The lecture deals with the status of art and literature production in environment of totalitarian regimes, deeply deviant, brutally violent and cynical, such as Nazi Germany 1933-45 or Soviet Union during Stalin’s era 1924-56, or Mao’s China during Cultural Revolution. For artists in such circumstances, imminent estrangement is inevitable. To comply or to ignore? To adjust or to defy? To relent or to refuse? That should be the alternative between self-censorship and inner emigration. But what if closer look reveals in most cases there is no real political and moral difference?

Sreten Ugričić, Research Fellow at Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Luzern. Born 1961 in Jugoslavija, country which doesn’t exist. Author of ten books: novels, short stories, essays and theoretical texts. Director of the National Library of Serbia from 2001 to 2012. In January 2012, after publicly supporting freedom of speech in Serbia, he was accused by the Serbian Minister of the Interior for supporting terrorism. Serbian government dismisses him on the fictional („telephone“) session and since then he lives abroad.