Defund, Co-opt, Replace: How Authoritarians Reshape Culture (Frontlines) #3

🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues at another frontline: culture — where authoritarian power doesn’t just silence dissent, but reshapes the institutions that decide what gets staged, funded, and celebrated.

In this episode, we speak with Piotr Rudzki (dramaturg; formerly of the Polski Theater in Wrocław) and Kristóf Nagy (anthropologist; author of an ethnography of the Hungarian Academy of Arts) about how cultural worlds are reorganized under illiberal rule.

• Why is defunding today’s most effective form of censorship?
• How does co-optation work through grants and patronage?
• What do terms like “culture war,” “cultural takeover,” and “hegemony” clarify—and what do they obscure?
• And where can autonomy still be built: underground, inside institutions, or through collective organization?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 3 — Defund, Co-opt, Replace: How Authoritarians Reshape Culture, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Teaser & Jingle
• 1:01 Introduction: The Cultural Frontline
• 2:40 Meet the Guests: Piotr & Kristóf
• 6:13 The Polski Theater in Wrocław: Building a Public Stage
• 12:36 The Takeover of the Polski Theater by Authoritarian Conservatives
• 19:03 Short on Loyalists: The Cadre Bottleneck in Illiberal Hungary
• 23:14 Is the goal a “New Man”? Two Takes on Culture as Engineering
• 34:29 Governing Through Patronage: The Hungarian Academy of Arts as a Co-optation Machine
• 44:52 Spaces of Autonomy and Solidarity
• 52:33 Closing Reflections
• 57:05 Acknowledgements

Transcript

(00:00) Piotr Rudzki: These, let's say, authoritarian regimes, they knew that the culture with all these, you know, elements—universities, grammar school, galleries, Philharmonics and so on and so on—this is very good surrounding to make a new man.

(00:19) Kristóf Nagy: Although this cultural institution that I studied, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, would like to become this, let's say, cultural vanguard of the regime that shapes the entire population or the entire nation, it has actually, in most of the cases, a really limited outreach.

Intro: You're listening to This Authoritarian Life, a podcast in which we explore everyday human stories to make sense of authoritarian politics. My name is Kristóf Szombati.

Erdem Evren: And I'm Erdem Evren.

(00:53) Kristóf Szombati: So, dear listeners of This Authoritarian Life, welcome back. This is episode three of season two, "Frontlines." And this episode is going to be a bit special in the sense that it's growing out of a workshop that all four of us who are in the conversation attended back in October. So the workshop's title was "Culture and Authoritarian Transformations." It was organized by two friends of ours who I'm going to name: Katarina Sretković, who works for the Federal Agency for Civic Education [bpb], and Jens Adam, who is a scholar like us and works on authoritarian transformation himself.

And we were invited by them to continue the conversations that were held in Cottbus. And the participants came from all around Central Europe. So they were people from Serbia, from Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Eastern Germany. And they were artists or cultural managers or people who had held posts in cultural institutions or studied them. And we had discussions around what happens when, you know, an authoritarian transformation kicks in around you and you're one of these institutions. And of course it was mostly people who weren't aligned with the authoritarian powers. So I think most were liberals or on the left. And we had very, I think, intriguing and important discussions around this topic of what these pressures look like and how you can react to them, how we can collectively react to them.

And so we decided to invite two people from that workshop who we are going to introduce. And I'll just say a very few words about how we're going to continue this conversation in the podcast in the episode. So the first guest we have is Piotr Rudzki. He's a literary scholar and dramaturg who helped turn the Polish Theatre [Teatr Polski] in Wrocław into one of the country's most daring, I would say, public stages. His vision of a global theater that engages societal issues head-on came directly into conflict with the vision promoted by the conservative cultural elites who came to power in 2016. And we'll talk about what that means in practice because Piotr was removed from his job due to these clashes, you know, cultural war, basically. And he went on to found the Polish Theatre in the Underground, you know, starting a new institution from the grassroots. And Erdem, can you introduce our second guest?

