COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

The architect Gheorghe Leahu kept a secret diary in the period 1985–1989. In view of the risk of being arrested if the diary was discovered by the Securitate, he stored it in his garage, in a black cover, under some spare tires. After work, Leahu would write in this diary about aspects of his daily life and personal impressions. In the context of an increasingly repressive regime during the 1980s, this was a way of venting an intellectual’s resentments in communist Romania. In his diary, Leahu reported in detail on the severe shortages which affected everyday life in Romania in the 1980s, on the absurdity of the policies of Ceauşescu’s regime, and on the ridiculous nature of the official propaganda, especially the cult of the dictator’s personality.
Leahu was very critical of the regime in the pages of his diary. According to these notes, day to day life in Romania in the 1980s had become a fight for survival, a desperate struggle for food and other consumer goods, and professional activity, a long line of humiliations, caused by the arbitrary and absurd interventions of the holders of political power in the activity of architects. He also constantly criticised the policies of urban restructuring of the capital. In one of the passages dealing with this topic, Leahu noted the effects these policies were having on the identity of the city, but also on everyday life: “Old buildings are being demolished at an infernal pace, many new low-quality buildings are taking their place, the city is losing its personality, it is being completely transformed, the blocks of flats are steamrolling over entire neighbourhoods with gardens and backyards and decades– or centuries-old trees. Instead of life in a quiet backyard, we squeeze into blocks of flats like worms on the vertical, subject to barbarous austerity measures, with hot running water only five times a week, for two hours, always in the cold during the winter, we are becoming depersonalised like soldiers of a blind army of workers” (Leahu 2013, 56). The diary, published in 2005 by the Civic Academic Foundation under the title: Arhitect în “Epoca de Aur” (Architect in the “Golden Age”), constitutes a valuable historical source of information concerning everyday life in Romania in the 1980s. The content of the diary and the conditions in which it was written reflect the atmosphere of generalised fear, frustration, and helplessness in which many Romanian intellectuals were living in the 1980s.

Watercolour painting was for Gheorghe Leahu a form of escape from the constraints imposed on the activity of architects under communism, which became more severe in the last decade of the regime. In the 1980s, Ceauşescu intensified the process of urban restructuring of Bucharest, which entailed the demolition of entire areas in the centre of the Romanian capital to make room for new boulevards. These actions were legitimised by the concept of “urban systematisation,” which was presented in the official discourse as a process of modernisation through which the city would acquire a new socialist identity. The watercolours painted by Leahu in the 1970s and 1980s portray urban landscapes, especially in the old centre of Bucharest. In addition to their artistic value, these watercolours represent, according to their author, a “source of documentation” concerning the architecture of the Romanian capital before the demolitions brought about by the so-called “urban systematisation.”
A selection of these watercolours was included in an album that Gheorghe Leahu sent in 1986 to the Sport Turism Publishing House, entitled: Bucureşti – arhitectură şi culoare (Bucharest – Architecture and Colour). The album was passed by the censors, even though its introduction made no mention of Nicolae Ceauşescu. (Although this was not an official requirement of the publishing houses, most authors did refer to various quotations from the Secretary General in order to get their books published, so in the end, this reference became the norm, while its absence was seen as an ideological failing on the part of the author in question.) After the album was printed in 1988, the 4,500 copies were withdrawn before reaching the bookshops and destroyed. In addition to the failure to mention Ceaşescu’s name, another cause for the withdrawal of the album was the fact that it contained watercolours representing many old churches. Their presence contradicted the policy of the communist regime of discouraging the protection of the architectural heritage of the capital. Some employees of the printing house managed to rescue several copies, which they delivered to the author. The volume was republished in 1989 in a censored edition, and again in 1991, this time in an edition free of any censorship constraints. This volume, as well as others published by Leahu after 1989, represented an important component of the post-communist visual identity, and promoted in the public space a nostalgic approach to the old centre of Bucharest.

