COURAGE

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The exhibition called “Space, Architecture, Fine Art” was planned for October 1983 in Ostrava. At first, the exhibition was allowed and the catalogue was printed, but after the catalogue was published, the event was banned and most of the existing material was destroyed. The exhibition was supposed to show works by architects and visual artists, overall more than ninety authors, including those who were not allowed to have exhibitions in the 1970s.

Following Viktor Koval’s trial, on 27 August 1982 the Penal Section of the Supreme Court of the Moldavian SSR issued a special decision (opredelenie) regarding his case. In effect, this document represented a surrogate of the official sentence. Similarly to the usual pattern of such documents, the court emphasised the defendant’s “hostile attitude” towards Soviet power. In Koval’s case this deviant behaviour was purportedly due to his “false perception of Soviet reality,” which was induced by his “listening to the broadcasts of the anti-Soviet radio stations Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Deutsche Welle, BBC etc.” The document further summarised the defendant’s main anti-regime activities, which he undertook during 1977–1982. These included his criticism of “Soviet democracy,” his refusal to take part in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, his condemnation of the lies and distortions propagated by the Soviet press, his critical attitude toward Soviet foreign policy, in general, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in particular, and, most importantly, his open support for the Solidarity movement in Poland. The comparison between the Soviet political system and the political structure of Western countries was a constant theme in Koval’s conversations with his colleagues, which was allegedly proven by numerous witness accounts invoked in the document. Koval was also clearly aware that the Soviet state did not guarantee the basic civil rights of its citizens. This constituted another recurrent topic which emerged during the investigation. The authorities were particularly alarmed by Koval’s general critique of the Soviet system as a whole. The material evidence uncovered during searches of Koval’s apartment also contributed to the court’s ruling that the defendant had “committed a socially dangerous act” that fell under the provisions of article 203, part 1, of the Penal Code of the Moldavian SSR (“spreading calumnies and lies aimed at discrediting the Soviet state and social order”). However, based on the conclusions of the psychiatric assessment, the court found that Koval exhibited signs of a mental illness and personality disorder. It therefore declared him mentally unfit and thus exempt from criminal responsibility. He was thus sent to a special psychiatric facility in Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine) for “forced medical treatment.” Most of Koval’s papers and documents confiscated by the KGB were temporarily kept as a part of his file, while the rest were returned to his wife. This case is one of the most blatant examples of the application of punitive psychology in the MSSR during the late Soviet period. Koval’s political opposition to the regime, although it never transcended the individual level, was perceived as serious enough to warrant harsh repressive measures camouflaged under the “humane” rhetoric of a medical case.

“The Glossary of Technology” is the name for the special issue of “Vidici” that came out in the spring of 1981. It is one of the most significant dissenting publications that directly relied on the then subversive press trends in Czechoslovakia and Poland. “The Glossary of Technology” acquired a great deal of inspiration from the Solidarity Movement, which some of the journalists and editors were in contact with. In contrast to all previous editions, it was modelled on a manuscript from mediaval times with illustrations and using a calligraphic style. It was completely handmade and crafted with old-fashioned technology. Another specificity was that this issue was conceived as a dictionary with carefully selected samples. The manner in which the dictionary looked had a symbolic meaning. It was a protest against the modern technology-based social systems (Z.P. Piroćanac, Nomenclatura Serbica, 2012, 1).

The edition had 171 terms on 30 pages. Some of the terms mentioned were: "WILL – unconditionality. The possessor of movement and the only force that can master it. Will realized as life is personality. Will is without conditions, but it is the condition for everything. “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Book of Genesis); DEMOCRACY – equilibrium. A form of medium of society. This is the technology that cannot be eliminated by an individual. The devilish game of democracy is concerned with knowledge and ignorance, crime and punishment, cruelty and kindness ... (Cummings); MASS – indolence. Being the mass does not mean being part of the crowd, but rather being indistinguishable in the same impersonal frequency of consciousness in general. History is required to vanish in the mass, because it has become complete numbness, pure immanence. A direct consequence of the new role of masses organised into a collective ... is barbarism (Berdyaev); MORALS – mirroring, limiting. Morals are laws realized in the medium of society. Only technologists need morality to avoid collision while moving, however the individual does not need it. Morality is acting egoism. Moral judgments belong to a stage of ignorance in which the distinction between what is real and imaginary is lacking …” (Nietzsche).

All this was too confusing for the political authorities who did not know exactly what was behind this coded edition. The edition was banned, and its subversive nature was discussed in front of the University Commitee of the Union of Communists, where an analysis was initially formulated in the party document "Analysis of the Ideological Orientation of the Journals "Vidici" and "Student".” In it we see that it is precisely the "aesopian language" and that it is impossible to understand the text without a "key" or "code", which worried the party most. Eventually, it was concluded that "The Glossary" was anti-humanist and antisocialist-oriented, which was enough of a reason to ban it.
Soon afterwards, the party organs launched a media avalanche that lasted for several months, and the highest party officials spoke of the necessity to reckon with the group gathered around "Vidici" and "Student". However, it turned out that the criticism of "The Glossary" was merely a motive for launching a broader backlash against dissident groups after Tito’s death (1980). The subsequent outcome would be the publication of the "White Book" in 1984, by Croatia’s Communist party leaders, which called for an end to the so-called "cultural counter-revolution".

