COURAGE

povezivanje zbirki

Like a red line, Ellenpontok divided Géza Szőcs’s life into two: before and after 1982. Choosing to remain in his home country, thus accepting the monitoring by the secret police that this entailed, without a job and facing existential problems, he continued his dissident activity. On 14 July 1984 in the spirit of the traditions established by Ellenpontok, he addressed a fourteen-page petition to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in which he advocated the minority rights of Hungarians, and – at that time he alone – of Germans. With the thirteenth Congress of the Party drawing near, which provided the opportunity for publishing guidelines regarding its nationality policy, Szőcs formulates his demands in ten points. In the first point he asks that the Romanian constitution should include not just personal, but also collective ethnic rights – considered a taboo subject even today –, lifting up his voice for the recognition of Hungarians and Germans living in Romania as independent ethnic-historical groups. In addition to the reestablishment of the Ministry of Nationalities which operated between 1944 and 1952, he asks for the elaboration and guarantee of a law on nationalities (ethnic minorities), in accordance with the Nationality Statute of 1945, still in force, the 1946 Nationality Draft Act of the Hungarian People’s Union and the Programme Proposal drawn-up by the editors of Ellenpontok. He asks for public debate with a view to restoring such administrative, institutional and cultural frameworks related to ethnic interests as the former Hungarian Autonomous Region, The Transylvanian Museum Society, the Union of Hungarian Writers in Romania, the Hungarian Music Conservatory in Cluj-Napoca, the network of Hungarian-language schools and the university providing Hungarian-medium education in Cluj-Napoca, etc. He requests the making public of the unification document of the Cluj-based universities, dating from 1959, which stipulated as a principle for the future an obligatory minimum number of Hungarian students and teaching staff as well as the educational framework. He raises the issue of examining subjects such as Hungarian-language film production in Romania, or the extension of the one-hour Hungarian-language television broadcast. The fifth point of the petition is especially daring, since it encourages the compilation and disclosure of lists of Hungarians and Germans living in Romania. Moreover, Szőcs argues in favour of the disclosure of social and economic statistical data concerning the various nationalities. As far as education is concerned, he asks for disclosure of the number and proportion of Hungarian and German university graduates in the period 1945 to 1984, and, in the context of the last 10 years, a full l list of graduates who were declared to be Hungarians or Germans, broken down by higher education institutions. He also asks for the disclosure of statistics regarding secondary schools, by counties and cities. In the seventh point of the petition he asks for the Romanian Communist Party to publicly take a position against the practice of the press which, wrapped in the appearance of semi-officialdom, left room in periodicals or other publications for nationalistic and anti-Semitic manifestations, presenting the historical role of nationalities, especially that of the Hungarian minority, in a one-sided and distorted manner. Szőcs asks that the Party distance itself from the anti-minority policy of the interwar governments and render impossible the revival of this policy; as for preventing the falsification of history and malicious manipulation he sees the solution in the publication of a “White Book” which will contain all the significant documents – both political and cultural – pertaining to Romanian–Hungarian historical coexistence. Szőcs suggests that Romania should initiate at the United Nations the inclusion of an article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which will explicitly address minority rights, and also bring up the topic of supplementing the convention regarding genocide to include cultural genocide and, ethnocide, including an article about the elaboration of guarantees for rendering this impossible. In support of his requests and suggestions, Szőcs supplies primarily historical data, organised into points A, B, C, D and E. A part of the nationality-related requests touched upon by Szőcs in the spirit of constitutionality, compliance with Lenin’s ethnic principles and democratic freedom of opinion were already included also in the programme proposal of Ellenpontok in one form or another. He justifies his petition by arguing that the “current solution” of the nationality issue does not, for the time being, put an end to the flux of Hungarian and German masses determined to leave the country. “Except for those embracing assimilation,” Szőcs writes, “ethnic minorities at all times and in all places have wanted to enjoy equal rights not just as individuals but also as a group. This is why we demand not just personal rights – which can often prove to be rather vulnerable – but also collective ethnic rights.” “To conclude,” he writes, “I wish to express my appreciation to the Party leadership regarding the fact that they have abandoned the practice of retaliating against the formulation and expression of opinions different from the official point of view by immediately applying physical liquidation or long-term deprivation of liberty. I am fully aware of the fact that in the 1950s I would have had to pay with my freedom or life for similar activities, such as the publication of the illegal magazine entitled Ellenpontok – notwithstanding that this magazine did not attack the existing social order, had no agitating character and did not oppose the nationality policy of the party, either, but only practices and methods that are contrary to the declared principles of this policy.”

