The Baseless Monument

The study is about the last political monument of the Kádár era, erected in 1986 for Béla Kun, leader of the 1919 communist takeover in Hungary. Its sculptor Imre Varga had defined the style of official public monuments for more than twenty years by letting his life-size heroes step down from their pedestals. This met the needs of Kádár, who after 1956 based his legitimacy on the refusal of the Stalinist “cult of personality.” In 1986 Varga perfectly understood that time had passed for monumental political sculpture forever but cynically accepted the commission. He invented an ironically oversized statue that took as its model the Stalin monument, destroyed in 1956. By turning it into a public parody, he created an accurate reflection of the corrupt spirit of the last days of communism in Hungary.