Back in the U.S.S.R.

Comrade Lenin

This past weekend I took a trip back in time to the communist era with a visit to Budapest's Memento Park.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, nobody in these satellite countries knew exactly what to do with all of the massive sculptures they'd been forced to erect, commemorating communist leaders and the ideal of the "workers of the world."  Most were melted down for scrap.  One American with a good sense of irony actually bought a Lenin statue somewhere and had it shipped back to the U.S. where he erected it in Seattle, where it still greets visitors in a public square.

In Hungary, they opted to create a statue park on the outskirts of town.  It is here that these sculptures now sit, relegated to the scrapheap of history.  As an added bonus, in a little museum space they showed actual secret agent training films from the time.  Where to hide your bugs, how to use a hidden camera, how to tail a suspect, etc.  What the CIA would have done to have seen those films back in the day!