N 2007, the National Museum in Warsaw exhibited the part of its collec

Part I  ·  Moving People
the works of dissident artists without distinguishing between residents of the 
USSR and those who had emigrated.
Around the 1950s, socialist realism was given little support. There arose, 
in its place, the desire to experiment with new solutions in the artistic do-
main and to follow the example set by Western avant-garde movements much 
earlier. The exhibition isolated a number of precise sectors corresponding to 
those already established by Western art. Thus, it was possible to use formu-
las already employed by art historians.
For the Soviet news agency TASS, the Biennale was a “dirty farce”; with 
its subject of “cultural dissent,” its focus was on politics, not on art. Many 
criticized the show for its emphasis on politics for having a lack of artistic sub-
stance. However, “this Biennale may not be judged purely aesthetically; what 
counts here,” claimed the Venetian museum manager Guido Perocco, “is the 
historical and political moment.”
In contrast to the exhibitions in London and Washington, which were 
based on the collection of Alexander Glezer, in Venice there was a wider view 
of this phenomenon. There was also photographic material collected by Ilar-
ia Bignamini.
770
 The collection of Alexander Glezer had been on quite an ex-
tensive European tour, so the show had hardly offered anything new for ex-
perts. The sculptures by Neizvestny were shown at the same time in Schloß 
Morsbroich in Leverkusen. Included were Nusberg kinetic space draughts 
and typefaces by Erik Bulatow.
The audience visited the sports palace in droves, and large numbers also 
visited a Czechoslovakian graphic arts show and an exhibition of unlaw-
ful books and samizdat manuscripts. A piece of scrap material meant more 
than many words: a piece of cloth, which was smuggled from a Soviet camp.
771
 
Mostly the critics wrote about the political situation and not about the art.
772
In the same year the USSR tried to take advantage of the positive opin-
ion of its artistic tradition by organizing huge exhibitions in the United 
States. The exhibition 
Russian and Soviet Painting, for example, was pre-
770  See Ilaria Bignamini, “From the U.S.S.R.—Dall’U.R.S.S.,” 
Flash Art 76/77 (July-August 1977): 9–19.
771  “Redender Fetzen,” 
Der Spiegel 49, 29 November 1977, 243.
772  Ina Lee Selden, “Dissent Is Hallmark of Venice Biennale; Plagued by Problems,” 
New York Times, 16 No-
vember 1977, 24; Leslie D. Bruning, “Venice Biennale 1977: Politics Italian Style,” 
Art in America, 6 June 
1978, 12–13, and Gottfried Knapp, “Es gibt eine russische Avantgarde. . . . Doch niemand will sie haben. 
Die Dissens-Biennale in Venedig,” 
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 25 November 1977, 16.
sented in New York City and San Francisco in the sixtieth year of the Rus-
sian Revolution.
Like Glezer, many artists emigrated from the USSR in the following 
years.
773
 Oskar Rabin left for Paris. The situation for artists who emigrated 
to the West was somewhat similar to what they experienced in the USSR. 
When the exhibition 
20 Jahre unabhängige Kunst aus der Sowjetunion was or-
ganized by Peter Spielmann and Hans-Peter Riese in Bochum in 1978, Alex-
ander Glezer did not cooperate with them.
774
 The parallel existence of a Rus-
sian artistic life in the USSR and in the West continued until the period of 
glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev.
As a reaction to the events of that year, the USSR, Poland, Hungary, 
and Czechoslovakia boycotted the Biennale in 1978; only Romania exhib-
ited.
775
 In 1980, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland returned. In 1982, af-
ter six years, the USSR returned to Venice and continued participating in 
the following years; the commissioner, Vladimir Goriainov, showed most-
ly unknown official artists. In 1988, he showed the work of avant-garde art-
ist Aristarch Lentulov (1882–1943).
776
 Still, official participation did not re-
flect the actual situation. By this time the art market had begun to focus on 
nonconformist art; even Sotheby’s held a major auction in Moscow. In 1990, 
twenty-six years after the famous exhibition in Venice, the group exhibition 
Rauschenberg to Us, We to Rauschenberg finally let the Russian artists return 
officially to the international art world—albeit only briefly.
777
 In 1993 a non-
conformist artist finally appeared in the Russian pavilion: 
The Red Pavilion 
by Ilya Kabakov, in which the fenced-off pavilion of the Russian Federation 
was filled with abandoned scaffolding and empty paint cans while a small, 
brightly painted hut located at the back of the pavilion played loud, Soviet-
773  Marilyn Rueschemeyer, Igor Golomshtok, and Janet Kennedy, 
Soviet Émigré Artists: Life and Work in the 
USSR and the United States (Armonk, NY/London: M.E. Sharpe, 1985), and Paul R. Jolles, Memento aus 
Moskau. Begegnungen mit inoffiziellen Künstlern 1978–1997 (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 1997).
774  Hans-Peter Riese and Peter Spielmann, eds., 
20 Jahre unabhängige Kunst aus der Sowjetunion (Museum Bo-
chum, 1978). 
775  See Albert Wucher, “Politische Planspiele hinter den Kulissen der Biennale. Die umstrittene ‘Solscheni-
zyn-Schau’ soll allenfalls 1978 nachgeholt warden,” 
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1977, 29; Peter von Becker, “Vene-
digs Biennale bleibt vorerst autonom. Mehr Geld und konzeptionelle Probleme. Dissidenten-Ausstellung 
im Frühjahr 1978?” 
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1977, 12; Hans Klaus Jungheinrich, “Vom Schaustück zum Sem-
inar. Ein Rückblick auf die Dissens-Biennale in Venedig,” 
Frankfurter Rundschau, 1978, 17.
776  See “USSR,” 
XLIII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, 1988), 282–83.
777  See “USSR,” 
XLIV Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, 1990), 230–37.