Special issue of the Hungarian samizdat paper Hírmondó on the debates at the Counter-Forum in Budapest, October–November 1985

The Hungarian samizdat periodical Hírmondó (“Messenger”) was launched in 1993 by Gábor Demszky, also the founder of AB Independent Publishing House and from 1990 to 2010 the Mayor of Budapest, and hardly more than a year later also the founder of Beszélő (“Speaker” or “Prison visitor”). Soon, other samizdat papers were also launched, such as Demokrata (“Democrat”) which was founded by Jenő Nagy, and Máshonnan Beszélő (“Speaker from Elsewhere”), an East European Monitor which reflected the increasing interest among the public in the uncensored press and the Hungarian samizdat press. Hírmondó was published as a screen-printed bimonthly; by the Autumn of 1985, it had been published in 15 issues, each of which sold well. Its profile, style and character were somewhat different compared to other free press products, such as Hírmondó, which preferred to publish shorter articles and interviews. Its greatest asset was rather the fresh news blocs based on many sources.

Well over of one third of its October–November 1985 issue was dedicated to the debates which had just taken place at the Budapest Cultural Forum and the Counter-Forum. This issue included 10 documents, interviews, essays, and articles, for instance conference papers by Danilo Kis, Amos Oz, Edward Albee, and Peter Curman, open letters by Géza Szőcs and Miklós Duray, interviews with Jurij Ljubimov and Danilo Kis, US Congressman D’Amato’s speech, etc. Hungarian readers were also given a detailed introduction to the principles and activities of International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, which had been founded three years earlier. Though the articles and comments were published with no names, the issue nonetheless seems to be the product of good teamwork among the authors, editors, translators, and interviewers. Two of the authors who published anonymously in the issue were editors Miklós Haraszti and Gábor Demszky. Their witty styles and challenging statements make their writings easy to identify.  

During the first half of 1987, personal and ideological tensions within the MWU were rampant. These tensions came to a head early in the year, when the long-serving Chairman of the MWU, Pavel Boțu, committed suicide. This tragic event reflected not only the unprecedented degree of personal animosities and rivalries among the writers, but also a sharpening ideological divide along national-cultural lines. The Writers’ Conference organised on 18 May 1987 became the stage for heated and acrimonious debates. These debates reflected not only a generational rupture between the “generation of the 1960s” and the writers born in the interwar period, but also the radically changed ideological circumstances during Perestroika. Some members of the MWU did not hide their open dissatisfaction with the organisation’s leaders and used the context of Perestroika to voice radical demands. Aside from the journalist and publicist Valentin Mândâcanu’s incisive speech on the “language issue,” the speech made by Grigore Vieru attracted widespread attention due to its virulence and radicalism. At the time, Vieru was a well-known poet and author of children’s books, whose texts reached a wider audience compared to most of his colleagues. Vieru was frequently attacked for “nationalism” and “ideological deviations” by the MWU’s “old guard,” most notably Andrei Lupan. Vieru thus used the conference to mount a violent attack on Lupan personally and on the “old style of leadership” within the MWU more generally. However, Vieru’s speech is notable not because of the settling of personal scores, but due to the wider issues it raised. First, he responded to the accusations of emulating and “aping” the Romanian model by “looking beyond the Prut.” He rhetorically wondered: “Why wouldn’t I look in that direction, after all? Why do I have the right to look toward Turkey, but not beyond the Prut? What harm did Sadoveanu, Călinescu, Arghezi, Blaga, Stănescu do to me?” These cultural references only emphasised his pro-Romanian position in contemporary debates. Second, while attacking Lupan for his ostensible pro-Stalinism and his earlier ”ideological sins,” as well as for his ambiguous position toward the regime, Vieru used an openly oppositional language, going far beyond the prudent rhetoric of early Perestroika. He mentioned a number of “hot” issues that made his speech subversive in the eyes of the authorities. Vieru spoke about “the disastrous situation in which the speech of our children finds itself, the pollution of our folklore, the intentional and offensive neglect of our native language on national television,” but he also emphasised the ecological crisis, the consequences of the 1946–47 mass famine, as well as the “physical and spiritual inebriation of the common man.” All these topics were to be exploited by the fledgling national movement in the following years and served as mobilising slogans for the anti-regime opposition. Toward the end of his speech, Vieru launched a rhetorical tirade against his opponent, using this pretext in order to voice a number of social and political grievances:

“Do you know that, behind our literary distinctions and prizes, we are witnessing, in broad daylight, a real linguistic disaster? Do you know how distorted and ugly is today the speech of our children, youth and even older people? Do you know that the few Moldavian kindergartens in Chișinău are full to the brim and it is impossible to enrol your child there? Do you know that, out of seventeen hours of TV broadcast every day, barely two or three, and sometimes even fewer, are reserved for TV shows in our native language?!...Do you know that our villages, which preserved our national being, are being depleted of their people and their soul?”