COURAGE

connecting collections

Makavejev is one of the founders of the Black Wave, a movement of Yugoslav cinematography. His movies criticize the rotten nature of society, from both communist and capitalist influence. As a supporter of the psychologist Wilhelm Reich, Makavejev often composes his studies into his films. His film Misterije organizma [Mysteries of Organism] (1971) pays homage to Reich'srevolutionary-psychology, never widely recognized.Though the film was banned in Yugoslavia soon after its premiere it was screened again a decade later, in the 1980s.

Makavejev has been the editor of magazines including Student, Književne novine, and Danas. He has also written film reviews and articles on social for many publications, including Polja. In 1958, he published a scenario,“for Godless ballet with pantomime,” as he called it,under the title “Hardboiled Hearts”(Polja, Issue 34, 1958),  as a satirical comment on the cultural situation in Yugoslavia. In his later texts, such as “A Bit of Man-eater, A Bit of Philistine”" (Polja, Issue 45, April 1960), and “Young Intellectual Today” (Polja, Issue 49/50, December 1960), Makavejev uses satire to critique Yugoslav society, especially its youth.

Makavejev emigrated to the United States in the early 1970s, where he lectured at Harvard University. He then returned to Serbia and currently lives in Belgrade.

Kazimir Malevich (b. 1879 in Kyiv and d. 1935 in Leningrad) is a leading member of the “Russian” avant-garde. Malevich was born to Polish parents in Kyiv, living in villages in the Ukrainian countryside until the age of 17. Art historians argue that Malevich’s early life had a deep impression on his work, his use of vibrant colors and his engagement with primitivism being two of the clearest examples. One of the pioneers of abstract art, Malevich was a central figure in a succession of avant-garde movements during the period of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and immediately after. The style of severe geometric abstraction with which he is most closely associated, suprematism, was a leading force in the development of constructivism, the repercussions of which continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. Under increasing pressure from the authorities in Leningrad, Malevich traveled abroad, after the government closed the Leningrad GINK-hUK (State Institute of Artistic Culture) the year before. He participated in several exhibitions in Berlin and Warsaw in 1927 and sought for a way to remain abroad outside the reach of the increasingly conservative Soviet leadership. The Polish authorities denied him refugee status, believing him to be a true Bolshevik, even though his work was being suppressed along with that of other avant-garde artists. A group of Ukrainian officials and artists in Kyiv came to Malevich's aid, among them Ivan Vrona, who offered Malevich a teaching post at the Kyiv Art Institute, where the former served as rector. Malevich’s work was suppressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s and remained little known during the following two decades. The reassessment of his reputation in the West from the mid-1950s was matched by the renewed influence of his work on the paintings of Ad Reinhardt and on developments such as Zero, Hard-edge painting and Minimalism. 

István Malgot (1941-) is a sculptor, puppeteer, and director. He is a founding member of the Orfeo group.

In 1964, he began his studies at the University of Fine Arts. Two years later, he got in touch with young undergraduates, who were enthusiastic about Maoism and were grouped around György Pór. They criticized the Hungarian communist system and contended that reform was necessary and inevitable. In the so-called Maoist trial, Malgot was given a suspended sentence, but the case was a warning to him.

Sculpture was not the most important field in his activity. He directed theatre performances for decades. He often used masks and puppets, and he combined their visual effects with the human body. In 1969, he founded Orfeo at the university with others. Orfeo was based not only on artistic activity but also on the criticism of the communist system from the left. The members of the group wanted to have an impact on society with the help of art.

In 1972, Orfeo was attacked by the communist cultural leadership and critical articles were published in the central communist press. The accusations were focused on the alleged dissemination of hostile, Western ideology and the immoral lives of the members of the community. The author of the article in the journal of the Hungarian Young Communist League, entitled Hungarian Youth, condemned Malgot as the main guilty party, who allegedly wanted to cut children off from their parents and intended them to create a big family, a commune. He wrote that Malgot broke the rules of social coexistence. In the end, the prosecution did not penalize the members of the group, but they were banned from every community centre. István Malgot and Tamás Fodor got a notice indicating that they were being accused of spreading antisocial views.

