Red Stars Over Budapest

This is how Hungary’s parliament building looked in 1960. The Budapest icon had been rebuilt after its devastation during World War II and topped with a 1 1/2-ton red star heralding communist rule in the country. 
 

The glowing, 3-meter emblem mimicked Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s red stars that had been installed along the walls of Moscow’s Kremlin in 1937. According to a report on the Hungarian photo archive Fortepan, the star was initially planned to be installed on the parliament steeple on Stalin’s 70th birthday in 1949, but the towering logistics of the emplacement led to its delay until 1950.

Hungary was ruled by Matyas Rakosi (pictured in Budapest in 1954) from the late 1940s until his downfall in 1956. The Hungarian described himself as "Stalin's best pupil" and emulated the Soviet dictator’s repressions and political violence.

A star sits atop the Elizabeth Lookout, photographed in 1954.

Perhaps the most visible sign of Rakosi's enthusiasm for all things Soviet was the installation of red stars throughout Hungary, especially atop some of Budapest’s most beloved historic buildings. 
 

The Buda Castle Tunnel with the star is seen in this 1958 photo.

The red star was common throughout the Soviet Union and in Eastern Bloc countries but, aside from the Moscow Kremlin, its installation on buildings was relatively rare, even in Stalinist Russia. In Budapest, however, as the Fortepan archive shows, it seems almost no famous monument was left without a crowning star.
 

The five-pointed star is planted in red flowers near Budapest’s Szechenyi Chain Bridge in 1954.
 

The Hungarian National Museum in central Budapest, photographed in 1953.

Even public transport vehicles were fitted with the emblem. This photo was taken in 1947 at a tram terminal in central Budapest.
 

The five-pointed star at the entrance to Keleti Railway Station in 1952.

The star is believed to have emerged as a symbol of communist politics due to a 1908 Russian science fiction novel called The Red Star by Bolshevik revolutionary Aleksandr Bogdanov. The book describes a classless socialist society on Mars where such equality has been reached that it’s hard to determine even the different genders of the red planet’s masses of Martian workers.
 

The red star seen (center right) on the wall of the Fisherman’s Bastion in 1954.

The red star has also been said variously to represent the five fingers of a worker's hand and the five continents of the world to which Lenin’s Bolsheviks hoped to spread the “revolutionary fires” of communist rule.
 

Workers rebuilding a bridge over the Danube in 1950 toiled under both the summer sun and a communist red star (top left).
 

Landmarks throughout Hungary, such as this border post in Komarom, photographed in the 1950s, were also fitted with the star. But many disappeared after 1956. 
 

Amid a ruthlessly violent uprising against communist rule in Hungary in 1956, the red star became a target for ascendant revolutionaries. This image shows a star being wrenched off a building in central Budapest. 

A revolutionary hammers away at a red star above Budapest's Calvin Square in 1956.

The revolution was soon put down with overwhelming force by Moscow but many of the stars that fell in 1956 were never returned to place. Rakosi left Hungary that year for exile in Soviet Russia, where he died in 1971.
 

Many of the hard-to-access stars, however, remained in place after the 1956 uprising. This photo shows Hungary’s National Bank building in 1969.
 

The Hungarian parliament is shown in 1970. The red star of the legislature building remained in place until 1990, when it was finally removed following the collapse of communist rule in Hungary. Today, the weather-worn star can be seen inside the parliament’s museum.