Stalin Monument (Budapest)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Stalin Monument in Budapest was completed in December 1951 as a "gift" to Joseph Stalin from the Hungarian People on his seventieth birthday (December 21, 1949). It was torn down on October 23, 1956, by enraged anti-Soviet crowds during Hungary's October Revolution.
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. “W.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’s police: "[The demonstrators] placed [...] 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 copy of the tribune was built in Budapest's 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 Ákos Eleőd.
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
