COURAGE

connecting collections

Bár a szerkesztőség még több számra való anyagot készített közlésre elő, a ’régi’ Mozgó Világ utolsó – kinyomtatása után betiltott, bezúzott – lapszáma az 1983 decemberi volt.

Valójában búcsúzó gesztus s egyben mementó volt ez, melyet a szerkesztők szinte teljes egészében Bibó István kiadatlan kéziratos tanulmányának s a róla rendezett történész vitának szenteltek.

A szám elején Illyés Gyula és Egyed Péter versei állnak, mintegy mottóként. (Az 1983 áprilisában elhunyt Illyés volt egyik versével a Mozgó Világ címadója – így kettős tisztelgés volt emléke előtt, hogy a búcsúszám élén két versét közölték.)

Ezután Bibó István nagyívű tanulmánya: Az európai társadalom fejlődése teszi ki a lapszám túlnyomó részét. Az erősen antimarxista eszmetörténeti művet Bibó 1971-72-ben mondta hangszalagra, majd leírt szöveget halála után fia, ifj. Bibó István javította és rendezte sajtó alá.

After a few months break, when the journal was coming close to its end, the restart of “World in Move” with its double issue of March–April 1981 seemed to be not just a positive sign of survival, but a real promise of a rebirth. The newly designated chief editor, Ferenc Kulin, together with his very much tried and tested editorial team, managed to get rid of direct censorship from the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, and was offered another chance by the main cultural commissar, György Aczél himself, “to prove their talents.” No doubt they tried to do their best on the 224 pages of the book-sized double issue.

On the first two pages there was an editorial addressed to readers briefly summing up the recent changes in and around the paper, and drafting further plans for the future. As it was stated, a long decade passed since the start of “World in Move,” and after a prolonged period as a “youth paper,” it was high time to become a forum for adults with full responsibilities. It is true that in two short paragraphs one can be read the obligatory ideological “loyalty statement” of all legally published papers (“engagement with socialism, dialectical and historical materialism,” etc.), but more important is the list of radical claims for free public debates in all fields of life: in politics, culture, arts, literature, science, education, and so on.

Coming from Chişinău, the magazine Literatura şi arta was the most obvious presence in the Marian Zulean private collection. As it came out weekly, there came to be over 200 issues in the collection.

Literatura şi arta came through the intermediary of the Romanian Post Office, because it was included in the catalogue of publications to which one could officially subscribe. The magazine was founded in 1977, and initially it was the official publication of the Writers’ Union of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, nowadays the Writers’ Union of the Republic of Moldova. This magazine played an important role in the late 1980s, during the so-called period of national rebirth in Moldova.

Marian Zulean recalls: “I remember that at the beginning of my subscription to this magazine, it came printed in Cyrillic letters. There were Romanian words and sentences, but written in Cyrillic script. Later, starting with 1988, I think [in reality, starting on 15 June 1989, the centenary of the death of the poet Mihai Eminescu, celebrated as the national poet in Romania, then still the Socialist Republic of Romania], it was printed in Roman script. I think this happened in the period in which the running of the magazine was taken over by Nicolae Dabija.” Indeed, in the period 1988–1989, when the magazine was headed by Nicolae Dabija, Literatura şi arta was one of the most important publications in the Republic of Moldova and the principal promoter of the return to writing in Roman script and the designation of Romanian as the official language in the territory.

“The magazine came to this country too. And it was, for those times, very lively, written in an alert language, very different from that of cultural publications here. Even if it was written in Cyrillic. Also, in its pages there were materials with political content – approved by a Moscow that, at that time, was much more liberal and more open than what our communists were doing here. It was an unusually free cultural publication for those times,” recalls Marian Zulean.

In its heyday, the magazine had a total print-run of approximately 260,000 copies per issue. Several thousand arrived in Romania, not in newspaper kiosks, however, but only by subscription, through the intermediary of the Romanian Post Office. It continued to appear after 1989 too, and, in a different format and with a much reduced impact, it is still active nowadays in the Republic of Moldova.

