Abstract
Central and Eastern European countries generally view their socialist heritage as an unwanted, unpleasant burden. The new identity-building processes after the regime change were initially dominated by efforts to rewrite, suppress, or erase the socialist past, while for Western tourists the consumption of key attractions and sites of the built heritage represents a particular form of heritage tourism through which they can experience a slice of an “exotic” past beyond the Iron Curtain. At the national and local levels, there is a vast dissonance between the material heritage of socialism and the identity and aspirations of post-socialist communities, which is even more evident in the case of newly-built, former socialist towns. Through the example of Tiszaújváros and Dunaújváros, my study primarily examines the institutional strategies chosen by these towns to address their socialist heritage. What principles prevailed in the compilation of the local collection of values? What kind of representation of the past do local museums offer, what role does the ethnographic heritage of the annexed villages play in museum presentation and collection, and how are local/regional traditions integrated into the town's image? Finally, through a specific community of memory, a Facebook page, I examine how the recent past appears in individual and collective – often nostalgic – memory, what values the community associates with the town, and how all these relate to the heritagization practices of the local elite.
Introduction
Despite their diversity, heritage typologies mostly share a positive value attached to heritage, which makes heritage elements worthy of attention, conservation, and protection. According to the universal and hegemonic heritage discourse, contemporary heritage making activities are partly aligned with grand national narratives and partly with expert, aesthetic judgements, in which the role of antiquity, authenticity, monumentality, authority, etc. is decisive.1 However, alongside such discourses of heritage, there have been recent efforts to broaden the meaning of heritage, reflecting the fact that heritage is a polyphonic concept that can be fraught with contradictions, problems, inconveniences, and negatives. The terms dissonant heritage, difficult heritage, contested heritage, negative heritage, and dark heritage are yet to be defined precisely, but they are used to describe phenomena inherited from the past and affecting the present, such as environmental pollution, social inequalities, poverty, or even the Jewish heritage in Central and Eastern Europe (Thomas et al. 2020).2
The heritage of socialism, which is mostly seen as an unwanted, unpleasant burden in Central and Eastern European countries, can also be added to this list because of its controversial perception. In the new identity-building processes that followed the regime change of 1989, the previously tabooed crimes of communism and the traumas suffered were brought to the surface simultaneously with an emphasis on anti-communist resistance in an effort to rewrite, suppress, and erase the socialist past. As one of the most obvious and easy-to-implement steps, they removed statues of communist leaders and heroes from public spaces and renamed streets and squares (Caraba 2011:31). As Duncan Light pointed out, however, the less movable elements of the built heritage, such as prefabricated apartment blocks, public buildings, and empty factory halls, remain an integral part of the urban fabric and a memento of the socialist past. While for Western tourists, consumption of the key attractions and sites of this heritage represents a specific form of heritage tourism through which they can experience a slice of the exoticized past beyond the Iron Curtain, there is a huge dissonance at the national and local levels between the opportunities offered by the legacy of socialism and the identities and aspirations of post-socialist communities (Light 2000; Murzyn 2008:335–339). Several strategies have been identified in research on how municipalities have addressed their undesirable socialist past: decommunizing urban spaces, actively forgetting the past, as well as constructing a new European identity as a means of moving on, through a return to the pre-socialist golden age on the one hand,3 and through a process of westernization/internationalization on the other (Young – Kaczmarek 2008:54).4 However, for the planned new towns – which were to serve as experimental sites for the realization of the new socialist society – the above path is not a viable option: these towns, mostly organized around an industry, are homogeneous in their (built) heritage (mono-heritage towns: Balockaite 2012) and visually linked to the era, so their socialist past cannot be bypassed in the process of recreating their identity.
Through the examples of Tiszaújváros (Leninváros between 1971 and 1991)5 and Dunaújváros (Sztálinváros between 1951 and 1961),6 both newly built as part of a greenfield investment – and at times with a view to all former socialist towns7 – I analyze the heritage making practices of local institutions (museumization, heritage list compilation, festivalization). What kind of representation of the past do local museums offer, what role does the ethnographic heritage of the nearby villages annexed to the new towns play in museum presentation and collection, and how are local/regional traditions integrated into the town's image? Based on a joint examination of the so-called local collections of values (értéktár)8 that aggregate the values of former socialist towns, as well as my interviews with committee members of the collections of values in Tiszaújváros and Dunaújváros, I am looking to find out what principles prevailed in the selection of values included in the local collection of values. Moreover, through the study of a specific online community of memory (a Facebook page), I will show how the recent past is represented in individual and collective memory, what values the community associates with the town, and how this relates to the heritagization practices of the local elite. Based on my observations in the field, I will also discuss the role played by festivals held in Dunaújváros and Tiszaújváros in recent years.
The representation of socialism in museums
The local museums and local history collections of the former socialist towns were mainly established in the 1970s and 1980s. In localities with a mining history, the museum's presentation and collection focuses on the history of mining. More interesting in this respect are the localities that were specifically built as new, independent municipalities, even though administratively they also included the old village in whose vicinity they were established. The establishment of the museum in 1951, when the town of Dunaújváros was founded, was necessitated by the discovery of a large number of Bronze Age and ancient artefacts during the construction of the town. The museum was moved to its current location in 1970, to the former party house on the main square, and since 1975 it has borne the name of the locality's ancient predecessor, Intercisa. Although the bulk of the museum's collection still consists of archaeological finds and ethnographic, historical, and lifeways objects and documents from the first half of the 20th century related to the old village of Dunapentele, the collection of material about the “history” of Sztálinváros also started right away, in 1951: newspaper articles and letters about the construction of the town and the ironworks were soon supplemented with objects and memorabilia relating to the construction. From the 1960s onwards, the collection was expanded in preparation for anniversaries, the most important of which was the 25th anniversary of the town's foundation. The permanent exhibition that opened on this occasion in 1976 (The History of Dunaújváros from Prehistoric Times to the Present) has – with some changes – remained open to this day, and thus primarily provides an interpretation of the museum narrative of the past.9 In 1976 almost two-thirds of the 59 display cases featured archaeological finds dating back to the conquest, less than a quarter were about the new town and the construction of the ironworks, while the remainder addressed the history and ethnography of Dunapentele from the Middle Ages to 1949.10 However, this disproportion was hardly reflected in the exhibition space, as the three main units were given almost equal floor space.11
Local history publications and museum exhibitions about the town have from the very beginning treated the earlier settlements as an integral part of municipal history, emphasizing the continuity between Dunapentele and the town's past, as the name of the housing estate built in the 1960s, Roman Quarter, suggests.12 According to the interpretation of Sándor Horváth, this legitimized the existence of the locality as a “town,” which, based on contemporary depictions, was frought with contradictions both in terms of architectural implementation, social environment, and urban lifestyle (Horváth 2017:40). However, it is also worth considering the difficulties of constructing the history of the town's brief recent past. In the early 1950s, there were no appropriate methods for doing contemporary urban research, a task assigned to local museologists—archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers. It is no coincidence that the labor and urban studies, which were emerging at that time in Hungarian ethnography, still sought the village within the town.13 In Dunaújváros, too, the foundations of the ethnographic collection related to the old village were laid from the very beginning, as the museum was organized by a person with a degree in ethnography and museology, and ethnographic specialists continued to work in the museum.14 Although the immediate heritagization – which was based on new values instead of time – was organically linked to the concept of Marxism-Leninism,15 the presentation of contemporary history from a practical point of view – lacking precedent – was far from being unproblematic. In 1955, the local history exhibition was described as follows: “This exhibition is something completely new: before, visitors of our museums only encountered relics from bygone eras. This form of exhibiting the present in a museum was first experimented with in Sztálinváros.16 It is a great and novel mission, which the staff of the museum of Sztálinváros could not have accomplished on their own without the help of the simple and renowned builders and workers of Sztálinváros (…) it was necessary to step outside the narrowly defined museological field and make collecting a social responsibility on a broad scale.”