(04:36) Erdem Evren: Sure. Our second guest is another Kristóf, Kristóf Nagy, who recently completed his PhD in anthropology on conservative cultural policy in Hungary. His ethnographic research at the Hungarian Academy of Arts [Magyar Művészeti Akadémia], which is one of the flagship public institutions created after Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party came to power in 2010, offers a deeper insight into how right-wing cultural institutions are making an effort to integrate artists with clashing different visions. Kristóf is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and he's actually speaking to us from the U.S. Welcome to This Authoritarian Life, both of you.

(04:55) Kristóf Szombati: So yeah, I think we'll start with Piotr, but I just want to say why these two people and what we hope to get out of the conversation. So I think they are situated in two very different places, Hungary and Poland, and also two very different cultural institutions. And we thought that one of them, Piotr, can talk a lot about what culture war looks like up close and how you kind of deal with it on a personal and collective level. But Kristóf worked in a very different environment in which this culture war frame, you know, understanding, doesn't really work. So it's going to push us beyond kind of the culture war paradigm. Because you see that an institution in which people who disagree on fundamental value grounds are still together, you know, not always working together, literally speaking, but are somehow still collaborating in the same institution. So we'll learn about how the hell that works.

(05:12) Erdem Evren: Starting from 2006, for about a decade, Piotr, you worked together with your colleagues to transform the Polish Theatre in Wrocław into a place of intellectual dialogue, moral confrontation, and maybe even most importantly, artistic experimentation. And your colleagues and you were insisting that this is a theater that belongs to society, not to the authorities. And you have staged different forms of critical public dialogue and you promoted the model of global theater. What was the overarching vision behind this work related to the theater and maybe like what were your kind of influences, inspirations? Could you tell us a bit about all this?

(06:05) Piotr Rudzki: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for inviting me for this conversation, which seems very interesting. And you know, we don't have half a day or one day to talk about all inspiration and all, let's say, food for thoughts, which were for us important to create this institution. I prefer call it Polski Theatre in Wrocław because, you know, this is the name of the theatre. Because Polish means all the theatres in Poland. So the Teatr Polski... when we started working there in 2006, that was quite... I mean, he used to have good moments in the past, for sure, but I'm not going to repeat all the history because this stage became Polish after 1945 when Wrocław, previous Breslau, became the Polish city.

And what was very important, what I would like to underline, that the first Polish president [of the city] was Bolesław Drobner and who came to Wrocław in, I think, July 1945. He also invited to his group one guy from Słowacki Theatre in Kraków. So, I mean, the people who were supposed to organize the new life of the city also were thinking about, you know, the theater. And there are many anecdotes and many histories, but I'm not going to touch it anyhow, otherwise we are going to spend the whole night talking about this.

Anyway, what was very important starting from 1945, that the good management... took into consideration that first of all, they should prepare the audience. The theater is not just for entertainment and the theater should somehow reply or conduct good dialogue with the audience. If we think about Lower Silesia, which Wrocław is the capital, you know, the mostly people who came were from, let's say, two groups of people: workers and peasants. So to have the audience for the production, they have to teach them what is the theater, which is not only entertainment, which is not only summer stage.

(09:00) Piotr Rudzki: So after '45, I mean, there was a, let's say, constant process, but with some breaks, of teaching the audience and preparing the new coming audience to contact with something which is more difficult as far as piece of art is concerned. When we came in 2006, that was really after a five or six years gap. So we started our working day in the theatre with a few courses for teachers, for pupils, for let's say ordinary audience, just to give them the idea what is theatre about. And what's very important—and this is not a very difficult thing to collect, think about Aristotle and his Poetics—the kind of catharsis, which could be also the kind of emotion which should be arised. So it means that the subject of the production, the idea as well as how the production looks like should somehow touch the audience.

Then I would like to mention one guy whom you probably do know because he is a Polish romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz. Before his death he spent four years in Paris having lectures in Collège de France. And in a very important lecture, we call it "Lesson Number 16," he underlined that the main aim of the theatre is to make lazy souls to be active, to make lazy souls to think. So the theatre in this serious kind of discourse in Polish theatre means that the theatre is something serious. And then we have Grotowski. And as you probably know, Grotowski shifted from Opole in 1964 to Wrocław. So, I mean, let's say we had a foundation, we had the ground which we can use building the new repertoire.

