No Live Files Remain

by Andras Forgach

  3. to work in the prime minister’s press department

  The answer of the manager in the bank was that he won’t let me go – he needs me badly, after a tough fight he agreed in principle but he put a condition that only after the cadre will give him at least two communists to replace me. He sent me there to tell this and in the meantime he phoned up Rosta. When I arrived there to explain things, they won’t listen to my explanations and immediately gave me work. Rosta dismissed all the conditions and so I am in the job after one year of wringling. Végi is jubilant and told me: ‘You see that I was right!!!’

  Otherwise no news, everything in order, having a fine time like in my good old bachelor days. I hope you don’t object. (?)

  AND NOW FOR A FLAT. The battle has begun for a higher living standard. All my pupils left for vacations. I am simply dried up. I hope you saved a couple of fillers so we can live on ‘fistukim’ [pistachios] at least.

  Love and many many kisses

  Forgács Marcell

  P. M.’s press dept. lecturer

  4 The series of premieres closed with Zsuzsanna Forgàcs’s solo performance. Made up of pantomime elements, the monodrama carries a deeply pessimistic message. It portrays human alienation and loneliness in a form that testifies to the inevitable dissolution of conjugal bonds, making out the family – and, within it, traditional gender roles – to be akin to a state of robot-like monotony. As with the previous performance, this one was full of erotic, obscene elements. The audience contemplated this, too, with appreciation.

  5 The guests were invited to the play, which began around 8:15. As per the title, it sought to bring to the stage the life of Pascal. The two leads were played by János Xantus and György Kozma. The piece – which they had embellished with puns – was decidedly obscene and homosexual in character, bearing the marks of the underground stage. It won unanimous praise from those present.

  Afterwards they screened short films by Ágnes Háy which my acquaintance had seen at a previous event. Of these, the study titled Tempo merits attention; for one of the actors – a stage designer from Kaposvár, named Major – is the companion of Miklós Haraszti.

  In the course of the screening, the Forgács siblings’ mother arrived in the company of Julia Veres, and on learning what the evening’s programme was, announced that she already knew the play. It follows from all of this that the performances must be regular.

  [. . .]

  Péter Kovács told my acquaintance that Miklós Erdélyi is organizing a ‘creative action’ on 17 June at 60 József Boulevard in Budapest’s 8th District, at which anyone interested is welcome.

  ‘Nemes’

  Assessment: The secret assignee carried out his assignment well. His report is of operative value and may be deemed as corroborated. His data confirm or complement corroborated information we have received from other sources.

  In recent months we have received intelligence from multiple sources that members of Budapest’s ‘new left’ and anarchist groups have established their new gathering points at the flats of János Xantus and Zsuzsanna Forgács. Our contact has now provided a foretaste of the programmes held in these locations by reporting in detail. Some of the individuals who attended the event have been under investigation by our organs for pursuing belligerent activities.

  The circumstances amid which these performances are held appear to reinforce their core concept that in the present political situation the most expedient method by which these groups and individuals can collaborate is mutual ‘artistic’ activity. The performances are nihilist in nature, their obscenity suggesting the participants’ deep personal crises. In indirect form they deny the legitimacy of socialist culture. Their works have been conceived in the spirit of the so-called ‘counter-culture’ fashionable in the West.

  6 Submitted: Secret assignee cn ‘Nemes’

  Received: Lajos Szabó, Police Capt.

  Place: ‘Nearby’ ‘C’ flat

  7 I no longer know if the veterans’ general state of mind needs to be taken into account.

  But I am writing (maybe for the second time) because I don’t want to end up in a mental institution, as happened with my husband. If you cannot arrange for the granting of the following request of mine through your own authority, I ask that you regard it as null and void. I have no need to have By no means forward my letter to another agency, institution, etc. (the reasons, if necessary) deal with the matter Throw my letter in the bin instead, and then it’s over.

  In shor 1) In 1947 my husband and I arrived from Palestine. My husband (born: 1920) and I are long time party members is a communist (1940) as am I (1942). (Medal for the Socialist Homeland, member of the partisan federation, etc.)

  2) My husband: sacked from prime minister’s press office in the course of the Rajk trials. Unemployment. Comrade Sebes says to me: ‘Your husband is not a cadre, let him become a construction worker.’

  3) In 1953 the director of the ‘Szikra’ book publishing firm sacks my husband because: his father-in-law lives in Israel (at the time the ‘doctors’ trial’ was underway in the Soviet Union. (The father-in-law: M. AVI-SHAUL, communist writer, poet . . .)

  4) Counter-revolution: my husband, along with myself, is among the first to report with the party. He winds up in mortal danger. After the counter-revolution’s military suppression my husband is summoned to the prime minister’s office to assist with the press and propaganda work (along with Ernő Vágó and others he goes to Csepel and other factories to dissuade the strikers, etc.).

  5) In 1957 he is hired by the foreign affairs desk of the daily Magyar Nemzet.

  6) In 1960, on recommendation of party central: London correspondent, MTI. Prior to our departure Tibor Köves (MTI) shows up in our flat. He declares: it’s him who should have travelled to London but he doesn’t yet have his party membership . . . (Later we learned that, during the counter-revolution, because of the Petőfi Circle etc. etc. he was ‘left out’ at MTI.) Tibor Köves then does all the back-stabbing against my husband that he can from back home. Comrade Forgács got no help from MTI. By 1962 Köves joins the party, and my husband is a nervous wreck from the outrageous backbiting from the hinterland unceasing backbiting at full steam. We come home. Köves goes to London.

  7) 1962: At the recommendation of Party headquarters my husband is sent to the foreign ministry. Months pass before the answer comes (several such letters letters of rejection over the years from the hand of Mrs Turai, the foreign ministry’s human resources official). (My husband did not go inquiring at the ministry of his own volition, but it always happened at the recommendation of the party’s higher organs.) In 1962 the then foreign minister said, and I quote, ‘Comrade Forgács, your father-in-law lives in Israel, which is why we can’t employ you. If Avi-Shaul requests repatriation and settles here, we can talk again.’ We had to swallow this atrocity, but we couldn’t. We felt like stigmatized and untrustworthy individuals and we were! Nothing has felt good since then, either, since there is a dossier the dossier of ‘Marcell Forgács’ has kept burning in the human resources department of the foreign ministry. Those who look inside imagine an enemy. We will continue experiencing this terrible this real nightmare again and again until we perish or until those responsible make amends.

  8) 1967: aggression in the Middle East. Marcell Forgács struggles for the unfaltering realization of the party line at state radio. He certainly pays for it: he’s called an anti-Semite, an agant agent provocateur, anonymous telephone calls and letters. Zionist-sympathizing individuals of both Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry harass him, he’s whispered about behind his back, he’s besmirched – and this has lasted to this day. Enough was enough when the whispers originating at MTI were expressed like this to one of my children who is in university (I have four children): Forgács is really talented but in chasing after better positions he informed on people at party headquarters. The ‘news’ originates with Hungarian newspaper reporters currently serving in the USA. I can’t prove it and I don’t eve
n have to, because that’s not the point. For my husband, this was the last drop. It’s as if a great darkness descended on his mind. They took him to the ophthalmology clinic for an emergency operation a cataract six months earlier a heart attack (he had a heart attack two years ago). They operated on his eyes but he couldn’t evade the mental institution! He is now there. but he will never crawl out of his condition, which in 1962

  Lesser blows bigger blows in 1948, 1953, 1960, 1962, 1967, and since then and during that time have done their work on him. But especially Recovery is in my opinion possible only if the fundamental injustice is redressed. Until then

  Until then

  With comradely greetings

  Mrs Marcell Forgács

  Bearer of Medal for Socialist Homeland.

  retired nurse

  8 Assignment: Pay continuous and unchanged attention to the activities of the two circles. If an opportunity arises naturally, visit the flats mentioned in the report. Acquire information about why and how often the various individuals visit the various flats. Avoid taking anyone at all to the events unless someone among your acquaintances has been invited. Observe the participants’ reactions and seek to maintain a low profile while at the same time accommodating your behaviour to that of the others.

  9 Dear Comrade Aczél,

  Our son, Péter Forgács, who is a first-year student at the College of Visual Arts, was failed out of his studies in sculpture in the middle of the academic year, which means his automatic expulsion from the College.

  The reason we are turning to you, Comrade Aczél, and asking you to receive us, is because we have been told that he received this dissatisfactory mark not for academic reasons but on the basis of a ‘political’ judgement. Péter was accepted thanks to his high score on the entrance examination. So far he has been at the College for two-and-a-half months, and not only is it inconceivable that during this time he would have regressed, but, to the contrary, his large number of new works show substantial progress, as those at the school who are experts have also determined.

  It has come to our attention, however, that prior to the academic evaluation, political labels were handed out in an impermissible manner at a gathering of party members, and after this came the extorted academic grade as punishment – on the basis of unproven accusations. Crowning all this was that my son and others, who were branded in their absence in similar fashion, were not notified of this, no, they were warned neither before nor after, but a ‘political’ sentence was carried out in the academic realm. This is, in our opinion, wholly unacceptable precisely from the perspective of our party’s policies, the purity of artistic critique and the pedagogy of art.

  We must however also share some circumstances related to our son that are unique. Péter is a hard worker; he wakes each morning at 4 a.m., delivers newspapers, and then goes to the College, where he studies and works until late afternoon. His wife, who is likewise a sculpture student, is pregnant. We share a flat with them and our other three children.

  Also pertaining to the general circumstances is the fact that our family was seriously decimated during the fascist years as well, and also that as members of the illegal communist party we bore arms in the fight against fascism and imperialist colonial suppression. During the time of the show trials we were branded Rajkists, Titoists and imperialist spies, which in our case meant losing employment and abandoning university studies. Discrimination and neglect was our lot over many years. It was hard to explain this to our four children, whom we raised in the communist spirit despite all this, and who became conscientious young communists.

  During the counter-revolution, we, too, got on the list of those to be ‘rounded up’ for being longtime communists. We were among the first in the battle against the counter-revolution, in the party’s restructuring and the establishment of the workers’ militia. Now it seems that they’re coming down hard on us once again as longtime communists, based on unfounded political assessments, but this time through Péter, with administrative methods.

  It is not our place to judge what should be debated at the College and its party organization, and how, but if they think that there are ‘debatable’ views, too, then those must be clarified through debate and not punished through un-academic means, wrecking the life paths of young men and depriving them of the opportunity to study and create their art. Debate on political and artistic problems corresponds to our party’s objectives, which tends towards clarifying ideological issues on the basis of principle and is suited to the principles of socialist art and criticism, as well as the norms of communist pedagogy.

  Thus we ask Comrade Aczél for an investigation of the case and for its just settlement.

  With comradely greetings,

  Budapest, 26 December 1971

  10 MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR

  TOP SECRET!

  Independent

  HIGHLY IMPORTANT!

  sub-department

  III/III-8

  MONITORING OF DOMESTIC HOSTILE OPPOSITION ELEMENTS

  DAILY REPORT NO. 127

  Budapest, 13 June 1979

  Disagreements have emerged in the Journal among the individuals participating in the preparation of the illegal periodical ‘Journal’ over the content of certain writings in the periodical. They reacted with particular sensitivity to the ‘editorial committee’ having called on Péter Forgács to withdraw from the ‘Journal’ his most recent piece, which compromises one of their peers. Because of the editorial committee’s stance this stance, his sister, Zsuzsa Forgács, declared: in the future she will not participate in the making of the ‘Journal’.

  The arguments also led Ferenc Dániel and Péter Nádas to decide to leave the Journal. cease their association with the ‘Journal’.

  Measures: Preparation of an information report,

  continuation of confidential investigation.

  Mrs Béla Mészáros, Police Major

  Sub-department Head

  11 MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR

  TOP SECRET!

  Department III/4

  HIGHLY IMPORTANT!

  17 November 1976

  Submitted: secret assignee CN TAMÁS FEHÉR

  Received: Tibor Cirkos, police lt.

  Place: ‘C’ flat CN BALZAC

  Subject: Establishment of the ‘Hungarian Feminist Movement’

  A university-student acquaintance of a friend of mine said that this summer a feminist movement formed in Hungary under the name Hungarian Feminist Movement. The documents or brochures of this movement previously appeared in Paris. Actually, a few people defected in the summer – my friend doesn’t know their names for the time being – and there they published a few pieces. In Hungary [. . .] according to him this movement is organized by Julia Veres, a girl who was formerly a philosophy major, and among the members, or at least the fairly active members, this acquaintance has already mentioned Piroska Márkus, who at the moment is a philosophy major in the faculty of humanities, as well as Zsuzsa Forgács. [. . .] He is specifically familiar with a proposed programme he told my friend about. This proposed programme comprises about ten points, and the following are among the points: Those who compiled the proposed programme think that women, insofar as they seek to assess or at all examine the situation of women, comprise a class and not some sort of group or a social conglomeration connected with a stratum, but that women are one of the fundamental classes in present-day societies and, indeed, can be counted as among the oppressed classes. Several of the programme points concern the subjugation of women by men – technicalities, for example, such as that mechanization does not fundamentally alter women’s subjugation, because it means a change only in the quantity of household work, but not – by no means – a qualitative change. It does not therefore represent the sort of liberation that would represent the enfranchisement of truly significant energies for women. The same thing refers to the scenario under which men would help women do housework. So too there was a programme point that, in almost manifesto-like fas
hion, stated that women should more deliberately exploit their biological attribute whereby they, and not men, bear children into the world. According to this proposed programme women are more apt to reap disadvantages, not advantages, from their situation with respect to men. According to another programme point, complete social liberation could better be ensured if women were not in such a subjugated role with respect to men, for not even men can realize all those rights that might be theirs or that they might have the possibility of exercising. Among other reasons this happens also because women have traditionally been oppressed amid social circumstances for centuries or millennia. Several points of the proposed programme concern the situation of the family, and they categorically reject this, though there are no concrete recommendations for what group or formation could function in place of the family as the smallest fundamental unit of society. Instead, these points suggest that the family is, from the outset, one of the factors in re-creating the conditions of women’s subjugation.

  Prepared as:

  4 copies

  3 typed pages

  Assessment: Our contact reported beyond the scope of his assignment that Julia Veres, former student of the faculty of humanities, and Zsuzsa Forgács and Piroska Márkus – presently third-year history-philosophy majors in the Faculty of the Humanities – are members of the ‘Hungarian Feminist Movement’, established in Hungary in the summer of 1976.

  The information contains the essential details of the programme manifesto of the ‘movement’, from which it may be concluded that they seek to engage in activities, on the basis of belligerent political ideas, ‘in the interest of improving the situation of women’, for which they also cultivate foreign links as well.

  Measures: I recommend that one copy of the report be sent to Interior Ministry sub-department III/III-4-b.