The material and documents collected at the time – from corporations, design agencies, workers, party secretaries, etc. (mainly models, blueprints, albums, memorabilia of work competitions, commemorative medals, competition flags, products of local factories) – also fundamentally determined the profile of later exhibitions. The 1976 exhibition, which focused mainly on the 1950s, also used these to represent the building process, the organization of local political party life and public administration, the development of education, culture, and sports. It was only in the 1980s that aspects of lifestyle history began to appear more intensively in the museum's collection, and only after the regime change did the exhibition include a room illustrating everyday life in the new town, furnished with the tubular furniture that was widespread in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tiszaújváros – unlike Dunaújváros – has no significant archaeological finds, and instead of a museum, the town still only has a local history collection.17 Since the establishment of the institution in 1976, the presentation of local history has included the immediate surroundings of the town, since the collection was based on ethnographic material (ceramics, peasant farming tools, clothing fabrics, etc.) collected by a local adult educator (népművelő)18 in the old village of Tiszaszederkény, mostly from the first half of the 20th century (Fig. 1). The institution's mission was to collect significant documents related to contemporary events, to conduct research on urban and industrial history, and to explore the life of educational institutions. Local actors in the local history movement also had a role to play in these activities (Kriston Vízi 1979:11–12). At the same time, the town administration and the county museum organization in charge wanted to give the museum a distinct profile: on the one hand, to highlight the development of the chemical industry in Borsod County, in line with national expectations, and on the other hand, to present the history of the development of Leninváros and socialist towns in general, the lives of workers commuting into the town, and the social phenomenon of commute. They also considered it desirable to create a fine art collection. The presentation of the ethnographic material was envisioned in Tiszaszederkény, in a country house and homestead preserving the peasant past of the area in an “open-air museum-like” manner.19 However, the ambitious plans set out in 1978 were largely unrealized, or only with considerable delay, compounded by the institution's repeated relocations and uncertain status.20
Permanent exhibition of the Local History Collection, November 1976. Source: Tiszaújváros Cultural Center and Library Local History Collection photo archive – 2007.2343.1
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
The new exhibition space opened in 1987 as part of the Local History Collection, but the town council had planned a different function for it: a Lenin memorial and exhibition site for the history of the labor movement. As a prelude, a temporary exhibition on Lenin's life and the October Revolution of 1917 was organized, based on loan materials (documents, publications, photographs) and a private collection of Lenin memorabilia (badges, numismatic material, brochures, posters), as the town had no such collections.21 This idea, however, was soon superseded by the regime change, and since then the building has been used primarily as an art exhibition space. In the permanent exhibition, which was inaugurated in 1986 and has been updated several times since, there was an initially important but later increasingly shrinking space for the presentation of the history and traditional folklife of Tiszaszederkény, which in the current exhibition is represented merely by a ‘clean room’22 interior. The ethnographic material has found a new home primarily in the Tiszaszederkény country house museum, which opened in 2010. At the same time, the presentation of the town's everyday life became much more pronounced: in addition to period photographs and documents and relics of the town's past, today there are rooms that represent barrack life, 1960s urban room decor, and the ambiance of May Day parades, while the 1990s are evoked by street nameplates that had been replaced, a mini typewriter/computer exhibition, and a fully furnished living room.23 (Figs 2–3)
The permanent exhibition of the Local History Collection in Tiszaújváros. Photo: Ágota Lídia Ispán, 2022
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
The lack of reflection on the role and function of the local history collection has contributed to the uneven structure of the collection. Ethnographic items related to Tiszaszederkény are overrepresented, while documents, photos, and items connected to the factories and the town's history (e.g., product samples from industrial plants, corporate publications) were included in the collection in an unplanned, ad hoc manner. For example, there is a significant amount of brigade diaries, KISZ (Young Communist League) documents, party membership cards, brochures, various memorabilia (red stars, badges, pioneer whistles), old street nameplates, all collected in preparation for a museum of the labor movement, but the collection was also used by public institutions during the regime change as a kind of storage for things that became redundant. These proportions changed in 2019, when the TVK Archive, kept on the premises of Tiszai Vegyi Kombinát (TVK, Tisza Chemical Works), was unexpectedly transferred to them.
To understand the significance of the material, it is necessary to briefly touch on the role of large corporations24 in local society before the regime change. They had considerable resources at their disposal: health, educational, cultural, and sports facilities, resorts for their own employees, and hotels for foreign professionals and visitors. In addition, they set up a bus service for the transportation of commuters in the area, paid special attention to their interests in the distribution of housing, financially supported the operation of the town council, financed the publication of factory and town newspapers, etc. Many functions were taken over from the town councils, and in the local power structure, along with the party committee, large corporations became a dominant factor (Barta 2010:26). Since the history of the factories and their associated institutions was constantly documented (TVK, for example, employed five photographers), the archive contains a large number of photo albums, photo negatives, film rolls, VHS tapes, tape recordings of business meetings, product samples, period magazines and professional publications, etc. The fate of materials stored in corporate archives built up over many years varies: they may have been transferred to the local archives, or they may have remained where they were, where, in the worst case, they were seriously damaged, or even destroyed (a local company had burned them), due to inadequate storage conditions, and access to them for research purposes has become difficult. There could be several reasons for this: they did not want to spend extra money on maintaining them, they neglected to pay attention to them, or the professional publications have become obsolete. However, it is also worth pointing out that after the regime change, the relationship of privatized, now multinational corporations with the localities changed radically, as expressed in the interviews in both towns: a kind of seclusion and reserved communication became typical for them. With the introduction of market economy and the transformation of ownership relations came the establishment of a new corporate culture that replaced the paternalistic attitude towards the town and its surrounding region and reinforced general social responsibility, which may have changed not only the role of companies in the local community25 but also their relationship to their own past and socialist heritage, which is worthy of further investigation.
Heritage in local collections of values
An essential aspect of “official” heritage is that the object, site, or practice identified as heritage through the various categorization procedures is part of a heritage list, which also determines the method of its handling and preservation (Harrison 2009:8–11; Borbély – Ispán 2019:9). Although the local collections of values do not have this latter function, they are suitable for analyzing institutional strategies, despite the fact that the managers of the collections themselves consider it just one – and not even the most important – channel in heritagization processes.26
The inclusion of national values in the Collection of Hungarikums and Collection of Hungarian Values, established as a result of the Hungarikum Act adopted in 2012, is a multi-stage process. The local collections of values are the first level of the national value pyramid,27 at the top of which are the Hungarikums.28 Today, the Hungarikum movement and the closely related value collection movement are widespread. Having a heritage item on the list at various levels has a prestige value for localities, both as a means of creating and marketing a local image and producing locality (Appadurai 1996). This complexity of functions and the use of the term ‘value’29 also contribute to the fact that the collections include phenomena that cannot be interpreted as heritage, since they are so contemporary that their origins go back only a few years.
While the Hungarikum Committee oversees the selection of values at the higher levels of the pyramid, the methodological manual of national value collection stresses the importance of local initiative at the lower levels: anything the community selects may be included in the local collection of values.30 This is also reflected in the diversity of content of the collections of values and the level of elaboration of the proposals (Vajda 2018:131). Several studies of heritage making practices have pointed out that the reinterpretation, communication, and use of local values – aimed at reinforcing local identity, but also associated with economic/tourist interests – are primarily the work of a narrow circle of local intellectual and political elites and institutions, which partially overlap. With regard to the Hungarikum act, Antal Lovas Kiss also points out that, although the possibility of nomination is open to all, decision-making is the domain of the local elites, whose interests and competence may differ from the expectations of the higher level of the Hungarikum system. At the same time, these professional expectations do not translate into concrete terms: the act fails to provide a precise definition of the basic concepts, whereas its approach to local communities is outdated. The heterogeneity of local society today results in diverse concepts of value, which do not necessarily correspond to a single set of values, officially declared - but in reality much more embodying the characteristics of power in contemporary Hungary – that could function as the basis of a unified Hungarian culture (Lovas Kiss 2014:89–94).
