COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

This featured item shows the typical content of C.A.D.D.Y. bulletin issues. As can be seen on page 2 of C.A.D.D.Y. Bulletin no. 8 (1981), they contain short texts (only one paragraph long) written in a concise manner. The text typically discussed news about various judicial sentences given to Yugoslav dissidents of diverse social strata (priests, workers, a poet, a college dean). The most interesting is the text “Two Years for Poetry” about the famous case of the poet Gojko Đogo, which helped lead to the formation of the intellectual opposition in Belgrade first driven to defend artistic freedom: “It must be noted that the intellectual community in Belgrade reacted with open and public protests against this trial of poetry” (C.A.D.D.Y. Bulletin, 8: 2).

Gojko Đogo was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for publishing a collection of poems entitled Vunena vremena [Woollen Times] in which he “metaphorically alluded to Tito’s rule as one of tyranny, indolence and ignorance” (Dragović-Soso 2002, 54). It was the first time that “poetry was being tried” and thus support for Đogo was considered to be a principled defence of the freedom of literary and artistic creation and brought together intellectuals from across the political spectrum (nationalists, the “New Left”, and liberals).

The Đogo case was significant in that it led to the first institutional base of intellectual activism since the crackdowns of the early 1970s. This is reflected in the formation of the Committee for the Protection of Artistic Freedom at the Association of Serbian Writers in May 1982.

In the first two years of its work, the Committee raised its voice against Đogo’s persecution and imprisonment, the ban of the book Slučaj Đogo – dokumenti [The Case of Đogo - Documents] by Dragan Antić, the ban of the play Golubnjača in Novi Sad, the broadcast Beograde, dobro jutro [Belgrade, Good Morning] by Dušan Radović, the ban of Ljubomir Simović’s collection of poems Istočnice, the sentencing to seven months’ imprisonment of the Dubrovnik poet Milan Milišić, the closure of the Zapis publishing house, the ban on the regular publication of the newspaper Književne novine, the ban of Nebojša Popov’s book Društveni sukobi – izazov sociologiji [Social Conflicts: A Challenge to Sociology], the illegal detention of the writer Borislav Pekić in Belgrade, the ban of Aleksandar Popović’s play Mrešćenje šarana [The Spawn of the Carp] in Pirot, and the ban of Živojin Pavlović’s book Ispljuvak pun krvi [Spit Full of Blood], among others (Kljakić 2015).

In their smuggling operations, the Smoloskyp couriers used various ways to obtain and to transport samizdat and other materials of the Ukrainian cultural opposition from Soviet Ukraine. Manuscripts were usually copied as microfilms, hidden in luggages or parcels (in souvenir dolls, busts of Lenin or Shevchenko, etc.). In order to smuggle materials, Smoloskyp agents sometimes used official Canadian Communist delegations that visited Ukraine, as their luggage was checked less thoroughly on the border. Unbeknown to them, Smoloskyp agents attached microfilms to their luggage or talked them into carrying some souvenirs (with microfilms hidden inside).

Nowadays, two doll-containers are displayed on the Smoloskyp permanent exhibition in Kyiv as a symbol of the creative agency of both Ukrainian cultural opposition and Ukrainian diaspora in building hidden communication channels and making the case of the Ukrainian oppositional movement internationally known.

The year 1971 was a difficult one for the Ukrainian sixtiers movement. in November 1970, Alla Horska-the artist known as the "soul of the sixtiers movement-was found dead, killed by blunt force trauma to the head in her father in law's apartment. She had gone there to retrieve a sewing machine and never returned. 

In a series of letters Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska wrote in 1971 to her friend in Prague-Zina Genyk-Berezovska-we learn more about the circumstances surrounding Horska's death, in particular its impact on her close friends and colleagues, most of whom had been under surveillance for a number of years and/or had been arrested and imprisoned. In a letter from January 13, 1971, Kotsiubynska writes that Horska's death was "so wild, so frightening, so unexpected" that it left their community shaken. She goes on to say that Alla's husband Viktor Zaretsky suspected that something had gone wrong but could not bring himself to enter his father's house alone. He asked Nadia Svitlychna to go to Vasylkiv and find out what happened. Svitlychna did go, together with Yevhen Sverstiuk. Horska was discovered dead in her father-in-law's house, while the latter was found on train tracks near Fastiv, decapitated and also dead. After a quick forensic analysis, the authorities determined that these gruesome deaths were the result of a domestic dispute and closed the case.  

