In Hungary, an appetite for Socialist souvenirs

BUDAPEST - competition was hard lot no. 38, a fine ceramic sculpture of Vladimir Lenin.

The winning bidder was 22-year-old TIMEA Szabó, almost $1,000 for the little parable of Communist heroes offered. Mrs Szabó, too young to remember Hungary Socialist past has firmly with its capitalist present.

"We are not in Lenin," Mrs Szabo says really, who works at a real estate company, after Budapest offers new rich.

Bela Doka for the Wall Street Journal some of Lenin portraits sold Monday evening.

But sizing, until your new investment - which portrays access the lapel of his coat, a star the first Soviet leaders expression on his bearded face - you said: "It looks pretty much in that Office."

Keeps Hungary Government auction paintings, sculptures and photographs that collected a huge rummage sale in the store dust socialist era, more than 20 years after the collapse of communism here.

The proceeds are used to after a further reminder of the central planning clean help: an accident that left in October the villages in western Hungary with corrosive red mud flooded - waste from an once State aluminum factory.

On Monday evening, hundreds of people entered the bidding at an art gallery which formerly served as bearings for Hungary's secret police.

Current leaders of the country, the cleanup partly considered a symbolic exorcism of the spirits of socialism - and a reminder past suffering.

To win the auction, the Government created a logo shows the hammer by the Communists old hammer and sickle emblem striking head Lenin and caused stars red to see. Below it is the motto, "Never Again."

"It is an important gesture." "Almost every Hungarian family somehow was a victim in the Communist era," says Gergely Boszormenyi-Nagy, an official of the Ministry of public administration and judiciary organized auction. "This is the end of the line." "We will no longer keep the stuff."

But the event comes at a time of increasing nostalgia for the Socialist years - at least in some circles of Hungarian society.

The country's economy has been upended by the global financial crisis. Unemployment rose as 1989 sank it the worst recession since the transition to capitalism.

Many older people thrown out of work now say that at least under the Communist regime everyone a job and something to eat had.

Gyorgy Torok, 45, vintage Lenin purchased lithography for about $50 on Monday evening, says the works of art for sale reminded him of his youth and his father, a mining engineer and avid collector of Communist era relics, died earlier in this year.

"When I was young, I really deep look in the deficiencies of the system", says Mr Torok, a real estate entrepreneur who says that his business in the midst of the economic crisis is struggling. "I lived a quiet, secure life where bread cost 3.5 forint and everyone had a job."

Today costs a Loaf bread, about 200 Hungarian Forint or $1.

Two decades after the collapse of communism are nostalgic Hungary and collectors of Communist kitsch to Soviet-era align artwork on a Government run auction. WSJ's Gordon Fairclough reports of Budapest.

Art played an important propaganda role during the Soviet sphere. When Communism collapsed in 1989, had on the Central and Eastern European countries politicians to decide to do with decades value of statues, paintings and other works of art in public space.

In most countries were hulking images of Lenin, Stalin and other communist VIPs moved out of its socket in parks and crammed in museums.

Many of the Hungarian are now in a sculpture garden outside of Budapest.

Some pieces have been snapped up by collectors of Communist kitsch in the West and put on display - how is the Lenin statue on the roof of the red square, an apartment building in New York's lower east side.

The works of art for sale are a mixed bag in Hungary this week. To provide insight into the iconography of socialism as the dissonant results, artists of different styles have been applied, what the Communist Party corresponding topics.

An Impressionist painting of women working at a TV factory assembly line and lush oil paintings was offered from shipyards, railways and steel mills.

A painting titled "Soviet-Hungarian friendship" of 1950, six years before Hungary unsuccessful uprising against the Russian rule in 1956, relaxing shows Hungarian farmers with Soviet soldiers, of which one holds a submachine gun. Two Soviet tanks idle in the background.

Some of the pieces are from famous Hungarian artists, the voluntary or involuntary, the Communist Government propaganda efforts appeared.

The work was purchased the Lenin statue of woman Szabó Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl. He was famous in Hungary and Great Britain for his depictions of characters, as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and the future Queen Elizabeth.

"We must take into account the experience of ancient times and learn from you to confront the past and use it cleverly," Gergely Mikola, 33, says Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Hungary. He had his eye on several lots but have been outbid.

At Monday's auction pieces turn Museum of Culver City, California, 25 bought it called "major works" of the Communist era Hungarian art.

The Museum specializes in art of the cold war in Eastern Europe.

"The representatives of an extinct era in world history, are", Justinian says Director of the Museum today.

Sales reach $63.000 on Monday, the first day of the auction. Thursday's triggered say session non-socialist pieces containing approximately $96,000, organizers. The auction ends on Thursday.

Peter Pinter, the owner of the Gallery, which is the use of auctions for the Hungarian Government believes that many of the elements on which block keep not good that the apparatchiks are enough to pilfer if the Communist system apart fell.

"Since the auction was announced one were set call people to say, ' we have a Lenin, we have at home a Stalin." Will sell it for us? "" "Mr. Pinter says."Parents probably kept these pieces because of nostalgia or because a specific value to you instead.... "But children feel they are a burden."

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