*It's a different world now, because nowadays it's the keyboard itself that betrays you to the police.
Burying the Typewriter
reviewed by Ahrvid Englholm
Den begravda skrivmaskinen by Carmen Bugan
("Burying the Typewriter", US Edition 2012 from Picador; Swedish edition 2014, publisher 2244, translation Ylva Mörk)
"A meeting on the Romanian Culture Institute in Stockholm touched upon the subject of underground press and art in that country under the communists and Ceausescu. I mentioned that I read that in those days you needed a *licence* from the government to even own a typewriter! The Institute's acting director Eva heard it and quickly dug up and showed me Burying the Typewriter (or the Swedish translation of it), which told about the Romanian dissident Ion Bugan who used typewriters and carbon paper to challenge the regime.
"This landed him a ten year prison sentence with frequent beating and torture, and for his family constant harassment and round the clock surveillance by the dreaded communist security service, named Securitate. The full story is told in this book, by his daughter Carmen who lived through it. I rushed to the library to find it, since I as a veteran fanzine publisher am interested in odd and underground publishing and know something about publications from a typewriter and carbon papers. (See note.)
"Carmen Bugan's story is heartbreaking. But the book doesn't begin that way. We read about a happy, almost idyllic childhood for Carmen and her sister Loredana. Kids with loving parents who could roam through the woods and the countryside in the sunshine, pick fruit from the trees, play and bathe and do everything children do.
"But darker streaks emerge in the story. Carmen's father Ion hates the regime. He earlier already served several years in prison for trying to escape Romania. And the 70s/early 80s Romania is a poor, gloomy place. Foodstuff is rationed. When delivery of something comes to the local shops you better rush there immediately, and be prepared to fight for it with the hundreds standing in line. Much of the delivery has BTW already been stolen enroute by communist bureaucrats, the transport workers and even the police. Electricity exists only now and then. Every town and village is ruled by a council that takes all orders from the communist party. And most people hadn't even seen a typewriter! (For modern readers: a typewriter is a sort of mechanical laptop computer without memory, that gives you your printout immediately!)
"But Ion had a typewriter. He actually had two, one which he had a licence for (through a slip in the bureaucracy) and a second illegal one. The last one he buried in the garden as a backup. Late at night he and his wife Mioara sat there, typing away flyers produced via stacks of carbon paper. They would then travel around and distribute the flyers, usually by sticking them into people's mailboxes. The flyers denounced the regime and demanded end of rationing, food for the people, electricity, freedom to travel, free trade unions, and things like that.
"Securitate of course found and collected the flyers and began an investigation. They had spies everywhere, ordinary people who where coerced and blackmailed into cooperation. For a long time they couldn't find the "culprits". One day in 1983, using a fake registration plate, Ion drove into Bucharest with a big stack of flyers. He made sure to pass the US Embassy to get caught in their CCTV cameras (to have independent proof of the trip) and honking the horn he went to big crowds of people and quickly threw out and distributed the flyers.
"This was too much, too open and he was arrested. Now Securitate had the final evidence of the dissident activites. Mrs Bugan went free, since she denied everything and her husband took all the responsibility. That he'd be given a long prison sentence for demanding bread and a decent life was a forgone conclusion - but life for the family (soon with a newborn son, Catalin) became a living hell too.
"Securitate came and seized virtually all their belongings (furniture, books, car) and stole all their food. They sealed most of the rooms in their house, so they had to live in the kitchen, and banned the children from attending school. They made their own keys to the house, installed microphones and would often come back, usually 2 am, from the no less than three watchpoints they had around the Bugans. The family was watched 24/7 and banned from using curtains, so that Securitate all the time could see what they were doing. Mrs Mioara was forced to divorce her husband, so that the children would be allowed to come back to school (always sittting in the back, always getting the lowest grades). They were banned from travels without permission and could only use one grocery store at specific times of the day (as if there were much to buy...). Mioara was kicked from her job and forced to take a low-paid employment making baskets. All the family and relatives, including the children, were often taken in for questioning.
"It's a really shocking story.
"But through listening to BBC, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, they learned that the Bugan case had become known in the west. Amnesty International had a group supporting them. And finally, in 1989 before the Romanian Revolution, Ion Bugan was released under a general amnesty, motivated by that Romanian prisons had been filled to the limit. Young Carmen was sent to the US Embassy in Bucharest with detailed instructions from her father on what to say and how to behave to get past the Securitate guards outside. She had to phone them a few minutes in advance and ask them to send someone out to met her, which they did. The Embassy knew about their situation and had promised to grant them political asylum and help them to emigrate.
"To make a long story shorter (but it included more harassment and even death threats) it worked, and in the autumn of 1989 they found a new life in Michigan, the US of A.
Here's an article I found about them:
http://www.mlive.com/news/grandrapids/index.ssf/2014/05/west_michigan_family_gains_new.html
"The Bugans saw the fall of the Ceausescu regime on TV on the other side of the Atlantic. The book ends with documentation about their case that Carmen Bugan could obtain under the new democratic government, though she writes that a lof of papers seemed to have disappeared (the link above implies more documents have been found and she's now preparing a new book).
"Burying the Typewriter is a very important and moving book. If you are the least bit interested in the situation behind the Iron Curtain in the old days, it is a must read."
–Ahrvid Engholm
Note: In the late 70's I co-founded the "secret" carbon APA called Cucumber. See my piece in Mimosa about it: http://www.jophan.org/mimosa/m15/engholm.htm . (I've published fanzines with most printing methods, though mimeograph has been most common, and even did two small zines on hectograph! These days my newszine SFJ is converted to a Twitter newsfeed and I do PDF-zines for EAPA.)
–
ahrvid@hotmail.com / Follow @SFJournalen on Twitter for the latest news in short form! / Gå med i SKRIVA - för författande, sf, fantasy, kultur (skriva-request@freelists.org, subj: subscribe) och var med i FANTASTIKNOVELLTÄVLINGEN 2015, info www.skriva.bravewriting.com / Om Ahrvids novellsamling Mord på månen: http://zenzat.wordpress.com/bocker C Fuglesang: "stor förnöjelse...jättebra historier i mycket sannolik framtidsmiljö"! /Nu som ljudbok: http://elib.se/ebook_detail.asp?id_type=ISBN&id=9186081462 / Läs även AE i nya E-antologin Mellan tid och rum http://www.adlibris.com/se/e-bok/mellan-tid-och-rum—himmel-och-hav-9789187711435 / YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07)