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style music.
778
 In 1995, the Russian Federation tried to give a representative 
view of artistic life.
779
In 2007, many celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the “Biennale of 
Dissent.” It was a crucial point where Eastern reality met still-existing West-
ern illusions. Sixty years after the Russian Revolution, the USSR had lost con-
trol over its artists. Emigration was not a solution for the artistic situation in 
the USSR. As I have shown, there had been many other exhibitions of non-
conformist art, but showing this on the Venetian stage was a different thing. 
Venice was, and is today, an important place for foreign cultural politics. The 
boycott of the biennials of 1978 and 1980 had shown the strong link between 
art and politics. Showing a first insight into the international network of art-
ists, gallery owner, curators, collectors, and art critics could only be the begin-
ning. This text can give only a short introduction to this subject. There is still 
a lot of work to be done. The research of Matteo Bertelé and Sandra Frimmel 
belong to an extensive project of the Swiss Institute for Art Research in Zu-
rich under the supervision of Beat Wyss from Karlsruhe. In a comparative 
perspective the scholars Kinga Bódi (Hungary), Jörg Scheller (Poland), Ve-
ronika Wolf (Czechoslovakia), Daria Ghiu (Romania), and Karolina Jeftic 
(Yugoslavia) are publishing studies about the participation in Venice of the 
different socialist countries.
780
778  Sandra Frimmel, “Kak pokazyvat’ Rossiju v Venecii,” 
Artchronika 1 (2003): 22–29.
779 Sandra Frimmel, “Der russische Pavillon auf der Biennale di Venezia 1995: auf der Suche nach einem 
repräsentativen Bild der aktuellen russischen Kunst,” in 
Kursschwankungen: russische Kunst im Wertesy-
stem der europäischen Moderne, ed. Ada Raev and Isabel Wünsche (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2007), 172–80.
780  In 2013, Daria Ghiu curated an exhibition at the transit.ro art space in Bucharest with a focus on the histo-
ry of the Romanian Pavilion—with documents. 
T
 