Given the severe constraints that the political authorities imposed on the activity of architects in the communist period, for Gheorghe Leahu watercolours became a form of escape. According to his testimony, Leahu was attracted by “architectural watercolour” painting because this activity allowed him to choose both the topics and his approach to them, thus offering him a creative freedom which was not possible in his professional activity. Being passionate about the architectural heritage of Bucharest, he chose to paint mainly picturesque landscapes in the old centre of the Romanian capital, and in other cities in Romania as well. He believed that painting “architectural watercolours” was also a way of leaving behind a testimony to the urban heritage which was in danger during those years. Because of Ceauşescu’s megalomaniac ambitions of reshaping the Romanian capital according to his vision of what a socialist city should look like, entire areas of the city were demolished during the 1980s.
Several of Leahu’s watercolours depict the Văcăreşti Monastery, one of the most important historic monuments in Bucharest, demolished in 1986. One of these watercolours, painted in 1976, is entitled “The Văcăreşti Monastery before the Storm.” The painting presents a panoramic view of the monastery complex built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The title given by the painter to this watercolour contains an unintentional allusion to the monument’s tragic destiny. As head of the Bucharest Project Institute, a state company in charge of architectural projects in the Romanian capital, Leahu was appointed in 1984 to coordinate a team of architects in designing the new Bucharest court of law, which Ceauşescu wanted to build on the site of the Văcăreşti Monastery. Together with his team, he supplied the authority with twelve different plans for the future building which preserved most of the monastery complex. Their efforts were unsuccessful because in 1986 the authorities decided to demolish the entire monument. Thus, the watercolour became a source of information about one of the most valuable historical monuments destroyed by the urban policies of Ceauşescu’s regime. It was reproduced in some of the architect’s albums and books. One of these books, published in 1997, was dedicated to the demolition of the monument: Distrugerea Mănăstirii Văcăreşti (The Destruction of the Văcăreşti Monastery).

As an engaged feminist Lydia Sklevicky held public presentations in the Yugoslav centres of the new feminist movement, Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, in which she advocated for the greater presence of the "women’s question" in public and scholarly circles, constantly emphasizing that this question  had not been resolved within the Marxist and socialist political order in Yugoslavia.

One of the lectures Sklevicky held was on the topic of "Emancipated Integration or Integrated Emancipation" in the ŠKUC Gallery (Old Square 21) in Ljubljana on Saturday, May 17, 1986. The lecture was organized by the first Slovenian feminist club, Lilit,  and the poster for it stated that the lecture was intended strictly for women. The poster is kept in the Sklevicky Feminist Collection.

Jiří Lederer's personal memos are from the meetings, consultations and sessions, especially from the Union of Czech Journalists from 18 April 1969 to 22 August1969. The book ends with notes from the events of the 1st anniversary of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops.

These notes capture the thoughts and encounters with various people during these dramatic days, as well as the feelings of Jiří Lederer, a prominent journalist, dissident and eventually an exile.

In the notebook remarks on Husak, Svoboda and Cernik, as well as known Czech writer Seifert, can be found in addition to short notes on the "silent demonstration" on Wenceslas Square on August 21. These notes serve as a unique example of journalist scriptures from the dramatic August events of 1968.

In the decision of the Belgrade District Court on June 28, 1968, it appears that the court banned the further distribution of “Student”, and furthermore could not decide what to do with the already confiscated issues. However, several weeks later on 18 July, it was decided that all confiscated samples of the journal would be destroyed “by being processed by the paper factory in Belgrade, with the appropriate compensation that will be put into the budget of the city of Belgrade as […] surplus income” (Kv. 752/68). Although the original document containing a detailed explanation of the ban is missing, it is still possible to reconstruct events by inspecting the available materials. This file also contains an appeal to the District Court, stating that the court's decision was unfounded because facts were incorrect, and the court “extracted incriminating sentences, individual expressions, and even only certain words from the articles so that the resulting conclusion was completely different than the original information”(Kr. 93/68, Belgrade District Court). One of the accusations of the court was that the texts in this issue suggested “a severe revolt against the working class and other working people in our country,” which is cited in the appeal as absurd.

Other documents reveal that the appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on the grounds that usually, “an article in the press is absorbed by the reader as it was written without any additional explanation by the writers of the article.” (Kr. 996/68). The Supreme Court's ruling indicated that the writers of the article were, “stressing certain negative phenomena, and such generalization of these phenomena, which depict our socio-political system entirely as backward, hopeless and stale, cannot be understood differently than to express and disseminate such distorted news and insights in order to cause peoples' unrest”.

