COURAGE

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Sveučilište slobodna Europa u egzilu (The Free Europe University in Exile) osnovao je Američki nacionalni komitet za slobodnu Europu 1951. godine u New Yorku kao akademsku organizaciju posebne vrste. Svrha organizacije bila je omogućiti akademsku izobrazbu u demokratskom duhu što većem broju iseljenika koji su napustili države u kojima su vladali komunistički režimi. Na ovo sveučilište su se mogli prijaviti iseljenici iz Albanije, Bugarske, Čehoslovačke, Estonije, Jugoslavije, Latvije, Litve, Poljske, Rumunjske i Mađarske. Ciljevi Sveučilišta bili su da se mlade iseljenike obuči da mogu pronaći posao i uklopiti se u demokratski svijet kao učitelji, profesori, inženjeri, liječnici, znanstvenici, ekonomisti, pravnici, povjesničari itd., te da oni jednog dana budu nositelji liberalno-demokratskoga sustava koji bi se gradio u srednjoistočnoj Europi nakon pada komunizma. Sveučilište je davalo stipendije za svoje ljetne seminare koji su se od 1952. održavali u Strasbourgu u Château de Pourtalèâs na kojem se raspravljalo o žarišnim političkim i kulturnim pitanjima. Predavači na ljetnom seminaru bili su ugledni članovi akademske zajednice i stručnjaci iz zapadne Europe i SAD-a.

Jakša Kušan bio je stipendist te organizacije i smatra da su tamo predavanja održavali pripadnici kreme liberalne akademske zajednice iz SAD-a, kao i brojni ugledni europski intelektualci iseljenici. Ono što je Kušan smatrao još važnijim jest da su se tu mogli sresti mnogi drugi studenti-izbjeglice iz zemalja koje su bile pod komunističkom vlašću, a između ostalog, tu je započela i njegova suradnja s Tihomilom Rađom i Brankom Salajem s kojima će kasnije osnovati i uređivati list Novu Hrvatsku. Ti ljetni seminari bili su, prema Kušanu, rasadište ideja i kulturnih kontakata. Smatra da su Poljaci i Estonci jako dobro koristili mogućnosti tog stipendiranja jer se tu iskristalizirala njihova nova mlada liberalna inteligencija. Jugoslavenski komunisti su pisali da je to škola za CIA-ine doušnika. Prema Kušanu, SAD-u je cilj bio da okupi ljude koji će se jednoga dana vratiti u Europu i na koje će jednoga dana moći računati u izgradnji demokratske Europe. No, smatra da nisu bili dosljedni, jer iako su dugo vremena financirali sve predstavnike i grupe seljačkih stranaka kao naš HSS, s vremenom su izgubili interes i nisu pomlađivali te grupacije i stranke i one su se rasule. (Intervju s Kušan Jakšom_2) Od svih organizacija koje je SAD financirao, samo je Radio Slobodna Europa (Radio Free Europe) opstao do danas. Ostalo su prestali financirati kad su vidjeli da u njima nema nekih značajnijih rezultata. (Intervju s Kušan, Jakšom_2)

U zbirci Jakše Kušana postoje materijali s nekih od seminara poput brošure o seminaru koji se održao 1957. Prema samoj brošuri, i seminar 1957. nastavio je tradiciju jednomjesečnog seminara koji se te godine održavao od 6. kolovoza do 7. rujna. Seminar je bio posvećen primarno međunarodnim odnosima i političkim, ekonomskim i društvenim problemima srednjoeuropskih satelitskih država, a na njemu su kao predavači sudjelovali i istaknuti intelektualci poput Czesława Miłosza ili Bogdana Radice. 

During the summer period there were various festivals at Costineşti: festivals of theatre, film, rock, folk, jazz, caricature. All these were given generous space in the broadcasts of Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti.

“The festivals had many moments that were subversive towards the communist regime, and some of these can be glimpsed in the ‘news-sheets’ of the festivals. These were true newspapers – truer, I dare to claim, and more playful, freer, more natural that the official newspapers,” says Andrei Partoş. He mentions also that the articles in these papers – not least because they were already approved by the regime – provided a sort of substantial “raw material” that was very precious for his radio broadcasts: “They were given out free on the beach. All the big names who came there on vacation wrote in them. They set up a ‘press unit’ and brought out various news-sheets, generally of four pages. They were distributed in large print-runs for the public there. The following year, I would reuse what had been printed on the radio – and the stuff was exceptional, because it had been approved.” Andrei Partoş is one of the most informed connoisseurs of these publications, and probably one of the few people in Romania who still keeps copies of them.

