From Avant-Garde to ‘Proletcult’ in Hungarian Émigré Politico-Cultural Journals, 1922-1924

From Avant-Garde to "Proletkult" in Hungarian Emigre Politico-Cultural Journals, 1922-1924 OLIVER A. I. BOTAR

We have to imagine these tiny groups, succeeding and turning against one another. Some had significant entourages, art magazines, and often wellknown theorists . . .. They imagined themselves explorers of the spirit ... But life played a tragic game with them. If they found a . .. little securitywhich some recognition, or the forced imaginings and formulations of theorists could give them, the ... clamor of a new trend knocked it into the dust. If we can visualize the uncertainty of their goals, the indifference of their environment, the chaos and vulnerability of spirit and feelings in which their denial of tradition left them, I believe we cannot refuse them our sympathy. It's as if they'd been wandering in some pleasant, mirage-projected land, of which, at nightfall, only the stark puszta [wasteland] remained. Aurc~l

Bernath, Utak Pannoniab61 (Roads from Pannonia) (Budapest, 1960), 379

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was a time of political and cultural turmoil in the Kingdom of Hungary, a situation that presented ideal conditions for the emergence of sharply opposed political movements. With the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy during the Great War, the ancien regime collapsed, and Hungary was thrown into chaos. The kingdom was transformed into a liberal republic in 1918, but as simmering ethnic tensions mounted and pulled the country apart, this government was replaced by an alliance of radical Social Democrats and Hungarian "Bolsheviks"-a "Soviet" republic-in March 1919. During the 133-day duration of this social and political experiment, intellectuals were placed into positions of power. The collapse of this regime in August 1919 sent many cultural workers into exile, dazed but radicalized. The Activists, 1 the avant-garde writers and artists grouped around Lajos Kassak and his journal Ma (Today; Budapest, 1916-19; Vienna, 1920-25), were principal performers in the cultural dramas that unfolded during those heady times. In Hungary they had had to deal principally with national, aesthetic, and political issues. Thrust into exile in 1919-20, they found themselves in the even more complex field of

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forces at play internationally. It is as a result of this play of forces that most of these writers and artists shifted their positions from aesthetically vanguard cultural activity to accommodation and, in some instances, servility to the Communist Party in both political and artistic matters. Close examination of the cultural journals produced by these Hungarian emigres during the short period from 1922 to 1924 reveals their progression from a milieu of relative freedom in which to debate politics and aesthetics to one of strict party discipline. As 1922 began the Activists were at the peak of their success in exile. They gathered in Social Democratic Vienna around Ma, which was published by Kassak and his co-editors and brothers-in-law, the poet Sandor Barta and the artist Bela Uitz. Others, such as the artists Laszlo MoholyNagy and Laszlo Peri, and the critics Alfred Kemeny and Ern6 (Ernst) Kallai, went to Berlin, where Moholy-Nagy, Ma's Berlin correspondent, was collecting material on contemporary art for Kassak's anthology, Buch n euer Kiinstler (Book of new artists), published in 1922 by the Julius Fischer Verlag of Vienna. In February Moholy-Nagy and Peri impressed the Berlin public with their International Constructivist works on display at Herwarth Walden's Galerie der Sturm. Reflecting the Activists' support of avant-garde trends, Ma's tenth-anniversary volume of r May 1922 was the most lavish ever and featured works by Dadaists and International Constructivists. It was around this time, however, that the Activist group began to fragment, its members separating into cliques of artists and writers who founded their own journals. May 1922 saw the publication not only of the anniversary issue of Ma but also of the first issue of Egyseg (Unity; Vienna, 1922; Berlin, 1923-24; Vienna, 1924), a rival journal co-edited by Uitz and the former Maist poet Aladar Komjat. In July the remaining Activists, unable to attend the International Congress of Progressive Artists held in Dusseldorf in late May, drafted a statement on the congress, calling for an "International Organization of Creators with a Revolutionary World View." This was their last unified stand. By the time the document appeared in the August issues of Ma and De Stijl, 2 Barta, his wife-the poet Erzsi (Kassak) Ujvari-Sandor Bortnyik, and Moholy-Nagy had also broken with Kassak, soon to be followed by Kallai and the polymath Janos Macza. By November Barta had launched his journal Akasztott Ember (Hanged man; Vienna, 1922-23), which was subsequently renamed Ek (Wedge; Vienna, 1923-24). Operating on the terrain between the cultural and political controversies in revolutionary Germany and Soviet Russia and informed by Constructivist and Proletkult discourses, Egyseg, Akasztott Ember, and Ek

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were immersed in the debate on the autonomy of the leftist avant-garde versus the Communist Party's control over it. The main source of information on the Proletkult movement in Russia for Hungarians living in Germany and Austria was the German press, in which articles presenting simplified views of the debates on Proletkult and its founder, Aleksandr Bogdanov, appeared as early as 1919.3 As a consequence, until 1923 Hungarians understood "Proletkult" to include the leftist avant-garde. Later, members of Komjat's circle used the term in the German sense of Tendenzkunst-that is, agitational art in the service of the Communist Party, what was known in Russia as "proletarian art, " 4 a phenomenon distinct from Proletkult and dismissive of the avant-garde. The influence of the Russian avant-garde was central to the shift among the Hungarian Activists from Dada to International Constructivism. On 20 November 1920, the Activists sponsored a "Russian Evening" that included a slide-illustrated lecture on Russian avant-garde art by the art-history student and news correspondent Konstantin Umansky. 5 Impressed by this event, Uitz soon joined the Party of Hungarian Communists (KMP), which in January 1921 sent him to Moscow to attend the Third Comintern Congress, held in late June and early July. There he met fellow Hungarians such as Kemeny, who had been sent from Berlin by the KMP, and Jolan Szilagyi, a student at the recently established VKhUTEMAS (Higher State Artistic and Technical Workshops). Through Szilagyi and her friend ElLissitzky, Uitz and Kemeny met Kazimir Malevich and visited VKhUTEMAS and INKhUK (Institute of Artistic Culture), where they encountered Aleksandr Rodchenko and other Constructivists. 6 Uitz and Kemeny were among the earliest foreign-based professionals to learn of the formation of the "First Working Group of Constructivists" at INKhUK on 18 March 1921 and among the few outsiders to see the "Second Spring Exhibition" of the OBMOKhU (Society of Young Artists), which opened 22 May and featured the work of the Constructivists. 7 Reflecting his keen interest in the new Russian art, Kemeny became a supporter of the OBMOKhU and lectured on it at INKhUK before his return to Berlin late that year. 8 Similarly, Uitz came to admire both Malevich and the Constructivists, collecting relevant documents that he later published in Egyseg. Uitz's trip convinced him that it was possible to be both socially and artistically "progressive" in a socialist state. This made the other Activists, still engaged with Dada, seem retrograde to him. After his return to Vienna, Uitz ceased to frequent the Schloss Cafe, where the Activists met, and began to patronize the Cafe Beethoven, the hub of Hungarian Communist political emigres. There, as one eyewitness reported, "on every occasion, Uitz recounted another detail of his recurring disagreements with

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Kassak. He deeply condemned the about-face of the 'Kassakists'. In his eyes Kassak was a defeatist." 9 Not having been to Soviet Russia and aloof from political parties by this time, Kassak was convinced that artists must begin creating the culture of the coming socialist age, for he, like most leftists, was still awaiting the world revolution. By I922 Kassak saw emergent International Constructivism as the vanguard of this new culture. Consequently, though the May Day I922 issue of Ma presented a mixture of Dada and proto-International Constructivist material, the balance was clearly tipping in favor of the latter. This trend was underlined in Kassak's text "Merleg es Tovabb" (Evaluation and onwardsL published in that issue, in which he announced a shift in the Activists' aesthetic toward International Constructivism. 10 In early I922 Komjat announced plans for the publication of a cultural journal in Vienna. 11 Komjat had been Kassak's main rival since his break with Kassak and the Ma circle in I 9 I 7. In I 9 I 8 Komjat had been a founding member of the KMP; in early I9I9 he and the theorist Gyula Hevesi had established Internationale, the first Hungarian Communist periodical; and later that same year, Komjat had played an important role in the cultural affairs of the Hungarian Soviet. In the prominent public debate on culture between Bela Kun, leader of the Hungarian Soviet, and Kassak, Komjat had supported Kun's condemnation of the Activists; despite his expressioniststyle poetry, Komjat supported the Communist cultural hard-liners. For Komjat and his associates-Gyula Hevesi, the artist Bela Friedbauer, and the former Maist poets Iren (Reti) Komjat (wife of Aladar) and M6zes Kahana-Uitz, a KMP member at odds with Kassak and recently returned from Moscow, was a good choice as artistic coeditor. The new magazine, Egyseg, was a rigidly Communist organ 12 which early on was open to avantgarde ideas, a condition that elicited the involvement of artists who up to early I923 still believed that Constructivism could be the expression of Communist "proletarian" culture. The first issue of Egyseg appeared after the opulent May Day I922 edition of Ma and seems to have been calculated to contrast with Kassak's journal. Its cover (fig. 3-I L though not signed, was probably the work of Uitz, reflecting Uitz's fascination with Russian Suprematism and Constructivism. Its blocky lettering and bold layout recall Russian avant-garde designs of the teens, and contrasted with the refined style of Ma. The covers of the remaining two issues were redesigned to be even simpler (see fig. 3 -2).

The stylistic contrast between the covers of Egyseg and Ma highlighted Egyseg's opposition to Kassak and the remaining Activists, a position that was expressed in the writings of Uitz and two former Activist critics, Andor

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(Rez) Rosinger and Ivan Hevesy. In a representative statement, Rosinger accused the Activists of "petit-bourgeois anarchist" opposition to authority and criticized them for their non-class-based view of art. 13 In Ma, Kassak responded to this and similar attacks. To demonstrate his political precociousness and loyalty to the proletarian cause, Kassak recounted the history of his journal and placed the defections of Uitz and others in a positive light, insisting that "I knew ... [this split] had to happen, and I am happy that it finally has. It unburdens us, offers us new possibilities for development." 14 While maintaining that his journal was consistently communist, Kassak also claimed that Ma had advocated the autonomy of art and had resisted any control, financial or otherwise, by the Party. This assertion, however, was contrary to fact. The Activists had tried to gain cultural hegemony during the Hungarian Soviet and to secure Party funding in 1920. 15 By omitting these facts from his account, Kassak helped establish the myth of his consistent opposition to artists' memberships in political parties and to the political control of art. After 1920, however, he did consistently appeal for the autonomy of art. In addition, he rejected the

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blind obedience to the Party demanded by Lenin at the Tenth Party Congress of March 1921. 16 Kassak's assertion of cultural autonomy was the source of the rupture between Ma and its offshoots: Kassak chose cultural independence while the others submitted to Party control. The Egyseg group responded to Kassak's assertions. They accused Kassak of appropriating Keparchitektura (picto-architecture)- a proto-Constructivist style of abstract art developed by Bortnyik and Kassak in 1920-21 17from "Bortnyik, [Georges] Braque, [Ivan] Puni and the Suprematists." 18 Ivan Hevesy attacked Keparchitektura by labeling it "planar decoration," mere art for art's sake, 19 a concept Kassak had consistently condemned since 1915 . As Kassak did not respond to these accusations, the debate between Ma and Egyseg ended. The fine arts policy of Egyseg reflected Uitz's engagement with Russian Constructivism and Suprematism. Except for a painting by Uitz, the art reproduced in the Viennese Egyseg was by Russian avant-garde artists whom Uitz and Kemeny had met in Moscow in 1921. In the 30 June 1922 issue, Uitz reproduced works by the INKhUK and OBMOKhU members

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Vladimir Stenberg and Karl Johanson, the VKhUTEMAS student Nikolai Prusakov, the VKhUTEMAS-associated artist Naum Gabo, and the VKhUTEMAS teacher and INKhUK member Ivan Kliun, 20 as well as a photograph of the Constructivist room of OBMOKhU's "Second Spring Exhibition." With the publication of two texts, the proto-Constructivist "Realist Manifesto" of August I920 by Gabo and Antoine Pevsner and Aleksei Gan's "Program of the First Working Group of Constructivists" of I April I92I, this issue was the first and, for a time, the most extensive anthology of Constructivist-related material to appear in the West. In the issue of I 6 September I922, Egyseg published Uitz's own linocut copies of five images from Malevich's book Suprematism, 34 Drawings, accompanied by Uitz's estimation of Suprematism and his translation of Malevich's introduction to the book, perhaps the first translation of a Malevich text. 21 Uitz demonstrated an early understanding of the divergence between the Russian avant-garde and Proletkult. After Konstantin Umansky's lecture in Vienna in I 920, Uitz wrote: "In Russia the material and spiritual revolutions are undergoing a parallel development [that] has but one obstacle: Proletkult, a concept which seeks to serve the cause of the new art by forcing ... artists back into the old, exhausted forms, while emphasizing today's worldview." 22 This negative assessment of the aesthetic of Proletkult was made ideologically easier for Uitz by Lenin's severe restriction of the movement late in I92o and was consistent with Kassak's dismissal of class-based art.23 Although Uitz's work of the early I92os implicitly rejected Proletkult's aesthetics, following the examples of the Suprematists, the Constructivists, and the "material research" methods at the VKhUTEMAS,24 Uitz expressed political sympathy toward Proletkult in an article on the condition of Russian art. He endorsed the ideas of individualism and collectivism propounded by Bogdanov and reserved highest praise for those groups (Constructivists, Objectivists, OBMOKhU, and UNOVIS [Affirmers of the New Art]) that he characterized as having "gone beyond [painting], to space; to the collective, physical, raw material ... [and work on] their 'projects' cooperatively. 1125 He drew parallels between Hungarian Activism and what he saw to be "individualistic" avant-garde trends-that is, the Russian Futurists, Expressionists, Suprematists, and "Spatial Cubists" (Vladimir Tatlin's circle). Finally, he contrasted avant-gardists with Proletkult artists, whose political ideology he considered to be more advanced. Thus, he faulted avant-garde artists for their individualism and their failure to see their works as transitional, and Proletkult artists for their use of primitive imagery: "The revolutionary [avant-garde] groups call for anarchy, but produce the [correct] pan-central form. Proletkult calls for a collective ideology, but creates formal anarchy. " 26

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While Uitz grappled with contradictions between ideological correctness and aesthetic value, Rosinger found Tendenzkunst (representational agitative art) and "formal art" (the leftist avant-garde) to be in dialectical relation to one another. He supported the former because "it leads toward the development of class consciousness and ideological unity" and the latter because "it is the way toward a new formal unity, the architectural organizing principle of the Gesamtkiinste, the new construction" 27-that is, architecture in the socialist state. Uitz's and Rosinger's inclusion of the leftist avant-garde and Tendenzkunst in the proletarian artistic program echoed the policy until 1922 of Anatoly Lunacharsky, head of the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros). 28 A programmatic statement published in the r6 September 1922 issue of Egyseg reflected this policy. It itemized four goals for the journal: (r) to provide a Hungarian-language cultural forum for the proletariat, (2) "to make conscious the road to the new collective art and culture," (3) to lay a theoretical foundation for a practical communist cultural policy, and (4) "As soon as [possible] ... the creation of Proletkult in Hungary." 29 Since in Egyseg's discourse on culture "collective art and culture" included the leftist avant-garde, this statement was consistent with Uitz's and Rosinger's position. As if to balance the fact that the art published so far had been exclusively of an avant-garde nature, it was announced that the fourth number of the journal would be devoted to Proletkult.30At this point one discerns tensions between Uitz and Rosinger, on the one hand, and the rest of Egyseg's contributors, on the other, even though the "Proletkult" edition did not appear until the following February due to the move of the Komjats, Rosinger, Friedbauer, and Gyula Hevesi to Berlin. Despite In~n Komjat's implication that the reasons for Egyseg's cessation in r 922 were solely financial, 31 there is evidence that KMP officials were displeased with the journal's avant-garde content and that this disapproval-a reflection of increased hostility toward the avant-garde in leading Soviet circles-may have fueled internal opposition toward the avantgarde content appearing in Egyseg. In a brief article published in the last issue of Voros Ujs6.g (Red journal), the central organ of the KMP in Berlin, the editorial board complained of "the confusion which some of those literary rags [irodalmi lapocsk6.k] that are supposed to 'sympathize' with us spread through their drivel, proclaimed to be . .. 'communist politics,' etc."32 The use of the plural ("rags") suggests that this attack was directed toward all the leftist Hungarian cultural journals published in Vienna in 1922, which would include Ma and Akasztott Ember as well as Egyseg. Such criticism, combined with Egyseg's internal tensions and financial

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problems as well as the recent move of the KMP's head office from Vienna to Berlin, may have contributed to the publication's suspension. When Egyseg was revived in Berlin in February I923, Uitz, who remained behind in Vienna, did not contribute to it, despite Komjat's solicitation of cooperation from leftist avant-garde artists. After the cessation of the Viennese Egyseg and Macza's break with Kassak, both occurring around October I922, Bortnyik and Macza began to plan a new publication. Kritika (Critique), like Egyseg, was intended to be an organ of "communist culture" devoted to "Proletkult." 33 Macza was probably the most suited of all the Hungarians to found a "Proletkult" journal, since he exhibited cultural attitudes inclusive of Tendenzkunst and avant-garde art, and he was the only Hungarian avant-gardist to have had direct experience after I9I9 with groups of Magyar workers. After the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet, he had joined the KMP and had been sent to his native northern Hungary, which was in the process of being absorbed into the new state of Czecho-Slovakia.34 In Kosice (formerly Kassa), Macza publicly supported the Russian avant-garde, particularly Komfut (Communist-Futurists),35 while playing a formative role in the flowering of "Proletkult." It was in this spirit that Macza edited Kassai Munkds (Worker of Kassa; Kosice, I907-37 ), the Hungarian-language daily of the Czecho-Slovak Communist Party, and directed a workers' theater.36 Subsequently expelled to Austria as part of a crackdown on Communists, Macza had joined the Activists. Though he soon found that Kassak was not politically committed enough for him, Macza continued the inclusive artistic policy he had established in Kosice. Thus, while in his last contribution to Ma Macza defended the leftist avant-garde from recent attacks by Lunacharsky, 37 he called for the production of Tendenzkunst in the proposal for Kritika, a publication that did not materialize, most likely for financial reasons. With the apparent demise of Egyseg and the failure of the Kritika project, leftist emigre Hungarians discontented with Ma turned to Akasztott Ember, edited by Barta, which appeared on I November I922. Barta's own discontent with Kassak and Ma had been indicated already in his article "Merre" (Whither), published in the I July I922 issue of Ma . In this article, Barta criticized the production of visual art when the political transformation was not yet complete and proclaimed literature as the only legitimate means of artistic struggle under the circumstances.38 Such an assertion effectively attacked Keparchitektura and set the stage for the final break with Kassak, which occurred during the summer of I 922.39 Barta explained the title of his new journal, Akasztott Ember, or "hanged man." He wrote: "As people, we now feel ourselves to be hanged. And if someone doesn't feel hanged, he belongs among those who hang and kick

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us. " 40 The "hanged man" referred to a character in one of Barta's Dadaabsurd dramas of 1920.41 It also refers to the cover of the January 1920 issue of Die Pleite (Bankruptcy), a Dada journal edited by George Grosz and John Heartfield that featured Grosz's Kapital und Militiir wiinschen sich: Bin gesegnetes Neues Jahr! (Capital and the military wish one another a blessed New Year!), in which personifications of "Capital" and the "Military" hang from gallows; and to Grosz's cover for Wieland Herzfelde's book Tragigrotesken der Nacht (Tragi-grotesques of the night), published by the MalikVerlag in Berlin in May 1920, which depicted a single hanged man.42 The reference to Grosz's caricatures reflects Barta's alignment with the radical Communist-Dadaist Malik-Verlag circle of Herzfelde, Heartfield, Grosz, and Franz Jung in Berlin. 43 Barta would have been informed of the Malik-Verlag after his arrival in Vienna in late 1919, as its publications were available at the Arbeiterbuchhandlung (workers' bookshop) in that city. 44 Direct contact with members of the circle would have taken place when a story by Jung and four of Grosz's caricatures appeared in Main the spring of 1921, 45 while Barta was still co-editor. AlthoughAkasztott Ember was not labeled as Communist and Barta did not join the Party until 1924, he considered himself communist and made it clear that his intention was to produce a journal radically independent of "bourgeois" culture in order to mercilessly attack that culture.46 His rejection-even if apologetic-of the leftist middle-class writer Tibor Dery's contribution to Akasztott Ember at a time when he was struggling with his journal is symptomatic of Barta's stringency in this regardY The introductory manifesto characterized the publication. Its tone of radicalism and rebellion and its concern for social issues set it apart from both the socialist aestheticism of Ma and the Party-centered tendentiousness of Egyseg. A litany of what was wrong with capitalist society included women's "fate of double slavery" in "housecages," film theaters as "the lassos of the capitalist construction of life," and the technological obsession of avant-gardists. 48 Barta called for a boycott of "bourgeois" cultural institutions, including schools and cinemas, and announced the commencement of cultural revolution through the formation of an "International Cultural Revolutionary Internationale" (sic) to be realized through the "Proletkult network. " 49 In an article on Proletkult, Barta criticized both Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, 50 though he agreed with Bogdanov that proletarian culture had to be separate from middle-class culture. Barta also outlined a social program that included anarchist ideas such as the communization of family life and the economy, the demolition of patriarchal or matriarchal authority systems, and free love. In an effort to lay claim to the right to be utopian while giving the appearance of being practical, he

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wrote: "Akasztott Ember struggles against the givens of . . . life with relevant weapons, and to a certain extent taking reality into consideration, but strictly with 'utopias' in mind." 51 Barta's typography, masthead, and layout of Akasztott Ember's first issue (fig. 3-3) were reminiscent of Ma . On the cover, the alignment of the title on the left, balanced by the vertical black rectangle on the right, recalls International Constructivist designs. The contradiction between this patent aestheticism and the anti-art rhetoric of the contents of Akasztott Ember may have prompted Barta to redesign the following issues. For these, he created a very different masthead (fig. 3-4L which, with its centered words and choppy, angular lettering, was expressionist in style and appeared calculated to distinguish Akasztott Ember from Ma. This subtle stylistic polemic paled next to the verbal attacks on Kassak that appeared in Akasztott Ember. Barta railed against what he saw as Kassak's aestheticism and careerism in a satirical pseudodrama (fig. 3-5 L which, in its typographical layout and intentionally juvenile figurative marginalia, is reminiscent of Heartfield's layouts for the introduction to the Kleine Grosz-Mappe (Small Grosz album) published by the MalikVerlag in 1917. In a rejoinder to Kassak's "Valasz sokfele, es allaspont" (A response in many directions, and a positionL Barta attacked Kassak's view that the masses must be encouraged to appropriate modern technology and modernist culture. He asserted that all contemporary culture was rotten to the core, and, rather than be appropriated, it had to be re-created. 52 By taking this position, Barta allied himself with the Linksradikalen (left-wing radicalsL such as members of the Malik-Verlag circle until 1920. 53 Indeed, in the first issue of Akasztott Ember Barta published "Manifesztum" (Manifesto) by Grosz and Heartfield, an excerpt from their infamous article of 1920, "Der Kunstlump" (The art scoundren 54 in which they attacked art and culture as inherently bourgeois and therefore to be discarded. In this article, Grosz and Heartfield were particularly critical of Oskar Kokoschka's public appeal to relocate the street fighting in Dresden during the Kapp Putsch of March 1920 from the vicinity of the city's galleries, since Rubens's Bathsheba in the Zwinger had been damaged by a stray bullet.55 Heartfield and Grosz wrote that they "welcome with joy that bullets fly into the galleries and palaces, into the masterpiece of Rubens, instead of the houses of the poor in working-class districts." 56 They toned down this position after being censured in the German communist newspaper Die rote Fahne (The red flag) in June of 1920, evidently as part of Lenin's contemporary campaign against the LinksradikalenY In late 1922, Barta's sympathy for such sensibilities showed him to be out of step not only with his Hungarian colleagues but also with most of the Malik-Verlag circle as far as Party discipline was concerned.58 Oliver A I. Botar

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