Relics of a Bygone Age? Memento Park, Budapest, Hungary

We’ve been much exercised in the UK (or, we were a few years ago) about the morality of statues celebrating figures whose achievements, when viewed through modern eyes, are somewhat dubious. Of course, morality is never set in stone, which makes the very notion of statues a bit dodgy, given that the values they represent will probably at some point cease to be regarded in a positive light. Equally, they are useful indicators of past principles and a means of seeing how they change over time. They are subjective focal points, as physical artefacts often are, not only for awe and veneration, but also for anger and destruction. The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol in 2020 in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests is a recent and well-documented example of the latter purpose. In 2003 in Baghdad, the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime was marked by the destruction of a 12-metre-high statue of the Iraqi dictator. And so on. In 1956, during Hungary’s October Revolution against Soviet control, an 8-metre-tall statue of Stalin was torn down having only been erected five years earlier, apparently as a 70^th birthday present from the oh-so-grateful Hungarian people to the great man. Although the revolution was crushed within days, the Stalin monument was never resurrected. Of course, the Soviets were trying to de-Stalinise everything after Uncle Joe’s death in 1953, so it’s easy to see why they weren’t too bothered about losing a vast bronze version of him in a satellite nation.

Statues obviously confirm an individual’s eminent status and can, sometimes simultaneously, embody ideological principles. It’s a simple, solid way of conveying a message about what and who is supposed to matter and be taken notice of. Great propaganda, then. However, once a regime or belief system collapses, the survival in situ of physical representations of its leaders, adherents, and cultural symbolism becomes not only inappropriate, but sometimes excruciating to look upon.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Hungary ceased to be a communist country, but it had an awful lot of communist-era statuary and public art standing around, over which hung the awkward question, What To Do With It? Whilst some people understandably and inevitably wanted to destroy these relics of a discredited regime, the Municipality of Budapest decided to put them in a specially designed theme park. I think it’s a splendid idea, partly from the perspective of preserving history for educational purposes, but also because turning these steely manifestations of fanatical triumphalism almost into fairground curiosities shrewdly subverts the message they were originally intended to propagate. I rather like the fact that the authorities chose to situate Memento Park (which opened in 1993) about 20 minutes’ drive from Budapest’s city centre, as it neatly encapsulates a ‘putting aside’ of communism, away from the centre of things, away from the ‘now’.

It was on my last day in Budapest that I decided to visit Memento Park. I could have used public transport to get there, but it looked a bit complicated and drawn out, so I took a taxi. It was worth it, since on the return journey I had a rather interesting political conversation with the driver. Always good to hear the views of people in other countries that we seldom get to hear in our own.

On arrival, I was greeted by the appropriately harsh and angular granite faces of the Brothers Grim – Marx and Engels. I wonder if either of them ever had the slightest notion of the horrors their political fairytales (which admittedly sound brilliant in theory) would unleash when met with the inconvenient reality of human nature? On the other side of the entrance was Lenin, who so effectively put Marxist theory into practice, liberating the masses from oppression, so that they could spend decades enduring even worse oppression.

Including representations of real-life political figures alongside ideological allegories, the park is filled with the idealised and stylised iconography of socialist realism. Solid and unyielding, the physical presence of these massive public artworks was conceived to seem as rigidly incontestable as the values they represent. Dubious notions of ‘liberation’ are celebrated via triumphant, allegorised depictions of rather muscular and heroic-looking workers and soldiers, frozen in stirring attitudes of exultation, fists pumping, flags waving, rushing forth into…what? Architect Ákos Eleőd ensured that the park’s design, including walls with nothing behind them and a road leading to nowhere symbolised the fruitlessness of the regime and its ultimate demise.

The replica of Stalin’s boots on their recreated pedestal (all that remained of the aforementioned giant likeness of the great dictator after it was sawn off at the knees), has an element of bathos about it: on the one hand, one thinks of the downtrodden and oppressed who suffered under his regime; on the other, without the rest of him, the boots seem somehow preposterous. It’s certainly an effective image.

Memento Park additionally includes an exhibition documenting events of the 1956 revolution and the fall of communism in 1989-90. There’s also a bust and photos of Lenin as a child. Which goes to prove that even the fanatically ruthless can start life looking lovable. In a small cinema, a montage of films made by Hungary’s Ministry of Interior Affairs between 1958-88 is shown on a loop. Basically, these are secret agent training videos, demonstrating how to effectively snoop, how to use bugs and hidden cameras, how to search a property undetected, and how to network (not quite the same as corporate networking these days…). Everything is done in an oddly matter-of-fact fashion, belying the oppressive control over people’s lives it represents. It’s a grimly fascinating historical insight into a sinister and potentially lethal world of intrigue.

Oh, and for another classic symbol of the Eastern Bloc, though one perhaps regarded with slightly more affection, there’s a Trabant parked within the entrance area of the park, which you can get into and pose with for photos, should you wish to do so.

Perhaps all countries should create their own Memento Parks, areas appropriate for solemn contemplation and contempt in equal measure. We each have our own opinions about the past. But, as Mr Shakespeare pointed out, ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. Before we get all morally superior, we might wonder which esteemed figures and values from our own age and society might one day end up scorned and rejected, their physical relics relegated, like their attitudes, to a peripheral place, subject to the gawps of day-trippers and the shaking of heads.

Website: Mementopark