Božidar Mandić was born on 1 January 1952 in Novi Sad. He was part of the avantgarde scene in the late 1960s and during the 1970s that gathered around Youth Tribune, Index and Polja. He was a member of the groups January, February, March and, subsequently, Intima, an informal urban hippy commune in Novi Sad.

He was among the youngest members of Youth Tribune and he established the group Stinking Bill and Company (Smrdljivi Bil i kompanija) in 1970 with Vladimir Mandić (unrelated). Subsequently, Božidar initiated The Academy of Fine Arts in Shed (Likovna akademija u šupi) as a reaction to the educational system. Božidar's significant performances aimed at shocking people and raising their cultural awareness. The majority of these performances were inadequately or not at all documented.

He says about himself: “I did not belong to schooled art. Rather I made a leap from a conceptual family into an elementary culture and ‘wildism’ [divljizam] – aesthetics which signify the beginning of a new civilization, even if I'm the only one for whom it holds significance.” (Milenković, 2015, p. 105)

He came to age in the company of the members of Youth Tribune and, in the words of Nebojša Milenković, he witnessed “the brutal blow they suffered from the communist bureaucracy”.  In the 1970s the alternative counterculture operated on communal principles and Božidar, together with those banned from Youth Tribune organized an urban commune at 18 Tesla Street, Novi Sad, because all means of institutional action were cut off. The commune was occasionally raided by police, as they were seen as drug addicts and as a danger to society.

The art of Božidar Mandić in the 1970s focused on creating ‘incidents’ and ‘spaces of incident’ in traditional culture. Vujica Rešin Tucić coined the term “tradition of the avantgarde” which refers to the concept of tradition and acknowledges the right of every person to choose the tradition to which they belong, place of birth notwithstanding.

In the commune on Tesla Street, Božidar and Braila, his spouse, hosted vegetarian lunches every Friday at 3PM and invited friends for conversation, being one of Božidar’s art forms. After being advised to leave this address by the police, Božidar and Braila purchased property on Rudnik mountain in 1977 near the village of Brezovica and they moved to the forest with their newborn daughter Ista. Božidar made his alternative way of practicing and living art into immediate reality. They established the Family of Clear Streams commune, or, as Božidar likes to call it “The Institute of Freedom Under the Open Sky”, where he still lives and makes art. He is active in the fields of literature, alternative theatre, theatrical directing and journalism.

Dušan Mandić graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in 1981, where he went on to complete postgraduate studies under Professor Janez Bernik. Between 1980 and 1982, he served as artistic director of the ŠKUC Gallery programme. In 1983, he became a member of the Irwin group. In 1984, he joined the wider art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). NSK consisted of the music band Laibach, Sisters Scipion Nasice Theatre (today Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung) and the design department New Collectivism.

Source: DUŠAN MANDIĆ 1980-1982 | Galerija ŠKUC, http://www.galerijaskuc.si/about/history/dusan-mandic-1980-1982/ (accessed February 11, 2017).

Mihai Manea (b.  5 April 1955, Bucharest) was educated at a vocational school. In 1982, together with a number of colleagues, he founded a rock band, Barock Group, without the knowledge of the Party Committee in the factory where he was employed at the time, the Machine Tools and Aggregates Plant Bucharest (IMUAB). Initiating and pursuing such musical activities was not forbidden, but  it required the approval in principle of the local Party organization. “The people in the plant, especially those from the Party who gave approval in the factory for artistic activities, found out about us directly from the newspaper. But there was no trouble. On the contrary, they immediately adopted us, they were proud of us. There were all sorts in the Romanian Communist Party.” This may be explained by the fact that all communist plants had to send participants from among their employees to the national Cântarea României  (Song of Romania) festival. Founded in 1976, and conceived as a festival for amateurs and professionals, Cântarea României  in fact destroyed professional standards and promoted shows eulogizing the Romanian Communist Party and its leadership, finally becoming an important vehicle for the personality cult of Nicolae Ceaușescu. At the same time, the local phases were much less ideologized than those at county or national level, so for many young people, taking part in this festival was a welcome break from their regular workplace activity (D. Petrescu 2010, 304–307).

