Stefan Arteni

The East-Central
European
Cultural Model
III

SolInvictus Press 2009

Gino Severini, Orphée Chimérique

2
 Stefan Arteni

The East-Central European

Cultural Model
(a revised and illustrated version
of the essay published in
www.asymetria.org , 2009)
III

3
Roman Relief, Three-Headed Sphinx Holding the Wheel of Fortune

4
Stefan Arteni
The East-Central European Cultural Model. 3. Intermezzo.
The Neo-Orwellian Madness.
[April 6, 2009]

Motto.
Daddy, where there is no morality, there is corruption, and if a society lacks
principles, that means it does not have any! (Ion Luca Caragiale)

Czesław Miłosz observes: “If nihilism, as Nietzsche says, consists in the loss of
memory, recovery of memory is a weapon against nihilism”. Gerhart Niemeyer
has exposed the nihilistic core of Communist ideology found in Marx's assertion
that the point is not to understand the world as it is but to change it, by which he
meant transforming it into something it is not. Niemeyer says: "Totalitarianism
would not be possible in practice if it were not for a long period of intellectual
erosion preceding the advent of the activist". He continues: “The fruit of
Communist rule must be spiritual chaos and progressive barbarization.”

Arpad Szakolczai attempts to conceptualize the programme of ‘reflexive historical

sociology’. He writes: “There is, however, an even more important...level of
explanation. This concerns the conditions under which the civilising process can
turn against itself, where the question is no longer simply a paradoxical
compromise between the civilising process and its opposite, the impulses set
loose by a previous dissolution of order, but where the fundamental
mechanisms of the civilising process are effectively, purposefully and
explicitly undermined. It is at that level that the totalitarian movements of
the twentieth century can be located, with the important caveat that they are
very closely related to the...inflections of the civilising process...Once every
section of the elite was eliminated, the Communist Party perpetuated the
situation by implementing the infamous practice of 'counter-selection'. This
implied that positions requiring any degree of leadership at any level of state,
society or economy were filled not on the basis of ability but loyalty to the party,
controlled by the 'nomenclatura' system...In this, there was an unbroken
continuity…The aim remained the same: the prevention of the possibility of the
formation of a genuine elite… But the production and reproduction of an elite, a
pool of individuals who are ready and able to provide leadership, is different from
expertise. It is furthermore a social, not an individual phenomenon, and the
conditions that existed during the entire life-span of communism were detrimental
to the possibility for the emergence of an elite in this sociological sense. What
was particularly missing there has been identified as most central for the
formation of an elite in a 1942 article by István Bibó. According to him, the 'calm
and creative' activity of the elite requires two things: the existence of a social
consensus behind the elite selection mechanisms and the actual assignment of
members of the elite to the proper places in the social structure. Bibó furthermore
stated that for the successful performance of its tasks the elite has to be

5
self-confident, self-conscious and impartial, without being conceited. In sum, the
elite of a society can only perform if it is given stable and calm conditions for its
activity, and if its values, its 'chosenness' is generally recognised both by the
others and by itself…The puzzling fact that the collapse of the much-hated
communist regime was not much perceived as a break in most countries of the
region is due to the fact that it did not end transitoriness, the central characteristic
of life under communism, only altered its modality.”

Abram de Swaan describes the inevitable result: “Obviously, what occurs under
these conditions is the bureaucratization of barbarism.”

The Archipelago of Political Prisons in Communist Romania

In the case of Romania, the pre-war elite was deliberately decimated and
marxism-leninism. contributed to what can be termed culturecide —the attempt to
erase and replace the cultural model and the ancient customs and rites. The
‘new’ or ‘postcommunist’ overlords have risen from among the old communist

6
cadres -- collectively known as either the nomenclatura, or the ‚new class’
described by Milovan Djilas, or the ‚communist aristocracy’, that is to say the
only ones privileged under the communist regime -- mainly due to their
advantageous positioning in the old networks and access to resources. They are
inescapably linked to structures, networks, thinking, and practices of the past.
The process of recruiting real elites, untainted by involvement with the old
structures, was gridlocked by the old cadres. Co-option by Western institutions
has helped restore the ‘communist aristocracy's’ past prominence.

