COURAGE

connecting collections

"Spartakus" was a newspaper of the Federal Trade Union “Freedom” (Zawodowy Związek Federacyjny “Wolność”), founded in Tricity by Zbigniew Stybel – one of the key members of the anarchistic Alternative Society Movement. The Federal Trade Union “Freedom” was founded under state socialism and was the first anarchistic trade union after war. Initially its activity was limited to helping conscientious objectorsdoing civilian service instead of mandatory military training based on conscription. Stybel, who stayed out of the anarchistic centre, noticed that people who managed to get a replacement service, were usual made to do very hard and humiliating jobs. Based on this realization, he had an idea to establish a trade union as an organization which could help people in such situation. With time the activities of FTU “Freedom” were broadened to offering help in other work environments.

Unlike other anarchist magazines (like “A Capella”), the “Spartakus” did not have the typical qualities of alternative youth magazines. The editorial board was not eager to use counter-cultural visual extravaganza, and the thematic scope concerned mostly workers’ situation and broader socio-political issues. The magazine’s main goal was to sustain communication between the union and people needing its intervention. Such profile of a newspaper was exceptional in the third-circuit press at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s.

A “Protest against the persistent imprisonment of civil activists,” for example against Vaslav Havel’s arrest, was held on 2 March by numerous alternative organizations and parties. Between 400 and 600 people protested on Vörösmarty Square. One of the photos, one can see a banner with the sentence “Silence is complicity.” This photo was probably taken by István Kurta.

A flyer for a solidarity event held at the Vienna Volkstheater on March 5, 1989, by large Viennese theaters to support Václav Havel. Václav Havel was arrested on January 16 for attending a demonstration during Palach Week, and in February was sentenced to nine months in prison. After his appeal and many foreign protests, the sentence was reduced and Havel was conditionally released in May 1989.

The leaflet shows the interest of the western public in the fate of Václav Havel, the most prominent representative of the Czechoslovak cultural and political opposition.

The flyer was exhibited at the exhibition „Czech Republic. Austria. Divorced - Separated - United / Lower Austria State Exhibition 2009 / State Chateau and City Gallery, Hasičský dům, Telč

Among the very few images that were taken from a high position, Lucian Ionică draws attention to those taken in a central place for the revolutionary events of Timişoara in December 1989: the former Opera Square, now Victory Square. He mentions that he never really felt any serious threat when he tried to take photographs, and that, on the contrary, he experienced a moment of great good fortune and generosity precisely on the occasion of taking these photographs from above. “In my case, the fear I had had that I might encounter hostile reactions proved unfounded. No one bothered me, no one prevented me from taking photographs. On the contrary, for one of the photographs I was even the beneficiary of a combination of favourable circumstances: in Victory Square, to capture that crowd, I couldn’t photograph from ground level. I had to go upstairs in a building. And I went upstairs in the building situated diagonally opposite the Opera Theatre, where at the time there was a milk-bar – now it’s McDonalds – and on its façade, high up, you can still see the marks of bullets from the Revolution. Quite simply, I just knocked on a door, and the gentleman agreed to let me onto his balcony. And from there I took photographs – one of which is among the best known photographs of Opera/Victory Square during the Revolution. I took a few pictures from there.”

Among these photographs mentioned by Lucian Ionică, one in particular, even after such a long time, has a very powerful significance for him: “From the balcony  I took a number of photographs, among them one that I would like to see turned into a monument. Of course there would have to be an artist, a sculptor who wanted to do this. There was, and I think there still is an electrical installation there. It’s an installation enclosed in a box, like a 70cm x 70cm square about 2 metres long. Well, on the surface of that there were five people, like a living statue. The image is very powerful, both visually and symbolically. As if people were standing on a pedestal, ordinary people on a pedestal. If a sculpture in realistic style were made from that photograph, it would show, in my opinion, that desire of people both to see and to participate in what was happening there."

At the Memorial to the Revolution in Timişoara may be seen Lorenţ Fecioru’s vest with the holes made by the bullets that killed him and the traces left by their victim’s blood. This object with a profound emotional charge was donated in 1999 by the mother of the hero-martyr. The material traces of the violent death of this young man are symbolic for all the young people who, with the recklessness and courage of youth, took part in the Revolution of 1989. At the same time, the manner in which he met his death is illustrative of the repression that followed in the days immediately after the outbreak of the popular revolt in Timişoara. Along with over 1,000 others, Lorenţ Fecioru is a martyr of the bloody events that led to the change of regime in 1989 and one of those to whom all Romanians are indebted for the freedom that they enjoy today. It is a civic duty of all Romanian citizens to preserve their memory, a duty that the Memorial has taken upon itself to pass on to generations who did not experience the Revolution of 1989.

Lorenţ Fecioru was one of those who, alongside the poet Ion Monoran, took part in the stopping of trams in Maria Square on 16 December. He died in the night of 17–18 December from the effects of a bullet fired by a sniper straight into his heart. In the public documents issued after the Revolution of 1989, it was initially stated that Lorenţ Fecioru was shot on the steps of the Cathedral of Timişoara. The facts, however, are otherwise, albeit equally tragic. Two decades after the tragedy played out, Lorenţ Fecioru’s youngest son related for a national newspaper what actually happened to his father: “My father was shot by a sniper in the night of 17–18 December. In the Securitate files photographs have been found that were taken during the day, when my father and some of his colleagues from work went out into the street and climbed onto tramcars, onto buses. I understand that in the file is written ‘mission accomplished.’ He was on the balcony with his friends that evening, telling them that he had seen when the photographer took pictures of them and that he was afraid to go out onto the balcony. The moment he went out onto the balcony he was shot. I saw the bullet that killed him, because he was shot in the heart and the bullet came out through his back and ricocheted off two walls in the house. His friends took him to the morgue, and by ‘good fortune’ they found a coffin, otherwise he would have been incinerated like the others.” This version is confirmed by researchers at the Memorial to the Revolution. Gino Rado, the vice-president of the Memorial, mentions that Lorenţ Fecioru was on the balcony at his home on Calea Şagului in Timişoara when he was fatally shot. The vest donated by the family of the hero-martyr Lorenţ Fecioru is on the same ground-floor level of the building of the Memorial to the Revolution in Timişoara, very close to the corner dedicated to the child-martyr Cristina Lungu.