In Tiszaújváros, the Cultural Center and Library performs the tasks related to the collection of values;31 in Dunaújváros, the committee for the collection of values works within the framework of the town council.32 Based on the recommendations of the methodological manual detailing the functioning of the system of collections of values, the proposals are developed with broad public involvement (e.g., through questionnaires, interviews, community discussions), in line with the principle of building from the bottom up (N. N. 2016:29). While in Dunaújváros the proposals for local values submitted to the committee for the collection of values are mostly based on the initiative of local residents and institutions – even if the compilation of the collection of values is not carried out according to the scenario outlined here – the biggest difficulty in Tiszaújváros is the inactivity and disinterest of the population.33 Public suggestions had been received soon after the Board of the Collection of Values was established in 2015, but developing an idea would have required an individual effort on the part of the proposers that they had neither the competence nor the inclination to make, so their role was limited to the suggestion of ideas. In fact, the selection of the value and the drafting of the proposal are the responsibility of the Board of the Collection of Values in Tiszaújváros, and as the members put it, they have been the generators of the process, practically from proposal to adoption. The basis of their work method, as well as the ultimate goal of the work, is the creation of a list: when the committee was set up, they developed a list of possible values, a kind of preliminary list, from which usually two values are transferred each year to the local collection of values, after prior consultation with the mayor and subsequent approval by the council. According to the principles outlined at the outset, historical and aesthetic value is important, and only finished oeuvres may be nominated, while emotional attachment as an aspect should be avoided due to its subjectivity. The principles have been relaxed and enriched with new aspects as a result of the constant need to expand the list,34 the model of other collections of values, and the flexibility of the concept of value itself.
Looking through the collections of values of all former socialist towns, it is clear that cultural heritage and, to a lesser extent, built heritage are dominant elements. The largest portion of cultural heritage35 is primarily made up of the (mostly) finished oeuvres of artists, writers, or prominent figures of local cultural life, and although the importance of technical intellectuals was clear in these localities, surprisingly few of them were included in the collections of values. In Tiszaújváros, however, Andor Huszár was one of the first to make the list: he managed the Tisza Chemical Works (TVK) between 1964 and 1988, which developed into one of the largest corporations in the Hungarian chemical industry by establishing the petrochemical industry and producing advanced plastics and packaging systems. He was also active in the town's political life and had initiated the construction of several urban facilities, such as the leisure center next to the TVK, which includes an outdoor pool and a skating rink. The local recognition of the CEO is indicated by a memorial plaque both on the TVK office building and at his former home, a street having been named after him, and in 2014, his admirers held an Andor Huszár Memorial Day, on the occasion of which a commemorative booklet was published by his former colleagues (N. N. 2014). Nonetheless, even if a person with a successful professional career and outstanding urban development and community-building activities plays a positive role in the local collective memory, his positional power in the socialist system may override all of it in his perception beyond the locality. The role of emotions cannot be overlooked in relation to the socialist era. Emotional involvement – in addition to current political aspects – is still an obstacle to a balanced, consensus-based assessment of the era, and polarized opinions carry too much conflict.
The former socialist towns have always been prime migration destinations, and therefore had a very diverse population from a variety of geographic and social backgrounds. Accordingly, the traditions considered authentic by ethnography – except for some traditional elements of settlements with a mining past or German/Slovak ethnic roots, as well as the guild traditions of Várpalota – are not very typical of these settlements. In the socialist era, traditions were being preserved in dance ensembles and crafts clubs operated within the framework of the amateur art movement, many of which made it onto the lists. As with other groups in this movement (e.g., choirs, orchestras), their value lies in their antiquity – many of them having been created at the time of the town's founding – and can be measured by the number of awards and exhibitions. These include events and festivals with a wide range of themes, organized in localities for several decades.
The second largest group in the collections of values is the category of the built environment.36 Seven of the 10 towns surveyed are mining settlements, the urbanization of most of which had begun by the turn of the 19–20th century, and the integration of the individual earlier settlements and colonies was underway by the mid-20th century. Only Dunaújváros, Tiszaújváros, Százhalombatta, and Oroszlány were established as a greenfield project, and the nearby villages that were administratively annexed to them became known as “Old Town.” Thus, these ten settlements had buildings of diverse origins, some dating back to the Middle Ages or even earlier, and even the newly built towns had at least one village church within their administrative boundaries. This is how the Tiszaszederkény church and parish, built in the late 18th century, became the first national value to be added to the Collection of Values in Tiszaújváros, later supplemented by the churches newly built after the regime change, while the first residential buildings of the settlement, built in the mid-1950s, soon became part of the collection as well. With its distinctive look, the 52-meter Water Tower, inaugurated in 1964, has become a symbol of the town and thus a national value, but the uniqueness of the town lies primarily in its planned character, and not in its architectural and aesthetic values, unlike in Dunaújváros.
In Dunaújváros, the downtown built in the socialist realist style is a compact unit, unique in Europe in its scope, with the most renowned architects of the period having worked on it, and there has long been a professional consensus about its architectural and artistic values (Barka et al. 2007). The Socialist Realist Educational Trail covers the town's most significant architectural monuments and is also part of the Collection of Values in Dunaújváros (Figs 4–5). The idea of the 33-station educational trail was born in 1990,37 but it was only created in 2004 by the municipality, in cooperation with the Tourism Public Benefit Corp. and the Chief Architect's Department of the Mayor's Office.38 The designated buildings were built in three architectural styles (classical modern; socialist realist; new modern) and mostly between 1950 and 1956 (some of them are already listed). As part of the project, informational signs were placed on the walls of the buildings, and a colored map and brochure were also published (Fig. 6).
The stations of the Socialist Realist Educational Trail. Photo: Ágota Lídia Ispán, 2022
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
Guided tour of the Socialist Realist Educational Trail during the Sugárúti Festival. Photo: Ágota Lídia Ispán, 2023
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
Churches and chapels make up 40% of the built monuments listed in the collections of values of former socialist towns; more than half of the buildings (52.3%) were built before the socialist period, and only one fifth (20.5%) can be linked to it. The socialist building stock consists mainly of socialist realist and modern buildings built in the 1950s, but there are settlements where no monuments from this period are registered at all.
Overall, it is clear that the compilation of the collections of values is locally influenced by the guidelines that have been crystallized within the “authorized heritage discourse,” in the mediation of which the Hungarikum movement also plays a role: the Hungarikums at the top of the value pyramid, functioning as representative national values, indirectly reflect back to the lower levels and provide normative guidelines.39 Much more problematic than the attribution of value on the basis of historicity and aesthetics is the heritagization of the recent socialist past, which can hardly meet the requirements of state-controlled heritage lists embedded in a national framework (cf. Jakab – Vajda 2018:16).
However, these towns would have a better chance of entering the international scene of heritagization, as some of the experiments in Dunaújváros show. For a while, Dunaújváros was also involved – through the architectural research group of Széchenyi István University – in the international EU project ATRIUM (Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes of the XXth Century in Europe's Urban Memory), organized by Italian experts, which was concerned with the exploration, analysis, and economic and touristic utilization of the architectural monuments of 20th-century totalitarian regimes, and resulted in the creation of an architectural-touristic cultural route, included in the European Cultural Routes certified by the Council of Europe (Koppány 2014).40 In 2017, the Braşov Museum of History approached the city museum with a plan for an international project called I was a citizen of Stalin's Town, which was eventually implemented in collaboration with the University of Dunaújváros. The project, funded by the European Commission and with the participation of Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and Poland, aimed to present the Stalinist totalitarian regime, primarily through the personal experiences and everyday stories of citizens who suffered through and survived the persecutions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the era and an appreciation of contemporary EU values among younger generations. The so-called documentation campaign (collection of photos, documents, objects, interviews) enriched the material of the participating museums, which was then presented through exhibitions and joint workshops and published on social media sites and websites.41 It is questionable, however, to what extent the image built around the notion of dictatorship – which is beneficial from a touristic and educational point of view and attracts funding – can be considered compatible with the desired self-image of the municipality. As the chief architect of Dunaújváros pointed out in an interview, it is not its former socialist identity that gives the town its unique image, but its planned and industrial character, which were the result of various aspects of the Rákosi era in the first half of the 1950s.42
The local community perspective: the role of nostalgia in heritagization
In the third section of my study, I examine a specific community of memory, a Facebook page, to find out how and with what prominence the recent past is reflected in collective memory, and what alternative value system emerges through it in comparison to the heritagization practices of the local elite. With more than 5,000 followers, the target audience of the site – in existence since 2011 – is people who lived in the former Leninváros (now Tiszaújváros) at one point in their lives and whose identity is still defined by a connection to the locality.43 However, their identification with the community is purely symbolic, marked for them by the name I am from Leninváros.44 The site's members come from a wide range of age groups, from current residents to those natives who have moved away from the locality, as well as those who have spent only a certain period of their lives there. Basically, the administrator posts photos on the page with a short description, with interactions coming in the form of likes and comments that reflect on each other. The comments below the pictures are mostly nostalgic reminiscences: they identify places and people, recall feelings, stories, and once familiar actions.45
The analysis covers the photos that have generated the most positive reactions. Of the 834 photos uploaded, 238 received over 100 likes.46 A significant proportion (about a quarter) of these are linked to emblematic retro objects of the socialist regime (from soaps to children's toys to cars) that are recognized throughout the country and serve as a common reference point for generations of people who lived through the era. There are also a few identity shaping objects that serve as symbols of the town or are local/regional specialties: in addition to memorabilia for representational purposes, related to large corporations, there are, for example, the promotional bags produced by TVK. It was common practice to take plastic products (bags, films) out of the factory and use them in the household; many people still have such bags in original condition. Their iconic nature is illustrated by the fact that the prize for the competitions the Facebook page ran was five retro TVK bags. The majority of the 238 most liked photos depict the town's various squares, streets, public facilities, and residential buildings.
