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But as televised theater, the formula works. Mr. Carlson reliably draws more than three million viewers. When he defended the idea of demographic replacement on a different Fox show in April, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, called for his firing, noting that the same concept had helped fuel a string of terrorist attacks, including the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. But when Mr. Carlson ran a clip of his comments on his own prime-time show a few days later, according to Nielsen data, the segment got 14 percent more viewers in the advertiser-sweet demo of 24- to 54-year-olds than Mr. Carlsons average for the year.

Every cable network cares about ratings, but none more so than Fox, whose post-Ailes slogan stresses neither fairness nor balance but sheer audience dominance: Most Watched, Most Trusted. And at Fox, according to former employees, no host scrutinizes his ratings more closely than Mr. Carlson. He learned how to succeed on television, in part, by failing there.

The talk-show host who rails against immigrants and the tech barons of a new Gilded Age is himself the descendant of a German immigrant who became one of the great ranching barons of the old Gilded Age. Henry Miller landed in New York in 1850 and built a successful butcher business in San Francisco; along with a partner, he went on to assemble a land empire spanning three states. They obtained some parcels simply by bribing government officials. Others were wrung from cash-poor Mexican Californians who, following the Mexican-American War, now lived in a newly expanded United States and couldnt afford to defend their old Mexican land grants in court against speculators like Mr. Carlsons ancestor. Through the early 20th century, Mr. Millers land and cattle empire was utterly dependent on immigrant labor, said David Igler, a historian at the University of California, Irvine, and author of a history of the Miller empire.

Over the years, the Miller fortune dispersed, as great fortunes often do, into a fractious array of family branches. Mr. Carlsons mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, was born to a third-generation Miller heiress, debuted in San Francisco society and met Richard Carlson, a successful local television journalist, in the 1960s. They eloped to Reno, Nev., in 1967; Tucker McNear Carlson was born two years later, followed by his brother, Buckley. The family moved to the Los Angeles area, where Richard Carlson took a job at the local ABC affiliate, but the Carlsons marriage grew rocky and the station fired him a few years later. In early 1976, he moved to San Diego to take a new television job. The boys went with him according to court records, their parents had agreed it would be temporary and commuted to Los Angeles on weekends while he and Lisa tried to work out their differences.

But a few months later, just days after the boys returned from a Hawaii vacation with their mother, Richard began divorce proceedings and sought full custody of the children. In court filings, Lisa Carlson claimed he had blindsided her and left her virtually penniless. The couple separated and began fighting over custody and spousal support. Mr. Carlson alleged that his wife had repeated difficulties with abuse of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines, and that he had grown concerned about both her mental state and her treatment of the boys. On at least one occasion, he asserted, the boys had walked off the plane in San Diego without shoes; the mothers own family members, he said, had urged him not to let her see the children unsupervised. He won custody when Tucker was 8, at a hearing Lisa did not attend: According to court records, she had left the country. She eventually settled in France, never to see her sons again. A few years later, Richard Carlson married Patricia Swanson, an heiress to the frozen-food fortune, who adopted both boys.

For many years, Tucker Carlson was tight-lipped about the rupture. In a New Yorker profile in 2017, not long after his show debuted, he described his mothers departure as a totally bizarre situation which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all. But as controversy and criticism engulfed his show, Mr. Carlson began to describe his early life in darker tones, painting the California of his youth as a countercultural dystopia and his mother as abusive and erratic. In 2019, speaking on a podcast with the right-leaning comedian Adam Carolla, Mr. Carlson said his mother had forced drugs on her children. She was like, doing real drugs around us when we were little, and getting us to do it, and just like being a nut case, Mr. Carlson said. By his account, his mother made clear to her two young sons that she had little affection for them. When you realize your own mother doesnt like you, when she says that, its like, oh gosh, he told Mr. Carolla, adding that he felt all kinds of rage about it.

Mr. Carlson was a heavy drinker until his 30s, something he has attributed in part to his early childhood. But by his own account, his mothers abandonment also provided him with a kind of pre-emptive defense against the attacks that have rained down on his Fox show. Criticism from people who hate me doesnt really mean anything to me, Mr. Carlson told Megyn Kelly, the former Fox anchor, on her podcast last fall. He went on to say: Im not giving those people emotional control over me. Ive been through that. I lived through that as a child. One lesson from his youth, Mr. Carlson told one interviewer, was that you should only care about the opinions of people who care about you.

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How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable - The New York Times

SHANGHAI, May 2 (Reuters) - When Tesla's (TSLA.O) Shanghai plant and other auto factories were shut over the last two months by emergency measures to control Chinas biggest COVID-19 outbreak, the burning question was how quickly they could restart to meet surging demand.

But with the Shanghai lockdown grinding into its fourth week, and similar measures imposed in dozens of smaller cities, the worlds largest boom market for electric cars has gone bust.

Other companies from luxury goods makers to fast-food restaurants have also offered a first read on the lost sales and shaken confidence of recent weeks, even as Beijing rolls out measures to help COVID-hit industries and stimulate demand. read more

Register

Joey Wat, CEO of Yum China (9987.HK), which owns KFC and Taco Bell, said in a letter to investors that April sales had been significantly impacted by COVID controls. In response, the company simplified its menu, streamlined staffing and promoted bulk orders for locked-down communities, she said.

The pressing question now is: how and when will Chinese consumers start buying everything from Teslas to tacos again?

In China's once-hot EV market, the recent turmoil is a stark example of a one-two economic punch, first to supply and then to demand, from Beijings hard-line implementation of COVID controls across the worlds second-largest economy. read more

Before Shanghai was locked down in early April to contain a COVID-19 outbreak, sales of electric vehicles had been booming. Teslas sales in China had jumped 56% in the first quarter, while sales for EVs from its larger rival in China, BYD (002594.SZ), had quintupled. Then came the lockdowns.

Showrooms, stores and malls in Shanghai were shut and its 25 million residents were unable to shop online for much beyond food and daily necessities due to delivery bottlenecks. Analysts at Nomura estimated in mid-April that 45 cities in China, representing 40% of its GDP, were under full or partial lockdowns, with the economy at a growing risk of recession.

The China Passenger Car Association estimated retail deliveries of passenger cars in China were 39% lower in the first three weeks of April from a year earlier.

COVID control measures cut into shipments, car dealers held back from promoting new models, and sales tumbled in Chinas richest markets of Shanghai and Guangdong, the association said.

One dealer of a premium German car brand in Jiangsu province, which borders Shanghai, told Reuters sales plunged by one-third to half in April, citing lockdowns and trucking bottlenecks that made it difficult to deliver orders.

He was even more worried about the impact on consumer spending power, he said, declining to give his name as he was not permitted to speak to the media.

"It could be worse than the first wave of COVID in 2020, when the economic recovery was quick and strong. Nowadays there are more uncertainties in the economy, and the stock and property markets are not doing well," he said.

Much will depend on how fast these restrictions can be lifted but the coming weeks may be difficult, Helen de Tissot, chief financial officer at French spirits maker Pernod Ricard (PERP.PA), told Reuters on Thursday. read more

Kering (PRTP.PA), which owns luxury brands including Gucci and Saint Laurent, said a significant chunk of its stores had been shuttered in April.

Its very difficult to predict what will happen after the lockdown, said Jean-Marc Duplaix, Kerings chief financial officer. read more

Apple (AAPL.O) also warned at its latest results over COVID-hit demand in China. read more

City authorities from Beijing to Shenzhen are trying to stimulate some demand by giving out millions of dollars worth of shopping vouchers to encourage residents to spend.

On Friday, Guangdong, a manufacturing powerhouse with an economy larger than South Koreas, rolled out its own incentives to try to restart sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids.

These include subsidies of up to 8,000 yuan ($1,200) for a select range of what China classes as new energy vehicles, including from Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and BYD. Tesla, second in EV sales in China, was excluded from the subsidy programme.

The U.S. automaker did not respond to a request for comment.

Chongqing, another major auto manufacturing hub, in March said it would offer cash of up to 2,000 yuan ($300) for shoppers who exchange old cars for new models and set aside another $3 million for other measures to spur sales.

While noting such measures, Credit Suisse analysts still said they believe COVID control measures have put both online and offline consumption on a downward spiral.

"We see the consumer sector as being at major risk if the prolonged pandemic and further tightening continue across China," they said in an April 19 research note.

Register

Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Sophie Yu in Beijing and Silvia Aloisi in Milan; Writing by Kevin Krolicki; Editing by Tom Hogue

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China COVID hard line eats into everything from Teslas to tacos - Reuters

Around 100 civilians were on Sunday evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the city. Around 1,000 civilians and 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are thought to be sheltering in bunkers and tunnels underneath the plant, enduring a weeks-long siege with little food or water.

One of the civilians evacuated spoke to Reuters, telling the news agency, We didnt see the sun for so long:

Cowering in the labyrinth of Soviet-era bunkers far beneath the vast Azovstal steel works, Natalia Usmanova felt her heart would stop she was so terrified as Russian bombs rained down on Mariupol, sprinkling her with concrete dust.

Usmanova, 37, spoke to Reuters on Sunday after being evacuated from the plant, a sprawling complex founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a subterranean network of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.

I feared that the bunker would not withstand it I had terrible fear, Usmanova said, describing the time sheltering underground.

When the bunker started to shake, I was hysterical, my husband can vouch for that: I was so worried the bunker would cave in.

We didnt see the sun for so long, she said, speaking in the village of Bezimenne in an area of Donetsk under the control of Russia-backed separatists around 30 km (20 miles) east of Mariupol.

She recalled the lack of oxygen in the shelters and the fear that had gripped the lives of people hunkered down there.

Usmanova was among dozens of civilians evacuated from the plant in Mariupol, a southern port city that has been besieged by Russian forces for weeks and left a wasteland.

Usmanova said she joked with her husband on the bus ride out, in a convoy agreed by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that they would no longer have to go to the lavatory with a torch.

You just cant imagine what we have been through - the terror, Usmanova said. I lived there, worked there all my life, but what we saw there was just terrible.

Thank you for following todays coverage of the war in Ukraine.

We will be closing this liveblog but you can catch all the latest developments on our new blog launched below.

US first lady Jill Biden is set to visit Romania and Slovakia on Thursday for five days to meet with US service members and embassy personnel, displaced Ukrainian parents and children, humanitarian aid workers, and teachers, her office has said.

On Sunday, celebrated as Mothers Day in the United States, Biden will meet with Ukrainian mothers and children who have been forced to flee their homes because of Russias war against Ukraine, her office said according to Reuters.

The wife of president Joe Biden will meet with US military service members at Mihail Kogalniceau Airbase in Romania on Friday, before heading to Bucharest to meet with Romanian government officials, US embassy staff, humanitarian aid workers, and teachers working with displaced Ukrainian children.

The trip also includes stops in the Slovakian cities of Bratislava, Kosice and Vysne Nemecke, where Biden will meet with government officials, refugees and aid workers, her office said.

Bidens visit is the latest show of support for Ukraine and neighbouring countries that are helping Ukrainian refugees by top US representatives.

South Korean ambassador Kim Hyung-tae has returned to Kyiv along with some embassy staff, the news agency Yonhap has reported citing the Foreign Ministry in Seoul.

The South Korean embassy was evacuated at the beginning of the Russian invasion and staff had been working at a temporary office in the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi since March.

The ministry said Kim would start working from Kyiv on Monday and that it was considering the phased return of remaining staff in accordance with the future security situation there.

[They] plan to carry out tasks on diplomatic affairs and protecting [South Korean] nationals under closer cooperation with the Ukrainian government.

More than 20 embassies, including those of the EU, UK, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, have already reopened in the Ukrainian capital.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken said US diplomats would gradually begin returning to the country during a visit to Kyiv last week.

Associated Press has filed a story saying that the Ghost of Kyiv, an unnamed fighter pilot who was praised for supposedly shooting down several Russian planes, is in fact a myth.

Ukrainian authorities admitted that the legendary pilot was a myth.

The Ghost of Kyiv is a super-hero legend whose character was created by Ukrainians! Ukraines air force said in Ukrainian on Facebook.

The statement came after multiple media outlets published stories wrongly identifying Major Stepan Tarabalka as the man behind the moniker. Tarabalka was a real pilot who died on March 13 during air combat and was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine, Ukraines air force said last month.

But he was not the Ghost of Kyiv, the force said in Saturdays statement. The information about the death of the The Ghost of #Kyiv is incorrect, Ukraines air force wrote in a separate post Saturday on Twitter. The #GhostOfKyiv is alive, it embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots of the Tactical Aviation Brigade who are successfully defending #Kyiv and the region.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, has told CNN its only a matter of time before US president Joe Biden visits Ukraine.

I have to think that a presidential visit is something under consideration, but only a question of how soon that will be feasible.

On Sunday US House speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest ranking US official to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv since the start of Russias invasion at the end of February.

The House delegation had discussed Zelenskiys priorities for the next phase of the war, which is concentrated in the east of the country after Russian forces withdrew from around the capital, and Bidens request for a $33bn aid package for Ukraine, Schiff said:

We wanted to discuss with him, within that really vast sum, what is the priority in terms of what weapons that he needs, what other assistance that he needs, Schiff said. We went through a detailed discussion of the next phase of the war. Its moving from a phase in which Ukrainians were ambushing Russian tanks -- it was close-quarters fighting -- to fighting more at a distance using long range artillery, and that changes the nature of what Ukraine needs to defend itself.

Russias top uniformed officer, General Valery Gerasimov, visited dangerous frontline positions in eastern Ukraine last week in a bid to reinvigorate the Russian offensive there, the New York Times has reported citing Ukrainian and US officials.

The Guardian was unable to verify the report.

During the visit, Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, narrowly escaped a deadly Ukrainian attack on a school being used as a military base in the Russian-controlled city of Izium late Saturday, the Times reported.

Around 200 soldiers including at least one general were killed in the strike, a Ukrainian official told the paper, but Gerasimov had already departed for Russia.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, earlier said that Ukrainian forces had likely conducted a rocket artillery strike on a Russian command post in Izyum on April 30 that struck after Russian chief of staff Valery Gerasimov had left but killed other senior Russian officers.

US officials could not confirm the attack and the Russian Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Our working assumption is that he was there because theres a recognition they havent worked out all their problems yet, one of the US officials told the Times. The Russian offensive has been slow, with widespread disarray and poor morale reported among Russian forces.

The Kremlin appears to be focusing its operations around the city of Izium as part of renewed efforts to seize the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Gerasimov has reportedly been put in command of the push.

Two explosions have taken place in the early hours of Monday in Belgorod, the southern Russian region bordering Ukraine, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regions governor has written in a social media post.

There were no casualties or damage, Gladkov wrote, according to Reuters.

On Sunday Gladkov had said one person was injured in a fire at a Russian defence ministry facility in Belgorod, while seven homes had been damaged.

Posts on social media said fighter jets and loud explosions had been heard above the city overnight. The Guardian was unable to verify the reports.

Russia last month accused Ukraine of a helicopter attack on a fuel depot in Belgorod, for which Kyiv denied responsibility, as well as shelling villages and firing missiles at an ammunition depot.

Updated at 22.22EDT

A few more images captured by Reuters of the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol, showing emotional scenes as people were reunited with family members in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk region:

Around 100 civilians were on Sunday evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the last holdout of Ukrainian forces in the city. Around 1,000 civilians and 2,000 Ukrainian fighters are thought to be sheltering in bunkers and tunnels underneath the plant, enduring a weeks-long siege with little food or water.

One of the civilians evacuated spoke to Reuters, telling the news agency, We didnt see the sun for so long:

Cowering in the labyrinth of Soviet-era bunkers far beneath the vast Azovstal steel works, Natalia Usmanova felt her heart would stop she was so terrified as Russian bombs rained down on Mariupol, sprinkling her with concrete dust.

Usmanova, 37, spoke to Reuters on Sunday after being evacuated from the plant, a sprawling complex founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a subterranean network of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.

I feared that the bunker would not withstand it I had terrible fear, Usmanova said, describing the time sheltering underground.

When the bunker started to shake, I was hysterical, my husband can vouch for that: I was so worried the bunker would cave in.

We didnt see the sun for so long, she said, speaking in the village of Bezimenne in an area of Donetsk under the control of Russia-backed separatists around 30 km (20 miles) east of Mariupol.

She recalled the lack of oxygen in the shelters and the fear that had gripped the lives of people hunkered down there.

Usmanova was among dozens of civilians evacuated from the plant in Mariupol, a southern port city that has been besieged by Russian forces for weeks and left a wasteland.

Usmanova said she joked with her husband on the bus ride out, in a convoy agreed by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that they would no longer have to go to the lavatory with a torch.

You just cant imagine what we have been through - the terror, Usmanova said. I lived there, worked there all my life, but what we saw there was just terrible.

Hello, this is Helen Livingstone taking over the blog from Maanvi Singh to bring you the latest from the war in Ukraine.

First a bit more from Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrovs interview with Italys Mediaset broadcaster.

He said that Russia was not demanding the surrender of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a condition for peace.

We do not demand that he surrender. We demand that he give the order to release all civilians and stop the resistance. Our goal does not include regime change in Ukraine. This is an American speciality. They do it all over the world.

We want to ensure the safety of people in the east of Ukraine, so that they are not threatened by either the militarisation or the nazification of this country, and that there are no threats to the security of the Russian Federation from the territory of Ukraine.

He also denied that Russia would attempt to claim victory in Ukraine by 9 May when Russia marks the end of the second world war with Victory Day saying that the Russian military would not artificially adjust their actions to any date, including Victory Day.

The pace of the operation in Ukraine depends, first of all, on the need to minimise any risks for the civilian population and Russian military personnel.

Asked about recent rumours concerning the health of president Vladimir Putin, he did not answer directly, saying instead:

Ask the foreign leaders who spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. I think you will understand what is at stake.

Updated at 20.34EDT

Jennifer Rankin, Harry Taylor, Maanvi Singh, Rob Booth

Updated at 20.39EDT

In Kherson, the first major city to fall, Russia is replacing Ukrainian currency with Russian rubles.

Per AFP, Kirill Stremousov, a civilian and military administrator of Kherson said that beginning 1 May, we will move to the ruble zone, according state news agency RIA Novosti.

It is a tactic to legitimize Russias control of the city and surrounding areas through installing a pro-Russian administration, according to an intelligence update released by Britains Defense Ministry. The move is indicative of Russian intent to exert strong political and economic influence in Kherson over the long term, the Defense Ministry said.

Russias foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that the county is working to prevent nuclear war, Reuters reports.

In an interview with Italian TV, Lavrov said: Western media misrepresent Russian threats. Russia has never interrupted efforts to reach agreements that guarantee that a nuclear war never develops.

Lavrov also doubled down on Russian conspiracy theories and propaganda about Nazism in Ukraine.

This week, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby called Russias justification for the war in Ukraine BS. Its hard to square [Vladimir Putins] BS that this is about Nazism in Ukraine, and its about protecting Russians in Ukraine, and its about defending Russian national interests, when none of them, none of them were threatened by Ukraine, Kirby said. Its brutality of the coldest and the most depraved sort.

Updated at 18.19EDT

Eight have died after Russian attacks on Donetsk and Kharkiv, according to the governors of those regions.

AFP reports:

The deaths came as the Russian army refocuses its efforts on eastern Ukraine, notably the Donbas region, which incorporates Donetsk and Lugansk.

Four were killed in shelling in the town of Lyman in Donetsk, the regional governor said.

On May 1, four civilians were killed in Russian shelling in the Donetsk region, all in Lyman. Eleven other people were injured, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.

Another person had died of his injuries in a town near Lyman, he added.

Lyman, a former railway hub known as the red town for its redbrick industrial buildings, is expected to be one of the next places to fall to the Russian army after Ukrainian forces withdrew.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces appeared to have made notable advances around the town, advancing on their positions by several kilometres, an AFP team in the area said.

Another three people were killed in shelling on residential areas in and around Kharkiv, Ukraines second city, the regional governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram.

As a result of these shellings, unfortunately, three people were killed and eight civilians were injured.

The Ukrainian army has also withdrawn from Kharkiv, its troops now in outlying positions, according to AFP journalists who recently visited the city.

Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy said that evacuations from Mariupol will continue tomorrow if all the necessary conditions are met. Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vital corridor has started working, he said. For the first time there were two days of real ceasefire on this territory.

In his latest address, he said:

We will continue to do everything to evacuate our people from Azovstal, from Mariupol in general. The organization of such humanitarian corridors is one of the elements of the ongoing negotiation process. It is very complex. But no matter how difficult it was, more than 350,000 people were rescued from the areas of hostilities...

Today, Russian troops continued to strike at the territory of our state. The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army. They targeted the warehouses of agricultural enterprises. The grain warehouse was destroyed. The warehouse with fertilizers was also shelled. They continued shelling of residential neighborhoods in the Kharkiv region, Donbas, etc.

They are accumulating forces in the south of the country to try to attack our cities and communities in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

What could be Russias strategic success in this war? Honestly, I do not know. The ruined lives of people and the burned or stolen property will give nothing to Russia. It will only increase the toxicity of the Russian state and the number of those in the world who will work to isolate Russia.

Isobel Koshiw and Ed Ram in Kharkiv report:

In Ukraines second city, where the barrage of Russian shelling has been among the most relentless endured, hundreds of people stand in line at a post office, waiting to be given chicken and potatoes. As elsewhere in the country, the mundane institutions of civil society of Kharkiv have had to be hastily repurposed for the goal of keeping its population alive, and about 30 such locations across the city have been turned into food aid distribution points.

The postal workers at this branch of Nova Poshta, who are being paid by their employer to hand out food instead of post, say that an average of 3,000 people come to their repurposed branch every day, seven days a week. They manage the queues using the post offices ticket system.

See the original post here:
Russia-Ukraine war: South Korea set to reopen embassy in Kyiv; Lavrov says Russia working to prevent nuclear war as it happened - The Guardian

PRAGUE The specter of communism is haunting Pragues art scene. The citys first private museum, Kunsthalle Praha, opened in February, marks a move away from the state-funded culture industry that once thrived but has struggled in recent years.

For almost a century, Pragues artists and curators have relied on the Czech government to fund exhibitions and residencies. Under communism, the state was the sole provider of cultural funds. After communisms fall in 1989, the city clung to this communist-era relic even as other European art hubs embraced private funding. Pragues National Gallery is still entirely funded by the state, as are several of the citys numerous residency programs.

That support structure has made the city particularly appealing to younger artists from elsewhere in Europe. Prague is centrally located near other major art hubs like Vienna and Berlin, so it is an ideal crossroads for Central and Eastern European artists. Czech artists and collectors tend to have close relationships with counterparts in the art communities of nearby cities, such as Dresden and Katowice. Artists from all over Europe come to Prague. This kind of exchange is the best way of making an arts scene more dynamic, notes Christelle Havranek, chief curator at Kunsthalle Praha.

Prague is often the first stop for recent art school graduates in France and Germany. State funding also means that there is ample funding for upstarts looking to relocate, and the citys relatively small arts scene is easier to break into than larger ones in London or Paris. Theyll come here for two, three, or four years, says Piotr Sikora, who curates artist residencies at MeetFactory. The scene is quite welcoming and there are structures in place to help them live here.

Unlike most other European cities, which have several major museums that share cultural significance, Pragues museum scene remains concentrated in a single institution. In addition to serving as a steward of the countrys national art collection, the National Gallery is also responsible for championing younger Czech artists and hosting traveling exhibitions.

However, funding cuts have stretched the already overworked institution to the brink. During the pandemic, the Czech Republic implemented an austerity plan that resulted in sharp cuts to its cultural budget. Artists have complained of poor pay and less than luxurious treatment, as well as a significantly reduced acquisitions budget.

Part of Kunsthalle Prahas proposition for the city is to introduce a private funding model as a means of assuaging the financial woes of the publicly run National Gallery. The museums founders and primary donors are Petr and Pavlina Pudil, one of the Czech Republics most prominent art-collecting families. Through their family foundation, the Pudils funded the museums construction and donated their entire collection to the Kunsthalle on permanent loan.

This approach has allowed the Pudils to bypass many of the constraints publicly funded institutions encounter, including funding limitations and the climate of the political environment. Public institutions tend to be vulnerable to political influences, which is something weve seen here and in nearby countries like Poland and Hungary, says Ivan Goossen, Kunsthalle Prahas director. In contrast, Goossen notes, private institutions are only limited by the desires of their members and donors, which allows them to develop a more robust program. Indeed, in 2020, the annual budget for the National Gallery was around $20 million, half of what it cost to build the Kunsthalle Praha.

Like the German kunsthalles, temporary exhibition spaces that lack permanent collections, Kunsthalle Praha is focused primarily on rotating exhibitions featuring works from a variety of collections. Unlike the National Gallery, which mostly centers on Czech art and building out its own collection, Kunsthalle Praha has a lean collection and focuses its efforts internationally.

Kunsthalle Prahas inaugural show, Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art, does just that. Curated by Christelle Havranek and Peter Weibel, the director of the Zentrum fr Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe, Germany, the exhibition traces the history of electricity in art over the past century. Kinetismus pairs works from art history textbook stalwarts like Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray with internationally recognized contemporary names like William Kentridge and Olafur Eliasson to explore how electricity has transformed artistic practices. Drawn from collections around the world, the chosen works lean heavily on live spectacle (lights, sound, physical magnitude) and interactive participation a clear sign that the museums inaugural exhibition is meant to be remembered.

In addition to its global aspirations, Kinetismus seeks to magnify the work of Zdenk Penek, a little-known Czech artist who was a key figure in the countrys early 20th-century avant-garde scene. In 1932, Penek was also selected to design a series of sculptures intended to adorn the facade of the Zenger electrical substation, which now houses Kunsthalle Praha. As part of the exhibition, the museum recreated the neon and plastic works, which mysteriously disappeared in the 1930s after being displayed at an exhibition in Paris.

Despite being privately run, artifacts of the communist state are deeply ingrained in Kunsthalle Praha. In the past, the Zenger substation was a crucial element in the citys electrical grid, powering parts of Pragues legendary tram system. And like many aristocrats in the former Eastern bloc, the Pudils profited from the wave of privatization that occurred in the 1990s. In Petr Pudils case, he acquired the countrys state-owned coal-mining operations.

When plans to launch the museum were first announced in 2019, Pudils role in post-1989 privatization came to the fore. After a local art outlet published an investigation into the familys finances, some artists and curators began to oppose the new institution. Their concerns were rooted in both Pudils libertarian ideology, which they saw as detrimental to the local arts community, and his involvement in an environmentally destructive industry. For their part, the Pudil family maintains they have long since divested from coal and now focus on solar and other more environmentally friendly energy sources.

I think the 90s really left a bad taste in some peoples mouths. A lot of people really see that period as the core of our troubles today, explains Tereza Stejskalov, the program director of the Czech branch of Tranzit, a pan-European arts organization. Those troubles which extend to other art hubs, such as Warsaw, Bratislava, and Berlin include increasingly unaffordable housing and decreasing funding for the arts.

In Berlin, a city whose rapidly developing art scene has served as a model and a warning for many in Prague, another private kunsthalle project has attracted unwelcome attention. The debate around the Kunsthalle Berlin has similarly focused on the privatization of arts institutions and its effects on the city. Earlier this month, more than 650 artists, critics, and curators signed an open letter denouncing the new exhibition hall.

The shadow of late communism has also affected the priorities of artists in Eastern Europe. A younger generation of artists and curators have grown up in a post-communist landscape that was far wealthier than that of their parents. Greater resources for travel and better funding opportunities have pushed them to foster connections with other art scenes in former Eastern bloc countries. Curator Sikora and others have been instrumental in refocusing attention inward, while organizations like the East Europe Biennial Foundation have formed regional alliances.

Theres a movement that says: Maybe we dont need the West as much anymore. Maybe we can connect with other Eastern European countries instead, states Stejskalov. By offering an internationally focused program that emphasizes Czech artists, Kunsthalle Praha seems determined to walk the line between East and West, as well as past and present.

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Almost all of Europe (and many other nations outside the continent) celebrates Labor Day, the origin of which goes back to the history of the USA. On May 1, 1886, trade and labor unions organized a large general strike. It was triggered by poor working conditions and the underpayment of industrial workers. It is a day off from work for the vast majority of Hungarian workers. In the past, in communist Hungary, it was celebrated with many events and huge parades where the political leadership could further spread communist propaganda. How is it possible that a western celebration was adopted by communist countries?

This article was originallypublishedon our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.

Despite its U.S. origin (a general strike on May 1, 1886), this day is celebrated in the U.S. and Canada not on May 1, but on September 1. Originally, the strike was aimed at reducing daily working hours, which were then 10-13 hours, to eight hours. At that time, it was decided to start the campaign on May 1, because in many American companies the new fiscal year began on that day, which also meant that many labor contracts would have gone into effect on May 1.

Around 340,000 people participated in the strike. A major center of the demonstrations was Chicago, where some companies went on strike for several days. On May 3, three striking workers at the McCormick Harvester factory were killed in a demonstration. The next day, a protest march took place, and in the evening, as the march was breaking up, the Haymarket riot broke out. Someone threw a fragmented bomb at police officers. The police responded by firing on the workers. Seven police officers and at least four civilians were killed. Because of this event, there is a tradition of May Day marches. Although we date the origin to 1886, there were earlier labor movements fighting for the establishment of the 8-hour workday, such as April 21, 1856 in Australia.

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The pictures of the first official May Day in Hungary perfectly capture the spread of the communist dictatorship's ideology among the members of the society.Continue reading

How can it be that a Western event became a communist tradition? It is perhaps a mitigating circumstance that the Briton, Robert Owen, who as early as 1817 wanted to improve the situation of workers with the slogan Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest, was one of the founders of utopian socialism. He was a socialist who had the interests of workers at heart. The fact that he came from a capitalist country was dwarfed by his socialist virtues.

Fact The communist regimes, whose ideology centered on working people, treated May Day as a special holiday. After the communist takeover, the day, originally called Workers Holiday, was politically transformed into a holiday of workers, peasants, and intellectuals, known as Labor Day, in the countries of the Eastern bloc. In Hungary, May 1 has been a national holiday since 1946. After the fall of communism, the name of the day of workers solidarity was retained as Labor Day. As in most countries of the world, it is now an official holiday in Hungary. /source: Wikipedia/

Although the holiday did not become an official state holiday in Hungary until 1946, it already existed in 1919, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was created. The day was celebrated even though the country was practically in ruins after World War I, the situation was chaotic, the Czechoslovakians in the north, and the Serbs and Romanians in the south were invading the Hungarian territories.

Long live the proletarian dictatorship painting by Albert Baky (18681944). Source: wikipedia.org

Andrssy Street on May 1 in front of the building of the Hungarian State Opera. Photo: Fortepan / SK

In the Kdr era (1956-1989) the day also had a special meaning. In the ideology of communism, the concept of the working man, the working people, played a very important role, and people were obliged to have a job. People took to the streets all over the country. Parades were held all over Hungary, and people paraded through the capital with banners, flags and signs. Participation in the celebrations was mandatory and the various factories, companies and offices had to take part in groups.

There are typical delicacies that people still like to eat nowadays even on this day, such as various sausages, beer, or cotton candy.

Jzsef Boulevard on May 1, 1946. Photo: Fortepan / Pl Berk

Stalin Square (today tvenhatosok tere) on May 1, 1955. Photo: Fortepan

May 1, 1964, From left: Istvn Dobi, immediately next to him Soviet cosmonaut Adrian Nikolayev and Jnos Kdr, Photo: Fortepan / Gyula Nagy

The parade was so important for the socialist countries that it was even held during the worlds biggest nuclear disaster: On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl reactor unit 4 in Ukraine exploded without the knowledge of the Atomic Energy Commission, enveloping the area in a cloud of nuclear dust. Forty times more radioactive material was released into the atmosphere than in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three million people in Ukraine and two million in Belarus were exposed. The mass media in the socialist countries first denied the disaster and then tried to minimize it. On Gorbachevs orders, artificial rain clouds were created in Moscow on May 1 and the radioactive cloud was directed at Belarus so that a parade could be held in the Russian capital. In Hungary, hundreds of thousands celebrated Labor Day in the streets without knowing that they were actually in danger.

Fact It is important to mention that in 1955 the Roman Catholic Church, led by Pope Pius XII, decided to declare May 1 the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Since then, May 1 has been the holiday of workers in the Catholic church as well.

Featured photo via Fortepan

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Labor Day: A Celebration by Communists Adopted from the West - Hungary Today