As it was merely printed on newsprint, this magazine was also very perishable. Nowadays only a few copies are still to be found in the Marian Zulean collection. In contrast to collections containing unique materials, where any loss is irrecoverable, the disappearance of the magazine Literatura şi arta from the Marian Zulean collection is not a tragedy for a potential researcher, as the issues in question can be found in public libraries in Romania and Moldova. The reason for its inclusion among the remarkable items in this collection is the astounding discrepancy between the discourse promoted by this literary magazine in the late 1980s and the characteristic discourse of cultural publications in Romania in the same period. The fact that under Gorbachev freedom of expression in the Moldavian SSR, as in the rest of the USSR, was appreciably greater than on the Romanian side of the River Prut produced a significant change among Romanians, who were in general anti-Soviet, but now, for the first time in the post-war period, came to direct their hopes for change towards Moscow (C. Petrescu 2013, 244–56). Furthermore, another discrepancy between the two cultural environments is worthy of notice. In Moldova, the national poet Mihai Eminescu was not only the symbol of this magazine, but also of the struggle for the recognition of the Romanian language, and implicitly of contestation of the Soviet communist regime. In Romania, the same poet had come to be dogmatised as a mere annex to the official communist-nationalist discourse, which was only deconstructed in the post-communist period (Bădescu 1999).

Made as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which emerged following the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy in 1919, the film offers a complex overview of revolutionary practice and the psychology of terror.

Dezső Magyar and Gábor Bódy, the director and the writer created a multi-layered narrative by using diverse literary sources, actual news footage, and references to current events. The main source of inspiration was Ervin Sinkó’s novel Optimists and the memoirs of József Lengyel and the wife of Tibor Szamuely. Georg Lukacs’s account on the subject was also used for references in some cases, as well as quotations from the writings of Mao and Che Guevara.

The film presents a general model of revolution through talking heads reflecting on their own interpretations and ideas. Though the story is based on actual events, the characters are all fictional. The protagonists, however, in addition to being professional actors, were members of radical intellectual and neoavantgarde circles. They pursued intense theoretical debates on the possibilities of revolutionary action, the dilemma of violence, the criticism of new bureaucracy, and the essence of working class culture.

In part as a consequence of the experiences of the Prague Spring and student movements in the West, the terms of the discussions were changed. The 68er radicals dropped Marxist-Leninist concepts and debated the meaning of leftist politics, the future, and the potentials of revolution and social autonomy. They developed an allegorical reading of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, which provided a pretext for the filmmakers to discuss 1968. Due to its subversive approach, the film was banned for decades.

The event Kaj je alternativa? (What is the alternative?) was organised by the FV group in Šiška Youth Centre in Ljubljana. In May 1983, the FV 112/15 group entirely moved its social activities from Disco Študent, situated in the basement of Building IV in the Rožna dolina student dormitory complex, to the Šiška because the authorities were exerting pressure on them. The poster was designed by Dušan Mandić, later a member of the Irwin group and Neue Slowenische Kunst.

Mandić’s design for the poster, which advertised the event, combined aspects of the aesthetics of the FV group and the band Laibach, with elements appropriated from socialist aesthetics mixed ambiguously with elements of petit-bourgeois romanticism. The poster underscored the FV brand, reproducing in the background a Laibach woodcut, the Metalworker, along with the band’s name (Laibach), which was prohibited at that time because of a crossed-out swastika, and slogans. This poster earned Mandić a visit from the police, which arrived with a search warrant, although Mandić was never prosecuted in court for it. Mandić says that the poster was made because Igor Vidmar, who wore two badges with anti-fascist content but decorated with swastikas on them, was imprisoned for two months. Mandić also included the problematic badges on the poster, and this was the reason why the police questioned him. At the police station, he stated that he was only a contractor, since the League of Socialist Youth of Slovenia and Radio Student has commissioned the poster and, therefore, they should be placed in custody.