With regard to Tiszaújváros's key facilities and sites, the community page shows new elements and a shifting emphasis as compared to the collection of values. The images that generated the most interaction (in terms of likes and comments) were related to public pools, parks, and playgrounds, as well as shops and restaurants. Besides portraying an idyllic, happy, carefree life that everyone remembers fondly, it is important to emphasize the role that these places played in the newly built towns. Following Ebenezer Howard's garden city concept,47 the planners envisioned the socialist city as a city of gardens and parks. Integrating nature into the urban fabric was an important element of the zoning plans, with an entire system of green zones created in residential areas. The idea was that they would facilitate the population's recovery from ill health, enhance the aesthetic experience of the town, and be of great importance for social interaction because of the cramped and uncomfortable living quarters. The cultural and sporting events organized here provided a framework for spending leisure time in an ideologically useful way. The average age of the population of Tiszaújváros was very low during the socialist period, and it was often called the town of children and young people, as were other socialist towns. Over time, the large number of children led to the construction of playgrounds next to almost every apartment block (in 1979 there were forty-two) (Ispán 2022; Bakay 2013, especially 32–35).
An excellent example of a park that also serves educational purposes is the traffic park, which was created in 1979 next to a kindergarten and with considerable social effort. On the miniature road network with zebra crossings and traffic signs, children learned the rules of urban traffic. In the spring of 2021, the Tiszaújváros administration informed the public that negotiations were underway with fast food chain McDonald's about opening a new unit, and that the area of the traffic park was being seriously considered as a possible location. This plan sparked a major protest: in the spring of 2022, a Facebook profile with 3,200 followers (Kresz Park Tiszaújváros) was created for the protection of the park, a petition was signed by 651 people, and nearly two hundred people had commented on the plan.48 Besides the negative health implications of the fast food restaurant, the environmental significance of the wooded area, and the negative traffic aspects, many of the protesters also emphasized the usefulness of the park, which has helped generations of children learn the rules of the road, and suggested its renovation rather than its abolition. They argued that it is an important part of the town's history, an iconic site with a lot of memories attached to it.49 As one signatory put it: “The parks of Tiszaújváros are the greatest!” Some residents have sent an open letter to the town council asking for similar parks in the town to be protected, and there have also been suggestions for the traffic park to be included in the local collection of values.50
Individual corporations have also set up their own leisure parks. The pool was built first next to the Tisza Power Plant in 1965, and in the early 1980s, TVK started construction on its grand leisure park, which also contributed to the town becoming a tourist destination. The first element of the multi-phase investment was the inauguration of the ice skating rink in 1981 – cooled with the evaporated ammonia used in fertilizer production – and then the pool in 1984. Besides the slides, the complex's uniqueness was the ice skating rink, open in winter and summer, where people could skate in a bathing suit in the summer, and which was mentioned in several posts on the Facebook page.51 (Figs 7–8) Both the Power Plant and TVK pools were closed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the new owners did not consider it economically viable to operate them. Over the years, the Facebook page has repeatedly published photos of the pools that have been closed and abandoned, which, as well as evoking memories of the past, have also provided an opportunity to express sadness, despair, helplessness, often anger and indignation at the devastation.52 (Figs 9 and 10) Like the pool closures, the photo of the thermal power plant shared during its closure in 2012, or the photo of TVK's headquarters posted in 2015 to mark the removal of the TVK sign from the office building, triggered strong reactions. In contrast to the positive memory of the former CEO, Andor Huszár, the new owners (sometimes along with the current town administration) appear in the local public discourse in a negative context, as ones who do not sufficiently appreciate the past of the former companies and do not treat well the heritage that was passed down to them.53
The TVK Leisure Center. Source: Tiszaújváros Cultural Center and Library Local History Collection photo archive, core collection
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
The pool of the Power Plant. Photo: István Bartók, 1995. Source: Tiszaújváros Cultural Center and Library Local History Collection photo archive – 2011.19.1
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
The closed pool of the Tisza Power Plant, 2015. Source: https://www.facebook.com/leninvarosivagyok.hu/photos/a.767667199963877/865181200212476/
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
To understand the significance of the nostalgic recollections of the Facebook page in the process of heritagization, it is worth briefly exploring the concept of nostalgia. Nostalgia is an emotional process of remembering: a longing for the distant past, a longing to return to the irretrievable past, but also a feeling, mood, and remembrance that evokes a sense of home (Pintér 2014:85–92).54 The constitutive role of nostalgia in the process of heritagization has been observed since the early development of heritage studies in the 1980s, and it has also played a key role in the British “heritage industry” debate.55 The literature on nostalgia today focuses mostly on Central and Eastern Europe,56 and the concept itself has become central to the analysis of post-socialist societies' relationship to the recent past (Angé – Berliner 2015).57
Nostalgia for the socialist past, the popularity of consumer goods, films, and songs of the period is interpreted by research as an objectification of longing for the “good old” socialist times, which helps to distance oneself from the present and return to a familiar past in the midst of the difficulties of political, social, and economic transformation (Launkauskas 2015:38). Other researchers, however, point out that nostalgia, instead of wanting to resurrect the socialist past, contributes to breaking away from the previous regime by first turning the symbols and relics of party-state culture into historical kitsch, and then commodifying and giving new meaning to the everyday objects of socialism. The authenticity and sentimental value once attributed to Western lifestyles and goods has been transferred to articles of socialist mass production once considered to be of inferior quality, and to the lifestyle of the period (Nadkarni – Shevchenko 2015:66–69; Nadkarni 2019:227–230).
Nostalgia as an emotion, a memory discourse, or a cultural practice (Stewart 1988:227) is a determining factor in various identity constructions – social, ethnic, or national – and a means of cultural identification. Moreover, like heritage, nostalgia is “a distinctive attitude towards the past inherent to contemporary culture” (Angé – Berliner 2015:2–5), and like heritage, it is the end result of a selection process: in one, the intention to preserve value, in the other, emotional attachment is the basis of salience (Smith – Campbell 2017:4). For a long time, heritage studies and heritage management practices have not sufficiently addressed the phenomenon of nostalgia and the role of emotions in general in heritage making, due to the political stigma attached to the concept, as Smith and Campbell point out. But it is well worth paying attention to, because as they note: “While practices of heritage making can be enacted using other emotional registers beyond nostalgia, nostalgia, nonetheless, is logically a key foundational and activating emotion of heritage making” (Smith – Campbell 2017:4). There is also a growing consensus that nostalgia should not be seen as a purely reactionary, retrospective feeling; it can also be a catalyst for progressive action, helping a community to remember its past with pride and mobilize resources to preserve values and ways of life threatened by economic and cultural change, both for the present and the future (Berger 2020:2). It is also worth pointing out that in individual and collective memory, instead of historical value and aesthetic quality, social practices related to buildings and spaces are evoked, ways of using the city that coincide with the former design intentions and ideas of socialist urban planning. In recent years, there have been initiatives in Dunaújváros and Tiszaújváros that have attempted a performative recall of these past practices.
