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

The endless promenade dedicated to the ideas and events of the labour movement

■ Róbert Berény 'i poster oh 1919

hammered out the alliance of progressive masses as early as the period 1936-39." The raised arm ending in a clenched fist is a well-used motif of the period’s monument genre. This, and the rhythmic repetition of the figures simplified into hardly more than puppets, were no innovations within Makrisz's oeuvre, as his most significant work, the Mauthausen Monument, was also based on the same composition. However, the execution of this piece is less successful, creating as it does a work comic rather than expressive in its effect. No wonder that the piece has come to be nicknamed skittle-players. In 1993, its place was occupied by a monument in memory of the Hungarians who had perished in Soviet labour camps.

33- Monument of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (István Kiss, 1969)

The erection of a monument to commemorate the first workers' state in Hungary, the Council Republic of 1919, was placed on the agenda before the revolution of 1956. Following a big competition, the commission was awarded to István Kiss. Construction work dragged on until as late as 1969, when the monument was finally inaugurated on the 50th anniversary of the Council Republic. The aim was to be a counterpart of the Lenin statue in Felvonulási tér, thus serving as a constant feature of the background to mass demonstrations held in the square. Lenin contemplated, as it were, the symbol of the world's second proletarian revolution. The eight-metre tall bronze figure stood upon a spirally rising pedestal. Its size, as that of the Lenin statue, was adjusted to the proportions of a new National Theatre meant to stand in the place of the tribune and designed by Miklós Hofer, an architect who also cooperated on designing the monument. The Regnum Marianum Church had stood on the site of the monument, the church itself being raised in the 1920s to commemorate the extinction of the Soviet Republic. It was demolished in the Rákosi era to clear space for the parade ground square.

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