‘Denunciatory press’: conceptual framework

The dictionaries define denunciation in terms of ‘whistle-blowing’, ‘snitching’ and ‘accusing’. Of these, denunciation is both a category of criminal law and a moral category at the same time. It can take place behind the scenes (such as the ‘work’ of repressive organizations or, in certain periods, the Party's network of informers), or it can be public (such as the filing of a police report). Press denunciation is a prominent form of the latter. It is always someone who reports on someone to someone, whether it is commissioned or done as a self-initiated and ‘diligent’ action. In this context, it functions specifically to incite the authorities (the addressee of the denunciation, who may even have commissioned the article) to take administrative action against the artwork and/or the author posited as hostile. The denunciatory writing addresses both the artist and his/her contemporaries, to intimidate them by drawing the attention of the powerful and the public to their actions. However, in addition to this rhetoric, something else is necessary for its intimidating power to take effect: the press platform that publishes the denunciation must be a tool of state power, lending the text the strength of a court order. In this way the press becomes part of the state's cultural control. This can be accompanied by the voluntary participation of overzealous journalists who identify with the monopolistic power. However, in certain dictatorships, the state authorities, who hold the monopoly on violence, take direct action. The question is not only what the consequences of the aesthetic and/or ideological ‘offender's’ act will be, but primarily what will be the nature of these consequences. These consequences may differ – in both weight and quality – from era to era.

Denunciation is a relatively late phenomenon considering that snitching has been present in all phases of human history, from ancient Rome through Renaissance Italy to absolutist police states. Although there are general theories about the psychology of informing on people, these do not allow us to grasp the peculiarities of denunciation. Zoltán G. Szabó mentions the desire for revenge as a common thread among informers, rooted in feelings of inferiority. Meanwhile, Sergei Korolev explores the socio-psychological motif of ‘fear'.Footnote ¹² Korolev's other, structural observation, which assumes a feudal society behind the desire to denounce, seems more pertinent. Following this structural-socio-psychological approach, denunciation can be described as a rare, because public (yet most often illegal), disciplinary instrument of modern dictatorships. It is a technique of illegal control related to the extension of the administrative state, which therefore cannot be examined in general, but only in a specific period, since its role depends on the political and power relations of the given era, where it becomes one link in the chain of state control that aims for actual ideological hegemony or monopoly. In this sense, denouncing as a paradigm in state socialism is very different in nature from the forms of denouncing in liberal democracies, which are regulated by laws that are passed by governments elected through democratic processes. Yet even incitements in the liberal press may also be followed by severe – yet not arbitrary – legal actions (e.g. McCarthyism). Still, in a liberal democracy, the press did and does not become part of the state's cultural control.

Danger arises when the control of the given social system extends ideological regulation, i.e. when there exists a state-approved ideology, and any works or authors that deviate from it are deemed harmful. The different types of denunciation can be distinguished according to what constitutes a ‘violation of the law’ in art and what types of criminal (or ideological, i.e. arbitrary administrative) proceedings can be brought against the ‘dangerous artwork’ as a crime. At its inception, within the context of Stalinism, denunciation of this paradigm existed in an ideocratic society that was entirely regulated and controlled by ideology, and thus was not based on law but on ideologically legitimized violence. Here, everything that contradicted the centrally defined ideology was criminalized, and could even be punished as a capital offence. Questions arise as to why the absolute holder of violent power does not immediately suppress any critical expression. While, through its informant network, it knows everything, through its unlimited power it can also do anything. So why does it need, in order to govern, journalists and critics who produce art criticism as their ‘service’, even in the harshest Stalinist times? The reason is likely to be found precisely in the ideocratic nature of such societies: the power system based solely on violence is covered up by an ideological legitimization that benignly conceals its true nature. This means that not only thoughts or art, but even everyday life, are only granted the right to exist if they comply with the requirements of the ideology, or are at least (ideologically) recognized. In places where this does not happen, where some kind of intellectual or artistic value system clashes with the ideological ‘reality’, there is a ‘committing of ideological crime’ which must be systematically pursued: the perpetrator must be exposed; their ‘crime’ must be reported and then sanctioned.

Although the Soviet Union had the Glavlit censorship agency (which controlled literature and publishers, including the press) in operation from 1922, with a separate division responsible for censorship of literature, film and, later, television, it is not solely the existence or absence of a formal censorship office that determines the extent to which freedom of opinion and of the press is restricted in a society. In Soviet practice, it was not the establishment of the censorship office that marked a turning point, but rather the gradual integration of criticism into the state control and ideological supervision of literature and the arts; that is, the broader censorship mechanism. At the same time, intentionally or unintentionally, it became a form of denunciation: a ‘criticism’ that treated works and artists as ideologically suspect, and urged their prosecution through public accusation, investigation and official action.