Kotiubynska processes the revelation that Horska had been killed by her father-in-law. Although many people did not believe this version of events, Kotsiubynska writes, with some sadness, that there were no concrete facts pointing to another assailant, adding that even those closest to Alla--Zaretsky and Svitlychna--did not seem to doubt the official version of events. Lamenting her own expulsion from the Institute of Literature, she adds: "By the way, the Ukrainian Artists Union reinstated Alla after her death. Perhaps, I too should die?"

In a letter dated June 28, 1971, Kotsiubynska writes again about Horska, this time indicating that there was a new version of what happened. The consensus had shifted, a reevaluation of the evidence suggesting that both Horska and her father-in-law had been killed by an unknown assailant who had not been identified. Alla Horska's murder remains unsolved and unresolved to this day.

Cardboard box with a large, red, stenciled, symmetrical question mark on the outer top of one side and the inner bottom of the other side. On the outer back side, a series of ten photos arranged in a grid demonstrating the possible combinations of similar boxes in an open and closed state.

On the third photo the box on the left is marked with an arrow pointing to a handwritten caption reading “that is this box.” Under the photo appears the typewritten title of the work and the following sentence: “The aim of the experiment is to examine the sensory and esthetic effects of generally asked questions.” Beside the photos, above the label the typewritten name of the author is visible.

The handwritten commentary suggests that a box can be interpreted alone as well (this concrete example incorporates two differently positioned, painted question marks). Looking at the photos, one can conclude that more—though not necessarily identical—copies exist, which were given away (as this example got to the archive).

Politics did not constitute the primary context of Péter Türk’s oeuvre, but a subtle, sometimes ironic, criticism of the system can be observed in his works produced during the first half of the 1970s. During this period, he created geometric, but more and more conceptually oriented works, pursuing visual, semantic-logical investigations, which formed an implicit statement in the eyes of cultural politics at the time.

The question marks appearing in several series of his works are “visual conundrums,” which come into play via their color, position, material, constellation and, last but not least, their variations. Contemplating the object, the viewer becomes involved in a conceptual-associative process.

During our visit, we first wanted to define what is a generally asked question. According to professor Beke, “how are you?” or rather “what’s up?” is a good example. Hearing (or reading) a question of this type it is worth noting that this still concerns the sensory effect.

The object bears the marks of time and the consequences of its storage conditions. Dedicated wood crates or humidity control could not be provided for an item kept in a private archive, but it did not lose any of its authenticity and conceptual clarity even in its current condition.

This tape recorder is the instrument with whose help over 1,000 hours of interviews were recorded in the course of Zoltán Rostás’s oral history project. It is a professional tape recorder, of West German manufacture, weighing approximately 7 kg, and is still in good working order, more than four decades after it was used for the first time. The UHER tape recorder has four recording speeds. Zoltán Rostás mentions that, in order not to have to manoeuvre the microphone attached to the tape recorder very often, and thus to avoid deterioration in the quality of the sound recorded, he used the instrument at the lowest speed. In this way, the recording capacity was considerably extended, and could be as much as five hours for a narrow magnetic tape.

Initially, this tape recorder belonged to the editorial office of the Hungarian-language publication A Hét (The week), where Zoltán Rostás worked before 1989. Identical audio instruments were also in the possession of the national radio and the Institute of Folklore, as they were very sturdy, durable pieces of equipment with an excellent recording capacity. “At the national television there were even better ones, Nagra. But I think I managed very well with my UHER. Which in fact, initially wasn’t actually mine. It was only after 1989, when the instrument was discarded, that it came into my possession,” mentions Zoltán Rostás. The UHER instrument is now in Zoltán Rostás’s home, close to the hundreds of tapes recorded with oral history testimonies. The great majority of the tapes used and now in the Zoltán Rostás private collection were Munplast, of Romanian manufacture.