MA (journal)


Ma is a Hungarian magazine connected with the Magyar Aktivizmus artistic group whose title not only reflects their initials but also means "today". It was founded in 1916 in Budapest by Lajos Kassák, who continued to publish it in exile in Vienna until 1925.

History

Origins

MA was launched after a previous journal A Tett had been banned by the prosecutor’s office in October 1916. The first issue was published the following month. From 1917 Béla Uitz joined the editorial team followed by Sándor Bortnyik, Jolán Simon, Sándor Barta and Erzsi Újvári.

Under the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Following the Aster Revolution, the MA activists were critical of Mihály Károlyi’s government. They agitated for a communist revolution publishing special issues in support of revolutionary change. When the Hungarian Soviet Republic was established on 21 March 1919, at first it seemed that the MA group would play an important role in the new regime as Kassak and Uitz had positions in the directorates of literature and art. However, when they refused to subordinate their work to the control of the Party of Communists in Hungary, they were the attacked by the Hungarian Social Democrats, who accused György Lukács, the Deputy Commissar for Public Education, of wasting money on their “incomprehensible” and “formalist” avant-garde art. However, Bela Kun denounced the MA group as a product of “bourgeois decadence”. Therefore, from a political point of view, the art of MA ended up in an interpretative vacuum. In July 1919, the regime faced a chronic shortage in paper, and the MA was discontinued. were also discontinued in those days. Kassák was left for Lake Balaton when MA was suspended. In August, following the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic he was imprisoned only being released in the winter thanks to the intervention of his partner, Jolán Simon. He then escaped to Vienna.

In Vienna

Kassák refounded the magazine in Vienna on May 1, 1920. He continued to publish it there until December 1, 1925. In 1926 Kassák returned to Budapest and founded the journal Dokumentum which he saw as a successor to MA. However it was discontinued after only five issues.

Contributors

Contributors include:

Writers