Örökségképzés az egykori szocialista városokban

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 spaces 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-communist communities, which is even more evident in the case of 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 selection principles prevailed in the selection of local values registered in the local collection of values? What representation of the past do local museums display, what role does the ethnographic heritage of the village part of the settlement play in museum presentation and collection, 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 – often nostalgic – memory, what values the community associates with the town, and how all this relates to the heritagization practices of the local elite.