COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The background to this event is linked to processes underway from the late 1950s. In this period, the MWU was dominated by two “generations” that competed for power and status during the next decade: the older “thaw” generation, which consisted of writers born in the 1910s and early 1920s, many of them with a solid background in Romanian culture, and the “generation of the 1960s,” which included a group of younger aspiring writers mainly born in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Most of the “thaw generation” graduated from Romanian high schools and subsequently were trained in Soviet higher education institutions. In contrast, the writers who became MWU members in the 1960s (who used to identify themselves as the “generation of the 1960s”) were aware of the gaps in their cultural knowledge and agreed to be initiated by their older fellow writers. Trained in this era of post-Stalinist relative liberalisation, the writers of the 1960s generation assimilated the new Soviet slogans, which were still taken seriously at the time, but developed simultaneously a certain degree of critical thinking. The communication between older writers, trained under the Romanian administration, and the new generation of writers provided the latter with an alternative model to the one practised by the Soviet system of education and propaganda. Their spotless political trajectory made some writers from the “generation of the 1960s” question the fairness of some Soviet-imposed norms. Without questioning the legitimacy of the Soviet system or communist ideology as a whole, the public positions of Moldovan writers emerged in October 1965, during the Third Congress of the MWU. On this occasion, the “thaw generation” and the “1960s generation” forged an alliance and openly challenged the Russification of the Moldovan population. They also demanded the introduction of the Latin alphabet. Obviously, the Soviet authorities qualified such critical opinions as nationalistic and implicitly anti-internationalist.

     Given the number of those involved in this public debate, the Third Congress of the MWU remains one of the most remarkable events that could be subsumed under the category of “cultural opposition” during the existence of the MSSR. Held on 14–15 October 1965, it marked the definitive consecration of the group of Moldovan writers known as the “generation of the 1960s.” They were the first to write in standard Romanian, and the quality of their literary output was superior to most of their predecessors and was in synchronism with the liberalising tendencies throughout the USSR. Members of this generation include such emblematic figures as Ion Druță, Grigore Vieru, Aureliu Busuioc, Pavel Boțu, etc. The Third Congress itself was the first manifestation of a nationally conscious agenda and the first event of its kind held in the Romanian language. This congress marked such a turn because it was held after a seven-year break, during which the Moldavian literary milieu was decisively transformed. The power shifted away from the previously dominant “Transnistrian” faction to the “Bessarabian” group, who advocated a higher quality of literary works and a wider autonomy for the writers’ creative process.  During the event, the writers raised a number of politically sensitive issues, such as the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet for standard “Moldovan,” the issue of education in Romanian at all levels, and the subject of party interference in literary matters. The audio recording allows a reconstruction of the atmosphere of the event, including the discourses of the participants. The event was open to university students, which provided for a much wider audience than usual, and for an accordingly broader public reaction. The reaction of the authorities was hostile and swift. Both at the congress itself and afterwards, the party leadership were alarmed and outraged by what they perceived as “nationalist” opinions articulated by some of the participants. In the context of the growing apprehensions about Romania’s position in foreign policy and its role as a potential model for cultural emulation in the MSSR, the party launched a campaign to combat “local nationalism.” At a series of meetings in November and December 1965, the first secretary of the Moldavian Communist Party, Ivan Bodiul, called for an intensification of “agitation and propaganda” work throughout the republic and for the “re-education” of those writers who voiced “dangerous” opinions. Although no direct repressive measures followed, the party line towards any manifestations of national consciousness hardened. Given the official reaction to this debate among MWU members, the audio recording of this congress represents a fascinating source for reconstituting not only this significant act of “cultural opposition,” but also the perception of the regime regarding “dangerous” and “oppositional” acts. 

According to very early notes and recordings, István Darkó began work on Macskarádió (Cat radio) while at high school, in the early 1970s, using stories from his home-made paper Bendzin and his comic-experiment Utazás a világ körül (Journey around the world) together with other writings, and it continued to grow until the end of his university years, in 1978. Darkó's first tape recorder was the famous Hungarian Mambó, acquired from his parents; later he used a SANYO. He was very inventive, because he knew the technical possibilities of the poor-quality tape recorders. He worked not with the switch cabinet but with his hand, manually touching the tape to the recording head during recording. He did everything with one tape recorder and one microphone.

The audio recordings of Cat Radio are preserved on East-German-made tape with the series mark ORWO TYP 120/360 m Double Play, 5/482. The box is labelled “A MACSKARÁDIÓ különműsora” (Special programme of CAT RADIO). Macskarádió I. (Cat radio I.), the full story itself, is on the first track, and Macskarádió II. (Cat radio II.), which is looser in its structure, composed as an evening music programme, is on the second. On a second tape Darkó stored the various sounds needed for the radio play, for example the clacks of train wheels and animal noises.