The idea was also to invite the young generation of the theater directors, really young, those who didn't have the opportunity to create something on the other stages, as well as trying to attract, let's say, masters. The last thing I would like to underline, when the problem started... The problem started in 2015, when the, let's say, this right-wing party [PiS] won the parliamentary election. You know, we were supported by the audience. That was something absolutely unique in the history of any European country or any other country that when the problem started, we had the representative of the audience, they created a fan page, "The Audience of Polski Theatre in Wrocław," and they pushed authorities, Wrocław authorities, Lower Silesia authorities, as well as central authorities, just to give us absolutely unbelievable support. That was for us, being in very difficult situation, some bright point.

(12:25) Kristóf Szombati: So can you tell us about the conflict? How did it erupt?

(12:30) Piotr Rudzki: The conflict was very simple. That was the end of the contract of Krzysztof Mieszkowski, the manager and artistic director with whom I used to work. We were asking, because the Polish Theatre is funded by the Lower Silesia government... we were just trying to make them to prolong this contract, trying to show them that any change in that point of the process is really something horrible, is really killing something that's really alive. Unfortunately, they didn't agree, they didn't prolong this contract and they just opened the competition.

And when they opened the competition we knew that we would lose. And we knew who is the person who was chosen by the ministry and this guy had quite bad reputation. And I was even in this jury, which was supposed to choose the new artistic and general director. And everything was set. Everything was set. We knew there was Krystian Lupa, me and one more theater director, Paweł Łysak, who was, let's say, on our side. And we just saw that everything is done in a way to make this guy new director. And when it was chosen, me and Krystian Lupa just decided we didn't sign the protocol of this meeting, we just left the place without an explanation. And then in fact started something really unusual also in the history of Polish theatre and art as such, that you know the huge manifestation, really huge, were organized in Wrocław.

(14:05) Erdem Evren: I'll come to that, but first of all, you didn't mention what your role was in the theatre, like what you were doing. And second, can you also tell us what was so provocative about the theatre as far as the government, the party was concerned? What made them not renew the contract of the artistic director and kind of appoint this government apparatchik of sorts, I guess?

(14:35) Piotr Rudzki: About my position, I was literary manager and also some theater directors like Jan Klata or Barbara Wysocka or the others, they invited me to be, let's say, dramaturg. Why? The process of creating production... even when we create with the [Residenz] Theatre, Shakespeare to [Saint-Genet?], there were two dramaturgs, one was [colleague] from German theatre and me, I was from the Polish theatre.

So something which was the spark which provoked this absolutely big anger against our theatre was the production directed by Ewelina Marciniak. She's now very well known theatre director in Germany. She's working in Hamburg and in the other theatres. Anyway, Ewelina Marciniak was preparing with us Elfriede Jelinek's Death and the Maiden. And she decided that just to show this kind of reification of women in patriarchal society, she wanted to hire two porno stars, if I can say like this. I mean, that was really also... that was really a little bit funny. Nobody from Polish, let's say, porn industry decided to take part. So we found a couple from Czech Republic.

And what was very unusual and against the law in Poland, the constitution... the Minister of Culture, they decided to implement censorship. But not the censorship which could be, let's say, somehow implemented after the opening. I mean, censorship shouldn't be implemented, I'm sorry to say this... If they decided that this is something against the law, something against the public sphere, they should just go to the court, just sue us. But they chose the other way. His director of the cabinet wrote a letter to the Marshal of Lower Silesia asking the Marshal to cut, to not allow to premiere this. And I can say now this is a kind of anecdote, but even the niece of Jarosław Kaczyński, Marta Kaczyńska, who has nothing in common with the theatre, she is just the daughter of the previous president who died in Smolensk, even she wrote, let's say, an essay against our theatre. That it was against, in her opinion, against the way to treat theater as a church.

(18:53) Kristóf Szombati: I would like to come to Kristóf just for... I want to bring him into the conversation because something not exactly similar, you know, but something happened in Hungary that I think reminds one of the story that Piotr just told, because there the National Theatre also became kind of, you know, the central terrain of battle where, as Piotr is explaining, a certain way of approaching theatre was not only criticized, but shown as a morally reprehensible approach that kind of undermines national well-being or, as you said, desanctifies the place. So, Kristóf, what Piotr explained, what kind of bells does it ring in your head? What happened in Hungary similar?

