COURAGE

connecting collections

Zdeněk Palcr was a Czech sculptor, restorer and art theoretician. He graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague (1945-1950). After his studies and his compulsory military service he worked as a restorer. He was a member of the Máj 57 (May 57) group, which was inspired by Czech and international modernist traditions. Palcr exhibited his work at all of the group exhibitions until 1964. He also participated in several international symposia and exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was at the New Hall Gallery in Prague in 1970. He also designed film posters. Creating sculptures became a spiritual matter for Palcr, which was why he refused to exhibit his work and why he did not want to make a living through sculpture. From the 1970s he looked at formulation in art theory – his writings were then published in the 1990s.

Jiří Pallas studied technics and, after emigrating, also system engineering. Between 1972 and 1978, he was one of organisers of folk concerts of songwriters within the association “Šafrán” until its elimination by the State Security (StB) at the end of the 1970s. Vladimír Merta, Vlastimil Třešňák, Dagmar Andrtová-Voňková or Jaroslav Hutka were also members of the association. Pallas and his wife were some of the first signatories to Charter 77 in 1976 and were forced to leave Czechoslovakia in 1977, due to StB’s operation “Asanace”. After his emigration to Sweden, Pallas founded and run the record label “Šafrán 78” between 1979 and 1985. It released LPs by singers and groups banned in Czechoslovakia, as well as well-known recording of Havel’s play “Audience” with actor Pavel Landovský. Pallas was also politically active in exile; he collaborated with “Výbor 21. srpna”, an organisation, activities of which focused on backing resistance against the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and where the initiative for creating “Fond na podporu Charty 77” (Støttefondet for Charter 77) started.

Boryana Panayotova is the younger daughter of Sevdalina and Panayot Panayotov and the
sister of Teodora Panayotova. Teodora and Boryana grew up in an environment of
intellectuals critical of the communist regime. Born in Sofia, they also lived
in Chepelare, where their mother was a teacher, and their father, Panayot
Panayotov, was director of the Vassil Dechev Secondary High School. As
children, Boryana and Teodora witnessed the innovative and creative activity of
their parents, and developed critical thinking and self-reflection.

Boryana Panayotova graduated from the University of Sofa in history. She is the
author of textbooks and university-level pedagogical materials. Boryana
Panayotova today lives in Canada and works as a lecturer at Université Laval
(Québec City) and Université Laurentienne (Sudbury).

Born in Shumen in 1934, Sevdalina Panayotova spent her childhood and youth in Sofia, where she graduated from the University of Sofia in Bulgarian philology in 1956. During her studies she became close to Petar Peev and Georgi Konstantinov, who in 1953 attempted to destroy the monument of Stalin in Sofia, but were arrested. Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, which coincided with the planned destruction of the monument, spared them a death sentence. They were sentenced to 20 years in prison in a forced labor camp in Belene on Persin Island. As their follower, Sevdalina was also declared an "enemy of the people", and thus was a subject of observation by State Security throughout her life.

During her student years, 1953-1956 the Sofia home of her parents, Petar and Vena Baychevi, became a center for a large circle of young people who gathered to debated, create, and argue. Another “alternative” place was the so-called "doghouse" on 23 Ivan Rilski street, where Assen Ignatov (a philosophy student, close friend of Sevdalina from Shumen, considered a leading contemporary philosopher; emigrated 1973), Konstantin Pavlov (poet), Mihail Berberov (poet), Uzuna (Dimitar Uzunski, long-time editor of the Shumenska Zarya newspaper, poet, fiction writer), Nella Dancheva (poet, long-time journalist in Shumen), Petko "the mayor", Manol "the dog", and others met and critically discussed the reality of socialism and undertook alternative political work. Together with some of her colleagues, Sevdalina participated in preparing an anti-communist rally, which was to take place on the evening of 7 November 1956, as a show of solidarity with the Hungarian revolution. However, the organizers were arrested, including Sevdalina Panayotova (then with her father’s family name, Baycheva), and the rally fell apart.

From 1959 until her death, Sevdalina Panayotova lived and taught in Chepelare (only living in Sofia during the period 1969 to 1974 with her husband Panayot Panayotov and her two daughters Teodora and Boryana). In 1972, Sevdalina Panayotova led a group of dissident intellectuals such as Rozalia Likova, a professor at the Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, Hristo Sabev (later known as Christopher Sabev), her old friends Petar Peev and Georgi Konstantinov, former students from Chepelare, then current students in Sofia such as Lika and Stefan Marev, Zlatko Kalaydzhiev, Maria Stoeva, and others. They gathered (most often) in the home of Sevdalina’s parents. Apart from political discussions, they read and discussed forbidden literature (documented in their State Security files by day, hour, and minute).

After Georgi Konstantinov, an anarchist who had laid a bomb at the Stalin statue, fled to the West in July 1973, Peter Peev and Sevdalina Panayotova were declared "anarchoterrorists" and accomplices of Georgi Konstantinov, and were accused of belonging to an illegal terrorist organization. In September 1973, Petar Peev was sent to the forced labor camp in Belene on Persin Island for three years, and in November Sevdalina was detained for 40 days at the Investigation Department of State Security at Razvigor Street No. 1 in Sofia. At that time, she was 39 years old, her elder daughter, Teodora, was 13, and her younger daughter, Boryana, 7. The rest of the group were also arrested and interrogated. In Emigrant memories, volume 1, Georgi Konstantinov, through the archives of State Security, proves that the repressive structure of State Security aimed to "collect materials" with the goal of starting a legal process against Georgi Konstantinov, Petar Peev, and Sevdalina Panayotova as organizers of an illegal movement of anarchoterrorists to overthrow communist rule. One of their "successful actions" – in the view of State Security – was the illegal emigration of Georgi Konstantinov. State Security assumed that they associated with Western counterparts. For the collection of "evidence", the State Security used numerous means: eavesdropping, threats, extortion, recruitment, violence (as evidenced by the thousands of pages stored in the State Security archives). Georgi Konstantinov himself says in his book that Peter and Sevdalina were never anarchists or terrorists, and even writes about Sevdalina's "literary circle" in a condescending manner. The investigation of the anarchoterrorists was terminated in the spring of 1974. After her release, in order to avoid exile Sevdalina returned to Chepelare, where she taught, organized a school theater, and wrote for the rest of her life. She turned speech into the main means of her opposition to the socialist regime. The word in all its forms, in writing, in everyday speech, in theater, as a means of education.

The life credo of Sevdalina Panayotova, a third-generation teacher, was that education and upbringing are key factors in the formation of one’s personality and the path to emancipation. Education in the sense of knowledge and scientific approach; analytical thinking in the sense of observance of basic moral norms, regardless of the circumstances. Therefore, developing critical thinking, i.e. questioning the "truths" imposed from the top, among friends, relatives, and above all students, was the Sevdalina Panayotova’s approach to opposition. The forms of her cultural opposition were various: organizing a literary circle, preparing theatrical performances, writing scenes and, in particular, teaching high school with an approach different from those officially accepted. As a teacher, screenwriter, and theater director, Sevdalina Panayotova created plays that were hindered by state institutions, but which have provided different generations with courage and anti-totalitarian thinking.

Since their childhood, Teodora and her sister Boryana witnessed the activity of their mother, "who has always provoked the disapproval of the socialist power. As a teacher, screenwriter and theater director, Sevdalina Panayotova, for half of a century, created scenarios and plays that were stopped and obstructed by the institutions, but which raised generations of courage, civic position, activity and anti-communist thinking."

Teodora explains her anticommunist beliefs by the characteristics of the totalitarian regime: "To enforce and to survive, the regime systematically and purposefully destroyed the basic moral norms and transformed the amoral behavior into normality: murder, lawlessness, betrayal, slander, lying, duplicity, falsification, corruption etc. At the same time, the regime held the population subject to fear and terror, which turned paranoia into a constantly mental state, destroying trust among people. And trust is the foundation of every society."

Having beeing parent herself in non-fear and non-obedience, Teodora Panayotova maintains that "the claim that there was no resistance in Bulgaria against the communist regime, comparing it with the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the Czech 1968 revolution and the Polish resistance 1981, is not true. In the first years after 9.IX.1944 there was the so-called Goryanstvo movement. These were militarized bands who fought against the communist regime and who were killed in very cruel way. Periodically in Bulgaria there were groups and individuals who have been against the communist regime, and who therefore spend years in forced labour camps or in prisons, or have been objects of dismissal, interrogations and other repressive measures; or forced to emigrate. One such group was also around Sevdalina Panayotova, whose collection we are presenting."

Her understanding of cultural opposition Teodora Panayotova expresses as follows: "Cultural opposition is an opposition through the means of culture in the narrow sense of the word, i.e. through the forms of art (verbal and non-verbal, of written and oral speech, which includes education). During the 45 years of socialist Bulgaria there was a cultural opposition, which is less expressed in works (written, paintings, sculptures, theatrical and musical) directed openly against the totalitarian power, but more in getting out from the established interpretation of works and breaking the pattern of socialist realism."

Andrei Pandele (b. 27 August 1945, Bucharest) is an architect, urbanist, and photographer. He graduated from the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in 1968. His professional portfolio in the field of architecture and urbanism includes a number of outstanding achievements. Among these may be mentioned: a five-star hotel in the Danube Delta; a solar dwelling in Sector 2 of Bucharest; the Ambrose Paré pavilion in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, Île-de-France; remodelling and fitting of nineteenth-century buildings on Calea Rahovei and Calea Victoriei in Bucharest; and a sixteen-level hotel on a steep (85%) slope at Băile Herculane. In 2000, he was strategy coordinator for the General Urbanistic Plan of the Romanian Capital, Bucharest.