he crucial notion organizing the memory of 1968 in Czechoslovakia of 
the outstanding writer Milan Kundera was the declaration of love received by 
him from the officer of the occupying forces on the third day of the Warsaw 
Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. “They all spoke more or less as he did, their 
attitude based not on the sadistic pleasure of the ravisher but on quite a dif-
ferent archetype: unrequited love. Why do these Czechs (whom we love so!) 
refuse to live with us the way we live? What a pity we’re forced to use tanks to 
teach them what it means to love!”
781
 The lesson received by Czechs and Slo-
vaks along with all the countries of the Eastern Bloc was not exclusively of a 
historical, but also of a linguistic nature. Sixteen years later, on the pages of 
his philosophical account of the communist past, 
The Unbearable Lightness of 
Being, Kundera answered: “love means renouncing strength.”
782
Not more than four years after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslo-
vakia—from 26 to 27 August 1972—Hungarian artists initiated in the Bala-
781  M. Kundera, 
Kubuś i jego Pan. Hołd w trzech aktach dla Denisa Diderota (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut 
Wydawniczy, 2000), 8.
782  M. Kundera, 
Nieznośna lekkość bytu (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1996), 85.
Magdalena Radomska
28
Correcting the Czech(oslovakian) Error: 
The Cooperation of Hungarian and 
Czechoslovakian Artists in the Face of the 
Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia

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tonboglár Chapel the merger of Hungarian and Czechoslovakian artists. The 
chapel, run by György Galántai from 1970 to 1973, was the most important 
venue for events and exhibitions of the Hungarian avant-garde.
The para-artistic action, organized by Hungarian art historian and critic 
László Beke, was the essential carrier of discussion on the intellectual and cul-
tural community of East-Central Europe. Two weeks previously in the cha-
pel, the exhibition of the Yugoslavian group Bosch + Bosch (László Kerekes, 
Slavko Matkovic, Predrag Sidjanin, László Szalma, and Bálint Szombathy) 
had taken place. Difficulties in organizing the exhibition had symptomati-
cally portended the twisted policy restricting “fraternal cooperation,” which 
afflicted many of Galántai’s initiatives. However, because of the political sit-
uation, projects involving Yugoslavia called for particular precautions—Ga-
lántai’s proposal faced disapproval on the basis of the conviction that the co-
ordination of international exhibitions was the domain of the state organs.
783
The Hungarian–Czechoslovakian artistic event was semantically placed 
on the other, painfully tensed, nerve of the communist world—the 1968 in-
vasion. The Balatonboglár actions were neither unprecedented nor of extraor-
dinary artistic quality. As early as 1968, Tamás Szentjóby created two of the 
most important works alluding to the political events—
Czechoslovakian Ra-
dio and Portable Trench for Three Persons. László Lakner’s work, The Wound-
ed Knife, was very apt, and in 1969 László Méhes conceived the interesting se-
ries 
Shaving Mirror for 6.80. The chapel actions were essential as a result of 
the cooperation between Hungarian and Czechoslovakian artists. Moreover, 
they were among few artistic actions inspired by the invasion as—according 
to Piotr Piotrowski—exclusively the Hungarian artists in East-Central Eu-
rope expressed their solidarity with Czechoslovakia.
784
Opposite the entrance door, Beke placed, on the surface of three walls, sets 
of Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian words in an attempt to learn the Slova-
kian language. Symbolically, it constituted the cultural autonomy of Slovakia 
by significant resignation from his own language (Hungarian) as a possible 
(and the easiest) tool of communication between Slovakian and Hungarian 
artists. Giving up the claim of one’s own language in favor of universality de-
783  Chapel Exhibitions at Balatonboglár, 1972, http://www.artpool.hu/boglar/1972/chrono72.html.
784 Piotr Piotrowski, 
Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1945–1989 
(Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2005), 222.
fined communication as the essential negotiation of meanings based on dif-
ferences that were impossible to evade. This action created a utopian horizon 
of understanding—a language pact against a common enemy.
Moreover, the art historian juxtaposed words similar in tone and mean-
ing—implying the moral integrity of the conquered. The operation constitut-
ed the field of the investigation directed toward the similarities rather than 
the differences, and it made a strong suggestion that the crucial disparity ex-
isted exclusively between the discipliner and the disciplined.
The majority of notions enabled merely the negative definition of the com-
munity in relation to the captivating ideology. Entries such as “bureaucracy,” 
“terror,” “conservative,” “repressive,” “repression,” “tolerance,” “individual-
ism,” “information,” “document,” “passive,” “provocation,” and “spy” carried 
weight because of their relativism; their meanings oscillate between the offi-
cial—defined by the ideology—and the unofficial. Others, such as “emigra-
tion,” “illusion,” “glass,” “prisoner,” “hell,” “bug,” and “officer,” were words 
whose real, multidimensional meanings were reserved exclusively for victims. 
Some entries served as a thread—the forcible recollection of the fact that no-
tions such as “paragraph,” “reaction,” “demonstration,” “action,” “coordina-
tion,” “spark,” “gale,” “street,” and “cobblestone” still remained in the diction-
ary of enslaved nations. This part of the installation recalled the dictionary of 
1968, in which the entry “cobblestone” had earlier (in 1971) been assigned by 
Beke as the subject of artistic investigation for a group of artists.
The notion of “Jew,” present on the wall among others, needs to be ana-
lyzed within the context of 1968. Moreover, it serves as a figure of the “small 
nation’s fate,” coined by Milan Kundera. The nation, which—according to 
Kundera—reflects and concentrates the fate of Central Europe, operating 
as the main cosmopolitan element integrating Central Europe and its in-
tellectual joint.
785
 “Who are Jews, if not the small nation 
par excellence?” 
asks Kundera in “The Stolen West or The Tragedy of Central Europe,”
786
 
