Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 4. (Budapest, 2009)
Recenziók
452 Abstracts evolving Stalinist dictatorship, Captain Gusev and his comrades had by the late 1940s taken their place as real persons in the pantheon of the new system : representation of their tragedy was designed to provide historic legitimacy for the official “Soviet-Hungarian friendship”. This was the propaganda purpose of the unveiling, in a grand ceremony, of a commemorative plaque to Captain Gusev and his comrades on a ministry building in Sas utca in central Budapest on the occasion of the centenary of their “execution” in 1949. At the same time, the same street was renamed in honour of Gusev. The ceremonial unveiling of a commemorative plaque on the wall of one of the most important institutions in the country and the highly symbolic naming of a city centre street represented a decision at the highest level to promote the significance of the Gusev story and honour his character. The fact that Guszev utca lay among streets which already bore the names of real officer-martyrs of 1849 contributed to the historical authentication of the fictional figure. The gradual revelation by historical research between 1950 and 1970 gradually revealed that Captain Gusev and his comrades had never in fact existed seemed to throw doubt on the justification for the street name and commemorative plaque. They stayed in place, however, no doubt for fear of embarrassment, until the political transition in the late 20th century. The case offers a more general lesson in how urban usage of space can be connected with the objectives of political propaganda.