The print-runs in which these publications appeared varied from a few thousand copies to tens of thousands of copies. Written in an alert and fresh language, totally different from the general tone of the communist press in Romania, they were conceived and edited in the Costineşti resort. Many well-known names from central publications appear in them, especially those who signed articles in the youth sections of the newspapers of the day. The then dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu is only mentioned very rarely in them, in contrast to the official press, where mention of the name and “achievements” of the communist supreme leader was obligatory.

In contrast with what was produced in the summers in Costineşti – radio transmitting “with no holds barred” and publications through which there breathed an air of normality and even freedom – , the rest of the time in Romania the mass media felt to the full the constraints of the communist regime. The period 1980–1989, in which most of these publications appeared as “festival news-sheets,” was named the “satanic decade” by Mircea Zaciu, a respected literary critic (Zaciu 1993, 7). It was precisely the period in which the personality cult of the Ceauşescu couple reached its apogee. Moreover, in 1985 regional radio stations in Romania were closed down, officially on the grounds that the Romanian state had to save energy in order to pay its accumulated international debt faster. The broadcasting schedule of public television, which was indeed the only television channel in that period, was drastically cut back. The broadcasts, which were entirely controlled by the party apparatus, were reduced to two hours per day, from 8 pm to 10 pm. The official reason for this decision was that people ought to go to bed early, in order to be well-rested and ready for work the next day. Printed publications were likewise strictly controlled, with the language used in published articles being homogenised in the light of directives received from the Romanian Communist Party.

Among the publications printed in the course of numerous summers at Costineşti as “festival news-sheets” may be mentioned: Spectator (news-sheet of the Amphitheatre Galas), Secvenţa (The sequence, subtitled “The paper that gave in its resignation”, a news-sheet of the Film Festival), Stop-cadru (“Freeze frame”, also a news-sheet of the Film Festival), and Consecvenţa (The consequence). There has not yet been a systematic study of these publications, which provided little islands of normality in a media landscape which, like Romanian communism as a whole, was very dark at the time.

The full title of this central document in the Marian Zulean collection is Întîlnire la nivel înalt: Moscova, 29 mai – 2 iunie 1988. Documente și materiale (Summit meeting: Moscow, 29 May – 2 June 1988: Documents and materials). The book documents in detail the content of the visit to the USSR made by US President Ronald Reagan in the early summer of 1988, at the invitation of Mikhail Gorbachev.

The volume consists of a series of transcriptions of the public moments of the meetings of the leaders of the two states, four speeches by each of them, press statements and addresses by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, transcriptions of question and answer sessions in front of the press, and the answers given by the Soviet leader in an extensive interview granted to the newspaper The Washington Post and the magazine Newsweek prior to the visit. The book also gives details of the ceremony of exchanging instruments of ratification with the reference to the coming into force of the treaty eliminating medium-and shorter-range missiles, and the text of the joint statement made at the Moscow summit. Not least among the interesting features of the book is a substantial photographic archive of the state visit.

In order to understand why such a book constituted an alternative source of information, it must be recalled that, in comparison, the reflection of this visit in the Romanian press was minimal. Marian Zulean remarks: “I remember that it was just mentioned briefly in short news items. Because in fact what was happening then between the USSR and the USA did not suit the leaders of the communist regime here at all. Once I read this book, to which I added what I heard on Radio Free Europe, I really understood what had happened during those days in the USSR.”

The book is preserved in good condition in the Marian Zulean collection. It has 128 pages and was published, directly translated into Romanian, by Novosti Press Agency in 1988. The book was purchased at the International Trade Fair for Consumer Goods (TIBCO), where the USSR had a very large stand.

This entry captures the emergence of LGBT meetings in East Berlin. LGBT communities were not strange to the GDR. Despite the several legal frameworks issued starting 1960s that introduced softer measures against homosexuality, homosexual activities were not legal for a long period. It was only in 1988 that the prosecution of homosexuality was eliminated in the GDR.