It is questionable whether ideological criticisms, which fought against certain works, movements and authors with an anachronistic fervour and aimed for their disappearance, can be considered as denunciations, given that these criticisms were made without becoming part of state cultural control. In Hungarian literary history, the term ‘persecutor criticism’ appeared in the early twentieth century; likely it was first used by Pál Ignotus, the founding editor of the renowned Hungarian literary journal Nyugat (West) and an important figure in Hungarian press history.Footnote ¹³ It primarily refers to ideological denigrating criticisms and signifies the prevailing ideological smear campaign in the contemporary press and criticism. Similar to Stalinist denunciation, persecutor criticism puts a particular artwork on trial before the seat of judgement of the proclaimed eternal and undeniable truth (the theory) that it upholds as the ultimate value. It holds the work accountable for meeting the criteria of ‘valuable’ art as defined by the theory, and if it finds it lacking, it executes the verdict by erasing it from cultural memory.

Ignotus referred to those critics as ‘wolves’ who, not unlike the prevailing practice of the time, approached the value of literary works from the perspective of the author's national affiliation and commitments, and, based on the same principle, he labelled the creator and their work non-national, ‘foreign to the nation'.Footnote ¹⁴ Although persecutor criticism imposes a rigid ideology on the works and uses a normative, exclusionary and disparaging argumentation technique, it does not appear in any administrative power field, nor is it a link in the chain of state art control; it remains within the bounds of a regulated, formally liberal press (leaving the victim of the crime/incitement the option to file a lawsuit against the offender/criminal), even though it explicitly pushes those boundaries.

However, the situation completely changes when the act of writing criticism becomes the public and visible disciplinary technique of single-doctrine cultural control, as was the case in the Stalinist state socialist dictatorship. The classic model of ideological criticism as a denunciatory instrument for controlling culture, regulating artists and justifying administrative action against works and authors can be vividly illustrated by the following example.

The Stalinist origins of the denunciatory press

The premiere of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk took place on 22 January 1934 in Leningrad, and it was received extremely positively. However, two years later, in 1936, Pravda published an editorial which unexpectedly ‘exposed’ the long-running opera's outrageous ‘formalist sins’ and the author's ‘ideological aberrations’. The criticism was still being cited in 1948 by A.A. Zhdanov at the music artists’ conference convened by the Party and, even after Stalin's death, the editorial continued to be regarded in the country as a canonical text;Footnote ¹⁵ not because of the critic's talent, but because the Pravda article marks the beginning of the Soviet campaign against formalism.

The circumstances surrounding its publication have significance beyond the purely philological, as the anonymous article ‘Sumbur vmesto muzyki’ (Muddle Instead of Music) gives the impression that it is an editorial piece from the Party newspaper,Footnote ¹⁶ thereby suggesting that perhaps the criticism was written or dictated by the main figures of contemporary cultural policy: Kerzhentsev or Zhdanov or even Stalin himself. Since it was widely known that the denunciation could only have been made on the dictator's orders, the possibility of drafting a reply did not even arise, and the circumstances of the publication proved more important than the actual identity of the anonymous author. Since then, based on archival research by Evgeny Efimov, the author's identity has been revealed: the article was written by David Iosifovich Zaslavsky (1880–1965), a political journalist and music and theatre critic. This is known because he received payment for the article.Footnote ¹⁷ It is all the more significant that, in the contemporary interpretation of the criticism, the assumed authorship has a prominent importance. According to Zaslavsky's own confession, it was accidental that the article was published anonymously. Nevertheless, this elevated it to the status of an official document on the Party's platform, practically to the level of a Party resolution. Thus it became the leitmotif of the first large-scale ideological campaign, the ‘anti-formalist’ initiative. In this sense, the true author of the Stalinist denunciatory criticism is not ‘Zaslavsky’ after all, and from this perspective the secret that he guarded so carefully, namely that he wrote the piece, is just as irrelevant as it is in the case of a political speech, where the important thing is not the person who formulated the text, but the person who delivered the speech. In accordance with the poetics of denunciation, the chosen enemy and the author are always provided with a face. In this case, the face of the enemy is that of the ‘formalist sinner’, while the authorial mask that takes shape in the readers’ minds is that of power, represented by Stalin. All of this is supported by Zaslavsky's sarcastic epithets: ‘Stalin's favourite pen’, ‘the Kremlin's mouthpiece’ or ‘the top penman of Stalinist journalism’. While this article of his came out anonymously, at other times Zaslavsky himself actually liked to write under a pseudonym.Footnote ¹⁸ He was a journalist for Pravda from February 1928 to March 1965 and played a defining role in shaping the newspaper's identity after 1940.