In his employment card, Mihai Manea was categorized at IMUAB as “cutting-tool operator,” denoting a highly skilled worker. It is a trade that he has practised very little, because in fact a large part of his professional activity has been connected with the production of and technical support for numerous concerts. For a short time, he also worked at the Research Institute for Household Articles and Toys in Bucharest. Like many other young people, Mihai Manea had multiple ambitions: he toyed with science fiction writing, frequenting several clubs (and chairing one such writers’ group, which operated within the IMUAB), with a sporting career (he is a former rugby-player), and, for a short time, with cinema (directing short and very short films as a member of cinema clubs in Bucharest).

At the same plant where he was employed until 1990, Mihai Manea was the coordinator, in both the technical and the editorial senses, of the amplification post through which “cultural-artistic programmes” were transmitted for the benefit of the institution. “It’s interesting that they let me deal with it, that they had the trust to leave something like that in my hands – and I say this because I wasn’t a Party member. Only when I was young, I was, for a short time, a member of the Union of Communist Youth, but I was never a full member of the Romanian Communist Party. I kept slipping through the net.” In communist Romania, all young people aged between 14 and 30 were in the Union of Communist Youth (UTC), but of these only some became members of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). In other words, inclusion in the UTC was obligatory and automatic, but PCR membership was conditional. In the 1980s, the selection criteria were lowered so much that only those who did not want to did not become Party members. Most joined out of opportunism, because belonging to the PCR gave access to many privileges, from the allocation of an apartment to approval for going abroad as a tourist.

For more than two and a half decades, Mihai Manea has worked as a technician at the Romanian Youth National Art Centre, an institution under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, and he continues to maintain his passion for music and concerts, including at a professional level. It was basically only after the fall of communism that Mihai Manea’s life-long passion turned from amateurism to profession. “As young rebel I fingered an instrument too… the bass, but satisfaction came only when I began to understand that you can be a creator if you are part of the technical team. And so I moved on to pressing buttons, and gradually had the chance to work in big musical productions. You know, behind the scenes, when you’re inside the show, there’s a lot of adrenaline and sensations that can’t be described in words. Behind the scenes there’s a lot of work and there’s an army of people who always have something to do. There are thousands of metres of cables for sound and electricity, there are scaffolds and cranes, everywhere you find amplifiers, sound processors, and lighting controls. You come across hundreds of boxes, ventilators, smoke generators, pyrotechnics, gas for flames, scenery, and there are people who know about all these things and work with them while taking care for the safety of others. On the stage, on the roof, and under the stage, nothing is placed at random. How could I describe this beautiful madness? There aren’t words enough to express what you feel when you’re there, with people who have to make it all work.” Thus Mihai Manea concludes his confession about what is both his passion and his profession. Like many others who developed various hobbies in their free time by speculating on the freedoms permitted by the regime in the grey zone of tolerance, Mihai Manea represents a model of the post-December 1989 transformation of a personal collecting passion, in this case derived from his passion for music, into a profession.

