Beyond the Iron Curtain: re-imagining a Communist past for the tourist present

Call me crazy but I always had an idea that the Communist past of former Soviet Bloc countries was not entirely a laughing matter. Even in Hungary, where “goulash communism” made it one of the best places to be if you were unlucky enough as to be stuck behind the iron curtain, life was not a walk in the park. So the public historian in me had a field day last summer when I found myself behind said curtain. Turns out it was all a big joke.

Never mind the Museum of Communism in Prague whose cartoony mascot grimaces at you from every corner. I’m talking about a veritable communist Disneyland, the Communist statue park on the outskirts of Budapest (http://www.szoborpark.hu/index.php?Lang=en). The surprising thing was not that the government decided to keep this assortment of monoliths, which mostly depicted either Hungarian communist revolutionary Bela Kun or anonymous heroic youths striving for the glorious future. The surprising thing is how they approached it all. The giftshop is case in point. You could actually buy CDs entitled Best of Communism volumes 1 through 3. They had t-shirts and mugs with various slogans, including a satire of the three tenors (“the three terrors”), socks and pins bearing the hammer and sickle or the Hungarian communist party logo, and various other kitsch designed for the backpacker with a sense of homour. What they didn’t seem to have – at the giftshop or in the park itself – was anything that lent even the remotest sense of context to the statues we were seeing. Stalin was nowhere to be found. Lenin was being restored and was under a tarp. My travelmates and I had a blast there, despite the disappointment at having missed Joe and Vlad. But I have to ask: is this the responsible way to deal with a recent past that was truly devastating to a very large group of people? And it’s not just the statue park. Up on Castle Hill you can buy soviet era gas masks for the equivalent of $400 Cdn and pause for a photo op climbing over the very tanks that rolled through Budapest in 1956. And most Hungarians I met made constant jokes about their years behind the iron curtain.

Hungary is recovering from the economic wreckage of its half century under communist rule and is now welcoming tourists back in droves. Tourists bring money. Tourists want to be entertained. And so Hungary entertains. I still wonder though: is this more important than honestly coming to terms with an unpleasant past? And is it really appropriate to make light of a such a serious and recent piece of history?

I’m not pretending I’m not just as capable of laughing at the Soviets as the rest of you. And for the record I didn’t visit a single other museum while in Hungary, so for all I know there could be thoughtful and balanced exhibits of life under Communist rule all over the place. But the question of how to balance economic revival and very serious issues of national identity is an intriguing one. I don’t have any answers – but I would recommend checking out the park if you ever find yourself in Budapest. Just make sure to leave time for the Turkish baths . . .