Prakfalvi Endre: Architecture of Dictatorship. The Architecture of Budapest between 1945 and 1959 - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

task in the Szabad Nép article cited above: “What kind of architecture does our society want? It is such an architecture that is intelligible for its contemporaries, which commemorates the revolutionary character of the present generation, which glorifies its age, which fills the people with cheer and happiness and leads it towards new victories!” A turn-around is called for in the country’s architecture. The negative examples that must be avoided are the high- rise in Lehel tér, the medical centre at No. 12 Fehérvári út, the bus station in Sztálin (today’s Erzsébet) tér and the Kőbánya Polyclinic.

An essential role in the process of creating Socialist Realism was played by the proclamation of Hungary’s communist architects announced on 30 November 1949, in which it was declared that “the imperialist onslaught fought under the colours of architectural formalism and cosmopolitanism must be opposed without mercy or delay in the interests of creating a socialist, realist architecture in Hungary”. Well-known were the teachings of the Soviet ideologue Zhdanov who said that there was one thing shared by all formalists whatever disguise they donned - their enmity to the people. The decree was published in the same issue of the new journal Építés-Építészet (Construction-Architecture) which carried a salutation addressed, with the deepest fondness, to a seventy- year old Stalin. (It was about this time that publication of Tér és Forma and Új Építészet was discontinued.)

In the summer of 1951, in the interval between the debate and the first congress of architects, Építés-Építészet was still obliged to reiterate, in an editorial, its call for a turn-around in architecture. Summing up the characteristics of the past six years the article concludes that the recent period continued in the traditions of the pre-war era. The style of the constructivist, functionalist works failed to reflect the deepening of the class struggle or express the transformation of a society progressing towards socialism. What is more, they did not even satisfy the criterion of true functionality. It is an irony of the story that even as the article appeared, the newly completed Kispest Polyclinic (122 Ady Endre út, designed by Lajos Hidasi), was enthused about (“beautiful!”) in the chief party organ Szabad Nép, although the building was one of the last specimens of modern architecture in the period before Socialist Realism came to dominate construction work in Budapest.

When launched in 1952, Magyar Építőművészet set it24