Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Eszter Balázs: Avant-Garde and Radical Anti-War Dissent in Hungary-A Tett (1915-1916)

WAR CULTURE(S)

The ‘war culture’ is a concept coined by the historians of the Péronne Históriai Museum of the Great War in France (Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker).1 it refers to the totalization of war promoted by the discourses, representations, behaviours and practices that characterized the societies involved in the First World War. The main themes of the ‘war culture’ are glorification of the homeland, elevation of patriotic values, praise of allies, legitimation of violence and hatred between nations. Recently, however, it has become more usual to talk of‘war culture(s)’, the plural allowing us to develop a more differentiated picture of how different nations, social groups or even individuals related to the war. Although the ‘war culture’ or ‘war cultures’ took general hold almost from one day to the next, we also find examples-very few, at first-of rejection of war rhetoric and opposition to the war. Kassák himself initially helped to shape the ‘war culture’, like the majority of intellectuals in Hungary and, indeed, all over Europe. Only a few months later, however, he turned his back on war-spurring rhetoric and progressively took up combative anti-militarism. This was to pervade the whole mentality of his journal. Despite its tiny circulation and - set against the enormous power of the press and institutions promoting the ‘war culture’ - its presumably almost imperceptible influence on public opinion, the government could not tolerate even this tiny level of dissent and banned the journal in 1916. After Kassák launched his next journal, MA [Today], in autumn the same year, things began to change. Over the next two years, war fever gradually subsided all over Europe and the desire for peace, even in Hungary, became more openly expressed. MA ran without disturbance until the end of the war. 1

1 See, e.g., Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau-Annette Becker, 1914-1918, Understanding the Creat War, Profile, London, 2002,102-103.

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