(19:35) Kristóf Nagy: I mean, in a certain sense, yes, there was a kind of this politically loaded takeover of the Hungarian National Theatre in the early 2010s. I do not remember the exact year right now, around 2013 or something like that. And I think what was kind of peculiar in the Hungarian case, in a retrospective perspective, is the fact that actually on the one hand there was this really conscious or really determined project to take over, get rid of the liberal theater director and so on. But I think there wasn't really a plan what comes after.

I mean, there was a new director, Attila Vidnyánszky, who is still running the theater. But I think he's doing not necessarily the kind of theater that you would associate with a right-wing authoritarian regime. He's running a kind of experimental, avant-garde, post-avant-garde theatre, so he is not necessarily the theatre maker who would attract, I don't know, millions of audiences. So in this sense, it was a kind of... I think the entire story of the Hungarian National Theatre... is that, okay, we are getting rid of the liberal cadres, but actually there isn't necessarily a really clearly crafted strategy that follows, what comes after. And I think that's something that is a kind of inherent feature of these authoritarian cultural policies... that there is a lot of contingency in it.

I mean, even these authoritarian regimes have a kind of limited number of cadres who they could mobilize. So in this sense, they do not necessarily have the perfect match for every position. Rather, if we step into their perspective... we can realize that, okay, from their side, it's also a kind of crisis management. Okay, how to find a theater director who is more or less sharing our values and still can run a theater that is attracting an audience and so on. And not so easy project, as you would think. And it's a time-consuming process to raise this kind of new class of, let's say, artists or intellectuals... What I see, at least in Hungary, is that actually there is now a young generation, maybe in their late 20s, early 30s, who were kind of already raised in this regime and were kind of more automatically engaged with its politics.

(23:14) Kristóf Szombati: Would you say in both of these countries that culture was like an important point? Was it kind of in the central interest of both governments? Was it at the top of the list that "we want to do this and that, follow these goals, put these people into positions"? Or would you say that it wasn't amongst the top concerns of both ruling parties?

(23:35) Kristóf Nagy: Maybe in the Hungarian case, I would say that that was a kind of central concern to unmake the previous, let's say, liberal hegemony. And I think crafting a new, let's say, right-wing cultural hegemony is not a top priority anymore, but really unmaking and undermining the previous, let's say, regime where mostly liberal figures were ruling and running key cultural institutions, that was, I think, a top priority. And that was a project that I think Viktor Orbán's regime quite successfully completed by the mid 2010s.

(24:05) Piotr Rudzki: But if we treat culture wider—so it means education and higher education and all general education—so it means they had, as far as Poland is concerned, they had a program. And one general thing that came into my mind... starting from Lenin who said that the most important art is film. I mean, authoritarian regimes or governments who are on the way to authoritarian regimes, they knew that the culture with all these elements—universities, grammar school, galleries, Philharmonics and so on—this is very good surrounding to make a new man. That was the dream of communism. That was the dream of fascists or Nazis, just to rise a new man, new man who will not doubt, who will just follow the ideas.

And it was real. I remember I talked about this in Cottbus, that before 2015, they had this pre-election Congress, Law and Justice Party in Katowice, and the lady who was then the Deputy Minister of Culture, she said openly... I mean nobody in that time just took care about this, but she said openly: "We are not going to ban, we are going to not give money." And fortunately, as I said, also in Poland we have this two-system governing. One is the central government... and the other one is local governments and the third one is the mayor, the municipal government. Fortunately, all these levels of governing of Poland were not taken by Law and Justice party, so the kind of protest and fight against these changes could be created.

(26:15) Kristóf Szombati: I want to let Erdem ask a question, but... I think we should briefly discuss this "creating new Man" thing because it kind of now occupies the whole room. So, Kristóf, is this a prism through which you read right-wing cultural policy in Hungary?

(26:35) Kristóf Nagy: I definitely agree with the part that Piotr said that popular culture has a definitive role in this, any kind of crafting hegemony and cultural hegemony. And I think this is not necessarily the feature of only or the exclusive feature of, let's say, right-wing regimes. If you think about the post-World War II US hegemony, it was much more based on Walt Disney than how much it was based on Jackson Pollock, if we have a look on just on cultural production.

