COURAGE

connecting collections

The distinctly unique group identity of the Hungarian veterans’ circle in Provence is visible in the fact that their members took an active part in both of the hottest armed conflicts of the Cold War: as teenage insurrectionists in 1956 Hungary, and a few years later as volunteers of the French Foreign Legion in the final phase of the devastating Algerian war. Due to much more powerful counter-forces, finally they lost both their fights; however, as the lucky survivors,  they managed to win the peace. Thus today they are among the few witnesses who have been given the chance to recall those troubling events that took many of their generational fellows, who died young or disappeared worldwide some 60 years ago.

A conservative estimate of these youngest recruits of the Legion, a few of them still underage at that time, is 500 among well over of 3,000 Hungarian volunteers total, who, following 1956 served in Algeria under the French tricolor and the red-green banners of the Legion. As a result of five years of archival and oral history research both in Hungary and France, more than the half of them, 269 members of the younger age group, have been identified by name and personal data. Finally, some two dozen Hungarian veterans were found in Provence and Corsica, and nine of them volunteered to share their memories with the wider public as the main characters of a feature length documentary film and a 500-page documentary book. (See Béla Nóvé’s film and book of the same title and subject, Patria nostra, published in late 2016.)

Even the first interviews and questionnaires of the veterans proved with shocking evidence how deeply and decisively their 1956 experience was etched in their memories. For various personal, biographical reasons, in the autumn of 1956 they all joined the protest demonstrations and the revolutionary unrest with great enthusiasm. Now nearing the age of 80, they still remember this time as their “baptism by fire.” The then thirteen-year-old János Spátay volunteered as a courier, passing secret messages sewed in a football from the isolated revolutionary troops across the bridges of Budapest that were blocked by Russian tanks. Fourteen-year-old Béla Huber from Sopron was the first to throw a hand grenade at the local headquarters of the ÁVH (the communist secret police); he continued to hide out in the woods along the Western border with other teenage boys for a month after the adult insurgents had all fled to Austria. Sixteen-year-old Gyula Sorbán took up arms on the first night at the siege of the Radio headquarters and for days was busy producing Molotov cocktails until he was gravely injured in the leg by a Russian tank grenade. Sándor Soós, a 17-year-old apprentice miner in Oroszlány protected the entrance of the New York Palace, a hotel and press center in downtown Budapest, with a light machine gun and only fled to the West with the last groups of insurgents one week after the second Soviet invasion.

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.