Thirty years after the collapse of communism in Hungary, we visited the sites of its deleted totalitarian statues.
1Zalaegerszeg 1975-2019 A snugly dressed Lenin statue in the western city of Zalaegerszeg (top). The Soviet founder’s statue was torn down in 1991 and is in a city storage facility. The structure that replaces Lenin shelters a stone carving of the city’s coat of arms. 1975 photo: Fortepan/Krantz Karoly
2Budapest 1977-2019
A cubist statue of communist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (top). In 2019, a monument to pro-reform communist politician Imre Nagy was moved onto the site from its former location behind Hungary’s famous parliament building. Nagy was executed for his role in the 1956 uprising against Soviet domination of Hungary. 1977 photo: Fortepan/Hlatky Katalin-Fokert
3Gyor 1969-2019
A World War II memorial in front of the Gyor city council building featuring a Soviet soldier with his gun thrust aloft in victory (left). The monument was relocated to a city cemetery in 1990 and replaced with an uncontroversial tree. 1969 photo: Fortepan/Uvaterv
4Budapest 1956 - 2019
A Red Army soldier statue being torn from his plinth during the 1956 uprising (top). Most of the other, less politically charged figures of the Liberty Statue atop Budapest’s Gellert Hill remained untouched. Like many of the communist-era statues in this gallery, the soldier now stands in an open-air museum in Budapest. 1956 photo: Fortepan/Nagy Gyula
