Prakfalvi Endre: Architecture of Dictatorship. The Architecture of Budapest between 1945 and 1959 - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
that with the (re)construction of a new Budapest, the capital of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the creation of a capital of a nation on its way to Socialism could now commence. The Politburo stated its requirements in a November 1951 directive. Specified in the document was the main objective of the developmental plan to be prepared within a year. It decreed that in the plan the historical city structure be kept through the preservation of the existing rings and radii focusing on Sztálin tér, that progressive traditions be given pre-eminence, and that the creation of a Socialist capital be advanced. Earmarked for the programme, planned to be completed in twelve years, was a sum of 23 thousand million forints: nine thousand million was set aside for the public transport system, six for housing development, three and a half for public roads, two and a half for green areas, and another two for public utilities. The powers defining their rule as historically unprecedented approached the capital (and indeed the whole country) by attempting to shape the city's structure along with the entire life-style of its population in their own image, to transform Budapest into a proletarian city, a city of labourers, the centre of a Hungary in the process of building Socialism. Realising the symbolic power inherent in the city, the aim of the regime’s ideology was to have Budapest fulfil its role in the system’s self-definition - to serve its historical legitimation. The planning process culminated in 1953, with an architects’ conference addressing itself to issues of city development. Gábor Freisich (a city planner and member of the Architectural Council at the time) summed up the tasks lying ahead as follows: “It must be stipulated that the plan properly express the power of Socialism, the enthusiasm and optimism firing the construction work, while asserting the patriotic charge of Socialism, too.” It can be established that what came out of designers’ studios were more like architectural fantasies than rational or feasible ideas. One of the plans submitted, for example, would lay the greatest “emphasis on the festive character of building Socialism. For that reason it proposes to give a ceremonial look to the Danube embankments by using the river itself as an architectonic axis flanked by ornamental gates, sculptures and emphatic parliament buildings. It designates a new decorative boulevard along the extension of Madách út to be punctuated by a new Lenin statue as a 32