The Sugárúti Festival was held for the first time in Dunaújváros in 2022: They wanted to revive the “forgotten values of Dunaújváros and Vasmű Road.” The festival was organized in the framework of the Interreg project targeting municipalities in the peripheral and border regions along the Danube. The project aims to build regional and local resilience through the valorization of cultural heritage, to promote the development of tourism in the municipalities, and to strengthen cooperation between the Danube communities. The program builds on the strong involvement of local actors, providing action plans and concrete measures.58 The event, which attracted nearly 2,000 people, was organized by the Budapest-based Contemporary Architecture Centre, with the cooperation of local cultural organizations. The festival aimed to bring back the atmosphere of the former promenades to the now deserted avenue, in response to local demand reflected in several forums.59 Programs included retro street toys, a socialist realism themed guided tour of the town, a period streetscape with a vintage car, a “dress-up” stroll with live music evoking the experience of promenading, a display of historic photos, a farmer's market, and the revitalization of abandoned spaces with the help of artists.60 Relatively few people turned up during the day at the program venues on the closed-off Vasmű Road, which may have been due to the sweltering summer heat, and although the evening's “musical and costumed stroll” attracted a larger crowd, the boulevard planned for huge parades hardly filled up.61 (Figs 11–14)
The inaugural Sugárúti Festival. Photo: Ágota Lídia Ispán, 2022
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
The festival was held for the second time at the end of May 2023. The program seems to have been successful in its objective: the local community has taken ownership of the initiative, and the pool of organizers has narrowed to local actors. The involvement of the townspeople and various institutions, NGOs, and companies – whose program ideas, cooperation in organizing, and performances the organizers counted on – continued to be a major focus. In this spirit, the festival has made the activation of local communities and social life an equal goal to the evocation of the past. The main event of the festival was clearly the costumed parade, which was moved to the morning, now deliberately harking back to the former socialist May Day parades, as the organizers expected the participation of local companies, factories, businesses, and professional organizations, just as in the past.62 There were no thematic or temporal restrictions on the costumes: while in the first year participants were encouraged to dress in period costumes of the fifties and sixties or even in contemporary elegant outfits, in the second year they could come dressed in anything, even a futuristic attire, to the parade billed as the first contemporary carnival of Dunaújváros.63
The parade, which started at 10:30 in the morning, was made up of diverse communities: on the leading Csepel truck was the brass band of the local music school, followed by approx. a hundred kindergartners and their escorts, followed by athletes in uniform (gymnasts and hockey players), representatives of various NGOs (foundation supporting people with disabilities, association promoting babywearing) and local institutions (Institute of Contemporary Art, art schools, postal workers), and finally the individual marchers. The short procession on Vasmű Road was watched, photographed, and filmed by many onlookers and media workers. The accompanying programs of 2022 have been partly repeated: more spatially concentrated, but on a much larger scale. The participants of the Régiújváros (Old New Town) event decorated the street with paraphernalia from the 50s, 60s, and 70s: old toys (including a carousel), relics of youth movements (kisdobos/‘young drummer’, pioneer, KISZ/Young Communist League), ertswhile consumer goods (Retroújvárosi Bambi/a popular refreshment, clothing), and music and shows of the period were provided by a Terta world radio and a jukebox. Several bygone crafts were also represented (knife sharpener, street sweeper, pretzel vendor, sunflower seed vendor, tinker), and the people working the exhibition booths welcomed visitors dressed in period costumes, or at least something that evokes the atmosphere of the period, while a local amateur theater troupe performed period scenes, and a veteran car show with about twenty cars finished off the parade. There was once again a farmer's market, a craft fair, a photo exhibition, a local history quiz, a playhouse, a socialist realism tour, with the Institute of Contemporary Art's interactive exhibition of the history of the city as a newly added element, and in the evening, local bands and performers played music concurrently at various points along the route. Many families took part in the programs, with parents explaining to their children how to use the toys, how to use the rotary phone, or members of the older generation discussing amongst themselves who owned which type of Skoda and what it smelled like. On the sidewalks bustling with people, the discussion of some aspect of the past and the recollection of memories and experiences provided a constant topic of conversation. Many lingered in front of the TV playing old May Day footage, and they even compared it to the atmosphere of today's parades (e.g., it used to be louder) (Figs 15–23).
The second annual Sugárúti Festival. Photo: Ágota Lídia Ispán, 2023
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
In Tiszaújváros, Retro majális (Retro Mayfest) events occasionally provide a framework for evoking the past, most recently in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the May Day event could not be held in the traditional way (except for the erection of the Maypole and the musical reveille, the fair and the various musical and dance performances and sports programs were cancelled), therefore the Tiszaújváros Cultural Center and Library, as the organizer of the event, created Tiszaújváros Anno, a program aimed at retrospection and remembrance. As part of the event, they exhibited the replica of Lenin's armored car,64 organized an art walk, and an outdoor exhibition from the materials of the local history collection, of photos depicting the town's Mayfests of bygone decades and the town itself, as well as of old relics (street nameplates, badges, flags), attracting a large crowd.65 The locals' nostalgia for the old Mayfests was centered on similar elements: parading, interesting shows, craft fairs, eating and drinking in corporate tents, strolling families. Although for the most part – except for the parade last held locally in 1986 and the active participation of corporations – these have been an integral part of post-regime change May Day celebrations, the unanimous opinion of local newspaper respondents was that it would be good to bring back the atmosphere of the old Mayfests, “to hold it in a retro way, so that young people can see what was going on here for 30–40 years.”66 In 2022, Retro Mayfest was held again, with a bazaar, the armored car, and a sightseeing Ikarus bus67 providing the old ambiance, and there was also an opportunity to dress up in 60s clothes, while dragon boating on Városi Dísztó (the municipal pond) was added as a new attraction (Fig. 24).
Poster of Retro Mayfest in Tiszaújváros, 2022 (Tiszaújvárosi Krónika 40/17:16. /April 28, 2022/)
Citation: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 68, 2; 10.1556/022.2024.00009
Apparently, very similar sentiments drive parts of the population of Dunaújváros and Tiszaújváros in terms of their attitude towards the past, and the events that consciously reflect on these, going back to the former Mayfests, also share many elements. However, in the case of Dunaújváros, it seems that the old holiday has been given a new meaning and its central element has been restored: the transformation of the parade68 – rendered unseemly by the regime change – into a carnival creates an opportunity for participation that allows the active involvement of workplace (and other local) communities. Meanwhile, the act of parading also offers a new form of participation, a quasi-activity, for the mostly passive participants of these events—those just taking in the sights, spectating, or watching their children play. The event has many links to the recent past, making it more likely to appeal to the middle-aged and older generations, but the opportunity to move away from the retro has clearly opened up the event to younger generations who were not alive during the socialist era. In terms of the heritage of socialist towns, Dunaújváros comes closest to the example of Nowa Huta, where the utopian and post-industrial decline narratives have both come to an end, and the artistic and touristic remaking of the city began concurrently with its gentrification (Ludwig 2021:8).69
Conclusion
In my study, I examine the identity development of former socialist towns through heritagization processes. Showcase towns, created in the spirit of a break with the past and utopian visions, functioned as symbols of a new socialist culture, which required reinterpretation after the regime change. Civic heraldry, a condensed expression of the official self-representation of the municipalities, reflects this shift: whereas in the past the coats of arms bore socialist symbols (red star, the color red, blue for peace) and the symbols of locally significant industries (in Leninváros, also the rivers that represent local ties), after the regime change, the socialist symbols were replaced by symbols representing the historical (Roman, medieval, early modern) past of the villages (Dunapentele, Tiszaszederkény) annexed to the municipalities; moreover, Dunaújváros also wanted to reference its industrial and planned character. In both regimes, the relationship of the settlements with the past is more complex and multifaceted than can be described with the mere motif of the absence or omission of the past.
Since inception, local museums have seen the earlier settlements as an integral part of municipal history, and the extension of the urban past has also served as a kind of legal basis for their existence as towns. In addition to archaeologists and historians, ethnographers have played an active role in the founding of museums, and ethnographic objects related to the villages known as the Old Town still form the bulk of the collections. At the same time, in keeping with immediate heritagization, they quickly set about collecting materials on the more recent “history” of the municipalities, which in practice, in the absence of previous examples, presented difficulties. In addition to the predominance of various objects and documents (mainly relics, memorabilia, albums), it was only from the 1980s onwards that collections began to focus more on materials related to lifestyle history. While under socialism these villages offered – until the creation of the urban past – “a practical solution to the past that was always at hand,”70 a means of anchoring new settlements in the region, after the regime change, they now offered the possibility of connecting to the national narrative. This can be clearly traced in the compilation of local collections of values, which, despite their heterogeneity, try to comply with the guidelines of the “authorized heritage discourse.” Although new towns are less likely to make it to the top of national heritage lists, they can generate more attention on the international scene of heritage making.