Vlastimil Marek je český alternativní hudebník, překladatel a publicista. Celoživotně se svými aktivitami zaměřuje především na východní filozofii, je zenový budhista a propagátor hudby New Age. Marek byl v 70. a 80. letech dlouhodobým aktivistou Jazzové sekce a do roku 1984 působil i v Sekci mladé hudby. Publikoval v periodikách obou sekcí články, recenze i překlady. Na přelomu 70. a 80. let absolvoval pobyty v zenových centrech v Polsku a Japonsku. Rozsáhlá byla jeho činnost přednášková, např. cyklus přednášek v knihovně Jazzové sekce v roce 1985. V červenci 1986 vyšel v nové edici Jazzové sekce Dveře (č. 1) úvodní Markův článek o hnutí New Age (Přežije sitár rok 2000?). Stejnojmenný hudební pořad připravoval s Emilem Pospíšilem. Byl členem hudebních skupin Extempore, Elektrobus, Amalgam, MCH Band. Hrál také s Jakubem Nohou (folk), Zdeňkem Hráškem (jazz). Od roku 1968 vydával i své vlastní časopisy pro přátele, a to nákladem pěti kusů, tzv. Markoviny. Samizdatově vydal rovněž desítky textů a překladů s duchovní a filozofickou tematikou, z nichž většina je uložena v knihovně Libri prohibiti. V srpnu 1986 byl vzat StB do vazby pro pořádání mírového gongového koncertu. Souběžně s tím byl obviněn pro údajné „poškozování zájmů republiky v cizině“. Následná žaloba byla vystavěna na základě jeho článku „Dopis z Prahy“ pro časopis Kyoto Journal (prosinec 1984), ve kterém se vyjádřil o omezených možnostech existence nezávislé kultury v tehdejším Československu. Odsouzen byl ke čtyřměsíčnímu trestu odnětí svobody s podmíněným odkladem na jeden rok. Jeho trestní stíhání sledoval Výbor na obranu nespravedlivě stíhaných (VONS), který o něm opakovaně informoval ve svých „sděleních“. Své duchovní postoje, vzpomínky a bibliografii shrnuje Marek např. v knize Český zen a umění naslouchat (1994).

The founder of the Collection of Political Transition, József Marelyin Kiss, historian and sociologist, was born on the 24^th of February, 1953, in Csepel. He spent his childhood in Tököl where he completed primary school. He graduated from the secondary school in Csepel (1967–1971), worked first as a teacher in Szigethalom, and then after the years of (compulsory) military service he was admitted to the Lajos Kossuth University (KLTE) in Debrecen in 1973. He received his (MA-equivalent) degree in history and geography from the university in 1978. He worked as a teaching assistant for the Department of Scientific Socialism (within the Institute of Marxism-Leninism) at KLTE between 1978 and 1980, then lectured on medical sociology at the Institute of Marxism of the Medical University of Debrecen. He was given permission to leave this position on the condition that he attend an intensive two-year course of the Department of Sociology of Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, which was an accredited postgraduate educational institution in the Buda Castle. This period of education and activities spiked ​his interest in the opposition and began with the revelation of his discovery of samizdat writings, his further studies in sociology, and his acquaintance with some of the distinguished members of the cultural opposition. In the case of his life career as a sociologist and contemporary historian, his cultural opposition was expressed in the topics he scrutinized, their fact-finding characteristics being contrary to the official ideology of the communist regime. Encouraged personally by István Márkus, in 1983 he joined ​the rural village sociological research project led by Márkus and István Fekete in Homokmégy, and then he took over as head of the project. The early 1980s were a remarkable phase of activity, documented in the Collection of Political Transition, resulting in the rise of oppositional attitudes. Several social scientists who were regarded as opposition personalities contributed to these village research projects. Some of the documents of the Collection are linked to the rural sociology research.

In his courses at the Medical University of Debrecen, he lectured on deviant behavior and poverty and provided research documentation by István Kemény and Zsuzsa Ferge to his students, “asking them not to pass this samizdat stuff to the police who otherwise already were well aware of them.” His career and research activities are related to “cultural opposition” in terms of his work as a sociologist and historian of contemporary Hungarian history. His research that revealed the facts of how Hungarian society functioned in reality under communism were in opposition to the prevailing socialist ideology and the official views of the ruling party.

