COURAGE

connecting collections

Veljo Tormis wrote his Kurvameelsed laulud (Melancholy Songs) in 1979, and dedicated it to the conductor Neeme Järvi, who was persona non grata in the Soviet Union since 1978. Thus, Tormis was told to cross out the dedication on the first page of the manuscript. However, he refused to do so, and covered it up with a strip of dark paper instead. The dedication is faintly visible through the paper. The manuscript was accepted, and later archived in this form. On a later copy, which also belongs to the same collection, the dedication is rewritten and formulated as a dedication to Neeme Järvi's leaving the homeland. Järvi emigrated to the United States in 1980.

Kurvameelsed laulud is not the most famous work by Tormis, but the manuscript is a unique and notable rarity as a reflection of the struggle with Soviet censorship.

The cantata Lenini sõnad (Lenin's Words) is a purely ironic work. It was formally dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union. Tormis used extracts of texts by Vladimir Lenin. The irony lies in the fact that these were extracts which demanded equality between nations and the right of self-determination. Since the author was Lenin himself, the authorities could not blame Tormis for anything. Whether the authorities understood the irony or not remains unknown.

It has not been widely performed, and even not at all since the restoration of independence, but it is often quoted in the press as a curious case. This cantata is definitely not forgotten. For example, Lenini sõnad was one of the works mentioned in the obituaries of Tormis.

The original manuscript and a later written copy are currently stored in the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum.

In 1948, Jonynas openly criticised the final thesis by the student F. Levitac ‘The Struggle by the Lithuanian Communist Party against the Fascist Regime in 1934–1936’, for its poor academic and professional quality. Levitac was a member of the Communist Party, and Jonynas’ remarks caused a severe reaction from the university council. He was accused of ‘bourgeois nationalism’. Jonynas gave a speech to the university council in which he accepted his ‘political and ideological mistakes’. This helped him to keep his academic position at Vilnius University. The document illustrates very well the dramatic situation of a talented scholar and intellectual who made a career in interwar Lithuania under Stalinism.

The year 1983 was the 100th anniversary of the Lithuanian newspaper Aušra. This newspaper, edited by Jonas Basanavičius, played an important role in the Lithuanian national rebirth in the 19th century. Aušra was an illegal newspaper, published in Prussia and smuggled into the Russian Empire. A conference on Aušra was held in Soviet Lithuania, at which Vebra was not allowed to give a presentation. Nevertheless, he stood up to make a comment, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the situation in the state of research into this important issue.

During his detention in Mordovia in 1963-1969, Knuts Skujenieks wrote several hundred poems. He was allowed to send two letters a month, and sent poems in letters to his wife which were read by his colleagues. After his release, he composed a collection of poetry, but it could not be published until 1990, and was only published in its entirety in his complete works in 2002. As Skujenieks said, this poetry ‘is not "gulag" poetry, but poetry written in the gulag [...] The initial shock and protest gradually turned into a fight in prison within myself' (Bitite Vinklers. Introduction. In: Seed in Snow. Poems by Knuts Skujenieks. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2016, p. 9).