Shostakovich (unlike Isaac Babel or Vsevolod Meyerhold) ultimately did not suffer any harm. However, the press campaign was followed by the banning of the work, a crackdown on the composer and the elimination of the so-called ‘leftist’ orientation in Soviet art in the 1920s, which was stigmatized as ‘formalism’. In the years before the era of total control, during the era of persecutor criticism, there was not yet a single cultural policy doctrine. Some of the critics, depending on their political affiliations and in the interest of the power group they represented, would order administrative action against the work and author publicly accused in their criticism, without any serious political consequences at the time. The anti-formalist campaign of the 1920s and 1930s, however, attacked art from above, within an administrative political and ideological field of power, in the name of ‘public accessibility’. Here, the smear campaign launched in the press was initiated by the state power (mostly informally). The critic was typically an executor who sometimes overperformed or eagerly rushed ahead of the commission, while also setting a deterrent and guiding example for other artists with the sharpness of the criticism and its potential administrative consequences. This case study of the Pravda article (‘Muddle Instead of Music’) showcases how the circumstances of publication are constitutive elements of denunciatory criticism, and how the same rhetoric – regardless of the author's intention – can have different interpretations, resulting in different consequences in both strength and nature, when published in a magazine in a pluralistic press market, or as a leading article in the newspaper of a ruling party.

The ‘third T’ in Hungary: the post-Stalinist field of power

The paradigm for post-Stalinist Soviet denunciatory art journalism was not so much Soviet theatre criticism after 1956, but primarily contemporary literary criticism. The denunciatory press that emerged after April 1953 did not converge randomly, but around certain works and authors that serve as the focal point of organized political scandals. The important denunciatory press campaigns of the Khrushchev period (1953–64), characterized by relative liberalization, include the reception of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) by the Writers' Union after the notorious twentieth Party congress and the press campaign against the author after the book's international publication and due to his Nobel Prize in 1958; or the press attack against Iosif Brodsky in 1964, likely ordered by the KGB and based on vague motivations.Footnote ¹⁹ Post-Stalin cultural control was, in fact, analogous to the method used by the Hungarian leadership in the early 1970s (although, of course, the severity of the means cannot be compared): to force the ‘unmanageable’ to the West – from Iosif Brodsky to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from Andrei Sinyavsky to Vladimir Voinovich – typically by applying treason charges of various forms. This is largely how the so-called ‘third wave’ of Russian emigration was born by the end of the 1970s.

In the case of one of the most important workshops of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, the rhetoric of the newspaper article also became a performative act. The artist collective was banned and pressured – through denunciation in the press, similar to the contemporary Soviet examples – to leave the country. However, all of this happened in an era when censorship and prohibition were no longer common in Hungary. Among the socialist countries in the surrounding region, Hungary was known as ‘the happiest barracks’ during this time. The cultural policy of the ‘three Ts’ which is associated with the name of György Aczél Kádár's culture minister, was characterized by the three slogans of ‘support’ (támogat), ‘tolerate’ (tűr) and ‘prohibit’ (tilt), with the emphasis gradually shifting away from the third T, prohibition. Aczél's cultural policy was characterized by the continuous expansion of the ‘tolerate’ category. As historian Éva Standeisky put it, in the Rákosi era (1945–56) there were basically only ‘two Ts’ (prohibition and support), meaning the removal from circulation of propaganda art. Therefore Aczél György's cultural-policy innovation, the ‘three Ts’ policy, essentially consisted of introducing a third category, namely the ‘tolerated’, and then continuously expanded its scope, recruiting more and more artists to serve the regime.