Alexei Marinat (b. 24 May 1925, Valea Hoțului village, MASSR, currently Dolyn'ske, Odessa region, Ukraine; d. 17 May 2009, Chișinău) was a prominent Moldovan writer active in the Soviet period, best known for his personal diary critical of the Soviet regime and for his novel about life in Siberia, inspired by his experience as an inmate in a labour camp during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He also held consistent pro-Romanian views, which made him suspect in the eyes of Soviet authorities. On 27 May 1947, while a student in Chișinău, Marinat was arrested by the KGB after the discovery of his private diary, Eu și Lumea (I and the World), in which he expressed thoughts critical of the Soviet regime. He was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour in a closed labour camp and was deported to Siberia. He was freed on 5 November 1955, by a decision of the Odessa Military Tribunal, and returned to Moldova. However, he was never legally rehabilitated, not even in the late Soviet period. Although his civil rights were reinstated, he was kept under the surveillance of the secret police and was considered a potentially subversive person. During his trial in 1947, he was accused of having collaborated with the “Romanian-Fascist” authorities during the Second World War. He originated from Transnistria, a territory temporarily occupied by Romanian troops in 1941–1944, which aggravated his predicament, because he had held a minor administrative post under Romanian occupation. The inquiry concerning his case was repeated three times (in 1947–48, 1955, and 1989). On each occasion, his collaboration with the Romanian administration during the Second World War was confirmed on the basis of his official position at that time. He was accused not only of persecuting his fellow villagers who were members or sympathisers of the Communist Party, but also of certain hostile acts against the villagers who belonged to the Jewish community. It is not clear to what extent he was indeed involved in the deportations of Jews, although the papers in his file hint at that possibility. This uncertainty also reflects the USSR’s ambiguous policy towards the Holocaust. After his return to Chișinău in 1955, Marinat remained critical of the regime in his literary works and public pronouncements. He was thus regarded with suspicion by the Soviet authorities, in spite of the fact that he was not directly involved in any oppositional activity after his return from Siberia. These suspicions increased after the publication of his 1966 novel Urme pe prag (Footprints on the Threshold), which drew on his earlier experience as a prisoner in Siberia and, according to Marinat’s own assessment, was barely publishable by Soviet standards. The case of Alexei Marinat is a curious example of a person who defied the rules of the regime and did not fit neatly into the antagonistic “camps” struggling for power within the local writers’ milieu. He remained an independent and somewhat marginal figure because of his refusal to exchange his relative personal autonomy for the privileges bestowed by the state on his more loyal colleagues. However, his opposition never turned into open rebellion. This ambiguity defined Marinat’s personality and career both before and after 1990.

Adrian Marino was a Romanian literary historian and critic, who succeeded in gaining a notable international visibility, despite the fact – truly unique in communist Romania – that he had never worked for a state institution. Born in Iaşi on 5 September 1921 in a middle class family, Marino, at his parents’ initiative, attended a military high school, and experience he remembered as traumatizing because of his incapacity to adapt to the principles of military life. His early intellectual formation took place at the end of the 1930s and the mid 1940s, when he attended classes at the universities of Iaşi and Bucharest. His literary debut occurred in 1939, in Jurnalul literar (The Literary Magazine), when he was still a high school student. Professor and literary critic George Călinescu noticed him as a student, and Marino became his teaching assistant at the University of Bucharest in the period 1944–1947. George Călinescu’s option to support the new communist regime for opportunistic reasons, as well as Marino’s criticism of his professor’s vision – which dominated literary history and criticism in communist Romania – led to a separation from Călinescu and the end of his activity at the University of Bucharest in 1947. In 1945, Marino became a member of the youth organization of the National Peasants’ Party (PNŢ), one of the dominant parties in the inter-war Romanian political system. In the context of the repression by the communist regime of the so-called “historical parties,” Marino, along with other young members of PNŢ, tried to continue to publish illegally the party newspaper Dreptatea (Justice), and contributed to drafting certain ideological texts for PNŢ. Because of this youthful political activity he was arrested in 1949, and spent eight years in communist political prisons (1949–1957) and six years of house arrest in the Bărăgan (1957–1963).

