Peter Kalmus

“The basis of underground was that the majority of people, about 95% had the essential self-preservation instinct to have children, family, and once having kids one never wanted to have them sick or in orphanage. That’s why people tried to collaborate with the regime. They went to manifestations on the 1st of May, attended meetings. One of the Screwball’s messages was that if you didn’t want any career, you didn’t mind working as boilerman, worker at a farm, or dustman, because you had nothing to lose. They had nowhere else to put you. However, people were afraid to lose comfortable career – of being a head of a hospital department, or a teacher. If you gave up your career when being young and childless, they had nothing to blackmail you for. Their philosophy was: If you don’t do what we want, your children won’t get to the pioneer camp, they won’t be accepted to grammar school… Now you got scared. For God’s sake, why would I have three kids if they were doomed to end up like dummies? This was the principle of the flock, of the mass.”

“Of course, there were many official artists who had works of high quality. Some of them played both sides and worked also for Bolsheviks. Although, there were some unique artists, who worked just for the public sphere and had monumental pieces without idealistic intervention. First of them was Ján Mathé and the second was Mária Bartuzsová, whom I used to help for over a year. She reproached herself even for making a state seal with a star. Heineken has a star, too! This is a proof that there were prime artists in Bohemia and Slovakia, as well as in Košice, who earned well and didn’t have to do ideological works. They were able to defend themselves in not doing Lenins, Gottwalds, sickles and hammers; they didn’t do ideological art, but art the way they felt it. This is how Ján Mathé, and let’s say, in a way also Alexander Eckerdt worked.”