Despite their illegal status, LGBT individuals found alternative ways of gathering, avoiding Stasi surveillance. Meetings were regularly held underground in the cellar of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf in the suburbs of East Berlin. Following police intervention this meeting place was banned, so members needed to find a new location for their regular gatherings. Various bars and cafes in the Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood of East Berlin then hosted LGBT gatherings. The only constant was the day of their meetings, namely Sunday, while some of the cafes such as Prenzlau and Ecke Schönhauser became very popular. These were known among the members of the LGBT community as the “Bermuda Triangle” (Bermuda-Dreieck).

Some bars continued to operate after 1990. Rooted in these initiatives, after reunification the Sonntags-Club e.V. association, representing the LGBT community, was organised in the Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood in Berlin.

Limes was a circle of Hungarian dissident intellectuals which operated more or less actively from 1985 until the 1989 Romanian revolution. The aim of the circle was to provide a pluralist platform of cooperation for Hungarian intellectuals, which meant holding monthly/bimonthly organized meetings and publishing a journal dealing with the history and actual situation of the Hungarian minority from Romania, as well as other outstanding research work pertaining to other domains. The circle was also devoted to maintaining high standards of scientific work in Romania. As there was no chance of getting anything past the censors in Romania, the plan was to smuggle manuscripts to Hungary and to publish the journal there.

The initiator was Gusztáv Molnár, who mostly due to his job as a literary editor at the Bucharest-based Kriterion publishing house had a large personal network among Transylvanian Hungarian critical intellectuals. The core of the group was represented by the following individuals: Vilmos Ágoston, Béla Bíró, Gáspár Bíró, Ernő Fábián, Károly Vekov, Levente Salat, Csaba Lőrincz, Ferenc Visky, András Visky, Péter Visky, Levente Horváth, Sándor Balázs, Sándor Szilágyi N., and Éva Cs. Gyímesi. Through the process of editing the journal, many more intellectuals became acquainted with the activity of the Limes group.

Between September 1985 and November 1986, six meetings were held in four different localities in Romania in the homes of members of the group. The meetings encompassed a presentation (usually of a manuscript) followed by a debate, and all proceedings were recorded. The series of meetings was interrupted by a search and seizure performed by the Securitate in Molnár’s apartment in Bucharest. All documents related to Limes were taken and later studied by the authorities. By this time, the plan to make four Limes issues had already been completed, and the manuscripts for the first two issues had already been collected. The contents included transcripts of the Limes debates and studies and documents covering topics such as “national minorities,” “nationalism,” “totalitarianism,” “autonomy,” and “Transylvanianism” as a guiding ideology for the Hungarian minority in Romania. The topics also included the situation of the Csángó Catholic (Hungarian-speaking) population in Romania.

The Limes group ceased its activity after the intervention of the Romanian secret police, and in 1987, summons and warnings were issued to the members of the group. Though no more meetings were organized, after a while, Limes members resumed work on the texts. Molnár moved to Hungary in 1988, but the editorial work was continued in Romania by Éva Cs. Gyímesi Éva and Péter Cseke in Cluj. The first issues of Limes was published by Molnár in Budapest in late 1989. The content does not coincide with the initial first volume of the Limes, but the issues did contain excerpts from the debates which were held at the first two meetings.

Invaluable insights into the details of the Limes story and other events in the lives of outstanding Hungarian intellectuals are provided by the Securitate files on professor of philosophy at the Babes Bolyai University Sándor Balázs (1928–), which are available for research in the Historical Collection of the Jakabffy Elemér Foundation. This is because the Limes activities in Cluj were recorded by the county agency of the Securitate as part of the information surveillance files on Sándor Balázs. His code name was “the Sociologist” (Sociologul), but the table of contents at the beginning of the dossier refers to “the Sociologists” (Sociologii), the code name used to denote the Limes group.

The dossier was opened at the beginning of 1987, and the version handed over by the CNSAS for research has three volumes which consist of some 800 folios. The files represent various types of documents: 1. strategic plans, analyses, and annexes to these plans; 2. characterizations and personal networks; 3. Syntheses, reports, and notes; 4. Information and materials obtained from surveillance; 5. Results of the monitoring activity; 6. Minutes. As noted already, the dossier contains copies of documents considered important originating from the surveillance files of other people involved in the Limes group: Éva Cs. Gyímesi (code name Elena), Péter Cseke, Gusztáv Molnár (Editorul), Lajos Kántor Lajos (Kardos), Ernő Gáll (Goga), Sándor Tóth (Toma), and Edgár Balogh (Bartha).