So in this sense, I believe that the popular culture has an important role and maybe I would add that besides movie and film production, I think architecture is really important because architecture is probably the only form of culture that everyone has to consume. You don't really have a choice. I mean, of course you can discuss how much is it the choice, but let's say that you have a choice to go to a gallery or not... but when you are walking in a city and you are confronting with these buildings, you don't really have an option to at least to see them or not see them.

But at the same time, I think this kind of making of "new man" is a tricky question, I think, because especially because these cultural institutions have, let's say, social reach. And that was a kind of key takeaway of my own research in the Hungarian case, that although this cultural institution that I studied, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, would like to become this, let's say, cultural vanguard of the regime that shapes the entire population or the entire nation, it has actually, in most of the cases, a really limited outreach. And I think that's something that we should keep in mind, that the ambitions are not equal with the results... Although their own propaganda or their own mission statement is to, let's say, craft a new cultural backbone for the Hungarian nation, their practice is much more about crafting new funding schemes, defunding, let's say, liberal cultural projects and funding, let's say, right-wing cultural projects, but definitely not rewriting the mindset of the nation, I think.

(29:28) Piotr Rudzki: I mean, fortunately. But if you have a look, sorry for this very tragic example, but if you have a look at North Korea and in a smaller extent China, it means that such project could be developed with the aims the authoritarian government just decided to take. So, I mean, unfortunately we could mention a few examples, but fortunately, I think—I don't know, Kristóf, maybe you have a better idea—but maybe because of internet and because of the kind of freedom which one can access because of internet, this could be not so easily done in Europe. But in China, you can't use Google. When I was in China with the theater, with the Woodcutters, you can't use Gmail, can't use Google.

(30:30) Erdem Evren: I'm listening to this conversation, obviously, thinking of many examples from Turkey. I mean, you know, the party state has been in power since 23, 24 years by now. And from the very beginning, I think the party state, Erdoğan, really had this agenda of creating a new man and really very actively had this desire to shape the cultural sphere as they see fit. But on the one hand, I think to this day, we say that culture or cultural sphere is the area, the realm that the AKP, the Justice and Development Party, has been least successful in controlling and managing. I mean, still to this day, the most prestigious publishing houses are left-wing or left-liberal. The most prestigious theater companies are left-wing or left-liberal.

But on the other hand, I think, yeah, as you said, Kristóf, and you, Piotr, actually, like, when it comes to shaping the new man, I think, let's say, making the education more religious, for example, is definitely a much more concrete and important goal rather than having this or that theater or appointing this or that person. Or I don't know, like bombarding the society with certain conservative norms with regards to family or family life.

In any case, once to come to Kristóf's point, yes, it's difficult. Yes, it requires new cadres. But A, after 20 years, I think 20 years may be enough time to grow these cadres. And second, you may not maybe conquer the museums and the publishing houses and the theater companies, et cetera, but you can also manage them through a system of rewards and punishments. So just like you said, you know, there is no money for those filmmakers who are critical of the regime. There is no money for those artists who are critical of the regime. My sense is that I think kind of what the AKP has achieved is not that unimportant on the one hand, but also it hasn't completely monopolized the cultural sphere either.

(34:01) Kristóf Szombati: Kristóf, you want to jump in? Maybe, I mean, it's also the time to bring in or say a bit more about the institution that you did research in.

(34:10) Kristóf Nagy: I wanted to jump in by saying that I think what Erdem said and I really agree with that... I would bring the same kind of argument through the Hungarian case. I think it's an exciting kind of combination of this kind of neoliberal logic of funding and cultural funding with this kind of authoritarian regime. So yeah, as Piotr also said, it's not a question of censorship or not censorship, but rather, "we don't have money, sorry, you didn't get this grant in this competitive grant scheme" and so on. So in this sense, I believe that it's a really telling encounter of authoritarian policies realized through these neoliberal settings.