In the field of culture, we are seeing an exercise in authority-building by an elite

consisting of the heirs of the communist ‘new class’, mostly saplings grown in the
“tree-nursery for party cadres”, the so-called ‘boyars of the mind’ (Radu Gyr
preferred the expression ‘cultural jugglers’), an elite bereft of any legitimacy, an
elite with a negative image. The postcommunist elites have perpetuated the
"they/us" dichotomy.

There is an old Romanian proverb that says: “The mouth of a sinner tells the
truth”. It will then suffice to quote a few lines written by Sorin Antohi, one of the
‘boyars of the mind’, known now as the pseudo-Doctor (he falsely claimed to
hold a Ph.D. in History from the University of Iaşi) who had also served as an
informer for Romania's communist-era Department of State Security. In an
article entitled “Romanian culture is a fiction”, published in Contrafort 3-6
(77-80), March-June 2001, Antohi has jotted down a short note about his fellow
neo-culturniks: “The cultural elite…ultimately a tiny minority, is totally alienated
from the society it comes from and which it should help orient itself. From the
political and ideological viewpoint, most top cultural and intellectual figures of
contemporary Romania have broken their relationship with society (if they ever
had any!). Betting immoderately on a sketchy and bovaric westernization, being
(like state communism) narcissistic and despising the people’s stirrings and ills,
our cultural elite…has failed in its historical mission…” These are the facts we
should reflect on. We should also recall Homi Bhabha’s words: “Mimicry and
masquerade are born from the desire to be equal, accepted and recognized;
nevertheless, mimicry does not bring us closer to the essence, it only creates
empty masks and meaningless forms of imitation“.

The world is becoming more uniform and standardized. Demythization has

become dehistorization. Specific cultural models are transported directly from
one country to another. Transnational neo-leninism appears to have become the
globalizing Zeitgeist of the 21st century. The megadreams of situationists and
neo-situationists have been transformed into bureaucratic agencies. Never
before has the synchronization with one particular cultural pattern been of such
global dimensions and so comprehensive. Overload, noise, lack of precision and
ignorance, construct their limited and contradictory knowledge under systems of
sense that reduce cultural complexity to chiliastic ecstasy. Systematic erasure of
all cultural memory is implicit. Leszek Kolakowski had predicted: "The specter is

7
stronger than the spells we cast on it. It might come back to life." It re-appears, it
circles, it re-enters the stage.

Old books have character, they can no longer be re-educated.

(Mircea Platon)

The Romanian Archive, M. Kogãlniceanu redactor,1841

8
Lucian Blaga, Poems (Poems of Light), 1919

Gândirea, Year XII

9
Lucian Blaga, The Mioritic Space, 1936

10
Lucian Blaga, The Genesis of Metaphor and the Meaning of Culture, 1937

11
Gheorghe Bratianu, Bessarabia: National and Historic Rights, 2004 (first edition
published in 1943)

12
13
Dominique Noguez, Lenine Dada, Le Dilettante, 2007

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Stefan Arteni
The East-Central European Cultural Model. 4.The Avantgarde and Marxism.
[April 6, 2009]

Motto.
Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born. (Tristan Tzara)

“Chronologically and axiologically, Europe is firstly...the Europe of ascetic-noble

personalism. The left is too young to claim any great achievement. It has not yet
built anything lasting, it opposes the Gulag to the cathedrals, and party activists
to monarchs”, writes Mircea Platon. Platon speaks, of course, about the Europe
of nations, a Europe that, kidnapped, displaced, and brainwashed, nevertheless
insists on defending its identity.

Milan Kundera has defined national identity in this way: "The identity of a people
and of a civilisation is reflected in what has been created by the mind - in what is
known as 'culture.' If this identity is threatened with extinction, cultural life grows
correspondingly more intense, more important, until cultural life itself becomes
the living value around which all people rally." Once our historical past and our
culture, that which gives our present actions and reality meaning (by being a part
of the transcendent/eternal) has been deconstructed - seen to be totally false and
oppressive - there is nothing left to hold society together. “Breaking the continuity
with the past, wanting to begin again, is a lowering of man and a plagiarism of
the orangutan,” writes Jose Ortega y Gasset.

