Background
The Stalin monument was built during the classical period of Socialist Realism, the official art of Stalinism, which was a tool to instill the ideology of the Party into the people. This realistic and didactic aesthetic style celebrated the hard working proletariat and especially the cult of personality surrounding figures like Vladimir Lenin, Stalin and other Eastern European Communist leaders.
Stalin statues sprung up everywhere in Eastern Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were cult objects that demonstrated the almost mystical powers of Stalin. Upon the completion of the Stalin statue, a journalist in Budapest said:
"Stalin was with us earlier; now he will be with us even more. He will watch over our work, and his smile will show us the way. I have been told that in Moscow it is customary to pay a visit to Comrade Lenin in Red Square before beginning, or after finishing, an important task, either to report or to ask his advice. Undoubtedly the same will occur here with the statue of Comrade Stalin."
The monument not only demonstrated Stalin’s power, but the power of the Hungarian Working People's Party as well. Directly across from Stalin’s monument was MÉMOSZ, the house of the builder’s union, condemned for its modernist architecture influenced by the West.
After the death of Stalin in 1953 Socialist Realism went into decline, in connection with the political changes, initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when he denounced Stalin's cult of personality.
Read more about this topic: Stalin Monument (Budapest)
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