only demonstrated Stalin power, but the power of the Hungarian Working People’s Party as well. Directly across from Stalin monument was MMOSZ, the house of the builder union, condemned for its modernist architecture influenced by the West.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 Socialist Realism went into decline, in connection with the political changes, initiated Khrushchev in 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when he denounced Stalin’s cult of personality.

Destruction

On October 23, 1956, around two hundred thousand Hungarians gathered in Budapest to demonstrate in sympathy for the Poles who had just gained political reform during the Polish October. The Hungarians broadcast sixteen demands over the radio, one of them being the dismantling of Stalin’s statue. A hundred thousand Hungarian revolutionaries demolished the Stalin statue, leaving only his boots, in which they planted a Hungarian flag. The bronze inscribed name of the Hungarians’ leader, teacher and “best friend” was ripped off from the pedestal. Before the toppling of the statue, someone had placed a sign over Stalin’s mouth that read “RUSSIANS, WHEN YOU RUN AWAY DON’T LEAVE ME BEHIND!” The revolutionaries chanted “Russia go home!” while pulling down the statue. .C. and other insulting remarks were scrawled over the fragmented parts of the statue.

The account of the incident by Sandor Kopacsi, head of Budapest police: “[The demonstrators] placed […] a thick steel rope around the neck of the 25-metre tall Stalin statue while other people, arriving in trucks with oxygen cylinders and metal cutting blowpipes, were setting to work on the statue bronze shoes. […] An hour later the statue fell down from its pedestal.”

copy

Present

The site of the former Stalin Monument is now occupied by the Monument of the 1956 Revolution, completed in 2006 for the 50th anniversary of the historic event.

A life-sized copy of the tribune was built in the Statue Park with the broken bronze shoes on top of the pedestal in 2006. This is not an accurate copy of the original but only an artistic recreation by sculptor kos Eled.

References

^ Sinko, Katalin. “Political Rituals: the Raising and Demolition of Monuments.” Art and Society in the Age of Stalin. Ed. Peter Gyorgy and Hedvig Turai. Budapest: Corvina Books, 1992. 81.

^ Aman, Anders. Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe During the Stalin Era. Cambridge, MA: The MIT P, 1992. 195.

Bibliography

Aman, Anders. Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe During the Stalin Era. Cambridge, MA: The MIT P, 1992.

Bown, Matthew C. Art Under Stalin. Oxford: Phaidon P Limited, 1991. 73-86.

Demaitre, Ann. “The Great Debate on Socialist Realism.” The Modern Language Journal 50.5 (1966): 263-268. 2.0.CO;2-3?

Sinko, Katalin. “Political Rituals: the Raising and Demolition of Monuments.” Art and Society in the Age of Stalin. Ed. Peter Gyorgy and Hedvig Turai. Budapest: Corvina Bookk, 1992. 81.

Terras, Victor. “Phenomenological Observations on the Aesthetics of Socialist Realism” The Slavic and East European Journal 22.4 (Winter, 1979), pp. 445-457. 2.0.CO;2-5>

See also

History of Hungary

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Joseph Stalin

On the Personality Cult and its Consequences

Polish October

Socialist Realism

Stalin’s Monument (Prague)

Stalinism

External links

Day by day account of the 1956 Revolution

American Hungarian Foundation’s 1956 Site with Photos/Audio/Video

Reflection of BBC’s Reporting of the Hungarian Revolution

Continuance of Stalin’s cult of personality in Georgia

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Joseph Stalin

Politics

Early life  Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, and Polish-Soviet War  Rise  The Stalin Era as Soviet Leader  Collectivization in the Soviet Union  World War II  Molotovibbentrop Pact  Winter War  Occupation of the Baltic states  Soviet invasion of Poland  Germanoviet Axis talks  Sovietapanese Neutrality Pact  Tehran Conference  Yalta Conference  Potsdam Conference  Cold War  Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship  Eastern Bloc  Titotalin split

Concepts

Stalinism  Neo-Stalinism  Socialism in One Country  Socialist realism  Stalinist architecture  Aggravation of class struggle under socialism  Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature

Controversies

Great Purge  Holodomor  Gulag  Decossackization  Population transfer in the Soviet Union  Forced settlements in the Soviet Union  Soviet war crimes  Rootless cosmopolitan  Doctors’ plot  Moscow Trials  Allegations of antisemitism  NKVD prisoner massacres  Katyn massacre  Nazioviet population transfers  Soviet Census (1937)  Soviet deportations from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina  Operation North  Mingrelian Affair  Leningrad Affair  Lysenkoism  Censorship of images in the Soviet Union  Operation Lentil (Caucasus)  Operation Priboi  Vinnytsia massacre  Kurapaty  Nazino affair  Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union  Purge of the Red Army in 1941

Works

Ten Blows speech  Alleged August 19, 1939 speech  Falsifiers of History  Stalin Note

De-Stalinization

Pospelov Commission  De-Stalinization  Rehabilitation (Soviet)  Khrushchev Thaw  On the Personality Cult and its Consequences  Gomulka thaw  Soviet Nonconformist Art  Shvernik Commission

Criticism

Stalin Epigram  Lenin’s Testament  Leon Trotsky  Ryutin Affair  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  Vladimir Bukovsky  Andrei Sakharov  Anti-Stalinist left

Remembrances

Stalin Monument in Budapest  Stalin’s Monument (Prague)  Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori  List of places named after Joseph Stalin  Yanks for Stalin  Stalin Prize  Stalin Peace Prize

Family

Besarion Jughashvili (father)  Ketevan Geladze (mother)  Ekaterina Svanidze (first wife)  Yakov Dzhugashvili (son)  Konstantin Kuzakov (son)  Nadezhda Alliluyeva (second wife)  Vasily Dzhugashvili (son)  Svetlana Alliluyeva (daughter)

Category

Categories: Buildings and structures in Budapest | Demolished buildings and structures | Monuments and memorials in Hungary | Hungary Soviet Union relations | Colossal statues | Joseph Stalin | 1951 worksHidden categories: Hungary articles missing geocoordinate data | All articles needing coordinates