The afterlife of communist statuary: Hungary's Szoborpark and Lithuania's Grutas Park

Forum for Modern Language Studies

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 185-198

  Williams, Paul ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Communist statuary; Grutas Park; Liminal space; Memory; Post communism; Public art; Statue parks; Szoborpark; Tourism

Indexed keywords

EID: 42549092793     PISSN: 00158518     EISSN: 14716860     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fmls/cqn003     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. C. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, MA, 1994), p. 321.
2. N. C. Johnson, "Mapping Monuments: The Shaping of Public Space and Cultural Identities", Visual Communication 1:3 (2002), 293-8 (p. 293).
3. See B. James, Visual Narratives of Hungary's 1956 Revolution (College Station, 2005), pp. 29-30.
4. R. Akos, "Szoborpark F.A.Q.", Szoborpark, Hungary. Available at . Accessed 12 March 2007.
5. D. Light, "Gazing on Communism: Heritage Tourism and Post-Communist Identities in Germany, Hungary and Rumania", Tourism Geographies 2:2 (2000), 157-76 (p. 168).
6. A. Bridge, "A Fun Day Out with Uncle Joe", Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2005. Available at . Accessed 16 January 2008.
7. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1993).
8. R. Fowkes, "The Role of Monumental Sculpture in the Construction of Socialist Space in Stalinist Hungary", in: Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, ed. D. Crowley & S. E. Reid (Oxford, 2002), pp. 65-85 (p. 65).
9. E. Palonen, "Postcommunist Histories in Budapest: The Cult of Great Men in Spring 2002", Contours of Legitimacy in Central Europe: New Approaches in Graduate Studies, 24-25 May 2002, European Studies Centre, St. Anthony's College, Oxford. Available at . Accessed 2 November 2007.
10. E. Aleksandravicius, "Post-Communist Transition: The Case of Two Lithuanian Capital Cities", International Review of Sociology 16:2 (2006), 347-60 (p. 357).
11. E. Palonen, "Creating Communities: The Postcommunist City-Text of Budapest", Transit Online (2006), fn 21. Available at . Accessed 3 January 2007.
12. E. Kovacs, "The Cynical and the Ironical - Remembering Communism in Hungary", Regio - Minorities, Politics, Society 1 (2003), 155-69 (p. 159).
13. See G. Ashworth & R. Hartmann (eds.), Horror and Human Tragedy Revisited: The Management of Sites of Atrocity for Tourism (New York, 2005).
14. Kovacs, "The Cynical and the Ironical", p. 159.
15. J. O'Connor & D. Wynne (eds.), From the Margin to the Centre: Cultural Production and Consumption in the Post-Industrial City (Aldershot, 1996).
16. In July 2006 the GDR Museum, Berlin opened. Aiming to capture the feel of everyday life during the communist era, it chiefly exhibits popular culture productions, newspaper reports, and everyday, locally manufactured, consumer items from the period. One gallery details with wry affection the Trabant, the small car that sums up the pleasures of East German consumerism. Another recreates a typical, standard-issue, living room from an East German apartment which showcases a slightly spare mimicry of Western pleasures.
17. See J. Ekman & J. Linde, "Communist Nostalgia and the Consolidation of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe", Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 21:3 (2005), 354-74.
18. Quoted in B. James, "Fencing in the Past: Budapest's Szoborpark Museum", Media, Culture & Society 21 (1999), 291-311 (p. 296).
19. For instance, in January 2007 the Estonian parliament passed the "Law on Forbidden Structures", which allows for the removal of all the nation's statues of Soviet soldiers. Action has focused on the removal of a bronze statue from the centre of Tallinn to a cemetery which is argued to be a less controversial location. The question of whether Estonia was "liberated" by the Soviets, or whether they were an occupying power, is one that has caused great contention between Estonian nationalists and ethnic Russians. See "Estonia to Remove Soviet memorial", BBC News [Europe], 12 January 2007. Available at . Accessed 12 January 2007.
20. See J. E. Young's discussion of the "countermonument" in The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: 1993), pp. 27-48.
21. G. Lankauskas, "Sensuous Re)collections: The Sight and Taste of Socialism at Grutas Szoborpark, Lithuania", Senses & Society 1:1 (2006), 27-52 (p. 33).
22. Ibid., p. 44.
23. J. R. Foley, "A Visit to Szoborpark", Flashpoint 8 (Spring 2006). Available at . Accessed 11 December 2006.
24. Cited in L. Dapkus, "Stalin's World Elicits a lot of Cheers, Jeers", Desert News (Salt Lake City), 7 May 2006, p. A2.
25. Ibid.
26. S. Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Durham & London, 1998), p. 73.
27. Lankauskas, "Sensuous (Re)collections", p. 32.
28. "Fencing in the Past", p. 303.
29. M. Dapin, "On your Marx, Get Set... Gone!", Sydney Morning Herald 26 November 2004. Available at . Accessed 16 January 2008.
30. A.-M. Losonczy "Le Patrimoine de l'oubli: Le 'Parc-Musée des Statues' de Budapest", Ethnologie française 3 (1999), 445-52.
31. Lankauskas, "Sensuous (Re)collections", p. 38.
32. Guy Debord defined psycho-geography as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals". See G. Debord, "Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and Action", Situationist International Anthology, trans. & ed. K. Knabb (Berkeley, 1981), p. 23.
33. R. Watson, "Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism: An Introduction", in: Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism, ed. R. Watson (Santa Fe, 1994), p. 6.
34. However, it is worth noting that these parks do not exist in isolation. Vilnius' Museum of Genocide Victims, situated in the former KGB building, and the Terrorhaza (Terror House) Museum in Budapest, housed in the former headquarters of the State Security Police, both draw explicit attention to political crimes carried out during the communist period.
35. G. Nodia, "How Different are Postcommunist Transitions?", Journal of Democracy 7:4 (1996), 15-29 (p. 26).
36. K. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York, 1999), p. 5.
37. If Szoborpark and Grutas Park reflect a wry eulogy to state socialism, a very different strategy informs the recent dedication, on 12 June 2007, of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism on the Mall in Washington D.C. (the geographic centre of American monumental pageantry). In 1993 the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was given approval by an Act of Congress to build a memorial to commemorate the more than 100 million victims of communism. The memorial will feature a paved plaza of approximately 900 square feet with a 10-foot-high figural sculpture atop a simple stone pedestal 3′ 6″ high. The sculpture is a bronze female figure based on the "Goddess of Democracy" statue erected in 1989 by the pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square.