Itt-Ott, 1991 (24. évfolyam, 1-2/118. szám)

1991 / 1-2. (118.) szám

OREGON JOURNAL, OR THIS IS NO PLACE FOR DREAMS

Two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling’s 90th birthday was being celebrated by the university at which I am teaching. In terms of place it happened in America, in the State of Oregon, yet everything was so painfully familiar. The Great Local Son came home, festive speeches resounded, the huge cake was sliced, the library thanked the scientist for the gift of a huge collection of papers documenting his lifework, and then, on the next day, everything went on as before, and Pauling returned to his home in Palo Alto, California.

The university is impoverished, the State has cut its budget drastically since the citizens have voted their unwillingness to pay taxes on their property. And because there is no sales tax here, the only recourse is the curtailment of state institutions. Not only the universities will get the short end of the stick. The entire educational system will be hurt by the budget reductions, but social programs will suffer even more. The mentally ill will have to leave their institutions, the incapacitated, on the other hand, will have to leave their home environment and move into institutions, for lack of state support. Everyone has to help himself, and whoever is unable to do so because he is ill, old, uneducated, has many children, or is unemployed, will face tough times.

It is with hesitation that I write this, because it seems all too familiar to me. We used to read of such things in the “old” Népszabadság, and we would immediately throw down the paper in anger and disbelief, and reach for an available copy of National Geographies or of Life instead. We only believed these, latter sources.

Prom a Hungarian perspective this relative poverty, or impoverishment still represents an unattainable good life. The college students do not know the meaning of the term poverty. They have to be taught how to live in a society in which there is never enough of the blessings of comfort (housing, cars, free time, roads, sewers, telephones). They pay hundreds of hard dollars to learn what it means to be an East European. They learn the East European experience as a separate subject. They take notes: Nine changes in the governmental system in one century, each of which meant a 180° turn in values, institutions and elites; a continuous role-change by the persecutors and the persecuted; symbolic acts in lieu of ones having real and tangible results; organized, collective irresponsibility; aborted attempts at reform; long-term lack of sovereignty; acquired helplessness; negative identity.

There are times when they raise their heads and say: that’s the way it is here, too, in Oregon. They are more than familiar with the irrationality of bureaucratic rationales. Just now, when the university’s budget has been trimmed back horribly, the administration has bought garbage cans for $500 apiece to beautify the campus. Political non-participation and apathy are not unusual here either. The fog of politics is just as impenetrable for them as it is for us, back home. One of my students, Eric Weber, once declared that Oregon was Hungary without Hungarians.

This is, of course, an exaggeration. Hungarian students talk more to each other, the feeling of belonging is stronger among them, their relationships are less superficial. Here, the spirit of competition implants a suspicion into everyone: What if the other is just using me? Thus they prefer to be silent, they talk only about sports, the weather, or of their pets. Intellectualism in the East European sense is totally unknown in this land. Although every one of the houses of

the professors and the students could well fit into a Chekhov piece, their inhabitants lack the ambivalence, the hesitation, the wrestling with the meaninglessness of life. If their cars break down, there is a place to take them, and they are fixed right away. Their pay or stipend is more than enough to cover the basic needs of everyday living. Writing is a duty. But everyone knows exactly what he has to do, and when. The way they know their rights, their punctuality, their belief in themselves, their self-assurance are wonderful. When I asked my students what they were proud of, they each of them, without exception, talked of their achievements. This is no place for dreams.

In my farewell lecture I talked about according to what background perspectives we might explain the events in Eastern Europe in 1989/90. If we were to do so in terms of New York’s Broadway, we should have to think of a musical with the title “The Rise and Fall of the Evil Empire.” Out of the darkness of the first act we hear the chorus of lament: the voices of the oppressed. This is followed by the scenes of liberation: the Warsaw round table, the splitting of the Iron Curtain, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the battle on Wenceslas Square, and then the finale in Bucharest: the Fall of the Evil One. A comedy could follow this piece, a duet by Reagan and Gorbachev about the dialectic necessity for freedom (with the entire ballet troupe of the KGB in the rear of the stage).

Of course there are much more serious approaches. Speaking of morality, we can state with Havel that the “life of lies” has ended. But has it, really, or have new little lies merely taken the place of the old, single big lie? Politically, we could talk about revolution, about the unstoppable progress of freedom; ideologically, about the rebirth of liberal ideas, accompanied by the fall of left-wing ideals into disrepute, and by a cultural nationalism. A sociological reading of history would have to deal with the question of whether those who in the old days did better for themselves than others will now be able to preserve their positions, whether they will become members of the neo-bourgeoisie, or will instead prefer to make themselves indispensable in the guise of nationalistic slogans in a system that will continue, with unchanged tenacity, to dispense and to deprive? An economic explanation could obviously focus on the dilemma of a total economy based on centralized redistribution vs. a pluralistic market model.

My audience, made up largely of my colleagues and students, really perked up when I got to Eastern Europe’s cultural significance. As I was preparing my talk in the morning, Sonya, the ever-talking and intelligent first lady of CNN was just saying how good it was to be American, because whoever was American was fortunate. The thought suggested itself: To be East European, on the other hand, is misfortune itself (and within that, to be Hungarian: a curse).

A long discussion ensued on this point, and they barely let me finish. I borrowed the end from Lyotard, who called revolution an insignificant little ideal. I think everyone has to have his own revolution, so that not only the system, but he himself will change, and so that even if the system does not, his own life at least will become better, truer and happier in every way.

It is an important lesson, one that can really be learned only here: That one should not pay attention to politics, because it is something distant and uninteresting. One should have a home, love, go on outings and car rides, eat — and whatever is beyond this should be experienced on television. — György Csepeli, Népszabadság. Transl. by L.J. Éltető

48 ÍTT-OTT 24. évi. (1991), 1-2. (118.) szám