Soon cultural theory came to the defence of the subculture for the first time. The poster was even printed in Mladina in a somewhat censored form, but it appeared in full in the first issue of the alternative publication Viks. The event What is the alternative? was organised as a theoretical symposium, featuring some of Slovenia’s most prominent contemporary theorists, artists and cultural figures, such as Slavoj Žižek, Rastko Močnik, Lev Kreft, Pavle Gantar, Iztok Saksida, Dušan Mandić, etc. Some people were disappointed because the debate remained at the theoretical level and did not address some of the real issues that the alternative scene was grappling with, such as battles over space or the legal problems faced by the band Laibach. The event What is the alternative? revealed certain other internal contradictions within the alternative scene.

The Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism was an ideological basis of the Orange Alternative movement. The document was written by Waldemar Fydrych and originally was published in the "A" magazine in 1981. "A" included also essays by Wiesław Cupała and Paweł Jarocki as well as some graphics and pictures. It was sold on the streets to the students, workers, and other passers-by in Wrocław and other Polish cities. The continuation of the "A" magazine" was "Pomarańczowa Alternatywa" ("Orange Alternative") paper which was distributed during the students' strikes in November and December 1981. Both gazettes were issued by the New Culture Movement.

The text of the Fydrych's Manifesto was inspired by the Manifesto of Surrealism by Andre Breton and other his works. But the Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism was also a parody of the state socialist propaganda. It rejected the whole realist aesthetics, both the socialist realism from the 1950s and classic realism represented by Dostoevsky, as a boring rationalization of the creative and joyful life. Fydrych affirmed the "living for adventure", irrationality, spontaneous love, an imagination that "means a world without limits". He juxtaposed the philosophers and the politicians and took side of the latter, who in fact change the world:

"We shall soon get rid of the philosophers. Luckily, even in the moments least propitious for surrealism, it has always found refuge in public toilets of every city. Advisable. I recommend such spiritual wanderings. It was there that Icarus soared. It was difficult for pure rationalism to take control of the toilets. Surrealism has prevailed in toilets thanks to the politicians. For nowhere is there such a close relation between relief and the aesthetic feeling. The philosophers attempted to extend their reach also to these places, but their foul hopes misfired. The politicians have always been great surrealists. They are waiting for affection. Let’s love the politicians. The philosophers are defeated.

At present, it’s high time to expose the foul acts of the philosophers before the Tribunal of Surrealism. Next to them, I propose to build a Great Tribune to extol the great deeds of the politicians from. Let’s all have a whole-hearted laugh. The war between materialism and idealism. From the point of view of a vigorous intellect it is but a primitive entertainment. The functionaries of philosophy, Judases of criticism, experts in constraining imagination and spontaneity, do not count on it".

Veljo Tormis wrote his Kurvameelsed laulud (Melancholy Songs) in 1979, and dedicated it to the conductor Neeme Järvi, who was persona non grata in the Soviet Union since 1978. Thus, Tormis was told to cross out the dedication on the first page of the manuscript. However, he refused to do so, and covered it up with a strip of dark paper instead. The dedication is faintly visible through the paper. The manuscript was accepted, and later archived in this form. On a later copy, which also belongs to the same collection, the dedication is rewritten and formulated as a dedication to Neeme Järvi's leaving the homeland. Järvi emigrated to the United States in 1980.

Kurvameelsed laulud is not the most famous work by Tormis, but the manuscript is a unique and notable rarity as a reflection of the struggle with Soviet censorship.

The cantata Lenini sõnad (Lenin's Words) is a purely ironic work. It was formally dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union. Tormis used extracts of texts by Vladimir Lenin. The irony lies in the fact that these were extracts which demanded equality between nations and the right of self-determination. Since the author was Lenin himself, the authorities could not blame Tormis for anything. Whether the authorities understood the irony or not remains unknown.

It has not been widely performed, and even not at all since the restoration of independence, but it is often quoted in the press as a curious case. This cantata is definitely not forgotten. For example, Lenini sõnad was one of the works mentioned in the obituaries of Tormis.

The original manuscript and a later written copy are currently stored in the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum.