The City Builder – an essay by György Konrád on his novel The City Builder

In his The City Builder, a novel completed in 1973, the Hungarian author György Konrád focuses on the intellectual rifts of the planners who, in the era of the communist regime, were commissioned to transform Budapest into a modern-socialist city in line with the Stalinist model. The political changes in Central Europe, the de-Stalinization and the consequences of the failed Hungarian uprising of 1956 are the backdrop to an intriguing story about the changing mentalities of the planners assigned to the reconstruction of Budapest as a socialist city.Budapest is not a border city in the strictest sense of the term. The geographical dividing lines between successive political-economic regimes seldom traversed or even brushed the city. Nevertheless, Budapest has all the characteristic features of a border city. More than any other city, the border city literally finds itself in a position that bears the inherent risk of waking up and suddenly finding itself on the other side of the border. And if that happens, the city will inevitably be confronted with the attempts of the new regime to leave its imprint wherever it can. The new authorities will take possession of the public buildings, decorate the public realm with monuments, slogans, and symbols, and remove the paraphernalia of its predecessors. The city is always, and in all circumstances, the billboard of the regime.In the late 1940s, Budapest was integrated in the socialist empire. The city that had evolved as one of the prime examples of Western European architecture and town planning was forced to adopt new models: the bourgeois capitalist metropolis now had to express the hopes and dreams of the new communist society. On the road to socialism, however, the authorities regularly changed course. The death of Stalin, the Russian departure from Austria in 1955 (restoring Budapest's traditional position as a border capital), and especially the Hungarian uprising in 1956 that was partly triggered by these events, marked fundamental changes in the regime's policies. This is directly reflected in the ideas and attitudes of those invested with the task to transform the capital and make it fit for socialism.