Manifesto of the Seven

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The Manifest of Seven (Czech: Manifest sedmi ) from 1929 was a protest against the new party line by some well-known and left-wing artists and members of the Communist Party (KSČ) in Czechoslovakia who were active in the Devětsil Association .

The KSČ, which had been able to work legally since its foundation in 1921 and was one of the largest communist parties in Europe, decided in 1925 to carry out a so-called Bolshevization , in other words: it wanted to abandon the previously relatively liberal course and follow the policy of the Comintern approach. The change of course was sealed by the election of Klement Gottwald as party leader at the Fifth Party Congress in February 1929. Among other things, the primacy of politics in art should in future be enforced.

Initiated by Ivan Olbracht, seven artists published a Manifesto of Seven , which first appeared as a leaflet addressing Spisovatelé komunisté komunistickým dělníkům (Writer-Communists to Communist Workers). In this manifesto they expressed their fear that the planned strict orientation towards Moscow would jeopardize the previous mass character of the party and, as a result, its ability to act in favor of a "factional hazard"; this is, so further in the manifesto, “a suicidal policy” based on the mistakes of one's own comrades.

The seven undersigned writers, poets and literary critics were: Ivan Olbracht , Helena Malířová , Stanislav Kostka Neumann , Josef Hora , Jaroslav Seifert , Marie Majerová and Vladislav Vančura .

This declaration was immediately condemned by the party leadership and the signatories were expelled from the party in March 1929. They were also criticized by other artists who expressed their loyalty to the party through the Zásadní stanovisko k projevu "sedmi" (basic declaration to the manifesto of the "seven") (including Karel Teige , Vítězslav Nezval , Julius Fučík , Vladimír Clementis , Ladislav Novomeský ); some of them (such as Clementis or Novomeský) fell victim to later party purges themselves after 1948 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Libor Vykoupil: Ecce Homo - vnitřní stranický převrat v KSČ ... [Ecce Homo - the inner party overthrow in the KSČ ...], broadcast on February 18, 2009
  2. ↑ a b Manifest sedmi (original document), online at: www.ucl.cas.cz (PDF file; 421 kB), Czech, accessed on April 28, 2010
  3. ↑ Z. Kárník: České země v éře První republiky (1918-1938) , Libri, Prague 2003, quoted from: Adéla Křížová: Časopis Levá fronta v historickém kontextu počátku 30. let , diploma thesis at the University of Budweis, Budweis 2011, p . 12, online at theses.cz / ...
  4. ↑ Zásadní stanovisko k projevu “Sedmi” (original document), online at: www.ucl.cas.cz (PDF file; 187 kB), Czech, accessed on April 28, 2010

literature

  • Jiří Opelík (Ed.): Lexicon české literatury. Osobnosti, díla, instituce . Volume 3 / I. Prague, Academia 2000, ISBN 80-2000345-2 , pp. 664-671 (Lexicon of Czech Literature).