In 1965, when political prisoners in Romania were gradually being freed and socially reintegrated, Marino was given the right to publish, and in 1969 he was legally rehabilitated. Consequently, he resumed his editorial activity in 1965 with the volume Viaţa lui Alexandru Macedonski (The life of Alexandru Macedonski). In an attempt to make up for his years of detention, he engaged in intense cultural activity in the period 1964–1989, both in Romania and abroad, publishing in 1980 his first book in France at Gallimard Publishing House under the title L'herméneutique de Mircea Eliade. In order to preserve his intellectual freedom, Marino carried out this intense activity outside the institutional framework of the communist state. In this respect, Marino confessed in his memoirs: “I have been since my release from prison (1963) a complete freelancer, with no ‘employment record,’ not listed on any ‘payroll,’ etc.” (Manuscript, 309; Marino 2010, 255). This special situation was made possible by the high royalties paid by the Romanian and foreign publishing houses. In addition, he carried out a vast correspondence with Romanian intellectuals in Romania and abroad, for example, Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Matei Călinescu, and Mircea Carp. In recognition of his cultural activity, Marino received the Herder award in 1985.

After 1989 he asserted himself as an ideologist of the democratisation process in Romania and as a civic activist. In 1990, he founded in Cluj, together with dissident Doina Cornea, the Anti-totalitarian Democratic Front, and he was a founding member of the Association of Professional Writers of Romania, an alternative to the Writers’ Union of Romania, created during the communist regime. In 2010, five years after his death, his memoirs were published under the title Viaţa unui om singur (The life of a lonely man). The publication of these memoirs, which represent a well-structured and virulent attack against intellectual life in communist and post-communist Romania, generated heated debates in the Romanian cultural press.

The debates also covered the topic of opposition to Romanian intellectuals who collaborated with the regime, and raised the problem of Marino’s relationship with the former Securitate. These controversies were initiated by a series of articles published in one of the most important Romanian newspapers in the first half of 2010. The articles were based on information from a file of the Department of External Information (DIE), one of the Romanian secret services during the Ceauşescu period, which stated that Adrian Marino had been an informer and “influence agent” of the Securitate and subsequently of DIE in its actions concerning the Romanian immigration towards the West, in the period 1970–1980. The file in question contained no documents signed by Marino, only reports and notes of the secret service officers concerning Marino’s activity as an informer. These revelations divided Romanian public intellectuals into Marino’s accusers and his defenders. Among the former, Vladimir Tismăneanu stated his disappointment that such a very active public intellectual as Adrian Marino had collaborated in any way with the Securitate. Among the latter, Gabriel Andreescu, former dissident and civic activist, claimed that, in the absence of a signed pledge or of notes signed by Marino, Marino’s true relationship was with the Securitate cannot be evaluated with certainty (Andreescu 2012, 26-28). Marino himself admitted in his memoirs to having discussed and supplied information to certain secret police officers, without signing a pledge: “I only answered certain imperative questions. As many other political prisoners were forced to do. At least, I gave no written statements, as Corneliu Coposu and many others did. Above all, there was no official ‘pledge,’ written, signed, and dated. It was a very special relationship, specific for my category. I couldn’t refuse to answer one question or another. Only that the ‘answer’ had many possible nuances and interpretations; and, from my point of view and that of my interlocutors, it was without any real ‘political’ information, to which I had no access.” (Manuscript, 291; Marino 2010, 239). Given his notoriety, but also the nature of the documents preserved in the archives of the former Securitate, the Marino case represented one of the most significant controversies in post-communist Romania on the topic of the collaboration with the communist secret police. Beyond these debates, Marino’s memoirs remain a detailed confession and one of the most elaborated criticisms concerning the relationship between the intellectual and the authorities in communist Romania.

During the 1960s, Marković was one of the organizers of the Korčula Summer School in the 1960s, and was a member of the council of the philosophical magazine Praxis, which had a critical outlook on Yugoslav society. As a representative of this school of philosophy, he indirectly became one of the main critics of Josip Broz Tito and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Marković published his first texts in Polja in the spring of 1964. His articles, such as “Political Alienation and Self-management” (Polja, Issue  76, October 1964) and “Dialectics of Social Direction” (Polja, Issue 74, May 1964) dealt mainly with critique and ideas of communist development of communism within Yugoslavia. He worked as a strategist and participated indemonstrations at Belgrade University in 1968. In January 1975, alongside other colleagues from the Praxis, Marković was suspended from the Faculty of Philosophy  and later became one of the most prominent dissidents of the time.

