Hungary Sold On ‘The Best Of Communism’

Ah, the golden oldies.

The Soviet national anthem, World War II-era songs praising Stalinism, the marches of the workers movement - they’re back in Hungary, on compact disc, and they’re topping the charts.

Titled “The Best of Communism,” one of the anthology’s more curious offerings is a Lenin diatribe on the evils of capitalism.

“We couldn’t figure out what he was talking about,” publisher Akos Rethly said of Lenin’s speech, “but the word ‘capitalism’ he repeated several times, so we assumed he blamed it.”

Rethly, 34, a Hungarian teacher by profession, is also the director of Budapest’s communist statue park, where renderings of members of the Soviet regime were taken after communism’s fall.

The statue park is visited by some 25,000 people a year, but the CD has sold over 20,000 copies in the first three weeks.

The 24-track CD is No. 1 in Hungary, the only place it is available. But Rethly is planning an Internet home page, where it will also will be available.