Hungary Military Museum Budapest

[hunyadi]

Rick - the tone of the musuem remains to be on the conservative / anti communist (1945-1989) ideals. The text in many of the plaques were 'look what the commies did to our military' variety. There is a whole room on the 1956 Revolution (with a nice display of an AT gun and....an alarm that goes off every time someone got near it!!! UGH!) that is clearly biased towards the revolutionaries - but that was the deal - after 1956 they were 'rebels' and 'anti-revoutionaries' (!!) today they are 'heros' 'mayrters' etc... 50 years - 180 Deg....

[Gordon Craig]

Rick,

There are strong feelings about things before what is termed here as the "change of regime". A lot of it focuses on what happened in 1956. The English translation used at the Military museum leaves a lot to be desired and sometimes it is difficult for me to be sure just what they are trying to say about what is displayed. Hungary transitioned, through Kadar's "goulash communism", from a true communist state to something closer to capitalism before things came apart in 1989. They are still struggling to put things into a democratic forum and it is difficult for people to see things improving when prices are going up constantly and the number of homeless people on the street keeps increasing. All that being said, they have done a good job setting up displays that include most of what is collectable during this period. And they appear to have been fairly objective about it. Up until recently a lot of what is on display, at least in the medal and badges category, was relatively available. In the last few months it has started to dry up. Charles and I used to find piles of cased and uncased lots/medals/badges etc on tables in the flea markets. Even some high end awards were available this way. Those days are gone and tables now contain few medals and most of them run of the mill stuff. It was just too good to last.

Regards,

Gordon

[hunyadi]

In the last few months it has started to dry up. Charles and I used to find piles of cased and uncased lots/medals/badges etc on tables in the flea markets. Even some high end awards were available this way. Those days are gone and tables now contain few medals and most of them run of the mill stuff. It was just too good to last.

Thats becasue we bought them all.....

But back to the musuem - here is the "tone" of some plackards which left me the with the feeling of 'look what they did to us'.

[hunyadi]

But they also had a bunch of cool posters