A different cultural logic of heritagization can be discovered through studying local communities of memory. By nostalgically recalling the social practices associated with the parks and playgrounds, pools, shops, and restaurants that are essential features of planned cities, a slightly different cadastre of iconic urban facilities and sites is revealed in comparison to the local collections of values. Instead of the aesthetic quality and historical value of the buildings, emotional attachment has become the basis of salience and cultural identification, which also draws attention to the role, importance, and mappability of the collective characteristics of nostalgia – and emotions in general – in heritagization. The validity of this is, however, limited to a certain extent, as the generation born after the regime change enters the discourse on heritage making with different motivations, and increasingly endows the heritage of former socialist towns with non-ideological meanings.
Acknowledgement
The research was funded by projects ELKH SA-35/2021 Heritagization, Cultural Memory, Identity, and NRDI K_22 142797 (K_22 143295) Heritage Constructions in Contemporary Community Settings – Identity, Memory, Representation.
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Ágota Lídia Ispán is a research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities. She holds a PhD in Historical Science (Social and Economic History). Her main publication is A város vidéke. A falusi lakosság életmódváltása az urbanizáció hatására [The Countryside of the Town: The Changing Lifestyle of Village People Due to Urbanisation], Budapest, MTA BTK, 2020. Her research interests focus on lifestyle changes in the framework of socialist modernization and urbanisation, the socialist city, rural history, heritagization.
Laurajane Smith calls it authorized heritage discourse (Smith 2006:11–12).
The concept of dissonant heritage was introduced into the scientific discourse by Tunbridge and Ashworth. In their interpretation, dissonance is an essential feature of heritage, since the heritage that results from any kind of selection necessarily entails the exclusion of the heritage of certain social, ethnic, or religious groups, the marginalization, ignorance, and distortion of their historical experiences. In addition to divergent and conflicting interpretations, dissonance can be caused by, for example, reluctant heritage messages associated with wars, pogroms, persecution, discrimination, and by previous interpretations of heritage that have become outdated and are no longer compatible with the norms, objectives, and dominant ideology of the present (Tunbridge – Ashworth 1996:20–32). Of the concepts indicated above, perhaps dark heritage is the easiest to delineate, being associated with death, suffering, and disaster, as well as their sites (e.g., battlefields, concentration camps, Chernobyl).
See also: Eyal et al. 1998:9. In the context of the post-communist transformation, the authors examine the strategies used by the former elite to adapt to the new institutional conditions, and how they change their habitus in order to assert themselves. One of the ways in which they do this is by invoking pre-1945 social experiences and models of behavior and thinking, discarded under communism, instead of their immediate past, in light of the radically changed circumstances of 1989 and along the logic of “denial of denial.”
A somewhat different attitude to the socialist past can be observed, for example, in post-socialist Mongolia, where the activities of dictator Khorloogiin Choibalsan in the pursuit of national autonomy overshadow his role in the anti-religious pogroms and political purges that claimed many victims. As a result, unlike other communist leaders, such as Stalin or Lenin, his public statues have remained in place, and a town in his county of birth has borne his name since 1941. Read more in: Szilágyi 2019.
Tiszaújváros is located in the heavy industry region of northeastern Hungary, founded in 1955. A coal-fired thermal power plant was built first, based on which several new (mainly chemical) large plants were then built. The town's population peaked at the time of the regime change (18,685 in 1990), and although it has been relatively successful in maintaining its economic competitiveness, it has since declined, reaching only 15,479 in 2023.
The construction of the country's “first socialist town” began in 1950, 67 km south of Budapest, near the village of Dunapentele. The town became a major center of heavy industry (mainly iron and steel) as a result of priority developments, and its population peaked in 1980 (60,736). Although metallurgy remained the leading industry in the town even after the regime change, the population has steadily declined due to shrinking job opportunities, reaching 41,873 in 2023.
Various geographical, sociological, and historical studies in Hungary have classified 10–14 Hungarian towns as socialist towns. In my analysis, I consider the following 11 towns, as identified by historian Pál Germuska: Ajka, Dunaújváros, Kazincbarcika, Komló, Oroszlány, Ózd, Salgótarján, Százhalombatta, Tatabánya, Tiszaújváros, and Várpalota (Germuska 2008).
Municipalities may establish a collection of local values and set up a committee for organizing the identification of national values located in the municipal area. For more on this: https://www.hungarikum.hu/en/content/committees-local-and-regional-collections-values (accessed January 4, 2023).
https://www.intercisamuzeum.hu/kiallitas/allando (accessed May 3, 2023) In 2003, the prehistoric section was completely, and the Roman section partially renovated, while in 2016 the ethnographic unit was updated.
Eight display cases and five tableaus were dedicated to the history of Dunapentele, and there was also an ethnographic house interior set up there. There were 14 display cases and three tableaus related to the new town and the ironworks, as well as a room interior of a barrack, and a figure of a workers' militiaman (Matuss et al. 1979).
The museum was initially to be located on several levels of the tower of the new town hall in Sztálinváros, and the layout was to represent the hierarchy of the different eras: the Bronze Age at the bottom, “the relics of slave society, i.e., feudalism” on the next level, then “the bad mementos of capitalism,” and finally “the evidence of our beautiful life today” at the top. The first exhibition of local history, opened in December 1951 on the occasion of Stalin's birthday, was titled The History of Sztálinváros – as was the new permanent exhibition inaugurated in 1955 – and, like the 1976 exhibition, it began with the prehistoric period. One of the three exhibition halls was dedicated to the “new town,” where the present and the future were presented (Matussné 2005:5–6). In the context of the village museum in Tiszapéterfalva (Pyiterfolvo in Transcarpathia, Western Ukraine), which opened in 1970, Sándor Borbély explains that the basic principle of the museum's design was chronological, in addition to modeling pre-capitalist social inequalities. Like in Dunaújváros, different time periods ranging from prehistory to the “recent past” were presented in units of the same size, based on a teleological-deterministic approach. The fast pace used to narrate a long period of time became slower and more detailed as we approached the present. According to the author, “the sequentially shifting narrative pace was suitable for inverting the hierarchy of the different timelines,” for presenting the progressive and forward-looking present (Borbély 2016:204–206).
Similarly, the town's ancient past is the focus of the Matrica museum in Százhalombatta.
More on this: Kósa 2001:207–208; Ispán 2020:13–15. In Hungarian ethnography, the study of contemporary phenomena emerged as a truly independent task in the 1970s. On this, see: Fejős 2003.
In Dunapentele, collections were diverse, and with the intention of furnishing a separate farmhouse, or interior, particular attention was given to folk furniture, foodways, kitchen equipment, and costumes (Lukács 2005).
From the 1930s, the concept of cultural heritage in the Soviet Union included not only monuments created in the past, but also those created during or after the revolution of 1917. This reflects a communist perception of time that based its future-oriented narrative on a revolutionary present and an ever-shifting utopia, instead of a nationalist ideology rooted in the past. More on the communist concept of heritage: Deschepper 2018:6–7; Ispán 2019:90–91.
Emphasis in original. A sztálinvárosi múzeum várostörténeti munkájáról [The urban history work of the Museum of Sztálinváros]. Magyar Nemzet 11(289):5 (December 9, 1955). See also: Négyezer év története a sztálinvárosi múzeumban [Four thousand years of history in the Museum of Sztálinváros]. Népszava 80(10):5 (January 13, 1952); A sztálinvárosi múzeum [The Museum of Sztálinváros]. Új Ember 9(39):1 (September 27, 1953).
Here I would like to thank Balázs Kákóczki, researcher of the local history collection of Tiszaújváros, for presenting the collection and enriching the analysis with valuable insights.
Sándor Kiss worked from 1966 for nearly 40 years at the cultural center in Tiszaszederkény. Besides collecting, he also founded local folk music ensembles. Tiszaújváros has honored him several times, and his work earned him inclusion in the local collection of values. http://www.ertektar.tiszaujvaros.hu/index.php/kulturalis-orokseg/varostortenet/80-kiss-sandor-munkassaga (accessed May 08, 2023).