Particularly problematic is the last sentence in the article Mystery and Hysteria by Nebojša Popov, which says “who can not listen to a song, will listen to a storm,” which can be interpreted as spreading of alarming news to threaten  “public order and peace” and as a “threat of new unrest” (Kr. 996/68).

Among the court materials, the District Court's decision to terminate the investigation against Nebojša Popov and the chief editor Đorđija Vuković of “Student" can be found who were charged with the criminal offense of spreading fake news through the press (Article 292 of the Criminal Law). The basis for suspending the investigation against Vuković was that the incriminating article Mysteries and Hysteria was written by Popov, and had no connection to Vuković. The investigation against Popov was suspended on 25 June, because the problematic text had been seized. Thus, the charge of “spreading fake news” was dropped (see Kr. 927/68).

The tape on which are imprinted the voices of two personalities of Romanian culture, Lena Constante and Harry Brauner, is today in the Zoltán Rostás private collection and contains an extensive interview taken with the couple in 1985. Harry Brauner (1908–1998) was a Romanian folklorist and ethnomusicologist of Jewish origin, who came from a family that included other notable intellectuals: his brothers were the surrealist painter Victor Brauner and the photographer Theodore (Teddy) Brauner. Lena Constante (1909–2005) was an artist and folklorist of Aromanian origin, and the author of a number of well-known postcommunist volumes, which were well received by readers of memorialistic literature. The couple were involved in a famous political trial, which had as its central figure Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, an intellectual of Marxist orientation and an important political leader after 1945, arrested in 1948 and executed in 1954. This political trial was to have been a show trial, like those of László Rajk in Hungary and Rudolf Slánský in Czeschoslovakia, but in the end it was orchestrated behind closed doors, on the basis of false testimonies squeezed out of some of those included among the accused, as in similar cases in the Soviet bloc. In 1954, Harry Brauner was sentenced by the communist authorities to 15 years in prison and Lena Constante to 12. Both were released in 1962, after 12 years, but Brauner had to remain in “obligatory domicile” on the Bărăgan plain until 1964, when all political prisoners were released. The two only got married after their time in prison, while Brauner was still in forced domicile. In 1968, both were politically rehabilitated by Nicolae Ceauşescu, who had initiated a belated de-Stalinization and was reviewing some of the political trials orchestrated by his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, in order to gain political capital. After 1989, the Pătrăşcanu trial was one of the most visited subjects out of the whole period of Romanian communism, owing to the political and intellectual eminence of those included among the accused. The interview carried out in 1985 by Zoltán Rostás also includes the couple’s testimonies about political imprisonment and forced domicile, subjects that were and still are of maximum interest for the majority of historians of postcommunist Romania. Here is an extract from Harry Brauner’s reflection on the significance of his experience of incarceration, remarkable for the way in which he synthesizes the essence of the absence of the rule of law under communism in a period in which there was effectively no access to professional analyses of undemocratic regimes: “ZR: Were you really so dangerous that after you had come out of prison they also gave you obligatory domicile? HB: Yes, it seems that I was very dangerous. Much more dangerous than I imagined. But at the same time, I was a good example for all the others, don’t you think? ZR: In what sense? HB: Ah, you haven’t understood what I mean. I was a good example for intellectuals, for artists, for all those who could see an example of what could happen to a man who had done nothing.” The aim of the 1985 interview was broader, however. The recording includes discussions referring to the beginnings of the couple’s relationship, to intellectual life in the interwar and postwar periods, and above all to many details of their contribution to the researches of the Gustian sociological school. “It was, I remember, a single meeting, but quite a long one. Lena Constante spoke significantly more than Harry Brauner, as he preferred to be very concise in the answers he gave me. By the way, he was a character in himself, with a voice and a ceremony of speaking that were quite distinctive. Indeed he is the character in a well-known novel by Marin Preda,” says Zoltán Rostás, recalling the meeting of which the dialogues are preserved on the magnetic tape in his private collection.