Past Unmastered: Hot and Cold Memory in Hungary

摘要

After the political transition of 1989-1991, what to do with the public monuments made in the spirit of Socialism became an important issue in post-Socialist countries. Destroying 'art' seemed a barbarous response to the problem. One solution was to take them away to statue parks, as occurred, for example, in Hungary and Lithuania. The Hungarian Statue Park represents an intellectualising attitude to the sculptures put into a newly created context, which deprives the statues of their threatening effects and leaves them as no more than the mementos of a former era. The philosophy of the park is to create a distance from the up-to-date political environment, that is, from party political issues. In contrast to this use of art, the Budapest House of Terror evokes hate and stirs up emotions. What the House of Terror does is try to keep this outrage and hate hot, while the Statue Park lets it remain cold. But in each, the Socialist past remains unmastered. Neither of them triggers active memory work and helps to master the past in Hungary.