If we examine, in parallel, how the original Stalinist denunciation model was shaped and developed in Hungary during the 1960s and 1970s, after the consolidation of the new Kádár regime in 1963, we must study it in a post-ideocratic system, in contrast to the Stalinist Soviet Union. The post-ideocratic system essentially implies the existence of a central ideology, the enforcement of which, however, is mostly simulated. As a result, during the Kádár era in Hungary, we typically come across consequence-free denunciations, or ‘phantom accusations’. With these cautionary theatre reviews and debates, typically no administrative intervention is associated; at most they serve as a replacement for them. The writings that catalogued the ideological ‘sins’ of the discussed theatrical performance and threatened the creators came hand in hand with certain anxious reflexes among the affected artists, even during the Kádár era, in most cases. However, the Balatonboglár case discussed in this study stands as an exception. The primary objective of these articles generally turned out to be ideological correction in and of itself. This system shows certain similarities with a Soviet model, which, however, is distant not only in space but also in time from the Kádár era. One of the lesser-known types of dictatorial state socialism implemented so far is the pre-Stalinist ‘NEP type’, in which there is not yet a prominent ideological doctrine (pre-ideocratic state socialism). Similar to the NEP (New Economic Policy) prevailing in the 1920s, there were numerous platforms within the Party, but the constitutive element of the context surrounding denunciatory criticism – namely the single central doctrine that the artists affiliated with various creative workshops were obliged to enforce with varying success – was absent for the time being. If this were present, it could reinforce accusations expressed in denunciatory criticisms and instead of expressing a subjective and individual opinion; the critic acting as gendarme could point to ‘violations’ against specific ‘exhortations’. More precisely, the doctrine of the NEP era was that there is no doctrine, and the goal was to encourage competition among different artistic currents within the Party. The value system between them was formed on the basis of free competition. It was at this point that Nikholai Bukharin announced his policy of ‘letting a hundred flowers blossom’. However, we cannot speak of a prioritized rule of cultural law during the NEP era, meaning that according to Bukharin's cultural policy the competition between aesthetically diverse trends was accepted. During the NEP era, the concept of the ‘fellow traveller’ (poputchik) still existed, which called for tolerance towards transitional ideological forms. It is this concept that overlaps with the Kádár-era category of the ‘tolerated’.

It is essential to note that with the introduction of the ‘tolerated’ category, the party state consistently placed the fear-inducing technique of denunciatory criticism (which could have political and existential consequences) in the Hungarian socialist past, before 1956, into the so-called ‘fifties’, and projected it from the current reality into the distant Soviet Union and neighbouring countries, such as the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and also Czechoslovakia after 1968. This rhetoric of ‘compared to 56’ and ‘compared to the Soviet Union’ was a self-legitimizing argument used by journalists or cultural policymakers speaking on behalf of the party state, positioning the promise of the future against the horizon of negative social experiences. We find this communication both in Party resolutions and in the press.

This was, however, a contradictory policy, as the party state with a monopoly on power renounced the use of administrative tools (open violence) in an administrative field of power, while holding a monopoly on violence, without any legal or political accountability. While avoiding their use in its own self-interest, it reserved the right to employ them at any time and vaguely threatened to use them, however reluctantly and hesitantly. The regime had no interest in tarnishing its reputation in the West with possible administrative measures – prohibitions or retributions. Nor did it wish to invite the violent action of the already hostile and suspicious Soviet comrades against itself with the ‘softening’ of the one-party state and the domestic transformation and dismantling of the administratively controlled and monitored culture of the Soviet-style state. The Kádár regime broke with the former Rákosi era (1948–53) and, in practice, was ‘softer’ and more permissive than neighbouring countries, which represent continuity, above all Leonid Brezhnev's and Mikhail Suslov's Soviet Union.

The renowned Hungarian aesthete and expert in Russian studies Ákos Szilágyi applied the concept of ‘negative legitimization’ to this arrangement, which describes not the official ideology of the system, but rather its tactics and methods of execution that are in internal contradiction with the official ideology, based on the realities on the ground. It refers to the informal (and not mutual – ultimately therefore illegitimate) agreement that the Kádár-era party state unilaterally and coercively entered into during the first six years after coming to power, with the promise of softening and relaxing the state's withdrawal from economic and intellectual life in order to maintain the authoritarian structure.Footnote ²⁰

However, this informal policy of ‘softening’ was never publicly announced and did not mean a softening of the regime itself, but rather the ‘softening’ of the methods associated with the regime: avoidance of the use of ‘hard methods’, greater ideological tolerance, criticism of denunciation and public disciplinary acts without ‘administrative consequences’, and a kind of empty creative freedom for artists, wrapped in an ideologically decorated setting that was imposed from above and could be withdrawn at any time. All of this was on the condition that artists did not violate the two main political taboos: the ‘Soviet taboo’ and the ‘one-party system’ taboo. That is, the softening did not affect the essence of the system.