The petition of July 1984 remained without a reply. Nevertheless, Géza Szőcs continued to use this means to inform the Party leaders about the existence of primarily Hungarian minority claims. On 10 February 1985, Szőcs drew up his proposal regarding the establishment of a world alliance of minorities. “We apply to the UN with the proposal,” he wrote, “that it should lay the foundation of an institutional system under its auspices, the purpose of which is to represent in principle the interests of all the ethnic minorities in the world.” He concluded his proposal, extending over more than one page, with the following lines: “The ethnic minorities living in all parts of the world together represent an enormous majority against any majority taken separately. The Minority International conceived by us could function as a right hand extended as a sign of peace for this majority organised from minorities.” On 15 February 1985, after a personal visit paid by Szőcs, the writer and later emigrant Dorin Tudoran also signed up to the proposal, as did the economist and politician Károly Király on 27 March 1985. On 28 March 1985 Szőcs submitted another petition to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. In the sixth and last point of the petition which summed up the new developments, unwelcome from the ethnic point of view, of the months following the first petition, Szőcs asked the Romanian Party and state leadership to present and support at the UN the proposal for the creation of a minority world alliance signed by the three of them and attached to the petition. The service of the petition represented not only an organised action but also a Hungarian-Romanian joint demonstration. This proposal for a world alliance of minorities was presented also in Western countries, but no substantive reverberations resulted.

The files of the Office of the President of the Parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the period 1978-1982 include the preserved petition with copies of 3,002 signatures from Omiš residents opposing construction of a sintered magnesia factory in that area. The petition drive in Omiš was organised on 7 April 1979. It was signed by 3,002 persons: 2,540 eligible voters and 462 students under 18 years of age. According to the file cover, Parliament received the petition on 12 April 1979, and placed it ad acta ten days later, on 24 April. Besides Parliament, the conclusions from the town meeting and the petition with copies of all 3,002 signatures were also sent to the Omiš Municipal Assembly and to a range of republic-level institutions, and to participants in the Second Conference on Adriatic Protection, held at that time on the island of Hvar. That campaign resulted in further debate on the matter by the professional and general public.

The document is available for research and copying.

A typewritten copy of the Russian translation of the petition signed by 55 well-known public figures, scientists and cultural activists was submitted to the Council of Ministers on 14 March 1958. The original of the petition was in Latvian, and is now in the files of the Latvian SSR Council of Ministers in the State Archive of Latvia. The petition had three supplements, about the valley of the River Daugava, the natural and cultural features that would be lost by flooding it, and alternative options to the construction plans.

During the search of 18 May 1983, among the objects confiscated from the collection of Dan Petrescu and Thérèse Culianu-Petrescu were forty-five typed leaves of a manuscript representing an unusual literary project: the collective novel “Furrows Across the Baulks” revisited. The manuscript had four authors. In addition to Dan Petrescu, these were Luca Piţu, George Pruteanu, and Sorin Antohi. “Furrows Across the Baulks” revisited was a rewriting, in a satirical register, of a quite well-known proletkultist novel by the Hungarian writer István Horváth, translated into Romanian in 1953. The original title Furrows Across the Baulks had inspired the rereading of the collectivisation process in an ironic key by the four young intellectuals. The manuscript existed in a single copy, which passed from hand to hand with each of the four adding a chapter, so at the time of the search all material trace of the existence of this collective literary enterprise was lost. Regarding its confiscation, Dan Petrescu recalls: “At the same time they asked me about the novel [‘Furrows Across the Baulks’ revisited]. I said to them: ‘Why are you still looking for it? Because you’ve already got it.’ They had taken it from George Pruteanu. […] It didn’t exist in more than one manuscript. There were no copies. It passed from one to the next and each one added to it. They were also looking for letters in the search.” The Securitate had found out about the existence of this satirical novel at the end of 1982, when at the Young Writer colloquium in Buzău, Sorin Antohi read pages from the collective manuscript, imitating Ceaușescu’s voice when excerpts from Gheorghiu-Dej’s speeches were cited. According to the Securitate’s evaluation, in this novel “the policy of the Party regarding co-operativisation is ridiculed, […] with suggestive allusions to the higher leadership of the Party and of the state.” The public reading of the manuscript at this colloquium effectively meant its dissemination at national level, and what might just about have been tolerated at local level became dangerous when it came to have an influence on others.

A feuilleton in three parts, published in the magazine Intervju on 31 July, 14 and 28 August 1987, shows the extent of censorship in Yugoslavia in different fields of artistic production. It contains a chronological overview of banned publications (books, newspapers, brochures, postcards) in the period 1963-1987, banned movies in the period 1951-1985, theatrical productions in the period 1946-1982, as well as concerts and phonorecords from 1971-1972. According to the authors, the list is based on the records of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office and newspaper documentation. The authors note that none of the sources were complete, and why it is possible that some of banns were left out, either because the list included a work that was initially banned but then later, by a of a higher court, had the ban lifted. Along with the title of work, the rationale for the ban is also cited. The list is structured by years and, inter alia, shows that most publications were banned in the early 1970s (1970 – 9, 1971 – 19, 1972 – 28, 1973 – 8, 1974 – 15, 1975 – 4) and in the mid-1980s (1984 – 17, 1985 – 7, 1986 – 9, 1987 – 7). The document is available for research and copying.

Marko Lopušina, co-author of the feuilleton, has systematically researched censorship practices in the former Yugoslavia and published two books on that subject: Crna knjiga - cenzura u Jugoslaviji 1945-91. [Black Book – censorship in Yugoslavia 1945-91] published in 1991, and Crna knjiga – cenzura u Srbiji 1945-2015. [Black book – censorship in Serbia 1945-2015], published in 2015.