COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

The museum has several samizdat collections by Vasyl Stus, a poet, dissident, human rights activist and figurehead of the sixtiers movement. Two collected volumes of his poetry were given as gifts to Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets and her husband Ihor Kalynets, and later donated by Stasiv-Kalynets to the museum-memorial on Lonskogo St.

The first book Winter Trees (Zymovi Dereva) was published in 1969, and given to the couple on January 9, 1972. The volume included an inscription and in-text modifications written by Stus, which, in addition to providing insights into his creative process, also marked an important turning point in the story of these Ukrainian dissidents. Within a matter of days, Stus, Stasiv-Kalynets and many others were arrested in a sweep that took place on January 12-14, 1972. The catalyst was a “vertep,” or portable puppet theatre of the nativity scene accompanied by Ukrainian Christmas carols, organized by Lviv dissidents to draw attention to the plight of compatriots who had been arrested unjustly, like Valentyn Moroz in 1970, and to raise funds to support the families they left behind. Participants walked from house to house, dressed in colorful costumes and traditional Ukrainian clothing, carrying large festive stars and other adornments.

The carolers raised 250 karbovantsi (rubles) but 19 of the 45 participants were arrested and tried for anti-Soviet activities. Among them were Stasiv-Kalynets, sentenced to 6 years of hard labor and 3 years of exile, Stefania Shabatura, sentenced to 5 years of hard labor and 3 years of exile, and Vasyl Stus, sentenced to 5 years hard labor and two years of exile in Magadan. Stus was arrested again for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda shortly after his release in 1979 and sentenced to another 10 years of hard labor. He died in Perm in 1985 after declaring a hunger strike to protest harsh conditions and his maltreatment at the hands of camp guards. Mykhailo Horyn’ was sentenced to 14 years of hard labor and exile, while Marian Hatala, an engineer charged with disseminating samizdat and other unsanctioned literature, took his own life.

The second volume, pictured above, The Merry Cemetery (Veselyi Tsvyntar), is also significant. As with the other book, we see Stus’ signature handwritten modifications. In the bottom left corner, there is also a stamp from the institute conducting forensic analysis for the courts. This stamp indicates that this volume was used as evidence of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Along with a collected volume by Mykola Kholodnyj titled Cry from the Grave (Kryk z Mohyly), this volume by Stus was confiscated in many apartment searches in 1972 and were used in multiple court cases against Ukrainian dissidents arrested that year, in particular, the artist Stefaniya Shabatura and samizdat publisher Ivan Hel’. These confiscated materials were returned to their original owners, Stasiv-Kalynets and Shabatura, after independence. Though their case files remain in the SBU archives, the material evidence taken from their apartments was returned.

Vasyl Stus’ fourth volume of poetry was written under particularly difficult and unusual circumstances, during a nine month period in 1972, when he was held in isolation prior to his trial and sentencing. The poems were written in pencil (as he was forbidden from using pens) into a single notebook from January to September. Despite the austere conditions and near total isolation, Stus himself and literary scholars point to this period as one of explosive creativity in which he wrote nearly 200 poems and 100 translations. This notebook captures not only the circumstances under which these poems were written, but also Stus’ own extraordinary gifts as a poet and his strength of character. 

The cartoon “The Future,” which was included in the censored volume Umor 50% (Humour 50%), suggests through four successive images the story of a shipwrecked man longing in vain for rescue. In the first image, a huge ship on which is written “The Future” seems to be approaching a desert island to rescue a man; in the next three, however, it may be observed that this approaching ship becomes smaller and smaller, so that in the last image, the viewer’s eye can no longer even make out the inscription alluding to the long-awaited future of communist society, in which everyone should finally live happily. Beyond the ideological disillusion that was general in the whole Soviet Bloc, Mihai Stănescu captures that state of mind specific to communism in Romania in this final period, and suggests the hopelessness and lack of expectations. In this sense, the cartoon is not only a subtle criticism of Marxism-Leninism, but also a parable of the gradual disappearance of hope as the twilight of the communist regime in Romania approached.