However, in 1973 the position of György Aczél, who represented the policy of ‘softening’ behind the scenes in Hungary, began to weaken within the Party. The so-called ‘Biszku–Aczél’ conflict, which cannot be separated from the Soviet field of power, may have played a role in the severe administrative intervention in the case of the Balatonboglár artists.Footnote ²¹ This happened to an extent not seen since the transitional period preceding the 1963 consolidation and the solidification of Aczél's position. An intervention of this kind took place in 1957 with regard to the play Széchenyi, by the writer László Németh, who had already been politically legitimized at that time and had also received a state award. The play was a belated staging of a work created in 1946 and was performed at the prestigious Madách Theatre in Budapest. Its downfall was caused by the fact that the context of the performance was overshadowed by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, giving it an unintended interpretation. Another notable example from this period is the premiere in the northern city of Miskolc of Az ablakmosó (The Window Cleaner), a play by Miklós Mészöly, who had difficulties fitting into the regime. After only its second performance, the play was removed from the repertoire, followed by a series of attacks in the press. This process culminated in the dismissal of the editor-in-chief of the literary journal that published the play and a publishing ban (szilencium) imposed on the playwright. During the same year, the first play of the young writer András Pályi was also denounced by the local newspaper of Pécs, which meant the end of his career as a playwright.

The second wave of denunciations during the Kádár era is associated with the marginalization of the regime's top cultural politician, György Aczél. In the early to mid-1970s, a restabilization followed the 1968 Hungarian reform, due to Soviet pressure, but also with the triumphant support of hardliners within the Party, who envisioned Kádár's downfall. This situation lasted until 1978, during which time the reformist ‘liberal’ wing of the party state retreated, backtracked and made tactical concessions, including promoting hardline policies. The denunciation under discussion was part of this larger political context, but there were many other factors involved. In the field of theatre, the new leftist Orfeo art group was attacked in a youth magazine in 1972.Footnote ²² Also there were trials against other branches of art and theory. In 1972 there was the trial against the writer Miklós Haraszti,Footnote ²³ and in 1973 the case famously known as the ‘philosophers’ trial'.Footnote ²⁴ Some of these people also left Hungary, as part of a ‘wave’ of emigration.Footnote ²⁵ The policy of Brezhnev and the reversal of reforms (and Aczél's temporary marginalization) sent a message to them that the time was coming when they would not be safe in Hungary. And within this same ‘wave’, there came the 1973 article against the Balatonboglár artists, published in Népszabadság (People's Freedom), the Party's daily newspaper, with a circulation of one and a half million, which carried an even more serious political message.

‘Happening in the crypt’: an analysis of a post factum (retrospective) denunciatory article

An example of the relative and unpredictable nature of tolerance under the cultural-policy category of ‘tolerated’ is the case study to follow, which I will now attempt to place within the conceptual framework of denunciation. What are the characteristics of a press denunciation associated with the most serious administrative measures affecting theatre in a post-ideocratic era and regime? On 27 August 1973, the artist collective formed around the chapel art studio in Balatonboglár was banned. Four months after the ban, thus - unlike the classic denouncing technique - retrospectively, only after the group was closed down did the daily newspaper of the party state, Népszabadság, publish a full-page compromising article titled ‘Happening a kriptában’ (Happening in the Crypt) about one of the most important workshops of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, the chapel art studio in Balatonboglár, which reported that the workshop was closed by the authorities and the artists were evicted.Footnote ²⁶ The main organizer of the workshop (1970–3), György Galántai,Footnote ²⁷ rented the chapel from the Catholic Church. Here, artists of very different aesthetics and genres – performers and visual artists – came together, dissidents and intellectuals who were primarily connected by their shared underground existence and who did not fit into the official cultural paradigm.

The compromising article took up a whole page in the Party newspaper and the slogan ‘If necessary, let's ban!’ stood out visibly from the text. In line with the rhetoric of the denunciatory press, Szabó put the artists under ideological ‘accusation’. The main ‘charge’ presented in the report related to the illegal operation of the chapel art studio, and was linked to specific names:Footnote ²⁸

The author of the article was László Szabó, ‘the leading national-affairs correspondent of the Party newspaper, an emblematic figure of this type of exposé journalism'.Footnote ³⁰ In his article, he openly approved the necessity of the ban:

The article explicitly mentioned some of the ‘accused’ by name, including neo-avant-garde artists, the theatre-maker Péter Halász, sculptor and performance artist Gyula Pauer, and the aforementioned main organizer, György Galántai. It also highlighted the ‘dubious’ members of the audience ‘from abroad’, emphasizing that several of them had criminal records, specifically naming György Pór, who was convicted in 1968 for political reasons as the main accused of a Maoist conspiracy, or the use of forbidden platforms such as Radio Free Europe.Footnote ³² The accusation of ‘art crime’ appeared in the reception of the exhibition after 1971, when radical artists (Tamás Szentjóby, Miklós Erdély, László Beke and others), who experimented with actions and happenings, appeared in Balatonboglár alongside traditional exhibitions. In fact, the happening was banned immediately after its first appearance in Hungary in 1966.Footnote ³³ In the 1973 programme, Galántai also invited the most important avant-garde theatres, showcasing the related underground arts, including the Kassák Theatre (a company led by Péter Halász and Anna Koós from 1969 until their emigration in 1976), the István Kovács Studio (the first company of László Najmányi, who worked in multiple genres, from 1971 until his emigration in 1979) and BROBO (the first company of the renowned director of the era, János Szikora, from 1979 to 1980).

It should be noted as background to this that two years prior, on 8 July 1971, a threatening newspaper article about the Balatonboglár artists had already been published in the local newspaper, Somogyi Néplap (People's Newspaper of Somogy).Footnote ³⁴ The idea for the article, according to Sasvári's research, can be traced back to the county council apparatus, and ‘at that time it still held the promise of success. For a while, it forced the artists to compromise, while at the same time sounding the trumpet call to begin the campaign against the exhibitions.'Footnote ³⁵ Ten days later, the government's daily newspaper, Magyar Hírlap (Hungarian Gazette), reacted in a similar tone,Footnote ³⁶ indicating that this was not just a one-time denunciatory article, but rather a Stalinist-style media campaign aimed at the time at dissolving the artist collective. Although the author of the article recalled differently in hindsight, its writing was initiated by the county council:

Although, as we have seen, the denunciatory reading does not necessarily require a commissioned article, the Balatonboglár case is exceptional in the sense that we have information to support the denunciatory interpretation. According to Edit Sasvári, who has studied the history of the series of artistic events in Balatonboglár, in an interview conducted with László Szabó nearly twenty years after the press attack, he still claimed that his article was written based on a report from the public.Footnote ³⁸ In contrast, Sasvári's thorough study supports the commissioning narrative, which of course does not exclude the possibility that the author, László Szabó, also identified with the task:

However, more importantly for the contemporary reader, the article published in the party newspaper could be interpreted as a cautionary example and a deterrent.

It is particularly surprising that the cultural leadership of the party state assigned such importance to a few ‘rascals’ from Lake Balaton just a few years after the opening up of 1968. There is also the question why they seized this particular opportunity in the 1970s to start an ideological war against Maoism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, which at that time no longer posed a serious threat, through discrediting the Balatonboglár studio.Footnote ⁴⁰ Indeed, in his article, László Szabó names György Pór, who was convicted in the Maoism trial in 1968, and who sued Népszabadság for libel and defamation for not accepting his request for rectification. Of course, Pór could not win the case, and lost it at appeal in February 1974.Footnote ⁴¹ But Népszabadság did not publish István Eörsi's response article either, a fact that points to the organized nature of the press campaign.Footnote ⁴²

From the perspective of denunciation, the above converge on the cardinal question of what need there could have been for the commissioned article of the domestic political journalist László Szabó in retrospect. While press propaganda against the activities of the Balatonboglár artists preceded the liquidation of the chapel exhibitions in the case of the articles in Somogyi Néplap and Magyar Hírlap, the absurdity of the Népszabadság article lies in the fact that it appeared after the fact, after the criminalized artist collective had already been banned. Why did the party state leadership, who seldom employed explicit condemnation or denunciatory criticism, turn to this extraordinary measure instead of being content with discussing the act of banning within the internal public sphere of the cultural administration, as had typically happened? Why did they choose to speak out in public this time, which was distinctly atypical in 1970s Hungary?

