COURAGE

povezivanje zbirki

The philosophical notes of Lajos Szabó made in the years he spent abroad (between 1956 and 1967) fill more than one hundred and sixty notebooks. These notes in most cases are not contiguous texts, but groups of keywords and names, as Attila Kotányi drafted it, “systematizing scalings marked by abbreviations, paths of the branching correlations.” Szabó considered exact wording important, so he worked continuously on the purgation of language.

This concrete page was written in German. The first keyword, prismatic, refers to the interrelation of logic, ethics, and aesthetics (they relate as the prism makes colors visible). This concept has great significance in his thought. According to Kotányi, “this triple interrelation is the central dome of his philosophy.” As he worded it, “Prismatic research reveals the vortex motion of beauty, good, and true, in contrast with the dimness of ‘spirit’. The spirit is the unity, movement and energy of this three motifs.”

Petko Ogoyski in his collection with a piece of bread, the daily ration in the forced labour camp in Belene on the island Persin, he received on the day of his liberation from the camp in August 1953 and preserved. During the period of state socialism, the materials showing the repressive nature of the regime in Bulgaria were hidden at the birthplace of Petko Ogoyski, in the village of Ogoya, located between Sofia and the city of Vratsa. They were shown and made known to the public after the political turn in November 1989. After the end of the socialist state, numerous events were organized in which Petko Ogoyski participated and used materials of his collection (s. Events).

A request to stop the prosecution of Ján Čarnogurský, Hana Ponická, Anton Selecký, Miroslav Kusý and Vladimír Maňák addressed to the Czechoslovak President Gustáv Husák on 5 October 1989. The collection contains many requests or appeals to the President dealing with the prosecutions of church officials or believers. This request complains about the ignoring of other requests and criticises the imprisonment of Ján Čarnogurský, founder of the samizdat Bratislava Papers, and Miroslav Kusý. The appeal is signed by Roman Kaliský, František Mikloško, Martin M. Šimečka, Ján Langoš and other contributors in Bratislava Papers.

This samizdat miniature with its photocopied (from a microfilm) and manually bound pages represents a typical form of smuggling underground materials from Soviet Ukraine. Microfilms and miniature forms were the only way to safely smuggle abroad illegal literature and documents from the Soviet Union.

This samizdat book was rolled and hidden in a luggage of a Smoloskyp courier. This was the way how Smoloskyp couriers managed to smuggle many other Ukrainian samizdat and dissident materials, including Bil’mo by M. Osadchyi, O. Berdnyk’s manuscripts, the entire collection of the documents of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, D. Shumuk’s memoirs, a photo collection belonged to M. Rudenko, and so on. The obtained materials were later published in both Ukrainian and English, and were circulated in international media.

Mykhailo Braichevsky wrote his article Priednannia chy voz’ednannia? (Annexation or Reunification?) in 1966 in which he openly criticised the Theses on the 300^th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine and Russia (1654-1954), a document imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1954 as the only permitted interpretation of the events of 1654 in Ukrainian history, namely, the Pereiaslav Council and the Treaty of Pereiaslav, after which Ukraine became a part of the Russian Empire. Braichevsky’s work was circulated in samizdat in Ukraine,  smuggled abroad, and was published in Canada as a brochure. As a result of this writing, Braichevsky was fired from the Institute of History, where he worked as a researcher. In the next decade he was oppressed by the Soviet authorities and the Communist Party that demanded his public “repentance” and acknowledgment of his research “falsities.” He was not allowed to officially continue his research career.

At the turn of the 1980s, bands appeared on the Hungarian music scene which did not heed the status quo of the so called “pop-business.” They represented a grassroots new wave, which meant a turn to elementary music sources and the development of a poetically elevated world of lyrics. They soon became popular among the urban youth, but at the same time they were strategically marginalized by the monopolized channels of exposure of the time.

In this climate, it came as something of a surprise that one of these bands, Bizottság (Comittee), was able to release an album in 1983. The story has become a familiar anecdote. Due to the issue of popularity, a radio reporter asked one of the decision makers at the state record company if they would release some music by the new wave bands. He routinely replied that they had already discussed the matter with Wahorn from Bizottság. This was not true, but Wahorn just happened to be listening to the radio, and he sought out the decision-maker to discuss the matter.

After awhile, they agreed to make a concert album under the condition that the band change its name (from Bizottság to A. E. Bizottság in reference to Albert Einstein). The album was popular, and it sold out within days. However, the numbers were manipulated. It was released in only 14,000 copies, so the officials could later argue that only a small number of copies had been sold, it had not been popular enough and represented merely a niche type of music (a “gold standard” for success at the time was 100,000 copies sold).

The album presents several of the characteristics that made Bizottság (Comittee) special: the surreal lyrics fit the times, since in many cases the words were not used in their usual meanings in public discourses (though the lyrics remain poetic even today); the funny, improvised dialogues between songs; the special sound (for example the distinctive breaks developed by their female drummer, the peculiar riffs played by the guitarist, the sharp sound of the organ made in GDR, etc.); the remarkable post-production work (it is worth noting that the song Bestia (Beast) was altered by the censors: the word “siege” is made inaudible with the use of sound effects).

Altogether, it was an impressive debut album, and despite the limited number of copies made (a year later, another 10,000 copies were released, and twelve years later it came out on cd as well), it is regularly included to this day on the lists of the most remarkable Hungarian records ever made.