Benedek, Miklós: Egy majdani múzeum bölcsőjénél [At the cradle of a future museum]. Észak-Magyarország 34(258):4 (November 01, 1978).
The collection was established as part of the municipal library, then between 1984 and 1996 became an independent institution. Since 1996, it has been a part of the municipal library again.
Leninvárosi Múzeum [Museum of Leninváros]. Észak-Magyarország 43(260):4 (November 4, 1987); Ferenc Dóka: A hétköznapok barátsága [The friendliness of everyday life]. Észak-Magyarország 43(263):3 (November 7, 1987).
The clean room was a representational space in a peasant household, differing from the living-room in its furnishing and function, and was mostly used to receive guests in.
For more on the exhibition, last updated in 2016, see: Urbán 2017.
The construction of the Tiszapalkonya Thermal Power Plant started in 1953, and another thermal power plant was built near the plant in 1979 under the name Tisza II. Privatized in 1996, they came under US ownership and were closed in 2011 and 2012. The Tiszai Vegyi Kombinát (paint, fertilizer, plastics, polyethylene, olefin, and polypropylene plants), which had been in operation since 1959, closed several of its units following the regime change. One of the country's largest chemical companies has been operating under the name MOL Petrolkémia Zrt. since 2015. The Tiszai Kőolajipari Vállalat (Tisza Petroleum Refinery) was established in 1973; in 2001, MOL Rt., which had been integrating the company since 1991, discontinued oil refining, and since then it has been mainly used as a crude oil storage facility, in addition to operating smaller production units.
See: Péter Szegő: Ófalu és Újváros. A TVK kulturális szponzori tevékenysége [Old Village and New Town. The cultural sponsorship activities of TVK]. Élet és Irodalom 43(13):8 (April 2, 1999).
The parallel study of former socialist towns offers a comparative analytical framework. Except for Ózd, all these towns have established such collections of values, and they are publicly accessible. The closing date for data collection was November 2022.
https://www.hungarikum.hu/en (accessed January 4, 2023).
On the role of the Hungarikum movement and collections of values, see: Lovas Kiss 2014; Paládi-Kovács 2016; Vajda 2018:130–133; Cseh 2019; Báti et al. 2019; Eitler 2020; Balogh – Fülemile 2020:29–30; Apjok 2022; Bali 2022.
In sociological terms, value is an abstract cultural principle that expresses “what is considered desirable and important, good or bad, in a given society. Values and their order can vary from society to society and from one era to another” (Andorka 2003:490). In another approach, value is the organizing medium that effectively guides human behavior and action, determined by the interplay of external influences (e.g., interests, norms, customs, rules, laws) and the individual's way of thinking (Füstös – Szakolczai 1994:57–58).
As the website of one of the towns puts it: “all that we are proud of, all that we want to share with others and pass on to our descendants.” http://www.ertektar.tiszaujvaros.hu/index.php/felhivas (accessed April 4, 2023).
The Board is chaired by the director of the integrated public cultural institution, and its members are the head of the library, the museologist of the local history collection, the local history librarian, and a Pro Urbe award winner invited by the chairman of the Board.
It is chaired by the town's Deputy Mayor for Human Affairs, and its members are the Chief Architect and the Director of the Intercisa Museum.
I conducted focus group and semi-structured interviews with committee members in Tiszaújváros and Dunaújváros about the operation of local collections of values, which shed light on how and why certain elements are selected. At this point I would like to thank Zsuzsa Kitka, Zoltán Mátyás, Balázs Kákóczki, Ágnes Kázsmér (Tiszaújváros), and Imre Szabó (Dunaújváros) for sharing their insights on collections of values and heritagization.
The list, according to Umberto Eco, is used as a tool “when we know neither the limits nor the quantity of the thing to be represented, and we think of it as, if not infinitely large, at least astronomical” (Jakab – Vajda 2018:19).
The cultural heritage category of the collections of values of former socialist towns often includes the local museums, local history collections, and archives discussed above – which by their very nature embody the heritage of the past in a complex way – as well as fine art and natural history collections.
The municipalities classified certain types of buildings in different ways, e.g., churches and chapels were included in both the cultural heritage and the built environment categories. In my analysis, I put them all in the latter category.
Attila Kiss, associate professor at the College of Dunaújváros and newly appointed director of the town's Tourist Board, said that the town could succeed in the tourism market by embracing its socialist past, rather than denying it, and could present Eastern European socialism in a kind of socialist realist open-air museum, complemented with other attractions of international interest. https://mediatar.jakd.hu/index.php?p=video&v=rxvO6MOV (accessed: March 17, 2023).
The project was supported by the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage in the framework of “Cultural Routes to support tourism projects related to common European and/or Hungarian heritage.” The trail is a part of the Architectural Monuments Educational Trail and includes the 33 buildings in the socialist realist style.
Looking at the regional collection of values representing the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia (Western Ukraine), Sándor Borbély identified two dominant, closely related criteria in the heritagization practices of minority elites, which he calls age-value (the historical background, antiquity, archaic nature of heritage objects) and ideological value (the symbolic ethnic/national meaning of heritage objects), which overshadow other aspects (e.g., personal memory). Borbély classified the heritage elements included in the collection of values, very similar to the categories examined here, into two broad categories: 1. heritage objects endowed with historical value, originally created for non-commemorative purposes (e.g., churches, castles); 2. heritage objects and cultural phenomena with intentional or commemorative value, created by contemporary communities with the intention of passing on and preserving certain human actions for the present or future (e.g., monuments; official institutions of the Hungarian community; the oeuvre and legacy of famous people; activities and phenomena related to popular culture). Borbély 2023:463–481.
https://www.atriumroute.eu/ (accessed: May 19, 2023). Countries participating in the project between 2011–2013: Italy, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the cultural route only covers Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
https://www.brasovistorie.ro/proiecte/i-was-citizen-stalin-town (accessed May 19, 2023).
However, in addition to the unique socialist realist city center, the attractiveness of Dunaújváros is based on a number of other elements: natural landscape, Roman and medieval historical heritage, schools and sports. Interview with Imre Szabó, Dunaújváros, November 7, 2022.
https://www.facebook.com/leninvarosivagyok.hu (accessed June 2, 2024).
In this case, the community – instead of being delimited according to objective criteria – can be defined as a mental structure, a concept in which a “condensing symbol” referring to the past evokes a sense of community among the (otherwise diverse) members of the community, who give different meanings and interpretations to the symbol. The community model of Anthony P. Cohen is described in: Eitler 2022:2–3.
Although the images shared on the Facebook page and the conversations unfolding underneath them are intended for the public, I use the comments without attribution to the authors, in view of privacy rights. On ethnographic internet research and its ethical dimensions, see, for example: Garcia et al. 2009; Sanjek – Tratner (eds.) 2015; Lovas Kiss 2017.
The data collection reflects the status as of November 6, 2022, and the analysis covers photos uploaded by the administrator.
It was in his 1898 book, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, that Ebenezer Howard first expounded his ideas on the compatibility of the values of urban and rural lifestyles. An important part of the urban fabric is the central park, also serving as a scene for the development of community spirit, and the greenways around residential areas, which are lined with public spaces and schools. Ispán 2022.
Let there be a McDonald's in Tiszaújváros, but NOT in place of the Traffic Park! https://www.peticiok.com/signatures/legyen_meki_de_ne_a_kresz_parkban_tiszaujvarosban/ (accessed June 1, 2023).
Some examples: “I am emotionally attached to the traffic park! I was involved in its construction and I would like my grandchildren to be able to practice here!”; “With its disappearance, a site dear to many would be wiped from the town's memory!”; “Almost all of our town's natives learned to ride their bikes here, if these trees could talk, anyone who even thinks about hurting them should be ashamed”; “The Traffic Park was a symbol of the town, it would be nice if it remained in its original form”; “The Traffic Park has been an important part of the town for generations, and is also a nature reserve 
.”
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=117746850893128&set=a.118852724115874; https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=121282440539569&set=a.118852724115874 (accessed June 1, 2023).
