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Grigory Pomerants

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Rescuing prohibited art from capture
Tomas Venclova Poet
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Atsimenu, buvo tokia istorija, mes su ja gyvenome, nuomavomės kambarį Maskvoje, ir tame kambaryje jinai surengė pogrindžio, pogrindinių dailininkų parodą. Užėjo šeimininkas, kuris jai nuomavo tą kambarį. Sušuko – čia supuvęs buržuazinis menas, jum, reiškia, aš jums, reiškia, jūs čia nebegyvensite, visus tuos paveikslus aš areštuoju, perduodu milicijai. O mus jis išvarė. Išvarė, ant durų pakabino raktą – mes atsidūrėme gatvėje. Na, gatvėj neatsidūrėm, mes turėjom draugų, galėjom pernakvoti pas draugus. Marina galų gale turėjo motiną, mes galėjom pas jos motiną persikelti. Bet paveikslai areštuoti gali patekti į milicijos ir saugumo rankas, tai gali baigtis blogai dailininkams, autoriams. Ir mes nežinojome ką veikti. Bet milicija kažkaip neskubėjo į tą butą ateiti, per kelias valandas mes suradome bičiulį pavarde Olegas Prokofjevas, tai buvo kompozitoriaus Prokofjevo, labai garsaus kompozitoriaus, sūnus. Irgi toks pogrindinio kultūrinio gyvenimo dalyvis. Ir Prokofjevas buvo labai liesas ir lankstus. Jisai per mažą langelį įlipo į vidų, įlindo į vidų to buto. Ir iš vidaus atidarė langus. Ir mes per langus išnešėme visus paveikslus. Uždengėme juos ten paklodėmis, kitais įvairiais būdais ir pernešėme į bičiulių butą. Tokiu būdu išgelbėjom juos nuo konfiskavimo. Tai buvo tą dieną, 1961-ųjų metų, balandžio 12 dieną, kada skrido į visatą, į kosmosą pirmą sykį Gagarinas. Ir visa Maskva buvo pilna Gagarino portretų. Didžiulės minios nešė Gagarino portretus ir visokius plakatus – tegyvuoja, reiškia, mūsų laimėjimai kosmose, noriu ir aš skristi į kosmosą, va tokie buvo plakatai, na, buvo gana autentiško tokio džiaugsmo priepuolis Maskvos minioms. O mes įsimaišę į tas minias nešėme visai ne tokius paveikslus. Atsimenu maži vaikai parodė, ranka parodė į mus ir sako: štai, matai, dar vieną Gagariną neša. O viena protinga mergaite dvylikos metų pasakė: iš kur tu žinai, gal čia visai ne Gagarinas? Na, tai buvo visai ne Gagarinas, tai buvo abstrakcionizmas, siurealizmas, dievai žino kas – paveikslai primenantys Pikaso, Džeksoną Poloką, Salvadorą Dali, žodžiu sakant, tais laikais griežtai draudžiami. Va tokiu būdu mes juos išgelbėjom, čia toks tipiškas anekdotas iš to laikotarpio. Na, ir aš tada labai pradėjau bičiuliautis su Maskvos disidentais, ir iš jų vis daugiau ir daugiau gauti pogrindžio literatūros, vis daugiau ir daugiau su jais kalbėtis įvairiom temomis, ir dariausi politiškai ir kultūriškai vis turbūt labiau ir labiau apsišvietęs, vis toliau ir toliau nuo tarybų valdžios.

I remember a certain incident, we were living together, renting a room in Moscow, and it was in that room that she put on a clandestine show of underground artists. The landlord, who was renting that room to her, came by. He started to shout, 'This is decadent bourgeois art, you, I'm going to... you're not going to live here anymore, I'm going to seize all those paintings, I'm going to hand them over to the police!' And he threw us out. He threw us out and hung the key on the door – we found ourselves on the street. Well, we didn't really find ourselves on the street, we had friends. We were able to spend the night at the home of some friends. Marina [Kedrova], after all, had a mother, we were able to move in with her mother. But the paintings that had been seized could get into the hands of the police and the state security and that could end badly for the artists, for those who had created the work. And we didn't know what to do. But for some reason the police were in no hurry to go to that flat, within a few hours we found a friend by the name of Oleg Prokofiev, the son of the famous composer [Sergei] Prokofiev. He was also a member of the cultural underground. And Prokofiev was very thin and physically flexible. He climbed in through a small window and got into the flat and opened the windows from the inside. And we carried all the paintings out through the windows. We covered them with bed sheets and various other things and took them to a friend's flat. And that's how we managed to save them from being confiscated. That was the day, April 12th 1961, on which [Yuri] Gagarin flew into outer space for the first time. And Moscow was full of portraits of Gagarin. Huge crowds were carrying portraits of Gagarin and all kinds of placards: 'Long live our victors in outer space', 'I also want to fly into outer space', those were the sort of placards. Well, this was all quite an authentic paroxysm of joy displayed by the Moscow crowds. And we mingled with those crowds carrying completely different kinds of pictures. I remember some small children pointing, pointing their fingers at us and saying, 'Look, they're carrying another Gagarin'. And one clever 12-year-old girl said, 'How do you know? Perhaps it's not Gagarin'. Well, the pictures weren't of Gagarin at all but abstract, surrealist, and who knows what else, works – pictures reminiscent of Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dalí, in short the kind of work that was strictly prohibited in those times. And that was how we saved them. This was a typical anecdote from that time. Well, and it was then that I began to make friends with the Moscow dissidents and to get more and more underground literature from them, to speak with them more on various subjects, and I became politically and culturally probably more enlightened, and moved further away from the Soviet authorities.

Born in 1937, Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator of literature. He was educated at Vilnius University and later at Tartu University. As an active participant in the dissident movement he was deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1977 and had to emigrate. Between 1977 and 1980 he lectured at University of California, Berkeley, where he became friends with the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, who was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the school, as well as the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. He is currently a full professor at Yale University.

Listeners: Andrzej Wolski

Film director and documentary maker, Andrzej Wolski has made around 40 films since 1982 for French television, the BBC, TVP and other TV networks. He specializes in portraits and in historical films. Films that he has directed or written the screenplay for include Kultura, which he co-directed with Agnieszka Holland, and KOR which presents the history of the Worker’s Defence Committee as told by its members. Andrzej Wolski has received many awards for his work, including the UNESCO Grand Prix at the Festival du Film d’Art.

Tags: Moscow, 12-4-1961, Marina Kiedrova, Oleg Prokofiev, Sergei Prokofiev, Yuri Gagarin, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dalí

Duration: 3 minutes, 20 seconds

Date story recorded: May/June 2011

Date story went live: 20 March 2012