Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

The endless promenade dedicated to persons in the labour movement

retained his name even after the change of political system. However, of the sixteen streets and squares bearing his name only one Ságvári utca survives. Ság- vári’s portrait was transferred from the courtyard of the City Council of Budapest to the Statue Park. Inscribed on the pedestal was the following: A ftearlea warrior and leader oft the youth movement, he died a hero’d death in ftight- ing the Faiciit ftiend. With hid lifte and teaching he &et an example to the young oft Hungary. A modest memorial column had earlier been erected in memory of Ságvári, a former municipal clerk, which was replaced with a more prestigious bust in 1949, whose variants were later set up in three more locations. A 1959 version stood in the garden of the confectioner’s on Budakeszi út where Ságvári was fatally wounded in a gun fight with the police in 1944. That item was not left in its original place either; after dismantling, it was relocated to the courtyard of the Party's District II headquarters.

23- Statue of Árpád Szakasits (László Marton, 1988)

Árpád Szakasits was a long-standing veteran of the social-democratic movement. In 1948 he played a major part in the cooptation of the social-democrats by the communist party. In the fifties he was imprisoned, but after 1956 he was made chairman of the journalists’ association and the National Peace Council. The statue is a decently turned-out routine job, whose only claim to fame is that it was the last monument to be erected in honour of a politician in the Kádár era. It was erected on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Szakasits, at in Szakasits Árpád (today Etele) út, but survived there for only a few years. It was removed in September 1992.

24 . The Béla Kun Monument (Imre Varga, 1986)

In 1981, the Central Agitation and Propaganda Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party resolved that a monument be erected to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Béla Kun, the leader of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Budapest City Council was entrusted with the task. Of several locations and designs put forward, it was decided that Imre Varga should be commissioned to create the monument, which was to be set up on Vérmező, where Kun had addressed the workers' regiments before they were dispatched to the front in 1919. What made the sculptor’s task particularly challenging was the fact that he was expected to design a monument for a deeply controversial figure of Hungary's history, one whose merits as a political leader were overshadowed by his responsibility for the

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