György Martin was born on 5 February 1932 in Budapest. Between 1951 and 1955, he was a folk dancer. At the Csokonai Folk Dance Group, where he was active, he was called the “engineer dancer” because his dancing style was very punctual and precise, and he learned the smallest steps, as well. He was studying Hungarian literature, grammar, and ethnography and museum studies at Eötvös Lorand University. His professors were Gyula Ortutay and István Tálasi. Between 1953 and 1956, he worked at the Hungarian Institute of Folk Art [Népművelési Intézet] as a folk dance researcher.

In 1964, he wrote his dissertation. He was a member of the Folk Music Group of the Hungarian Academy of Science [MTA Népzenekutató Csoportja]. Later, he was head of the group. In 1974, he became the scientific leader of the Music Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science [MTA Zenetudományi Intézet]

The writer, poet, and journalist László Távolodó Marton was born in 1956. He graduated from the Széchényi István High School, the last high school in Hungary for boys only. He started his career in 1977 as an educator at the foster home at Megyaszó, a small village one hour from the city of Miskolc. Initially, he was asked to teach geography and biology, but as the position was filled, he taught physical education and handwork and handicrafts instead. Later, he taught mathematics and grammar. He started to work as an educator because it was a field “which did not require strict education, but it provided a service flat.” However, later he completed his studies in higher education and became a full-fledged teacher, even though his studies were interrupted by two years of military service. In the 1980s, he worked as a Hungarian (literature and grammar) and history teacher. During this time, Marton mostly wrote poetry, and he started to work in music journalism. Later, he published several literary, semi-autobiographical novels and short stories over the years, often related to music.

Marton was always interested in music. He was 16 years old when he acquired his first record player, although he could not yet afford to purchase contemporary Western jazz and rock records. He also decided in the 1970s that he would like to be a writer. These two interests were naturally combined in his work as a music journalist. His first writing in this genre was about a concert by the band URH (Ultra Rock Agency) at Kassák klub. While this particular article was not published, Marton did not give up his ambitions. At first, he started to publish in a column led by his friend, Ottó Fenyvesi, of the Novi Sad based magazine Képes Ifjúság. Meanwhile, he continued to pursue his literary ambitions. While these writings were only published years later, he wrote several short stories and poems at the time.

Marton always felt like an outsider. This is where his pseudonym Távolodó (meaning Receding), which was inspired by a poem by Patti Smith, ,comes from. In this move away, the search for the unknown and the uncertain plays as important a part as the feeling of not finding one’s place in the world. This feeling, conveyed by the word receding, pervaded Marton’s whole youth. When he travelled to Australia in the summer of 1983, he planned to stay there. As he was exiled, he moved in with his uncle, who lived in New Zealand for the same reason. However, he eventually came back to Hungary, and when the legendary underground club Fekete Lyuk (Black Hole) opened its doors in 1988, Marton and Tamás Rupaszov became frequent visitors. They started to edit the club’s fanzine under the name Lyukság (Holey Things). Fekete Lyuk was more than a popular nightclub. While the 1980s bore witness to the weakening of political-administrative control, as indeed the very existence of Fekete Lyuk shows, the collapse of the regime was still almost unthinkable. Within this environment, the club provided a rare place for free initiatives. One of these free initiatives was the fanzine Lyukság.

