Roger Scruton Sleeping Cities Summer 1999  During the eighties I
often traveled to Eastern Europe, hoping to make some small
contribution to the anti-Communist cause. My errands took me to
fabled cities—to their ancient hearts, as well as their dismal
peripheries. Of old Warsaw, I found, little remained, apart from
the medieval center, burned by the Nazis and then painstakingly
restored. But Prague and Budapest had come through the war more
or less unscathed. Subsequent building had amounted only to some
outlying socialist housing projects, with the occasional
faceless block in the city center, devoted to some inscrutable
Party function and bristling with armed guards.  A red star
affixed to the dome of the beautiful Hungarian Parliament—a neo-
Gothic castle inspired by Westminster—signified that it was now
an annex of the functionalist block next door, headquarters of
the Communist Party. The same red star, scattered over the roofs
and pinnacles of Prague, gave to the dilapidated palaces a sad
and temporary a