The answer is, presumably, to expel the artists in question from the country. We know that this was successful in the case of Péter Halász and Tamás Szentjóby. The denunciation after the fact was thus a kind of message to the unwanted ‘dissidents’ that their presence was undesirable. This was the Soviet practice of the 1970s, even if in a milder form: forcing unwanted artists to leave the country. Of course, there is a difference from the Soviet practice of the 1970s, when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was expelled. For Solzhenitsyn, leaving was mandatory, while for the Hungarian neo-avant-garde artists it was not: Péter Halász and Tamás Szentjóby left, while György Galántai and Miklós Erdély stayed. Moreover, the issued passport was not just a sign of expulsion (a ban from artistic life in Hungary), but could also be interpreted as a reward. After all, obtaining a passport to travel west was seen as a favour in 1970s Hungary, since possessing a passport was not an option for many. But the preventive technique, in the form of the press article, suggests that would-be emigrants should ‘take it outside’: if they want to practise their convictions and avant-garde art at home, there is no legal framework for that, and there will continue to be none.

The function of the retrospective or ‘post factum’ denunciation is thus not simply to publicly justify and legitimize administrative violence, or the appearance thereof, but it is also a form of pressure: to compel undesirable artists to leave the country. It seems that in Hungary they opted for this ‘solution’ for the same reason: considering the one-sided pact of negative legitimization, the only realistic option was to suggest leaving the country. Therefore the function of the article was not simply to eliminate the workshop, but rather to eliminate or reduce the theoretical possibility that the ‘maverick’ artists might in future cause trouble for the authorities. Or possibly the aim was to ‘force’ Hungarian cultural policy, examined before the Agitprop Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party – or more precisely, the ideological ‘Grand Inquisitor’ Suslov, who hated the ‘liberal’ Aczél – to take an action which, in the eyes of the West, would have deprived Hungary of its proud trademark as the ‘happiest barracks’. The ‘mavericks’ may even remain, but they cannot expect anything good in the future, as their artistic creed and creations are deemed illegal.

The condemnatory critique after the fact was probably brought about by the policy resulting from György Aczél's marginalization, also related to internal cultural tensions, which is why it is so reminiscent of the Brezhnev model of the criticism of denunciation aimed at ‘advising’ undesirables to leave the country. Ultimately, the retrospective article in Népszabadság unveils how the Kádár regime ingeniously navigated the challenge of handling aesthetically rebellious young artists and critical intellectuals. It managed to simultaneously pacify both the Soviets and the West, avoiding administrative measures and direct confrontations at any expense. Nevertheless, it compelled the neo-avant-gardists, who remained unassimilated within the tolerated margins of the system, to depart the country.

I also argue that the assertion formulated in the press article ‘Happening in the Crypt’ was a performative piece, as it can be considered, according to Austin, both a statement and an action. Certain linguistic expressions not only have a descriptive function but also a reality-creating power: they are capable of creating the slice of the reality they refer to, if pronounced at the appropriate time and place.Footnote ⁴³ Denunciation in a criticism also became both a statement and an action in the sociopolitical context of 1973, as it relocated the artists from the plane of aesthetics to the plane of proceedings initiated on suspicion of a political and ideological crime, treating the artwork as corpus delicti. The mere threat of retaliation, silencing or banning was sufficient to create dependence and intimidate the artists, and therefore to have existential consequences.

It is also worth briefly addressing the author of the best-known denunciatory theatre reportage on the Balatonboglár Chapel Studio. László Szabó, the former officer of ÁVH (Államvédelmi Hatóság, the Hungarian State Security Authority, a partially secret state security organization between 1948 and 1956), was one of the creators of the crime television show Kékfény (Blue Light), which he also hosted from 1965 to 1989. His name was associated not only with the genre of denunciatory theatre reportage but also with denunciation itself:

The article essentially argued that this is not art, but rather a violation of the law. The journalist did not simply label these artists aesthetically inferior, but rather connected them with law enforcement institutions and employed criminal-law terminology instead of aesthetic categories:

The ‘denouncing’ article in the Somogyi Néplap two years earlier also used the basic keyword illegality.Footnote ⁴⁸ It is also at this time that the possible expansion of the boundaries of ‘cultural crimes’ was raised.Footnote ⁴⁹ The first step in criminalization was to deny the artistic nature of the collective, which continued with the labelling of the Balatonboglár artists as criminals, traitors and shirkers: ‘Moral decay emerges from the intersection of aimless youths, confused ideas and criminal activity. This kind of degeneration creates an ideology of free living and a lumpen lifestyle, using anarchist rhetoric to glorify idleness.’Footnote ⁵⁰

The term ‘lumpen lifestyle’ here corresponds to the concept of tuneyadets (meaning ‘idler’, ‘work shirker’) of the Khrushchev period, which was used not only against those who avoided the general work obligation, but also against freelance intellectuals. The most famous case is that of the aforementioned Iosif Brodsky, who was exiled for several years to northern Arkhangelsk as a tuneyadets. To fully understand the concept of ‘lumpen lifestyle’, it is important to note that the Hungarian Criminal Code of the era included the term ‘publicly dangerous work avoidance’ (közveszélyes munkakerülés – KMK). Everyone had to have a registered workplace and a livelihood-sustaining occupation registered on their ID card. Of course, there was still room for self-employed writers and artists even in this system, but they were required to obtain association membership, or membership of the Art Fund, as this exempted them from the charge of KMK. Integration into the system of freelance work was not self-evident, because although the phenomenon of the ‘free-riding artist’ was accepted even in socialism, it required unconventional state employment categories.

