Don’t you hate when those unwanted Soviet relics get in the way?

Okay, I promise pretty soon I’ll actually start posting random thoughts and other things as opposed to just pictures.  Blame work and the thesis.

…he’s just kicking it on Margit Island in Budapest these days.

Somehow it’s fitting that the man who wielded the most power in Hungarian history at any one point, (hence the description totalitarian dictatorship), now has his ashes resting anonymously. His name can’t even be written out publicly.

Mátyás Rákosi, also known as the Hungarian Stalin, ruled Hungary with an iron fist from 1949 to 1955, albeit he was already calling the shots from 1947 for all intents and purposes. When he died in 1971, his remains were buried into these unmarked columbaria in a quiet ceremony. Due to the large size of his Soviet urn, (he died in the Soviet Union), his remains had to be placed into two columbaria instead of just one. Even in death he was more equal than others.

Although the columbaria originally bore his name, after a while it was reduced to his initials and the years of his life. Although I’m not sure about this bit, I can only assume that following the attack on János Kádár’s grave last year, the decision was made to remove his name, lest this be attacked again.

Thus, the man who was at one point the most powerful man in Hungary, and perhaps most powerful ever, is now being erased from history. He shouldn’t be, but I can’t exactly feel any sympathy for him.

During the course of my thesis, the Statue Park regularly comes up in academic papers as a positive example of how Hungary dealt with its recent past, and usually juxtaposed with the House of Terror, which academics tend to not be as enthusiastic about. (Perhaps more on that at some later point.) Budapest is I think the only Central European city with anything like the Statue Park, and if not, then it’s certainly the first, which is why it has received a fair share of attention.

Academics will write all sorts of praiseworthy sentences extolling the Statue Park, but there is one thing that becomes noticeable if you look at the names: none of them are Hungarian. Hungarian, or Hungarian-hyphenated academics know one of the big secrets of the park: the locals don’t give a toss about it.

Of the two times I’ve visited the park, it quickly became apparent that the only people speaking Hungarian besides me and my friends was the lady at the ticket office. Everyone else was a tourist from somewhere else. There’s a very simple reason, however for this, which does not take a long amount of research to answer.

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