The Stalin Monument (, ) was a statue of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. Completed in December 1951 as a "gift to Joseph Stalin from the

Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an Ethnicity, ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common Culture of Hungary, culture, Hungarian language, language and History of Hungary, history. They also have a notable presence in former pa ...

on his seventieth birthday", it was torn down on October 23, 1956, by enraged

anti-Soviet Anti-Sovietism or anti-Soviet sentiment are activities that were actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union. Three common uses of the term include the following: * Anti-Sovietism in inter ...

crowds during Hungary's October Revolution.

Monument

The monument was erected on the edge of Városliget, the city park of

. The large monument stood 25 metres tall in total. The bronze statue stood eight metres high on a four-metre high limestone base on top of a tribune eighteen metres 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, Sándor 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

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

, Stalin and other Eastern European Communist leaders. Stalin statues sprang 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: The monument not only demonstrated Stalin's power, but the power of the Hungarian Working People's Party as well. Directly across from Stalin's monument was MÉMOSZ, the house of the builder's 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 by

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...

in 1956 at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when he denounced

Stalin's cult of personality Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent feature of Soviet popular culture. Historian Archie Brown sets the celebration of Stalin's 50th birthday on 21 December 1929 as the starting point for his cult of personality. For the res ...

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 Polish October ( ), also known as the Polish thaw or Gomułka's thaw, also "small stabilization" () was a change in the politics of the Polish People's Republic that occurred in October 1956. Władysław Gomułka was appointed First Secretar ...

. 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!"Åman, Anders. ''Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe During the Stalin Era''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT P, 1992. 195. The revolutionaries chanted "Russia go home!" while pulling down the statue. " W.C." and other insulting remarks were scrawled over the fragmented parts of the statue. The account of the incident by Sándor Kopácsi, head of Budapest's police: " he demonstratorsplaced ... a thick steel rope around the neck of the 25-metre tall Stalin's statue while other people, arriving in trucks with oxygen cylinders and metal cutting blowpipes, were setting to work on the statue's bronze shoes. ... An hour later the statue fell down from its pedestal."

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 representation of the Stalin Monument was built in Budapest's Statue Park with the broken bronze boots on top of the pedestal in 2006. This is not an accurate copy of the original but only an artistic recreation by sculptor Ákos Eleőd.

References

Bibliography

* Åman, 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. * 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.

External links

American Hungarian Foundation's 1956 Site with Photos/Audio/VideoReflection of BBC's Reporting of the Hungarian RevolutionContinuance of Stalin's cult of personality in Georgia
{{Coord, 47.5114, 19.0814, type:landmark_region:HU, display=title Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Buildings and structures in Budapest Demolished buildings and structures in Hungary Monuments and memorials in Budapest Hungary–Soviet Union relations Colossal statues Statues of Joseph Stalin 1951 sculptures Destroyed sculptures Removed statues Sculptures in Hungary History of Budapest Soviet monuments outside Russia