“Those of us who lived through the heyday of the ice rink as teenagers could talk for hours about the many, many experiences… ‘words don't come easy’ blaring from the studio… gliding on the ice… chatting at the boards with hot rum and tea in hand… crowds and crowds… in the summer, hanging out by the pool every day… soccer… volleyball… too bad you younger ones can't see this anymore… it was good, really good!!! :-))” (2011); “I had a season pass, in the summer they would often put up the FULL sign, so many people came even from Miskolc! The hot sandwich was unbeatable! It was also great in winter!” (2018); “unfortunately, the ammonia factory closed, and so did the world-class leisure center. This facility was the jewel of Tiszaújváros. It was renowned not only internationally but worldwide. 38° in summer, and the young people of Tiszaújváros skating in their bathing suits, then swimming in a 50 × 25 m pool, eating gelato in the ice cream parlor, barbecuing in the shady park, having the best food in the restaurant, in their bathing suits, and mountains of beer. I'm proud to have been there and have served Tiszaújváros and the TVK employees.” (2019).
“A wonderful childhood memory… Such a shame!!! Unfortunately, those who made the decision never even tried to understand what the Center actually meant …:o(((“ (2011); “What a pity that the owners and managers of TVK let my childhood spot sink to this point. That's what you get when you take locals out of the leadership… TVK has taken quite a toll on the health of the locals. Perhaps the financial sacrifice associated with its operation might have been expected of the owners in exchange for the damages caused by the industry…” (2015); on the pool of the Power Plant: “Back in the day, there was so much life here during the season… TODAY it's pure Chernobyl” (2012).
As a parallel, see: Várkonyi-Nickel – Nagy 2020:298–303; Valuch 2020.
By the 20th century, the term nostalgia has evolved from a medical concept to a psychological concept referring to a mental state, and eventually an everyday term denoting emotion. While initially, like the notion of homesickness, it referred to a spatial homecoming, over time it was replaced by a longing for a time past, driven by the major social and economic changes of the 19th century and the resulting accelerated lifestyle (Pintér 2014:90–92; Angé – Berliner 2015:3).
According to Robert Hewison, the post-war extensive museum foundations were defined by a nostalgia of the elite and conservative social groups. This nostalgia was also incorporated into the government narrative of the time. The phenomenon has been criticized primarily for referring to a past that had never existed, which legitimizes the privileges of this group, and the desire to return to this past prevented progressive action in the present and hindered the development of social change in the future (Smith – Campbell 2017:3).
Some authors argue that a kind of nostalgic scientific industry has developed to study the phenomenon, as Eastern Europe becomes culturally more exotic and worthy of research through nostalgia, and therefore ultimately nostalgia contributes to the orientalization of the European East (Lankauskas 2015:40).
Nostalgia has now become a catch-all term, with research trying to identify different types of nostalgia. The best-known experiment is that of Svetlana Boym, who sees the two types of nostalgia she distinguishes as tendencies rather than types. Restorative nostalgia seeks to reconstruct the lost home, to close the memory gap between past and present, to completely restore the monuments of the past; it does not consider its approach to the past as nostalgic—the project is about truth. This characterizes nationalist revival movements around the world. Reflective nostalgia, on the contrary, is more about individual and cultural memory, aware of the gap between past and present, and thus not about the restoration of the past, but about reflecting on it, recalling fragments of memory, with a narrative that is not serious like restorative nostalgia, but ironic, humorous, unfinished, and fragmentary (Boym 2001:41, 49–50).
https://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/danurb_plus (accessed May 15, 2023); Kortárs Építészeti Központ, Professional report 2022, 22. https://tudastar.kek.org.hu/perch/resources/kekszakmaibeszamoloweb.pdf (accessed May 15, 2023).
See, for example, comments on the archival photos of the main road in the Mi, Dunaújvárosiak Facebook group.
http://dunaujvarosmesel.hu/2022/04/20/sugaruti-fesztival/ (accessed May 15, 2023).
Built between 1951 and 1957, the grand boulevard (85–110 m wide) embodied the city's strength and success, and was the scene of festive parades, while the shops and restaurants on the ground floor of the buildings attracted a large number of customers. However, the once bustling and lively promenade has gradually lost its appeal, its condition has deteriorated, the small shops are now outdated, and the street is in need of revitalization (Horváth 2021:90–94).
The call for entries emphasized that by using typical colors, materials, and motifs, the costumes – which an artist-coordinator provided by the organizers would assist in creating – can reflect their traditions, headquarters, logos, activities, or even a fantasy world.
https://dkik.hu/hirek/sugaruti-fesztival-felhivas-kozos-felvonulasra-unneplesre; https://dunaujvaros.com/hirek/202303/felhivasozonnel_csalogat_a_2_sugaruti_fesztival (accessed May 17, 2023).
A full-size replica of the armored car used by Lenin in the October Revolution of 1917 was made in 1970, on the 25th anniversary of the “liberation of Budapest,” by Csepel Automobile Factory and the Budapest Vehicle Cooperative at the request of the Hungarian Pioneer Association and the Hungarian Defence League. After touring the country, the vehicle was brought to Leninváros, where it stood for years in a town square and then in the courtyard of a primary school. After the regime change, it was moved to a warehouse, from where it was transferred in 1999 to the Military History Museum and Military Technology Park in Kecel for a period of ten years. After it was returned to the town in 2009, the local council had a heated memory politics debate about whether it should be allowed to be placed, along with sculptor Agamemnon Makrisz's statue of Lenin's head that once stood in the town's main square, in the courtyard of one of the municipal premises in a way that is accessible to the public. The representatives of rigth-wing Fidesz (Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance) said that the return of the armored car and the statue of Lenin's head was an “offense to many,” and “these symbols belonged on the dust heap of history.” The socialist (Hungarian Socialist Party) representatives, however, tried to convince the two debating Fidesz representatives – who moved to the town after the regime change – that “the statue and the armored car are an undeniable part of our past and history, as well as of the lives of the people who have lived here for decades (…) The site will not be a cult shrine to communism, but an objectified slice of our town's past, a memento.” Tiszaújvárosi Krónika 27(45) (November 4, 2009). The armored car was presented again in a public space during the inaugural Retro Mayfest held in 2016, on the 50th anniversary of town status.
https://kronika.tiszatv.hu/images/kepek/pdf/2021/2021_17.pdf (accessed May 18, 2023).
https://kronika.tiszatv.hu/images/kepek/pdf/2021/2021_18.pdf (accessed May 18, 2023).
The Ikarus bus factory, founded through the nationalization of a private enterprise in 1948, became one of the most successful companies in socialist Hungary, and one of the world's largest vehicle manufacturers in the 1970s and 1980s, with a large number of its buses exported to socialist countries. The various models of Ikarus buses are widely known due to their role in Hungarian public transport, and the legendary models are often featured at events. On the role of Ikarus buses as a national symbol, see: Bódy 2010.
On the history of May Day parades in Budapest, the special importance of decoration and choreography, the nature of the holiday combining elements of mass demonstrations and popular festivals, its role as a kind of carnival substitute, and its transformation after the regime change, see: Voigt 1994.
According to Katarzyna Zechenter's research, Nowa Huta, created in 1949 and annexed to Kraków in 1951, appeared in the official socialist narrative as a symbol of the new regime and socialist modernity, which clashed at several points with the unofficial, communicative memory of the settlement. Two key elements of this are: 1. the riots that broke out in 1960 over the potential construction of a church and which were hushed up in the public debate of the time; 2. the initially slow commitment to the Solidarity movement, which turned the city into a scene of demonstrations and street fighting during martial law. After 1989, the city built its new identity on these two events: the “struggle for the cross and for freedom.” By emphasizing resistance to socialism, the settlement successfully linked itself to the discourses that have defined Polish national identity for two centuries, woven around the struggle for independence and religion. In the identity construction processes of Nowa Huta in the 21st century, the personal recollections of ordinary people are becoming more and more prominent, representing experiences that differ from both past and current official memory politics; the young generation born after 1989 is also more critical of the national mythology. The author argues that, unlike Nowa Huta, Dunaújváros does not base its present identity on a rejection of its past, but rather on the metamorphoses of old Dunapentele since Roman times, and through this it also “nationalizes” communism. As an example, she cites a quote from a steelworks website, which attributes the need to build ironworks along the Danube to the idea of István Széchenyi (Zechenter 2015). However, the 19th-century reformer politician (1791–1860) – who is considered one of the creators of modern Hungary due to his ideas and manifold practical activities – is not, in my opinion, a dominant element in the discourse on Dunaújváros.