Broņislava Martuževa (1924-2012) and her family started to support the underground resistance against the Soviet regime in October 1945, when contacts with people from the Alliance of Latvian National Partisans (LNPA) were established. In October 1946, after the State Security Ministry (MGB) attempted to arrest her, she started to hide at a farmstead belonging to her family. Her brother dug a hideout under the floor of the house. She continued writing poetry in hiding. In 1950, she started to participate in the production and dissemination of the underground publication Dzimtene (The Motherland), the editor of which was the member of the LNPA Vilis Toms (1925-1951). Broņislava published her poems, and made handwritten copies of the periodical. By February 1951, when she and Toms were arrested, 11 issues of the periodical had been published. Martuževa was sentenced to 25 years in special camps in July 1951. Her sister Magdalēna and her brother Ciprijans received the same sentence for helping her. Her mother Helēna was sentenced to ten years. Vilis Toms was sentenced to death. In 1952, Broņislava was sent to the Ozerlag special camps in Taishet, in the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia. Her mother and sister were released in 1954, Broņislava and Ciprijans in 1956. After her release, Broņislava kept in touch with her fellow inmates, including well-known cultural figures (the translators Milda Grīnfelde and Maija Silmale, the poetess Elza Stērste, etc), and the result was an extensive correspondence. Attempts to publish her poetry were not successful, in part for political reasons, and in 1981 and 1987 she published two poetry books under the name of her relation, the poetess Eva Mārtuža. Broņislava Martuževa became a public figure with the start of the independence movement in the second half of the 1980s, and was respected for her anti-Soviet position, for her uncompromising stance against Soviet power, and for her poetry. Her well-preserved personal papers became a significant testimony to the cultural opposition to Soviet power. She realised this, and in the mid-1990s she started to donate it to the Museum of Literature and Music. 

János Maróthy (1925–2001) was an internationally acknowledged Hungarian Marxist musicologist and one of the key figures of academic research on popular music in socialist Hungary.

He started his career in the late 1940s and found employment in many important musical institutions. He was the head of the Mass Musical Department of the Association of Hungarian Musicians (established in 1949), and an active member of the Association’s Popular Musical Department. He also became the editor of the leading musicological journal Új Zenei Szemle ([New Musical Review]; founded in 1950), in which he published the very first Hungarian socialist realist music reviews that tried to be an example for the ideal music reviews of the future. And in his early scientific work, he tried to popularize the findings of Soviet musicology.

From the late 1950s on, due to the changes occurring in both national and international policy, Maróthy gradually reconsidered the cultural and ideological legacy of the early 1950s and developed his own music historical model, in which musical genres excluded from the traditional music history canon gained particular attention. At that time, he became a research fellow at the Budapest Bartók Archives, a forerunner of the Institute of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. At the end of the 1960s, he was a founding member and leader of the Department of Sociology of Music at the Institute of Musicology.

As one of the first Hungarian propagators of the genre of protest song and pol-beat and an ardent supporter of bottom-up initiatives, Maróthy launched a systematic collection of documents and audio recordings related to these types of music. This collection, along with the partly overlapping workers’ song research, is a good indicator of Maróthy’s role and the directions of his research at the very start of Hungarian popular music studies (in the early 1970s).

Nijolė Maslauskienė is the head of Lithuanian Communist Party (LCP) Documents Archive which is the subdivision of Lithuanian Special Archive. Maslauskienė is a leading expert in LCP archives, she wrote a couple of articles on the history of LCP. She has been working in the archive since 1987.
Nijolė Maslauskienė graduated Vilnius University in 1981 and started her professional career in 1987 in the Archive of the Institute of Communist Party History. Her main research area is the history of Lithuanian Communist Party.
According to Maslauskienė, cultural opposition is a special way of thinking and acting. It is a certain social position taken by a person. These people never protested directly against the Soviet regime. They never criticised the regime openly, for they were not underground activists. The main concern of the 'cultural opposition' was to use legal political ways to preserve Lithuania's national cultural heritage. Maslauskienė does not identify with the cultural opposition herself.
Maslauskienė considers the preservation of documents relating to cultural opposition and the anti-communist movement as being very important. After she was informed about the project, she told interviewers that the staff of the archive would prepare special exhibitions for visitors (students) about the activities of the cultural opposition during the Soviet period.

Theatre historian, editor, lecturer; research assistant at the Department of Theatre Studies at the The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. Employee of the Archive of the Studio Theatre of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Initiated research and publishing projects related to the work of Jerzy Grzegorzewski. Author of publications in Polish proffesional magazines:  "Dialogue", "Theatre", "Contemporary Culture", "Aspirations" and "Dwutygodnik.com".
Supervisor of the Jerzy Grzegorzewski Section, author of monographs based on the archives of the director's work, curator of archival selection at http://jerzygrzegorzewski.net/.