Clearly dated 1983, the cartoon “Working Visit” was probably among those withdrawn from the exhibition at the Eforie Gallery that year. It was subsequently omitted from the volumes later prepared by Mihai Stănescu before 1989, but it was included in the volume Best of Stănescu, which comprises works from the period 1979–1989 and was published in 2009 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of communism. The cartoon “Working Visit” shows a crowd of people drawn like parquet pieces on which footprints can be seen. The drawing mocks in a tragic-comic key the so-called “working visits” made by the secretary general of the Party, Nicolae Ceauşescu, together with his suite of communist officials, to various cities, to factories, building sites, and cultivated fields. These working visits, unknown in the time of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej but introduced and intensely promoted by Ceauşescu, followed broadly the same pattern: the Party delegation, led by Ceauşescu himself and in most cases also including his wife Elena, travelled to various “objectives.” There they were greeted by the local authorities and frenetically applauded by crowds of people specially mobilised to give the distinguished guests a long ovation. During these visits, Ceauşescu formulated so-called “precious indications” regarding what ought to be done in the factory, building site, or agricultural cooperative that he was visiting. Once launched, these “indications” became the letter of the law, no matter how absurd they were, and those on whom they had been bestowed dared not contradict them, even when specialists understood that they could produce disastrous effects. In essence, the “indications” symbolised the arbitrary character of decisions in a dictatorial regime. At the same time, for the presidential couple as for the rest of the officials of the communist regime, these “working visits” constituted what we would today call an image-building exercise. At the time, they were an obligatory element in the complex arsenal of the personality cult. For the crowds of people brought to attend these working visits, they were an exercise in accepted humiliation. This is what Mihai Stănescu manages to show through the cartoon “Working Visit.” This cartoon is one of the most well-known works in his portfolio, and indeed in the history of Romanian cartoons under communism.

The Free Europe University in Exile (FEUE) was founded by the National Committee for Free Europe in New York in 1951 as a specific type of academic organisation. The purpose of the organisation was to enable academic education in a democratic spirit to a large number of immigrants who left the states ruled by communist regimes. Émigrés from Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Hungary could apply to this university. The University's goals were to train young émigrés to find jobs and fit into the democratic world as teachers, professors, engineers, doctors, scientists, economists, lawyers, historians, and so forth. They were supposed to become the drivers of a liberal-democratic system in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. Since 1952, the University has conferred scholarships for its summer seminars held in the Château de Pourtalèâs in Strasbourg. The seminars were focused on contemporary focal political and cultural issues. Lecturers at the Summer Seminar were prominent members of the academic community and experts from Western Europe and the United States.

Jakša Kušan was a FEUE student. He believes that the FEUE lecturers were elite members of the liberal academic community from the United States as well as numerous prominent European intellectuals and émigrés. What Kušan considered even more important was that students/refugees from the countries under communist rule could meet there and exchange ideas. There he began his cooperation with Tihomil Rađa and Branko Salaj, with whom he later founded and edited the magazine Nova Hrvatska. These summer seminars were, according to Kušan, an arena of ideas and cultural contacts. He thinks that the Poles and Estonians used these scholarships very well because their new liberal intelligentsia was forged there.

The Yugoslav communists wrote that the FEUE was a school for CIA collaborators. According to Kušan, the United States intended to gather people who would return to Europe one day and on whom they could rely when communist rule collapsed (Interview with Kušan Jakša_2). Of all the organisations that the USA funded, only Radio Free Europe survives to this day. Financing of the rest ceased when the US saw that there were no significant results from them (Interview with Kušan, Jakša_2).

The Jakša Kušan Personal Papers contain materials from some of the FEUE seminars, such as a brochure on a seminar held in 1957. According to the brochure, the seminar in 1957 continued the tradition of a one-month seminar that was held from 6 August to 7 September. It was devoted primarily to international relations and the political, economic and social problems of Central European satellite states. The 1957 seminar featured intellectuals such as Czesław Miłosz and Bogdan Radica as lecturers.