Heritage Making in Former Socialist Towns in Hungary

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 sites 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-socialist communities, which is even more evident in the case of newly-built, 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 principles prevailed in the compilation of the local collection of values? What kind of representation of the past do local museums offer, what role does the ethnographic heritage of the annexed villages play in museum presentation and collection, and 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 and collective – often nostalgic – memory, what values the community associates with the town, and how all these relate to the heritagization practices of the local elite.