claiming that “the small nation is the one whose existence can be called 
into question at any moment, which can disappear and knows about it.”
787
 
785  M. Kundera, “Zachód porwany albo tragedia Europy Środkowej,”
 http://www.milankundera.webpark.pl/
MILAN_KUNDERA.htm.
786 Ibid.
787 Ibid.

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Therefore, beyond all differences, discord, and factors of isolation, Central 
Europe exists as a fate.
788
Certain words placed on the chapel walls referred directly to these dis-
cords. “Tank” and “ruffle” alluded to this part of the history of 1968, which 
linked Hungary and Czechoslovakia in shameful events during the Warsaw 
Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Thus, four years later, Beke took the risk of 
revising the dictionary’s entries, which—under the aegis of the totalitarian 
discourse—had seemed untranslatable in a considerable search for the com-
mon roots of communist Europe.
Although Beke’s initiative was one of the most important attempts to de-
fine the character of the interrelations in this part of Europe—which had 
escaped the totalitarian definitions—his interpretation was characterized 
by the similar utopia. The basis of this utopia of understanding—which re-
quired neither translation nor negotiation of notions—was a strong belief in 
the existence of common values and of the crucial notion of the enemy. Root-
ed in moral affinity, the understanding thus defined had a status of simple 
opposition to the totalitarian gesture, however—on the strength of the same 
mechanism.
The construction of the art historian, reflecting his desire to create the file 
of universally valid meanings, resembles the anecdote—told by Gyula Pau-
er—which was an apt diagnosis of the universalism of the totalitarian regime 
reflected by the obligatory presence of the Russian language in the education 
program of communist Europe. Pauer testified that the Russian taught in 
schools, mediated with philosophical and economical notions, appeared use-
less in everyday situations. During their trip to Moscow, Pauer and his friends 
were simply unable to order anything to eat or drink.
The spinning device was considered by Marx of no significance before it 
was incorporated into the ideological and economical structure—afterward 
it could function as capital. Significantly, it reflects the Marxist relation to 
language. Practice was of no relevance; the structure was the decisive factor 
for the semantics. Similarly, the structure created by Beke is characterized by 
the parallel power of establishing common meanings—shared but not ver-
nacular, disregarding practice and history.
788 Ibid.
During the same year, the most important discussion on totalitarian lan-
guage was created. 
Moral Algebra: Solidarity Action, with text by Hungari-
an artist Miklós Erdély, is the most apt intellectual proposal of a theoretical 
depiction of the idea of cooperation. Written in 1972 on the occasion of Er-
dély’s exhibition at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw, the text defines the logic 
of the massacre, according to which the extermination of mankind is possi-
ble in thirty-two moves.
789
 The artist takes over the logic and thus, by revers-
ing it, constructs the “logic of solidarity” based on the principle of indicating 
two individuals who can be warned “without using any institutional or com-
municational means.”
790
 The seemingly utopian text of Erdély marks one of 
the crucial points in his œuvre, in which the artist develops a notion of pow-
er that is strikingly similar to the Foucauldian model. However, Erdély char-
acterizes power as decentralized and dissipated—within the context of his 
life in the totalitarian regime. “The similarity between the prisoner and the 
warder,” claims the artist, “is greater than between the warder and the pris-
on, or between the prisoner and captivity.”
791
 Thus, the “moral algebra” inval-
idates the binary structure of oppositional notions—a useful tool of the to-
talitarian regime.
Nevertheless, during the meeting in the chapel, Beke conducted anoth-
er project of crucial historical importance. The action, during which the art 
historian used a propaganda documentary photograph, was found by Beke 
in a Western magazine
792
 and showed Hungarian soldiers leaving the invad-
ed Czechoslovakia. It was designed as an act of apology by the Hungarians to 
the Czechoslovakian nation. The photograph depicted two groups of soldiers 
pulling on a nonexistent rope, against a background of tanks.
The scene was acted out by Hungarian and Czechoslovakian artists and 
the composition of the picture was repeated faithfully. The very repetition 
had the psychoanalytical function of freeing people from the traumatic ex-
perience and was thus polemical toward the main tendency (the attempt to  
 