And let me add just one point and I think it will be directly related. I believe that the success of cultural policy under Viktor Orbán could be explained at least partially by the fact that they could enter to a really defunded cultural scene. So actually they could really increase cultural fundings and at least reintroduce some, let's say, welfare benefits for artists and intellectuals that were existing under socialist times... And for them, these welfare measures were really game changers. And I think in this sense that the fact that the cultural scene was so defunded or underfunded was really a reason why this new cultural policies could achieve a certain kind of success quite quickly.

(35:47) Kristóf Szombati: Absolutely. Absolutely. Kristóf, tell us a bit more about how this works through this institution that you did research on.

(35:55) Kristóf Nagy: So I studied the Hungarian Academy of Arts [MMA], which is a, let's say a cultural flagship institution of Viktor Orbán's regime. It is even mentioned in the current Hungarian constitution, which is quite atypical for a cultural institution. And it is not a teaching institution... It's rather an organization that aims to unite the cream of the artist[s]. It has around 350 members and... just to go back to the welfare measures, these 350 members get a really decent lifetime annuity. So they get a fixed monthly amount of money until they die. It's around 1,000 euro or 1,200 euros, which is really serious money for, especially for artists in Hungary.

One more aspect of this institution that is really telling that it was, let's say, it was funded two times. First, it was founded in the early 90s as an NGO of the right-wing circles... And actually when Orbán came to power in 2010, they, let's say, upscaled and elevated this institution into a state body. And this is the moment when it started operating as a branch of the state responsible partially for arts and culture.

And I studied this institution and I think it's a great case to understand how cultural policy works because it also has a mediating role between the artist and the state. Since it consists of artists, it's not purely a top-down transmitter of any governmental will or power, but it is at least a formally democratic institution when artists elect new members among themselves, artists make decisions. So in this sense, I think it's a kind of really telling case how these right-wing or authoritarian cultural policies work, which are really often going beyond this kind of top-down control... No, not at all. Actually, there are these really rich, socially embedded organizations which have an important role in mediating these wills but also shaping these governmental policies.

(39:24) Kristóf Szombati: Would you call it co-optation or...?

(39:26) Kristóf Nagy: Yes, co-optation or clientelism are great words and co-optation is especially a good word to describe it because it is not only co-opting or not only working with, let's say, right-wing artists or artists who were, I don't know, nationalists already in 1978, but they are also co-opting, let's say, former established figures of the previous liberal hegemony who are not so political or who are ready to accept these kind of new material benefits in return of some alignment with the regime. Or they are maybe just truly believing that they could somehow improve Hungarian culture through this institutional setting. So I think there is a lot of true belief and true... yeah, determination to do something for the country in these institutions. Not only cold-minded people.

(40:20) Kristóf Szombati: Yeah, sorry. I mean, I know a few people who or know people who know other people who are in this organization. I obviously don't want to name them at this point. But something I noticed is, and I think that's also important here, is that the fact that you are working in such an institution, even though you may have diametrically opposed values and ideas about how the world should be, it really impacts you when you kind of live from the money of the regime. It somehow I noticed it has an impact on people. It tends to, I'll be blunt, disempower critique because it draws them into a dance with power in which they are empowered. And I think this is what Kristóf was saying, that you have agency even though you're not running the show, but you do have agency. So you're in this space which is asymmetric from a power perspective, but it's not like you are a puppet moved around. So I think it's a quite clever way of reorganizing cultural space because it tends to, yeah, we use the word hegemony, but I guess to capture the mood, yeah, it makes people a bit more complacent and less ready to confront, is how I experienced it when I was close to this. But I don't know, does this resonate with you, what I'm saying?

(42:20) Kristóf Nagy: I just wanted to reflect to your earlier point on how, let's say, working in an institution shapes consciousness, and I think that's important. So, the question of funding and the question of ideology are not separate things, I believe. It's maybe... It's definitely not my invention. I can really go back to Karl Marx and his "social existence determines consciousness" thing, and I think that's practically... we can read naturally the same thing in this institution.

So as I started working for the Hungarian Academy of Arts, I did a participant observation there. So I was interning for them for a year. It brought a lot of actually sympathy, let's say disturbing sympathy in myself that, "Okay, I like these guys, he's really nice. He has some really great points about global capitalism and so on." So I didn't become a fan of the institution or I didn't become a member of the institution. But actually the fact that I was spending there a year, it definitely shaped my consciousness. In this sense, I can really imagine that being a kind of permanent member of the academy and getting a decent salary from there, how it shapes consciousness and how it kind of gives people or gives the members of the academia a kind of power when they can imagine that, "Okay, until this point I was just this helpless artist who was completely exposed to funding schemes and now finally I am the one who is deciding on grants and could kind of shape cultural policy in this micro level..."

(43:20) Piotr Rudzki: And that was my idea why I mentioned Woodcutters. I don't know if you read the novel written by Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters (Holzfällen). Yeah, so this is, I mean, if you don't read, I mean, this is about how the artists could, you know, could be corrupted in a sense by the, let's say, system of grants, system of money. So, I mean, they met after quite a long time... they met during the dinner and you know, they are with the narrator Thomas Bernhard, who is just, you know, telling them, "What did you do with your life? You just sell your art because of money, because of grants and because of all this, you know, hierarchy, being higher in the hierarchy, being in the power," what Kristóf just said. So that was the idea why I mentioned this.

(45:20) Erdem Evren: Shall we then come to another issue that has been also partly touched by both of you, which is the possibility of an independent, autonomous, even dissident cultural production in the times of authoritarianism. So, Piotr, I mean, you have more practical [experience] to say about this. You, after you were fired, you established an underground theater. Maybe you can tell us about your practical experience of this.

(45:50) Piotr Rudzki: The most important thing, if I look at all this [that] happened till today after 2016, I have to mention that the most important thing is that we set up, let's say, networking during these 10 years, networking of the people whom we can ask for support. So this is the first. Second, I mean, this is very difficult to tell by myself, but we really established the theatre on a very high aesthetical value. That was something which was really done, not commercialized. And it was received not only in Poland, let's say, all over Europe. So we had, let's say, background, we had the power from this background to talk to these members of the local governments who were not the members of the central government.

That was the case of Jacek Sutryk, who is nowadays mayor of Wrocław. In that time, he was the director of the Department of Social Issues in the municipality of Wrocław. And you know, that was the second or third person whom we met and showed our production and just asked: "Plug, help us." And he watched it and he decided and he just valued it as something which is really valuable and he helped us. And you know, he's helping till today, frankly speaking. We have a foundation, so now we're trying to apply for money from the different sources. And as I said earlier, the most important thing—because during the communist time there was no way out. The central government was the same, the local government and the regional government. Now because this government is separated, the power is more... how to say in English?

(47:38) Kristóf Szombati: Fragmented.

(47:39) Piotr Rudzki: Fragmented, fragmented, so this is the way how one can survive.

(47:45) Kristóf Szombati: But was it easy to get people who used to work for Polski Theatre into your underground thing? Was it seamless?

(47:50) Piotr Rudzki: I mean, we did it as a group. Some of us were fired, the others, like few actors, were still hired by the theater, but working already in that time, working in the underground. For me, the most difficult situation was when the new manager started on September 1st, 2016 and I was that time in Japan talking about Woodcutters(Holzfällen) because the show was going to be presented there. And you know I came back and I knew that this man is a disaster for this theatre so I should like to some extent behave as [if] he was just my boss and you know after work we were just doing our own jobs. But you know, he just decided in December 2016 to fire me.

Then my brain, my conscience was absolutely clear. I didn't have this... I don't know if you know the novel written by Czesław Miłosz where he presented the state of mind which we called Ketman. You know that you don't believe in the system but you are trying to behave as if. So I mean, it was of course about communist time, but to some extent, little extent, I felt the same for the September, October, November and half December. It was really horrible.

(48:52) Erdem Evren: So what I hear is that, A: you create your own community, not only passive spectators or followers, but really a community that would come to support you, stand together with you in difficult times. And second, kind of trying to flourish at the cracks, you know, formed by these different scales of power, like locals, municipals, national, et cetera. Kristóf, like, do you kind of observe something else in Hungary?

(49:20) Kristóf Nagy: When I'm thinking about alternatives, it goes back to, let's say, my diagnosis of where could this right-wing infrastructure build up quite successfully. And I believe that it was a kind of successful project in Viktor Orbán's regime because it could really kind of exploit the material grievances of artists and intellectuals. So in this sense, when I'm thinking about alternatives, it's definitely those... alternatives that are also tackling these material grievances, but not by co-opting them into, let's say, right-wing authoritarian regimes, rather in a democratic way, for example, by establishing trade unions for artists and intellectuals who are really fragmented...

And I believe that, for example, crafting, yes, these kind of structures of solidarity, which can be trade unions... So I strongly believe in this kind of solidarity-based alternatives, which are not only tackling the, let's say, the ideology of the regime, but also the, let's say, material foundations of the regime.

(51:16) Kristóf Szombati: But do you have examples of such initiatives actually getting off the ground and surviving?

(51:25) Kristóf Nagy: Not necessarily from Hungary. So it's also wishful thinking. I mean, I have friends and colleagues who started recently working on trade union for cultural producers, but they are really doing the first step. So it's too early to make a judgment on their project.

(51:40) Kristóf Szombati: So, yeah, I think maybe the powerscape isn't just fragmented enough in Hungary. And, you know, it's not a joke that I'm bringing here, but really it's a difference between, I think, Poland and Hungary. As Piotr explained, you know, there is a municipality in Wrocław who can be convinced of the value of what they're doing. But yeah, then back to you, Piotr. So how does, if you compare your life from before 2016 when you were the artistic director to, you know, now you're still the artistic director, but of the underground theater.

(52:47) Piotr Rudzki: We decided not to build a very complicated hierarchy. We like to make it flat.

(52:50) Kristóf Szombati: You're already beginning to answer my question. So what's the difference in the life of your pre-life and your...

(52:55) Piotr Rudzki: And so the difference is, I mean, it's much more difficult, you know, to run together. I'm not running myself. To run the group where, you know, the whole decision are taken in democratic way is really... I mean, democracy, we know this, is very difficult system. I mean, we decided to create something like a committee of underground and this committee consists of seven people. I mean, we take, let's say, everyday decision. We meet on a weekly basis and we just take this decision.

But... I mean, to some extent, I never thought that I would say this what I'm going to say. I'm glad, you know, I'm glad that, you know, this happened because, you know, this also meant that we should be ready to cope with very different situations, thinking about our professional life, about the other aspects of our life. And I think this is a kind of experience which also gave me a lot of fruits. Of course, it's much more difficult. It's less fruitful as far as salary is concerned. But you know, I work at the university, this is my main place of hiring, but I'm glad.

(54:26) Kristóf Szombati: And if you have to compare, you said there's two types of right-wing in Poland, basically, who now alternate in power. So have things changed in that regard since it's no longer the arch-conservatives, but the more liberal-conservatives who are in power?

(54:40) Piotr Rudzki: Yeah, I mean we don't feel this pressure, you know, which was given by all statements given by ministers and prime ministers during that time. I mean, as far as I receive it, you know, there's no such, let's say, ideology sold to the public. But you know, the situation is also more difficult because of the war in Ukraine. I mean, a lot of funds should be spent there. And for me, it's quite obvious that the people there should be helped.

And you know, this is something really, I'm sorry for the last digression. Last week, the guest from Lviv University visited us. We have this kind of agreement and every year our students go there and their students come here. Of course, our students didn't go because of the war, but they come every year. The teacher who came with them, when they arrived in the place where they were going to have rooms, that was a high-level building. Students asked on which floor they are going to be put. If the lower or higher end? The teacher was surprised, and they thought, "You know, when the alarm is going to be [on], from the lower level we are going to quicker find our place to survive." So this is something which we forget, which in everyday life we forget about this, but the war is really something absolutely horrible.

(56:18) Kristóf Szombati: Thank you for making the time. It actually worked out very well, I would say.

(56:22) Piotr Rudzki: Yeah, and thank you for inviting and creating this space for sharing thoughts. Thank you very much also from me.

(56:28) Erdem Evren: Great. Thank you. That was really great. Yeah.

Outro: So that's it from us for today. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. We would also like to thank our contributors: music and mastering Shai Levy, artwork and graphics Polina Georgescu, editing Vera Jónás, and our in-house communications advisor Anna Szilágyi.