Regarding the professional–political context, it is important to note that the Balatonboglár artists, true to the general spirit of the avant-garde, criticized the concept of ‘work’ not just in relation to industrial labour but in terms of conforming to the prevailing order in general. One could consider this a kind of bohemian attitude, the flâneur's (‘saunterer’, ‘loafer’) wasting of life as an attitude of rebellion against the establishment. The denunciation written against the Balatonboglár artists thus pertains to the idleness of creative individuals who do not fit into the establishment, when the author refers to ‘freeloaders’ and ‘lumpen’. By the 1970s, the (narrow) legal framework for free intellectual work was already in place (which also cut both ways, offering many workplaces the opportunity to do what was previously impossible: to fire their unwanted employees).

Since the mid-1960s, the state socialist system had been moving towards a more performance-based distribution, especially in Hungary, introducing economic reforms and a sort of consumer socialism, partly influenced by Western models. In fact, this was also what the ‘peaceful competition between the two world systems’ meant, as evidenced by the concept of the ‘premature welfare state’ (János Kornai),Footnote ⁵¹ or the expressions ‘fridge socialism’ and ‘goulash socialism’. At the same time, consumer socialism in Hungary was also opposed to all sorts of leftist ideologies: to folk-leftist ideas, or to the articles of Péter Veres, a writer and politician who criticized the petty bourgeois consumerist mentality, as well as to the ideas of the new or Maoist left, who argued that consumer socialism brings with it the corruption of revolutionary morals and idealism, as well as the encouragement of petty bourgeois consumerist selfishness. The neo-avant-garde was also opposed to this consumerist world view, as, paradoxically, consumerism was the mainstream reality of state socialist Hungary in the 1970s, even though it contradicted the central idea of socialism. This was also due to the fact that the dictatorship in Hungary tried to legitimize itself by expanding consumption, thus replacing political and moral legitimacy. The term ‘lumpen lifestyle’ that appears in Szabó's article should therefore be interpreted in relation to the concept of legal ‘work’ in consumer socialism: it refers to activities that are outside the scope of those accepted during the era of ‘fridge communism’ and are incomprehensible within legal frameworks, or to the activities of artists who intentionally withdraw themselves from that system. Finally, and equally importantly, another stunning aspect of Szabó's argument as a hegemonic author of a communist regime is that he adopts a purist tone and, in the name of Christian values, objects to the ‘desecration’ of the chapel.

However, it is not worth reducing the antipathy surrounding the artist collective behind the Balatonboglár exhibition to the issue of opposition to the regime. This is why the binary formula of the first and second public sphere has to be criticized. When the rhetoric of the Szabó article reflects on the elitist nature of the art of the few in the context of the neo-avant-garde, and when he exhibits a hostile attitude towards underground genres, it is important to note that the author is not alone in his aversion, not only among domestic journalists. The majority of the Hungarian theatre profession, which gradually integrated into the system as a ‘tolerated’ entity, also views the underground scene with reservation, as the avant-garde never took root in Hungarian theatre, due to the Soviet occupation and nationalization, which put an immediate end to it. The hegemonic position in the professional field, as well as in cultural management, also identified the non-realistic and therefore ‘incomprehensible’ avant-garde as the main enemy, and vice versa: the ‘avant-garde’ label became a general stigmatizing term for any experimental work, even if it had nothing to do with it.

By the early 1970s, the ‘tolerated’ category had become increasingly broad, and the ideological reorientation was merely a simulation that did not foreshadow or justify the bans but rather replaced them. The publicly justified, hence exemplary, ban in the form of Szabó's reportage took place in a particularly regressive moment of the Kádár era, on the periphery of the cultural field, among underground artists. In the early 1970s, a similar demand to that of the contemporary Soviet Union briefly arose in Hungary: namely that anything that did not fit into the official, slowly pluralizing, canon had to be pushed out of the country.