Cat Radio is not only a studio, but a spiritual place, where things come together, meet, or break up, an occult place, where the arrangement and matching of the stories takes place. All the characters speak through the voice of Darkó, with the bon ton (mannered, polite) Hungarian movie voice of the 1940s. But these are experienced voices; the performer only ever spoke in the sanctuary of Cat Radio when sufficiently aroused. He made the audio recording in stages. The elaboration of each detail, each sequence is mental. According to Péter Egyed, the fact that Darkó created it over such a long period made it an endlessly complicated story. There are at least three levels, though this is hard to realise after hearing it once or even two or three times. Because of its metaphysics and because of its complicatedness it is obvious that the radio play was not made for a broad public audience. The constant element in the events is persecution. The characters are divided mainly in three groups. As a matter of fact there is a battle of intentions going on, in which the secret service type of deception is crucial. It is a matter of make-believe, gullibility; who is capable of reconstructing the true reality in virtual sound fields? 

In Cluj and in Târgu Mureș the world, or rather worlds, constructed by István Darkó became known. When wanted to be in his element among his acquaintances and friends, he got out Cat Radio and let them listen to it. They listened to it, word leaked out, and the notoriety of Cat Radio exceeded theoretically and also practically the narrower circle of his friends. There was a mystical quality about it. It did not spread samizdat-like, because there was only one original tape, of which a copy was never made. But the fact that this tape was listened to by 10–20–50–100 people and so on made it a semi-public production. What runs on the tape is a continuous analysis of being. In Darkó's world there is a bit of the Orwellian, the hereafter, the world of passing, of things that have not come yet, that cannot be experienced by living people. In his view of life there is also an extraordinary closeness of death. Let's be careful, because we live in a world in which the other one is contained too, even if we don't want to acknowledge it!

When interpreting Cat Radio, Péter Egyed could not ignore the space and time parameters of its appearance. He believed that the material of Cat Radio could not exist independent of what István Darkó had experienced. Why did he not write something else? According to Egyed the Securitate, the state Party and other official agencies were not well-intentioned administrators of humanity, but people following orders and those orders were not about serving the good of civil society. They – contemporaries – were actually playing something according to the script of the multilaterally developed socialist society. It had to be played that things were all right, but everyone knew that it was actually about something else than what they were playing. In the script there is not real life, but Nothing – but where was real life then? Egyed thought that real life was located in what they experienced in intimacy, and what came up in intimacy, real friendships, love relations etc. Society had a life that supported this, as opposed to that which wanted to destroy it. In the army their officers told them that they, the intellectuals, were not needed for the country, either as intellectuals nor as soldiers. They were the "negligible quantity" and they were made to understand that they did not count from the point of view of the socialist future.

Augustinas Gricius’ letter to Justas Paleckis, written in 1953. The Lithuanian writer Augustinas Gricius (1899–1972) informed Paleckis that the gravestones of well-known Lithuanian cultural activists (the composers Stasys Šimkus, Sasnauskas, the writer Kazys Binkis, Professor Jaunius) in Kaunas city cemetery had been destroyed. The graves of Darius and Girėnas (Lithuanian pilots who flew across the Atlantic) were in especially bad condition. Gricius also criticised the Kaunas city authorities, who had shown no interest in preserving the gravestones of famous Lithuanian cultural activists. Augustinas Gricius was a journalist, writer and public figure.

Professor Kathy Hillman highlighted autographed volumes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as rare items in the Keston Collection. They require special handling and are not digitized. The publication is the 1974 London Book Club Associates edition translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn personally inscribed the book to Jane Ellis on February 26, 1976. Ms. Ellis worked for the Keston Institute for nearly 20 years, serving on the editorial board of Keston’s journal Religion in Communist Lands (later titled Religion, State & Society), including 5 years as editor. She also founded Aid to Russian Christians (ARC).

According to her obituary published by Philip Walters in Religion, State & Society in 1998, the ARC was the first organisation with the aim of systematically supplying material aid and spiritual support to Orthodox Christians in Russia. She remained the organization’s director until 1986. For the first four years of its existence, Jane Ellis ran the organization alone, operating out of a tiny bedsit in London. She wrote hundreds of letters asking for support for faith communities in the Soviet Union. She joined the Keston Center immediately after graduating from the university in 1973, where she translated documents, gave lectures, wrote articles for scholarly journals and edited volumes, and broadcast for the BBC in both Russian and English.  She travelled widely within the USSR and wrote two monographs about the Russian Orthodox Church, which were received with acclaim in Russia. She also promoted interfaith discussions and cooperative projects.