The sociological ground of the term ‘avantgarde’ is military and political, as

Armin Koehler has pointed out. It has nothing to do with art praxis. It is a matter
of context-shift, or, as Boris Groys says, of an exchange between the spheres
of the valued and the valueless, a kind of Nietzschean de- or re-valuation of
values. It operates under the spell of a Marxist obsession. Josef Maria
Bochenski characterized Marxism as a dogmatic system that is only postulated
and believed, an ‘atheistic catechism’. The marxist ‘cultural revolution’ was not
only directed at psychological and physical annihilation and suppression, but
comprised the element of memoricide. Memoricide is the destruction of
collective consciousness and memory. The modern utopian and dystopian
relationship, the attempt at memoricide or erasure, is followed, according to
Stjepan G. Mestrovic, by the confluence of ‘postmodernism’ and
postcommunism. The recent revisionist reconsidering of Socialist Realism and of
the art of the Zhdanov era may be evaluated in the context of post-orthodox
marxian tendencies and the attempts to rescue a marxist view of history. Mikhail
Epstein recalls Jean Baudrillard’s concept of ‘simulation’ as one of the definitions
of postmodernism: “Models of reality replace reality itself”. Hence Epstein
concludes that Socialist Realism, the simulative reality of a culture, was truly
postmodernist ‘avant la lettre’. Tuomas Nevanlinna remarks that “Socialist
Realism aimed to realize the avantgarde utopia by using the methods of
traditional art”. Rene Girard’s mimetic desire theory, when applied to Socialist

15
Realism’s appropriation of nineteenth century official Academic styles, may
suggest a relation between noticing one’s own insufficiency and an economy of
revenge.

What is the historical avant-garde? Let us return to a workable definition and to

its original use within the Marxist school of thought. Marek Kwiek points out that
the cliché of the ‘intellectual’ as legislator and interpreter or of the ‘philosopher-
prophet’, the pathos of a providential history of redemption, have been
displaced towards the art system. The fallaciousness of this idea is less
surprising than its prevalence. The art object itself plays only an incidental role.
Instead of sign processes as memory processes, there is a fallacious abstraction
conducive to aesthetic negativity that creates a self-perpetuating conflict. Dada
hoped to destroy traditional values in culture, aesthetics, and art. In his ‘Lenine
dada’, Éditions Le Dilettante, 2007, Dominique Noguez asks the question: could
Lenin have been Dada incarnate? Tzara's manuscript "ARC" appears covered
with the handwriting of Lenin. Soviet Utopia was born in the smoke rising from
the funeral pyre of a Russian Empire which had been systematically
deconstructed by Lenin and his confrères and followers. In other words, the
century of avantgardes aimed at turning aesthetics into surrogate of politics, thus
paving the way for the genocidal communist Gesamtkunstwerk fuelled by an
absolute hatred of anything traditional. “From the beginning, the aim of radical
artistic avantgardes has consisted in nothing else but the elevation of the artwork
to a life-style – and possibly the lifestyle of the entire society…From the start,
this project is totalising or, if one wishes to say so, totalitary…Modern
totalitarianism is only the radical materialization of this aim,” writes Boris Groys.

Gene Ray [ www.linksnet.de ] proposes a similar description: “Drawing on now-

classic Frankfurt School critiques of artistic autonomy, I will sketch the outlines of
the capitalist art system, including its ideology of the artist and its institutions and
social functions. This will make it possible to recognize three possible models for
critical and radical cultural practice: ‘critically affirmative art,’ avant-garde
practices, and ‘nomadic’ practices…groups and networks of Futurists, Dada,
Russian Cubo-Futurists, Constructivists, Suprematists, and Surrealists. With the
exception of the Italian Futurists, who notoriously became involved with fascist
politics, the other groupings of the historical avant-gardes were made up of
radical leftists who, anarchist or marxist in orientation, can credibly be described
as ‘anti-capitalist.’”.

[A more careful and accurate reconstruction of the Futurist movements and of

their adherence to the logicality of two ideologies is needed. Margherita Sarfatti,
"la donna del Duce" (Mussolini’s mistress), arts redactor for Popolo d'Italia, the
Duce’s confidante and biographer, played an important role in the invention of
fascism, and later created the Novecento movement, a movement which adopted
an entirely original interpretation of the grand Italian pictorial tradition (Mario
Sironi’s Manifesto of Mural Painting, 1933, prepared the terrain for a revival of
mural decoration), advocated technical accomplishment and promoted a boldly

16
modernist design and architecture, revealing thus the relationship between
fascism and modernism. (Saviona Mane, The Jewish Mother of Fascism,
August 7, 2006, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/735492.html ) Many
futurists went on to become the leading artists of Novecento. The Strapaese
group founded by Giorgio Morandi and joined by Soffici, Rosai and Carrà, also
advocated a return to tradition.

On the other hand, Russian futurists created a movement called com-futurism

(communist-futurism). Most of them, including Maiakovsky, the bard of the new
Soviet regime who wrote the famous verse: "Lenin lives, lived and will live", will
join Lenin’s bolsheviks and the ideology of proletarian internationalism.

Beginning in Cracow in 1917, Polish Formists aimed to create a national version

of modernism. Formists frequently painted religious themes. Stanislaw Ignacy
Witkiewicz wrote: "We live in a frightful epoch...[a] horrible, painful, insane
monstrosity that is passed off as being the evolution of social progress." A similar
movement existed in Croatia. Both movements drew on all formal systems and
experiments, including folk art, cubism and futurism, and called for a spiritual
rejuvenation of Europe (Timothy O. Benson, editor, Central European Avant-
Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930, MIT Press, 2002).
East-Central European nations were trying to reaffirm their identity and their
national traditions by contesting a single, monolithic modernism. The
internationalist avantgarde would have rejected these ideas as reactionary.]

In his ‘Theory of the Avantgarde’,1974, Peter Buerger, a disciple of the marxist

Frankfurt School, indicates that, when defining an avantgarde, “the question is
of revolutionizing life, not of creating forms that are destined to become the
object of aesthetic contemplation”. Peter Buerger describes the art of the
avantgarde, the categories of non-art, anti-art, and a-art, as the destruction of
art’s tradition. He writes: “The avantgardistes proposed the sublation or
artublation in the Hegelian sense of the term: art was not to be simply destroyed,
but transferred to the praxis of life where it would be preserved, albeit in a
changed form.. it is... the attempt to organize a new life praxis from a basis in
art...Only an art the contents of whose individual works is wholly distinct from the
(bad) praxis of the existing society can be the center that can be the starting
point for the organization of a new life praxis”.

The affiliation with communism of many dadaists and surrealists is well known,
Dan C.Mihailescu calls them “comintern’s toys”. We will mention only a few
names: Victor Brauner (agent of the comintern), Jules Perahim (zhdanovist
satrap), Gherasim Luca (Gilles Deleuze’s favourite; in 1967 Gherasim Luca
wrote on the mural Cuba Collectiva dedicated to Fidel Castro: «La poésie sans
langue, la révolution sans personne, l’amour sans fin.»). Many prophets of utopia
and internationalist Tendenzkunst (art engagé) willingly implemented the
‘proletcult’ doctrine and the bolshevik policy of desecration and destruction – they
were seeing the promised land, they were proclaiming the primordiality of

17
politically correct content and, consequently, novelty was guaranteed by the
‘new’ content.

A recent exhibition dedicated to Italian art of the 20th century closed with the
section ‘Tabula Rasa’ devoted to three artists of the post-war period who
intended to reactivate the spirit of the avantgarde: Fontana, Burri, and Manzoni.
‘Tabula Rasa’ signifies an attempt at creation ‘ex nihilo’. It is a messianism
without the Messiah whose outcome has been described by Mircea Platon: “the
hideousness of a wasteland”.
(The Novecento. Abstraction. Italian art of the 20th century, 5 February 2005 –
24 April 2005, Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, Museo di arte moderna e
contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto,
http://english.mart.trento.it/context_mostre_mondo.jsp?ID_LINK=346&area=62&
page=2 )

Western-style stylization of the avantgarde as paradigm has turned into a sort of

retroutopianism. The use of the term as a marketing tool has become
widespread. Methodologically, we should acknowledge the importance of
ideology, distinguishing the avantgarde from movements seeking only innovative
formalization systems – strictly speaking, neither Brancusi, nor Pallady may be
described as belonging to the avantgarde. The merciless demythization of the
past is part and parcel of the new and decidedly trendy academic ‘discourse’ but
no demythization of marxism is taking place. There is need for a demythization of
the avantgarde.

18
Futurist Manifesto, 1909 (Italian version)

19
Gino Severini, Portrait of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1913

Ardengo Soffici, 1915

20
 Ardengo Soffici, 1915

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Les mots en liberté futuristes, Milan, 1919

21
Enrico Prampolini, study for the cover of Noi Rivista d’Arte Futurista, 1923

22
 Margherita Sarfatti’s biography of Mussolini,
published in 1926 by Mondadori. The book was immediately
translated in 18 languages.

23
Umberto Boccioni, Portrait of Fiammetta Sarfatti, Margherita Sarfatti’s daughter,
1911

Umberto Boccioni, Portrait of Margherita Sarfatti, 1912

24
 Mario Sironi, Portrait of Margherita Sarfatti, 1916-1917 (?)

Carlo Socrate, Portrait of Margherita Sarfatti with her daughter Fiammetta, 1929

25
Achille Funi, 1930

Achille Funi, 1942

26
Achille Funi, 1942

Achille Funi, 1947

27
Achille Funi, study for mosaic, 1963-1964

28
Carlo Socrate, 1937

29
 Mario Sironi, undated

Mario Sironi, 1920-1930

30
 Mario Sironi, 1920-1930

Mario Sironi, San Martino, 1930-1932

31
 Mario Sironi, 1930-1935

Mario Sironi’s window for the Ministero delle Corporazioni,1931

32
 Mario Sironi’s study for a University of Rome fresco, 1935

Mario Sironi, L'Italia tra le Arti e le Scienze, 1935, Rome, Aula Magna
of the Rectorate, University La Sapienza

33
Mario Sironi, 1935

34
Mario Sironi, 1936

35
Mario Sironi’s mosaic for the Palazzo della Giustizia, Milano, 1936

Mario Sironi, 1935-1940

36
 Mario Sironi, 1936

Mario Sironi, 1939

Mario Sironi, 1937-1940

37
Mario Sironi, 1940

Mario Sironi, 1940

38
Mario Sironi, 1940

Mario Sironi, 1940s

39
Mario Sironi, 1945

Mario Sironi, 1947

40
Mario Sironi, 1945-1950

Mario Sironi, 1949

41
Mario Sironi, 1950

Mario Sironi, 1951

42
 Mario Sironi, 1952

Mario Sironi, 1953-1954

43
 Mario Sironi, 1955

Mario Sironi, 1955-1960

44
Mario Sironi, date unknown

Mario Sironi, date unknown

45
 Massimo Campigli, 1927. Campigli’s first marriage in 1927 to the Romanian
painter Magdalena (‘Dutza’) Radulesco had a bearing on his change of outlook.
After a journey to Romania, he developed a style inspired by ancient murals.

Massimo Campigli, 1930s

46
Massimo Campigli, fresco, 1938

47
Massimo Campigli, study for the University of Padua fresco
(the fresco was painted in 1939-1940)

Massimo Campigli, University of Padua fresco, detail

48
Massimo Campigli, University of Padua fresco, detail

Massimo Campigli, University of Padua fresco, detail

49
Massimo Campigli, University of Padua fresco, detail

Massimo Campigli, University of Padua fresco, detail

50
Massimo Campigli, 1941

Massimo Campigli, 1944

51
Massimo Campigli, 1944

Massimo Campigli, 1949

52
Massimo Campigli, 1950

Massimo Campigli, 1957

53
Gino Severini, 1922

Gino Severini, 1927

54
 Gino Severini, 1929

Gino Severini, 1929-1930

55
Gino Severini, 1930

56
Gino Severini, reverse painting on glass, date unknown

Gino Severini, painted terracotta, 1930s

57
 Gino Severini, 1930

Gino Severini, Le Arti, Triennale di Milano mosaic, 1933

58
Gino Severini, 1937

59
 Gino Severini, 1934-1935

Gino Severini, 1940

Gino Severini, study for fresco, University of Padua, 1940

60
 Gino Severini, 1942

Gino Severini, 1942-1943

61
Gino Severini, 1943

Gino Severini, 1943

62
 Gino Severini, 1946

Gino Severini, mosaic, church of San Marco, Cortona, 1951

63
 Fortunato Depero, tarsia of cloths, 1921

Fortunato Depero, tarsia of cloths, undated

Fortunato Depero, tarsia of cloths, 1925

64
 Fortunato Depero, study for advertisement, 1925

Fortunato Depero, CAMPARI SELTZ, study for poster, 1929

Fortunato Depero, Vogue Magazine cover, 1930

65
Fortunato Depero, Trento Costumes and Landscapes, 1936, tapestry

Fortunato Depero, Mountain Sports, 1941, tapestry

Fortunato Depero, Fishing and Hunting, 1941, tapestry

66
Fortunato Depero, Le Professioni e le Arti, mosaic, 1942

Enrico Prampolini, Le Corporazioni, mosaic, 1942

67
Giorgio Morandi, 1943

Giorgio Morandi, 1943

Giorgio Morandi, 1952

68
Ottone Rosai, 1943

Ottone Rosai, 1954

69
Ardengo Soffici, 1942

Ardengo Soffici, 1947

70
Carlo Carrà, 1937

Carlo Carrà, 1946

Carlo Carrà, 1947

71
Emil Nolde, Life of Christ, 1911-1912. Expressionist Emil Nolde was a supporter
of the National Socialist party from the early 1920s. Nolde's work was officially
condemned by the Nazi regime. He was not allowed to paint—even in private—
after 1941.

Emil Nolde, date unknown

72
 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Die Lesende, 1911. Expressionist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
was considered a ‘degenerate artist’ by the Nazi regime and was prohibited from
exhibiting in 1936 and fom painting at all in 1941.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , 1932

73
 Alexej von Jawlensky, 1910. In 1921, Russian expressionist Alexej von
Jawlensky had settled permanently in Germany. In 1933 Jawlensky was
forbidden by the Nazi regime to exhibit his work. He died in 1941.

Alexej von Jawlensky,1910.

74
Alexej von Jawlensky, 1932

Alexej von Jawlensky, 1936

75
Zbigniew Pronaszko, date unknown

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, 1931

76
Andrzej Pronaszko, 1916

Andrzej Pronaszko, 1939

77
…art is a hammer with which to shape reality.
(Bertold Brecht)

Robert Delaunay, Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1923

Max Herman Maxy, Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1924

78
Lajos Tihanyi (after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he emigrated to
Vienna, and from 1924 he lived in Paris), Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1926

79
 Kazimir Malevich, 1915

Kazimir Malevich, 1929-1932

80
Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov,1918

81
Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1920

82
Soviet agitprop train, 1920

83
 Poster by Vladimir Maiakovsky, 1920

Vladimir Maiakovsky, Lenin, 1934 edition

84
 Alexander Rodchenko, 1924

Sergei Senkin, Under the banner of Lenin for the second five-year plan!, 1931

85
 Matsa, Mikhailov, Novitsky,
VOPROSY RAZVITIYA PROLETARSKOGO ISKUSSTVA (Questions of
Development of the Proletarian Art), first edition,
Moscow, Komakademia, 1931

86
Isaak Ivanovich Izrailevich Brodskiy, Lenin in front of Smolny, before 1925

Isaak Ivanovich Izrailevich Brodskiy, Portrait of Joseph Stalin, 1937

87
Andre Breton, Valentine Hugo, Greta Knutson and Tristan Tzara. Cadavre
Exquis (Exquisite Corpse), 1933

88
 Alexander Mikhaylovich Gerasimov, Portrait of Joseph Stalin,1939

Iraklii Toidze, Under the banner of Lenin, with the leadership of Stalin, forward to
the victory of Communism, 1940

89
Jules Perahim, Fighting for Peace, date unknown

Renato Guttuso, Vietcong, date unknown

90
Mural Cuba collectiva, 1967, and detail (Gherasim Luca’s verse)
oil on canvas
501 x 1 083 cm (6 panels)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
Havana, Cuba

91
Enei Church, Bucharest, Romania. The church was deliberately demolished by
the communist regime on March 10, 1977, six days after the earthquake,
although the church had not been damaged.

92