789 M. Erdély, “Moral algebra, Solidarity action,” in 
Elhallgatott Holocaust, Bisterdo Holocaust, The Hidden 
Holocaust, ed. J. Fabényi (Budapest: Mucsarnok, 2004), 157.
790 Ibid.
791 Ibid.
792  László Beke refers to the fact in J. Klaniczay and E. Sasvári, eds.,
 Törvénytelen avantgárd. Galántai György 
balatonoglári Kápolnaműterme 1970–1973 (Budapest: Artpool-Balassi, 2003), 141.

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forget August 1968). Hungarian society—as Slobodan Stanković claims—
was determined to forget August 1968.
793
The process was complex and rooted in the early 1960s when, according 
to the detailed study by Charles András, the official diplomatic relations be-
tween Hungary and Czechoslovakia started to improve.
794
 The foundation 
of the process was laid by two visits—the first, paid to Hungary by the gener-
al secretary and the president of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný, in 1964, 
and the other by János Kádár and the Hungarian prime minister, Jenő Fock, 
in December 1967. The latter focused on bilateral economic cooperation. Ac-
cording to András, Czechoslovakia was the second most important econom-
ic partner of Hungary, while Hungary came fourth on the list of Czechoslo-
vakia. Therefore, if Beke’s action constituted the restoration of the previously 
repressed memory of the invasion, the invasion itself could be interpreted as 
a repression of the initial similarity of both countries. Moreover, the process 
of strengthening ties between the countries resulted in the spring of 1968 in 
the attempt to consider claims of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia, 
parallel to Hungary’s recognition of Slovakian autonomy.
Thus, the action of pulling the rope, acted out by artists, recalled the prob-
lem of the movable border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia—not con-
vergent in geographical and linguistic aspects—that had been abused by the 
totalitarian regime and used against Hungary in 1956 and against Czecho-
slovakia in 1968.
In Balatonboglár, two groups of artists facing each other, seemingly compet-
ing, were linked with the propaganda picture of Hungarian troops. Therefore, 
pulling the invisible rope in opposite directions, they were in fact cooperating 
in tearing the picture apart. Representing the shameful chapter in the history 
of both countries, the photograph was described by Beke as “quasi-magical.”
795
 
Although Beke’s penchant for universalism led him to characterize the event as 
the “picture within the picture situation,”
796
 the psychoanalytical discourse—
“metarepression”—seems to be more commensurate with the historical reality.
793  S. Stanković, “Hungarians Would Like to Forget August 1968, Yugoslav Journalist Claims,”
 http://files.
osa.ceu.hu/holdings/300/8/3/text/11
2–
1–284.shtml.
794  C. Andras, “Neighbours on the Danube,”
 http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text_da/33–5–
1.shtml.
795 Beke, 
Törvénytelen avantgárd, 141.
796 Ibid.
Figure 28.1. 
László Beke, 
The meeting of Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian artists (action of ‘tug 
of war’)—Spotkanie czeskich, słowackich i węgierskich artystów (akcja ’ściskania rąk’), 
Balatonboglár Chapel, 1972. Artpool Research Center in Budapest, courtesy of Júlia 
Klaniczay and György Galántai.

374
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2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene…