COURAGE

connecting collections

Peter Dabac graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Department of Mechanical Engineering. However, he has worked as a professional photographer since 1960, when he began collaborating with the Tošo Dabac Atelier. He has been a freelance artist since 1966, and in 1970 he became a member of ULUPUH. In 1970, after the death of Dabac, Petar inherited his atelier. He was the owner and head of the atelier and its event organizer until 2006, when he sold it to the City of Zagreb.

In the 1980s, he organized forty exhibitions of contemporary photography by domestic and foreign photographers at the Tošo Dabac Atelier. From 1991 to 2008, he taught photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. He exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions at home and abroad.

Photographer Tošo Dabac was born in the municipality of Nova Rača, near Bjelovar, in 1907., , He finished elementary school in Nova Rača, and later, after moving to Samobor, he attended the Royal Classics Gymnasium in Zagreb. He enrolled to study law in Zagreb, but never completed his studies.

He first encountered photography in 1924, and his first preserved photograph is a panorama of Samobor, from 7 March 1925. He first presented his work at an amateur exhibition in Ivanec in 1932. He was one of the founders and main representatives of the so-called Zagreb School of Artistic Photography. Since the 1930s, he has participated in a series of exhibitions at home and abroad, and in 1938 he won one of the most important awards: Camera Craff. In 1951, the Yugoslav Association of Photographers awarded him the title Master of Photography, and he was also a member of the Photographic Society of America.

He fought with the Partisans in the Second World War. After the war, he joined the Croatian Association of Artists. On several occasions he was employed to photograph motifs throughout Yugoslavia (Istria, Dubrovnik, labor campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina ...), as well as visits by Yugoslavian artists to Toronto in 1949, Chicago in 1950, Moscow in 1958 and the Expo in Brussels in 1958.

He exhibited at the international shows Das menschliche Antlitz Europas and Was ist der Mensch? In 1966 he received the national Vladimir Nazor Award for the highest achievements in the visual arts, and in that same year, he also received the lifetime achievement award from the Yugoslav Association of Photographers.

According to Marina Benažić, Tošo Dabac was apolitical, so he never took part in any opposition activities against the socialist regime. But he was very much involved in cultural events throughout Zagreb during the 1950s and especially the 1960s, when he opens his studio to many, primarily abstract, artists.

In 1888, Danov left for the United States, where he studied theology at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey, until May 1892. After graduating from Drew, in the fall of 1892, he enrolled at the Boston University School of Theology and obtained his degree in June 1893, his thesis being "The Migration of the Teutonic Tribes and Their Christianisation". He was a regular student at the School of Medicine of Boston University for a year before returning to Bulgaria at the beginning of 1895. Throughout his studies in America, Peter Danov created music, and held concerts in Methodist churches.

Upon returning to Bulgaria, Danov settled in Varna and in 1897 founded, together with Dr. Georgi Mirkovich, Dr. Anastasia Zhelyazkova, Vasil R. Kozlov, and other spiritual instructors and public figures, the Society for the Elevation of the Religious Spirit of the Bulgarian People, later referred to as the "Synarchic Chain" (1906) and into the Universal White Brotherhood (1922). After 1897 he became known as Beinsa Douno, translated roughly as The One Who Brings Good through the Word. The society held annual meetings in different rural and urban areas throughout the country. From the beginning of the twentieth century until the Balkan Wars, Peter Danov travelled throughout Bulgaria, delivered public lectures, mostly on the prevalent pseudoscientific field of phrenology, and took anthropometric measurements.

In 1912, he completed the book The Testament of the Colour Rays of Light, and in the next year, he began to present his Sunday lectures, given in series (e.g. Cycle of Power and Life), which set out the basic principles of his White Brotherhood's New Teaching. The lectures were transcribed by his students. Peter Danov's title "The Master" was recorded for the first time in 1914 in the minutes of the annual meeting. He would keep the title “Teacher” or “Master” for the rest of his life. 

During 1917–8, during the First World War, the government of Vasil Radoslavov forced him to resettle in Varna, arguing that his teaching was weakening the “morale of the soldiers at the front”. After the end of the First World War in 1918, the number of his followers all over the country grew rapidly and in 1922 Petar Danov opened an Esoteric School in Sofia, which he called the School of the Universal White Brotherhood, with two classes: Special (Youth) Class and General Class. In the school, theoretical knowledge was combined with spiritual practices, self-improvement methods, and body, mind, and emotion control exercises.

In the same year, 1922, Petar Danov was excommunicated by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on charges of “sectarianism and occultism”.

In the 1920s he established the settlement of Izgrev [Sunrise] near Sofia (today a residential area of the city) where he gathered his audience, followers, and disciples to form a centre for the esoteric school. He settled permanently in Izgrev where he delivered various series of his beliefs. In the following years, many students and followers bought land and constructed wooden houses surrounded by flowers and vegetable gardens. Over 20 years a commune was established. In the summer of 1926, the White Brotherhood Meeting was held for the first time in Izgrev, attended by over 1450 people. In July 1927, a salon was constructed in Izgrev by the engineer Rusi Nikolov, in which Peter Danov delivered lectures. In 1930, he opened a new series of his teaching, called the Sunday Morning lectures, which lasted until April 1944. From 1934 he started working on the Paneurhythmy – a series of exercises consisting of melody, text, and body movements. Later, he added the exercises The Sun Rays and Pentagram.

In January 1944, after bombing in Sofia, together with a group of brothers and sisters from Sofia, the Master went to live temporarily in the village of Marchaevo. At the end of December 1944, Peter Danov died in his home in Izgrev. He was buried in the garden of Izgrev and since 1997 his grave has been considered a state cultural monument.

István Darkó (4 May 1954, Cluj – 7 September 1982, Oradea) was a Hungarian writer and actor from Transylvania. He was the son of the art historian and painter László Darkó and the opera singer Edit Timkó, a member of the Hungarian State Opera of Cluj.

He attended both elementary and high school in Cluj. He came to the attention of the Securitate as a student of High School no. 11, today the István Báthori Theoretical Lyceum. The operation officer responsible for monitoring the institution identified Darkó as a close member of an anti-system student group identified as “Tamango Club,” who held house parties with no parental control. In August 1971 the “club members” and Darkó, five tenth-grade students, went on vacation to the Romanian seaside, where they pretended to be Hungarian tourists. After their return home and the start of the the new school year, reports of student informers led to their interrogation in 1972. The Securitate officer was primarily interested in the relationships the students in question had established with foreigners, but in the meantime it became apparent that they had had a negative attitude towards the visit of the Party’s general secretary to China, they had made negative comments regarding the situation of Romanian youth and they had rejected the dispositions of the educational (haircut declaring) reform of July 1971. The secret police already knew in July 1971 about the quite aloof Darkó, a member of the Union of Communist Youth, who had lost his father in 1970, that one of his uncles – a brother of his father, who as a Hungarian army officer had left the country in 1944 – lived in Denmark, and that he was waiting for his passport in order to be able to travel to visiting his relative. As a result of the informants’ reports his passport application, which had previously been favourably evaluated, was rejected, and the suspicion of “escape” was noted in the informative file on him. Darkó, together with the members of the “dissolved Tamangó,”, was kept under observation by First Lieutenant Emil Fodor, the officer responsible for the case, using an informant network employing minors and personal contacts for positive influence, until his university admission.

The secret police suspicion of escape plans accompanied Darkó later on. On 11 November 1973 the Securitate in Cluj sent the relevant material to Military Unit no. 01340 in Oradea, where Darkó carried out his reduced-duration military service. They made special reference to the high-school events and to the educative intervention of the secret police, which had caused Darkó's behaviour to change so that no more “Hungarian-nationalist manifestations” had been reported in his connection. Though during his military service he was observed by an informant and two collaborators, this did not bring any results worth mentioning. On 25 June 1974 the military unit's counter-espionage office in Oradea forwarded the case-file of Darkó, who was waiting to start his acting studies, to the secret police in Târgu Mureș, where the case was taken over by the Lieutenant-Colonel Ernő Makkai. The informant surveillance continued mutatis mutandis between 1974 and 1978, even though, in view of the previous events, as an acting student of the István Szentgyörgyi Dramatic Arts Institute, Darkó consciously avoided confrontation. He did not talk about the Securitate among his friends and cautiously refrained from any anti-regime statements or conflict.

His secret police files do not say much about his work as a writer. In 1970 Darkó started to write the one-person home-made paper Bendzin, the characters, stories and myths of which served as material for the later radio play Macskarádió (Cat radio). This latter, the "samizdat" made by tape recorder – which is a true impression of the grotesque world of the Ceauşescu regime, and a cult-piece for former students – was considered by Romanian radio operators to be the sole appreciable Hungarian radio play from Transylvania during the decades of socialism. Darkó's first writings were published in 1975. He published also as “Henrik Szénégető” in 1976 using a shared pseudonym with the poet Géza Szőcs. His writings were published in the literary-cultural periodical Echinox (Equinox) and in in the literary, artistic and critical weekly of the Hungarians in Romania Utunk (Our way), both published in Cluj.

Darkó finished his studies in Târgu Mureș in 1978. After studying his observation file, on 28 March 1978, an unknown Securitate cadre in Târgu Mureș, proposed that it should be transferred from the operative system into the mailing fonds, on the grounds that Darkó was member of the Romanian Communist Party and that according to the reports written about him he had refrained from hostile manifestations.

After obtaining his degree he was appointed to the Ede Szigligeti Troupe of the State Theatre of Oradea. As a member of this company, between 1978–1982 he acted in plays by Áron Tamási, George Bernard Shaw, Federico Garcia Lorca and Sławomir Mrożek. While still in Târgu Mureș he had got married, but he and his wife Éva Tóth were divorced in 1981–1982, during his time in Oradea. They had no children.

Because of the encouragement of his friends, the born actor Darkó started to write and publish. He collected his stories and these were also published as an independent volume in the series Forrás (Source) at the Kriterion Publishing House. His writings containing absurd and fantastical elements at the same time showed a world and a city, the inhabitants of which in spite of peaceful appearances were in terrible danger. Its inhabitants had to flee all the time, only their ingenuity enabling them to outwit their persecutors. His stories are linked to the existential fears before 1989. The volume caused significant controversy when it was published, and later on, popping up periodically, it lead to the appearance of a significant literary subculture. In 2007, the 1981 volume was republished by Péter Egyed. But in addition to the Forrás volume material, Egyed also published, as kind of a screenplay, the recorded interactive material of Macskarádió (Cat radio), and attached the audio material of Macskarádió on a disc enclosed with the volume (a sort of "keep with us on the train to Hell").

István Darkó died on 7 September 1982 at the age of 28 under suspicious circumstances. At his funeral Géza Szőcs gave the funeral speech. The last comment in Darkó's informative file originates from the secret police in Oradea. The handwritten note of 3 August 1984 states that according to certificate no. 1651 of the Municipal People's Council of Oradea dated 9 September 1982 the file of the deceased Darkó contains material of no interest for the Securitate and that it is proposed that the file be placed permanently in the mailing fonds.

Aleš Debeljak was a Slovenian cultural critic, poet, and essayist.

He graduated with a degree in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana in 1985. He continued his studies in the United States, obtaining a PhD in the sociology of culture from Syracuse University in 1989.

From the mid-1980s onwards, Debeljak was active in civil society movements. He decided to return to Slovenia around the time of Yugoslavia’s dissolution.

Like many others, he had come to accept the idea of Slovenian independence as a second-best option given the lack of better alternatives, as every attempt at reforming Yugoslavia while conceding more autonomy to Slovenia and Croatia had failed. He still retained and cherished his dual identity as a Slovene and Yugoslav, and thought that independence had actually limited Slovenia’s cultural references.

In 1991, he worked as an interpreter for foreign media during the Slovenian Independence War (also known as the Ten-Day War) and was an eyewitness to armed clashes of Yugoslav and Slovene forces at the Austrian border in Gornja Radgona.

He was one of the co-editors of the critical alternative journal Nova revija [New Review]. He also participated in the social liberal thinktank Forum 21, led by the former President of Slovenia, Milan Kučan. He was, until his death, a professor of cultural studies at the Faculty for Social Studies of the University of Ljubljana.

Ivan Dejmal was a Czech politician and ecologist. He graduated from a horticulture high school and studied at the Agrarian Faculty of the University of Agriculture in Prague; in 1970 he was expelled from his studies for having been arrested. Dejmal belonged to the leading student activists during the Prague Spring and was an important representative of the Movement of Revolutionary Youth (HRM). As recalled later by a former dissident Petruška Šustrová, Dejmal was not a revolutionary, but rather a conservative Catholic for whom freedom was more important than ideology and that is why, after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he decided to come together with people “who were willing to protest somehow in the time when the majority of others has already resigned”. He did not want to be silent when other people were being persecuted against.

In the beginning of the “Normalization” in the 1970s, Ivan Dejmal was imprisoned twice. Firstly, he was arrested in January 1970 and sentenced for the so-called subversion of the republic. He was released after two years in January 1972. In April 1973 he was called up for military service where he was sentenced to another two years of imprisonment for political reasons. He was released in 1976 and he made his living as a manual worker and was engaged in ecology. In the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s, he was an important representative of the anti-communist opposition and of the environmentalist movement in Czechoslovakia. He took part in the foundation of Charter 77 and he was among its first signatories. The illegal, so-called flat seminaries took place in his flat. From 1987 he edited and published the samizdat magazine Ekologický bulletin (The Ecological Bulletin) and in 1988 he co-founded The Movement for Civic Freedom and he also participated in the foundation of the Environmental Society.

In December 1989 he took part in the foundation of the Confederation of Political Prisoners and was an active member of the Civic Forum where he managed the environmentalist section. Ivan Dejmal was rehabilitated after 1989 and he could finish his studies at the University of Agriculture. From 1991 to 1992 he was the Minister of the Environment of the Czech Republic (within the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic) and from 1994 to 1995 he was the director of the Czech Environmental Institute. Afterwards, he worked as a freelancer, and was also the chairman of the civic association Society for Landscape and a member of the board of the Society for a Sustainable Life. In December 2007 he became the vice-president of the newly founded Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR); he died shortly thereafter in February 2008. Ivan Dejmal supported the founding of this institute because, as he said shortly before his death on Czech Radio, there was a need to investigate the causes of totalitarian power and to show the heroes who opposed it.

Gábor Demszky (1952-) lawyer, sociologist, politician, he was a member of the democratic opposition during the 1980s, a key figure in the samizdat publishing, founder member of the Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (SZDSZ) („The Alliance of Free Democrats”).

Gábor Demszky comes from an economist-family in Budapest, his parents were the members of that reformer economist generation which did not think about economic processes in the Marxist way. This origin influenced his mindset and attitude to the communist system. He graduated from Eötvös Loránt University. In 1972, he was banned from the university because of a demonstration what finally was not held. During this time he was working as a cab driver and a librarian and at this time he wrote his first sociological study. After his graduation, he made interviews, questionnaires in the countryside for some research institute. Thanks to this work he got insight into the life of Hungarian villages. His expulsion made difficult to find a job. He worked for Világosság journal from 1976 to 1981.

The socialist invasion to Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a milestone in forming of his mindset. This aggressive step resulted in his disappointment in the existing socialism but he believed that the system is reformable. The critics of the system were left-sided thinkers, he was interested in the new left movement, the anarchist syndicalism in these years. The 1970s brought a big change, he turned away from Marxism. He explained this with his meeting with the reality of the Hungarian countryside and the real results of the communist redistribution politics. He confessed that not only the realization of the Marxist philosophy but the thinking itself is wrong.

In the 1970s the liberal ideas shaped his activity. Demszky highlighted Adam Michnik’s work titled New Evolutionism in his interview, this essay inspired him and his fellow to establish independent organizations, press, movements. They thought the reform communism was not the proper way, they had to press to the system from outside and gained its change.

He was very active as a key man of the inner circle of oppositional intellectuals. We find his name among the founders of the Szegényeket Támogató Alap (SZETA)/ Fund For The Support Of The Poor, the subscribers of the Charta 77 declaration.

In 1981, he together with Jenő Nagy és László Rajk jr. established the AB Independent Publisher which dealt with political, literature books. Two years later started the journal of Hirmondó („The Messenger”) edited by Demszky. Between 1983 and 1988 26 numbers were published. The aim was to write about the democratic intentions in the Eastern-European countries. Besides this, he participated in the editing of other samizdat journals, too.

The Polish actions had a great impact on him as on his fellows as well. In 1981 he traveled to Poland, get a connection with the oppositional members and learn his samizdat producing techniques.

In his interview, Demszky talked about the fault lines among the different groups of opposition, for example, related to the judgment of the Revolution of 1956. 

During the samizdat publishing activity, the police held house search at Demszky’s flat on more occasion as the other prominent persons’ house as well. In 1983 he was sentenced to 6 months because of violence against an official person but it was suspended for 3 years. In the same year, he was awarded a grant of a Freedom to Publish by the International Accessories of Publishers. In 1988 he was a founder member of Szabad Kezdeményezések Hálózata („Network of Free Initiatives”) and Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (SZDSZ) („The Alliance of Free Democrats”). He was the senior mayor of Budapest from 1990, he was reelected four times.

Radek Diestler is a Czech music journalist. He studied history and archival science at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He has published articles in the music magazine Report since the beginning of the 1990s and worked as a journalist and editor of the magazine Rock&Pop between 1995 and 2002. He was an editor of a department of culture of news website iDNES.cz until 2008. He is also the author of several columns related to the Pilsen region and texts about its music history. He collaborated on the filming of the documentary TV series Bigbít (1998, Czech Television). He initiated the founding of the museum and archive of pop music (the Popmuseum), where the archive materials were originally stored after they were collected for the filming of the TV series.

Braco Dimitrijević is a Bosnian-Herzegovinian conceptual artist who lives and works in Paris. He was born in Sarajevo in 1948 and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1971. He finished graduate studies at the University of the Arts London at Saint Martin's Art School in London and, as a British Council scholar with a scholarship in London and Paris in 1967 and 1968, he became acquainted with contemporary art trends which he introduced into his work - first through "The Group Pensioner Tihomir Simčić", then through the "Casual Passer-by" cycle, "Transmonuments" and the "Tryptychos Post Historicus".

He had his first exhibition in 1958, at the age of 10, and the next one was held at the Student Centre Gallery in Zagreb in 1969. Dimitrijević is also an internationally established artist, his first solo exhibition abroad was held in Munich in November 1970, and he participated in the 7^th Paris Biennale in 1971. Since the early 1970s, his career experiencing an ascent on an international scale, which is reflected in the fact that he participates in group exhibitions abroad almost every year, and also presents his work through solo exhibitions. In his theoretical work Tractatus Post Hystoricus, published in 1976, he presented his views on the relativity of history and art history, at the same time criticizing the evolutionary aspects of art history, proposing to approach it as a living body rather than a static mass.

Since 1998, he has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was awarded with the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the portrait of Marko Marulić in 2007. He is the recipient of many Croatian and international awards.

Apart from his artistic work, which can be characterized as a subversive activity against the socialist regime, Dimitrijević did not actively participate in cultural-opposition activities. He describes his artistic activity as a kind of youthful rebellion against the cult of personality.

Vildane Dinç (Alieva) was born in 1978 in Ardino town, Kardzhali province, Bulgaria. In July 1989, at the age of 11 she moved with her family from Bulgaria to Turkey. Vildane obtained her secondary education in Turkey. Vildane narrates: “In socialist Bulgaria, my family lived like ordinary people, they were not politically active, but at the same time my family did not accept voluntarily the forced Bulgarization process during the 1980s. I remember how our Turkish names were changed to Bulgarian. The implementation of namecide (commonly known as “forcibly name change”) happened in December 1984. After the implementation of namecide my family members did not use Bulgarian names when communicating within family circles. However, they used Bulgarian names when dealing with officials.

My family was not politically active. We do not have any official documents stating the reason for our expulsion from Bulgaria. My family thought that we were expelled from Bulgaria especially because of my grandfather’s behavior. In socialist Bulgaria, my grandfather was speaking in public how ‘he doesn’t want to live in Bulgaria because of repressions and how he wants to go to Turkey.' I think this behavior of my grandfather was not deeply political but more motivated by everyday concerns. Of course, on the other hand, all daily endavours at this particular time have had political connotations and contexts.

My family was expelled from the country during ethnic cleansing of the summer of 1989, which the discourse of the Communist Party called “Revival Process” and “Big Excursion.” However, on 11 January 2012, the Bulgarian Parliament referred to this process as ethnic cleansing. I remember my grandfather said 'I want my grandchildren to speak freely in Turkish in streets and schools'.

I was personally motivated to start the collection. My basic motives for a collection of this kind are the following. First of all, collections regarding Eastern European socialist regimes generally do not include experiences of minorities, especially the Turkish experience of socialism. This, in my belief, is a shortage in understanding our socialist past. To understand the recent socialist past more comprehensively, one needs to include further and different experiences. Secondly, such collections can perhaps contribute to an abolition of discriminative acts committed in the socialist era, which are still continuing, for example, some effects and the process of the namecide implementation.
I am not a member of any organization, I only hold a position of a lecturer at the Uludağ University, Faculty of Arts & Science, Department of Sociology.”

Dinç, Vildane (Alieva, Vildane) explains her attitudes toward "cultural opposition" in the following way: “Cultural opposition means opposition which depends on values conflicting with the dominant cultural values of the relevant social system. The cultural opposition can be conscious and unconscious. One could say that the main subject of cultural opposition is a person, a man or a woman, of the everyday life. Cultural dissidents deliberately or unintentionally oppose with their beings and behavior. For example: speaking in their mother language, in some cases just knowing and respecting their mother language without speaking has a symbolic meaning, or wearing particular clothes, using particular phrases, or just thinking and having emotions against the dominant social-political system etc.

The Bulgarian communist regime, like other East European socialist regimes, was implemented from the top. Socialist power was, at first, inclusive. However, the restrictive and repressive implementations of the regime were gradually increasing after the first period. In socialist Bulgaria, the opposition and dissidents came from different ideological backgrounds (for example liberalism, different understandings of socialism, etc.) and different ethnic and religious groups (for example Turks, Gypsies, Pomaks, Jews, etc.) My family was not directly and effectively part of the cultural opposition. However, they have not voluntarily accepted the repressions during the 1980s. I can say that my family was rather a victim of the repression of namecide and ethnic cleansing, than a part of the direct opposition.”

Pál Diósi (1942) is a Hungarian sociologist and teacher. Between 1964 and 1966, he worked as a warehouseman in the Capital’s Measure Tailoring, and from 1966 to 1968, he was a walk-on at the Opera House. Between 1966 and 1983, Diósi was a turner at the Electric Fabric of Little Engines, while at the same time he studied at the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University, where he graduated as a teacher of the Hungarian language and Hungarian literature and a people’s educator. Between 1968 and 1971, he was a teacher at the Radnóti Miklós Educational Cultural House, and in 1971–1972 he was a main lecturer in the People’s Educator Group of the Council of Budapest’s District II. Diósi was an external research manager in the Capital’s Cultural House (1975–1977) and in the Educational Research Institute (1979–1982). He was an external teacher at the Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University (1975–1978, 1979–1980). Between 1972 and 1988, he was a scientific co-worker at the Youth and Public Opinion Research Group of the Communist Youth Alliance. From 1989 to 1991, he was a network leader at the Computer Science Application Corporation (SZÁMALK). In 1992, he founded the DIÓDATA Sociological Research and Advisory Office, where he still works. He has written many studies on youth, prostitution, and private business.

János Dobri (23 November 1914, Brașov – 1 October 1990, Cluj-Napoca) was a Transylvanian Hungarian Reformed pastor, scout leader and professor of theology. His father was a train driver and his mother was a housewife. He completed his early studies in the Reformed primary school of Brașov. In 1925 he was enrolled in the Catholic Secondary School of Brașov. In 1934 he was accepted as a student of Reformed Theology in Cluj. In 1939 he was a candidate for a scholarship abroad, but the outbreak of the Second World War prevented him from leaving the country and he was recruited by the army. Then between 1940 and 1941 he served as an assistant pastor in Zalău (ACNSAS, I211500/3, 1–15).

His involvement with the scout movement marked a decisive part of his life. The first Transylvanian scout teams prior to World War I came into being at the initiative of the Reformed church; following the Change of Empires, the Transylvanian scout troops were reorganised relatively late, beginning with the school year of 1922–1923. In the period between 1924 and 1929 scouting activities took place in the framework of the Prince Carol Foundation (Fundația Principelui Carol). Scouting in Transylvania was not a homogeneous and unitary movement. Reformed and Catholic scout teams operated separately. The scout movements of both denominations had their centre in Cluj, and their denominational youth magazines featured a scouting column. The Reformed scouts pursued their activities in parallel with the IKE (Transylvanian YMCA), and had their headquarters at Reformed Theology. Dobri got acquainted with the movement during his school years. From 1930 he was a member of the Romanian Scout Association up to its dissolution in 1938. In 1936 a Romanian national Jamboree was organised in Poiana Brașov where scout troops from neighbouring countries were also invited. This is where Dobri came into contact with the Hungarian scout movement. In 1937 he took part in the camp organised by the Training Staff of Honvéd (Hungarian military) Scout Troop Leaders (Honvédcserkész Őrsvezetők Kiképző Kara – HÖKK) where he gained insight into the organisation and goals of the movement. Upon returning home he became engaged in the education of youth, using Sunday school preparatory sessions as a pretext. He informed the young members of his scout group about the problems faced by Hungarian society (single-child families, land reform, negative German influence) and drew their attention to folk writers (Imre Kovács, Dezső Szabó, Gyula Illyés), encouraging his scouts to read the works of these authors. On 24 January 1937 the scout movement was abolished and replaced by the official youth organisation Straja Țării (Guard of the country). Nevertheless, scout sessions continued in secret. Dobri organised trips and initiated the creation of a folk dance group, and folk song courses began to be organised. In 1939 the local government banned Hungarian students from sports facilities. Dobri purchased an empty lot in Cluj where he also supervised the construction of a sports field. After the Second Vienna Award (by which northern Transylvania came under Hungarian rule), from October 1940 until March 1944 he was a member of the Hungarian Scout Association, and as the second-in-command of the 9th Transylvanian Scout District he led a section of group leaders known as The Circle of Patrol Leaders from Hárshegy (Hárshegyi Őrsvezetők Köre). In 1941 he attended a five-week retraining course at the ninth post hospital in Cluj. On 1 January 1942 he was appointed a military chaplain. In the period between 1941 and 1943 he was the training consultant of Levente (the official boys’ youth organisation in Hungary at the time) group leaders aged 14–16, but he was also entrusted with the training of young theology student leaders in Cluj. It was under his supervision that a scout park was established on Lombi Hill in Cluj, funded by civil organisations and associations based in Cluj. This park was used for purposes of scout leader training and camping. In the summer of 1943 when the scout movement began to display signs of adherence to Nazi ideology, he ceased to be active in scouting with some help from reformed bishop János Vásárhelyi (Jánosi 2017).

In February 1944 he was recruited into the army. Beginning with April, as the head protestant chaplain of the divisional brigade of the Royal Hungarian 27th Szekler Light Division of Târgu Mureș he held the rank of first lieutenant serving first on the Galician and then on the Northern Transylvanian front. On 17 October 1944 Dobri was taken prisoner by the Soviets in Baia Mare (Berekméri 2015, 222). In 1945 Dobri was recruited by the newly established anti-fascist Lajos Kossuth Regiment; however, since in the meantime the war had ended, the unit sent to the front was transformed into a labour squadron. For almost two years Dobri worked in the tram garage of Ivanovo (Russia), and later in the workshop of the local drama theatre. In September, 1946 he was transferred to an officer camp near Riga. Here he attended Russian language courses and took an active part in the cultural programs. He returned home on 23 June 1948 (ACNSAS, I211500/2, 25).

Following his release from Russian detention, until April 1949 he served as an assistant pastor in the Cluj–Orașul de Jos parish. He became a registered member of the Hungarian People’s Union (Uniunea Populară Maghiară), and also became a member of the Romanian Association for Strengthening Relations with the Soviet Union (ARLUS) as well as of the Russian–Romanian translators’ group. In September–November of 1948 he made translations from Russian for the Cluj left-wing daily newspaper Világosság. As of 1 May 1949 he was invited to teach at the department of “Russian Language and History of the Eastern Church” at the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj. Until 15 May 1955 he worked as a substitute teacher, and then, between 16 May 1955 and 30 March 1957 he functioned as a visiting regular lecturer. He obtained his PhD degree on 29 December 1949. His literary activities include the translation into Hungarian of Russian literary works, shorter studies and papers (ACNSAS, I211500/3 142).

He was forced to interrupt his activity as a teacher on several occasions due to short periods of arrest. Already from November, 1948 the Securitate was monitoring former scout leaders because of their previous activity within the scout movement. The Cluj Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Interior began to conduct serious investigations into the so-called HÖKK case in March, 1951. Dobri was arrested on 3 July 1951. Since investigators in Târgu Mureș played a major role in the handling of the case, he was transferred to the sphere of competence of the Mureș regional authorities as ordered from Bucharest. On 7 December 1951 the Cluj Military Court passed sentence in the case of a group of four members. The third defendant, János Dobri was sentenced to six months of correctional prison as well as a fine of 2,000 lei on charges of public instigation (intention to reorganise the scout movement).  He was released from the Cluj Court prison on 29 December 1951 (ACNSAS, P217/7; AANP, FMP, János Dobri).

On 1 April 1952 Dobri was restored to his position at the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj. However, on 8 April 1952 the HÖKK case was reopened by the 8th Directorate of Criminal Investigations, which considered that the sentence passed in this case was not in conformity with the severity of the crime, an opinion which was expressed in a written report sent to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office of the Romanian People’s Republic. On 30 January 1953, Dobri was arrested again. On 23 October 1953, the Military Court of Orașul Stalin (Brașov) sentenced him to one year and two months of correctional prison and the payment of legal expenses to the amount of 100 lei on charges of public instigation. However, since a period of eleven months and twenty-nine days – the duration of the original sentence no. 982/1951 plus the time spent in pre-trial detention – was subtracted from this sentence, his order for release was issued relatively early, on 27 January 1954. He served time as a prisoner in the Gherla and Jilava jails and the Cluj court prison, but he was also used as part of the labour force in Onești and Borzești (ACNSAS, P217/2).

Although an appeal was not filed before 11 February 1954, Dobri was already able to resume his activity as a professor as of 1 February. Following his third arrest on 21 March 1957 his photos were removed, on orders from above, from three boards of merit featuring theology graduates between 1950 and 1953; they were replaced by patterns. In 2009, upon the request of the congregation of Cluj–Dâmbul Rotund the three photos were restored to their original places (Jánosi 2017).

The Hungarian revolution of 1956 generated a wave of sympathy among Hungarians in Transylvania and this foreshadowed later retribution from the Romanian side. Basically, the term “Transylvanian Hungarian ’56” does not necessarily denote people’s anti-regime manifestations in October–November 1956, but rather the retribution process between 1956 and 1966, concentrated mainly on so-called group trials. Among these, the most significant were those cases of high treason which also raised the issue of Transylvania’s adherence. Such was the case János Dobri also became involved in. In show-trial that unfolded the charges were based on the plan elaborated by István Dobai, a jurist, aimed at solving the Transylvanian problem – the issue of territorial affiliation –, which was transmitted by Dobai to several people in Hungary during the revolution and which he intended to forward to the UN as well. This draft was later referred to in the court records and in specialised literature as the “UN-memorandum.” Dobri, arrested on 29 March 1957, was sentenced to six years correctional imprisonment and a further three years of forfeiture of rights and confiscation of total assets on charges of offence against the social order (instigated by typing and distributing poems). He served his sentence in the Cluj Court prison, in the Gherla penitentiary, in the Danube Delta and the settlements pertaining to the Danube–Black Sea canal – Grind, Salcia, Luciu-Giurgeni, Grădina, Ostrov, Periprava, Fetești –, and on the prison hulks known as Ileni Levendi and Gironde. By virtue of Gov. Decree no. 5/1963 he was pardoned on 28 January 1963 (Dávid 2006; P104/1-7).

In 1943 Dobri married Klára Czira, a district nurse who herself came from a clergy family. They raised six children, whose births were determined by the sequence of detentions and arrests. The status of political prisoner stigmatised and unfavourably affected all members of the family. Although from time to time it did not appear to be so because of the politically adaptable attitudes of the ecclesiastical elite, the preserving, family-aiding role of the Church is indisputable. The Dobri family lived in Cluj in the building of the church district (Kogălniceanu 29), exempted from payment of rent. The vicinity of theology professors made it possible for these professors to offer occasional help for the family. When the head of the family was taken away, Professor András Nagy organised charity actions. Help was also received from Saxon theology professors. However, after the good intentions displayed at the beginning, these good-doers gradually disappeared and started to avoid the Dobri family for fear of negative consequences, which filled the family with bitterness (statement of András Dobri).

As so many times before, on 2 February 1963 János Dobri returned home to find altered circumstances. This time he had to adapt to the changed elite within the Cluj church district. In the early 1960s, the elections of bishops within the Oradea and Cluj Reformed church districts were already controlled by the one-party state; in both cases persons were assigned to the highest position within the clergy  – Sándor Búthi and Gyula Nagy – whose previous lives and activities were a safe enough guarantee of Party-controlled church government (Jánosi 2015). Dobri’s social reintegration was made difficult by the three-year forfeiture of rights imposed upon him by virtue of the sentence of November 1957. Although he even submitted a written request to the Protestant Theological Institute asking to be restored to his previous position as a professor, his request was rejected on the grounds that he could not fill any position as a public official due to his former indictment. Following his release he worked for a few days at the national post office and then he was employed by the Chimica factory as a worker in the bakelite department. His scarce financial means made it necessary for him to undertake upholstery work as well. When his indictment was suspended, from 1 February 1965 he became a part-time clerk in the deanery of the Cluj Reformed Diocese. His activity as a pastor reached fulfilment in the Cluj–Dâmbul Rotund parish, where he served from 1 April 1969 until 30 October 1985 (ACNSAS, I211500/1).

According to the informative records in his file, the mapping by the secret police of János Dobri’s activity as a pastor between 1963 and 1989 was performed along two paths: 1. Primarily they focused on his everyday activity as a pastor and the impact of his activity within the Church 2. They also tried to uncover his international relations, which involved monitoring by informants who had travelled abroad for various reasons (international theological conferences, family visits, etc.) as well as the methodical observation of the pastor’s family guests from abroad (ACNSAS, I211500/1–7). Following his release from prison, due to his anti-regime and “Hungarian nationalist” remarks he was observed by the Securitate with the help of the informant network existing within the clergy. On 3 June 1967 a verification file was opened in the case. Besides mail interception and investigation efforts, on 25 April 1968 they also opened an observation file on his name, primarily due to his “nationalist” manifestations mentioned in the informant reports. His position as a deanery clerk allowed him to gain direct insight and he was not afraid to comment on leaders of the Reformed church and theology professors who proved willing to make compromises to please the system, nor was he hesitant to express his views regarding the treatment of Transylvanian Hungarians treated as second-hand citizens and the relations between the Romanian and Hungarian states. His views did not represent an impediment in obtaining a passport and spending time in Hungary between 5 and 23 December 1968 on the occasion of a death in the family. As was only natural, his international contacts with the charity organisations Palatinus and Caritas proved to be “justifiable”; it became clear that he had not been involved in subversive activities and that the real reasons behind his “misinterpretable” affirmations were his personal and professional dissatisfactions. On 18 March 1969 the closing of the observation file kept under the cover-name of “Dunca Ioan” was approved (ACNSAS, I211500/1).

Nevertheless, Dobri remained under close observation. He obtained a tourist passport for Hungary and Czechoslovakia. He and his wife returned home from the trip abroad in December, 1969. In a report dated February 28, 1970, the Hungarian state security services informed the State Security General Council about Dobri’s activity in Hungary (ACNSAS, I211500/4). As a result of the note, on 11 March 1970 the 1st Directorate issued an order for cooperation in the Dobri case between the competent authorities in Cluj and Bucharest and for the processing of the relevant material in a ninety-day work file. On 11 March 1971 the Securitate ordered the opening of another observation file on Dobri. As a direct cause they mention the “training” of religious dissidence as well as his contacts, deemed negative, with “reactionary” Hungarian emigrants. They considered it as highly suspicious that on the occasion of visits paid to him by Reformed pastors from Hungary Dobri sometimes accompanied his guests across the country and on other occasions made suggestions as to the programmes of their visits, so that they could compare and draw conclusions regarding the situation of Reformed Church members living in Hungary and Romania. On 8 February 1973, in the “Dunca Ioan” observation case the 4th Bureau of the 1st Department of Domestic Intelligence within the Ministry of Interior’s Cluj County Inspectorate drew up the action plan which, though subsequently updated at intervals of three to six months, determined the operations of the Department and set the operational guidelines until February 1989, according to the archival records. The action plan set forth the monitoring of Dobri’s activity as a pastor, the mapping of his contacts both in and outside Romania, and the acquisition of evidence to support the allegations. Taking into consideration the weakness of the informant network, the Securitate demanded the involvement of colleagues, elders and students from Dâmbul Rotund attending catechism courses, but also resorted to scheduled meetings, agent-provocateurs and “presents” intended to facilitate interceptions. The observation was extended to the pastor’s sons and daughters who were also entered in the register. Besides his extensive foreign contacts it was soon discovered that Dobri did everything he could to ensure the religious education of the underage members of his parish and took a series of steps in order to stimulate attendance at catechism courses. He doubled the number of religious services and allotted considerable time to family visits. It serves as a brilliant example for Dobri’s effectiveness that at Christmas 1973. as many as sixty-two children recited religious poems in the church. Moreover, he disregarded Decree no. 18 of the Ministerial Council, which stipulated his obligation to immediately report to his church superiors whenever Western aid was received or contacts with foreign citizens were established. His first warning occurred on 24 April 1974 (ACNSAS, I211500/4-6).

In the 1970s the Securitate attempted in the first place to contain and positively influence the pastor of Dâmbul Rotund. However, from 1980 the aim was to isolate him within the Church. A newly emerged case proved an excellent pretext in this respect. In the summer of 1980 Dobri offered to help Tamás Jenei, Reformed pastor of Bacău, to obtain his driver’s license in Cluj. As in February and March of 1980 Jenei did not pass the test due to chauvinism, he turned to Dobri for help. The latter issued a certificate confirming that his colleague was a pastor in the Dâmbul Rotund parish. Jenei then submitted a written request to be allowed to take the test in Cluj since he was working and temporarily residing there. The irregularity – the address and place of work provided by Jenei did not match those in the register – was not discovered until after he had passed the test. On 30 December 1980 the Cluj Law Court, by virtue of Sentence no. 2076/1980 sentenced Tamás Jenei to ten months of public work to be served on a construction site, and gave János Dobri a six-month suspended prison sentence with payment of legal expenses. Although, as a consequence of this case the Securitate expected a loss of credibility regarding Dobri’s person among both among the members of his parish and his fellow pastors, this did not happen (ACNSAS, I211500/4).

The monitoring continued even after Dobri’s retirement on 1 November 1985. He was warned again in August 1988. This measure was considered necessary because in the course of 1988 Dobri had publicly voiced his sympathy with the “anti-Romanian” actions taken by Hungary. All this coincided with the revival of his foreign contacts: he was visited again by former fellow scouts living in exile, by members of the HEKS charity organisation and by Dutch pastors. On top of that, Dobri also welcomed guests from Hungary on a regular basis. He still received numerous letters and packages by mail, and he continued consistently to pass on aid packages and medicine deliveries to pastors based in the Cluj area (ACNSAS, I211500/6).

In the fall of 1988 Dobri suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and was left with hemiplegia. After this, his health was continuously failing and he began to face difficulties speaking and moving, which limited his contacts with “elements displaying hostile conduct.” At the age of 75, half paralysed, he was no longer considered a threat to public order, and therefore on 1 June 1989 Lieutenant-Colonel József Ungváry suggested the closing of the observation file on him set up in 1971. Ungváry summarised the results of the eighteen-year monitoring. In Dobri’s case the Securitate had resorted to the informant network, mail interception and street shadowing. Dobri had been a target of interceptions and investigations, and he had been subjected to warning and “positive influencing.” In quite a few cases he had been declared persona non grata among his contacts. In the second half of the 1980s they had tried to annihilate his foreign contacts as well: four foreign delegates had been warned through the passport department, two had been declared persona non grata, and others had had their stay in Romania interrupted. Among his palpable accomplishments Ungváry mentioned the warnings issued in 1974 and 1988, together with the suspended prison sentence issued in 1980. The proposal to close the file was approved “on order” by Department I/B that same day and the closed file was handed over to the Bureau of Information and Documentation (B.I.D.) according to protocol.

János Dobri died on 1 October 1990. His life story, besides featuring almost the full set of accessories used by Communist repression, serves also as a role model for keeping one’s dignity as a member of a national minority under the totalitarian regime. He always subordinated his relationships with representatives of the government to moral principles that he consistently complied with. Due to his relentlessness he had to confront the authorities more frequently than his fellow pastors did on average, but on the other hand, beginning with the 1970s he became an authentic figure with a “martyr’s aura” in foreign public opinion. He became the permanent target of official visits from the West, the continual addressee of deliveries of medicines and other packages, who supervised and facilitated support for Transylvanian Reformed pastors for decades. His authenticity and endurance in the eyes of Western communities can also be linked to his most significant achievement as a pastor, the construction of the Church of Hope, which in the context of the Reformed church was a unique accomplishment during the last two decades of the regime. On the community level, Dobri’s example provides an alternative in a world where cooperation with the Securitate was a tacitly accepted part of everyday life, one which infiltrated into the life of families and became one of the decisive factors of career building. In the light of the compromising approach displayed by the church elite of the time, his attitude is even more prominent, securing him a place also among the members of Transylvanian Hungarian dissidents. His story is an example of successful survival that disproves and opposes the line of argument according to which the individual is a victim of the system, forced to resort to compromises in order to survive (Jánosi 2017).

Bruno Dobrić was born in Pula in 1957. He has worked as a librarian in the Research Library of Pula (today's University Library of Pula) since 1985; he is a library advisor and current head of the University Library of Pula. He has a Ph.D. in Information Sciences and is studying the Austro-Hungarian period in Pula. He has been a president of the Viribus Unitis Society for Research into the Imperial and Royal Navy (k.u.k. Marine) in Pula since 1999, and he also served as president of the Istrian Library Association for two years.

Zvonimir Dobrović (Zagreb, 1978) is an activist, curator, and festival director from Croatia. He is the founder and artistic director of Domino (Queer Zagreb), one of the largest independent art organizations in Croatia, responsible for running several festivals such as Queer New York International Art Festival, Queer Zagreb, and Perforations. Through different platforms he curates over 100 performances annually, staged all over the world. Dobrović has also edited several books, including Oral History of Homosexuality in Croatia (Dobrović i Bosanac 2007).