Andrei Pandele has a prodigious photographic activity, being a member of the (Romanian) Association of Artist Photographers since 1973 and of the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique since 1981, a founder member of the (Romanian) Sports Press Association in 1990, and a collaborator for Associated Press and Sygma in the same year. He has had photographs published in various foreign magazines, including Photo, Sovetskoe Foto, Fotografie, Lettres de Paris, Midi Olympique, Rugby World & Post, and in such Romanian publications as Arhitectura, Sportul, Fotografia, and the newspapers Adevărul, Cotidianul, and Evenimentul zilei. He has also had occasional university teaching activity, teaching courses on photography and architecture at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism. His photographs illustrated the volume Vom muri şi vom fi liberi (We will die and we will be free, 1990) by Irina Nicolau. He has published the greater part of his photographs in various albums and illustrated volumes, such as Fotografii interzise şi imagini personale (Forbidden photographs and personal images, 2007), Martorul-surpriză: Fotografii necenzurate din comunism (Surprise witness: The uncensored photographs of communism, 2008), Casa Poporului: Un sfârşit în marmură (The House of the People: An end in marble, 2009); and Bucureștiul mutilat (Mutilated Bucharest, 2018).

As a photograph, Andrei Pandele has an impressive portfolio. He has had numerous exhibitions of photographs all over the world, and some of his works have entered international private collections. Among exhibitions in Romania may be mentioned: “Fotografii interzise și imagini personale,” (Forbidden photographs and personal images) National Theatre, December 2007 to March 2008; “Amintiri din Epoca de Aur,” (Memories of the Golden Age) Cinema Studio, Bucharest, at the premiere of the film of the same name, September 2009; “Made in Romania,” Sala Dalles, October 2009; “Andrei Pandele la TIFF,” (Andrei Pandele at the Transylvania International Film Festival) Museum of Art, Cluj, May 2010; and ”Veșnicia s-a născut la sat,” (Eternity was born in the village) Museum of the Romanian Peasant, București, January 2015. He has had solo or group exhibitions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, and Israel. Articles about his photographs have appeared in numerous national and international publications. Out of all of them, Andrei Pandele considers that the article “A lost city: Photos of Bucharest's past,” published by BBC News, is the most important reference to his photographic work. Andrei Pandele keeps a blog, where a number of his photographs of everyday life during communism and of the demolitions in Bucharest in the last communist decade can be found. Address: http://www.ap-arte.ro/

His work changed during the 1990s for a number of reasons. On the local level the country was at war, on the global level a transformation was underway towards embracing new technologies. In his own words “this new environment led me to question my acquired knowledge and in relation to that and the economic crisis in Serbia, I saw the strengthening of my personal feelings and relationship toward immaterial art as my initiation, precisely through the local neo-avantgarde and avantgarde.”

He was active in the Apsolutno art collective from its inception in 1993 until 2005. The collective focused on new technologies, traditional art projects and video installations. In the second half of the 1990s, through artist residencies abroad, he acquired an insight into international events and contemporary social and cultural challenges in Europe. The political shift on 5 October 2000 – when the presidency of Slobodan Milošević was ended by mass demonstrations of Democratic Opposition of Serbia supporters – pointed to the needs and problems in art production that reacts to and yet is not rooted in the infrastructure and politics of culture, where it could interface with societal relations.

After acquiring experience abroad and learning about organizational models, in 2001, together with other members, he established New Media Center_kuda.org with a space with permanent infrastructure, where people could gather, share ideas and information and collaborate. This became the basis for new artistic production, a hub, an archive and a library. The mission of kuda.org is to organize artist-activists who challenge the use of new technologies in art and society and to create a platform for the critical analysis of technology and society.

Žarana Papić is remembered as one of the pioneers of Yugoslav feminism. She set high standards in theory and in activism, struggling for a more equal and fairer society.

As a trained sociologist, Žarana first encountered contemporary feminist theory at the Croatian Sociological Society conference in Portorož in 1976. In the same year, she attended the first course of Women’s Studies organized at the Inter-University Center Dubrovnik. Together with other colleagues, she organized the first international feminist conference in Eastern Europe in October 1978 in Belgrade’s Student Cultural Center (SKC). At this conference feminists from countries like England, Germany, France and Poland were invited for the first time, which also provided the opportunity for exchange with Yugoslav feminists.

The conference was titled: Drug-ca žensko pitanje, novi pristup? [Comrade woman. Women’s question- A new approach?] This conference represented a new feminist movement and theory, which was driven by hosting renowned participants from around Europe. The conference critically examined the dominant patriarchic system, and enabled the founding of a group of feminist-oriented theoreticians and activists in Yugoslavia. The conference signaled the beginning of a feminist critique of patriarchy in socialism.

Starting in 1977, Žarana Papić published articles on the subject of women’s issues. Together with Lydia Sklevicky from Zagreb, she edited the book Antropologija žene [Anthropology of Women] (1983), the first of its kind in Yugoslavia. The book inspired many young women to engage with this topic. In 1989, Žarana became an assistant in social anthropology at the Department of Sociology. She completed her doctorate degree with the thesis: “Dijalektika pola i roda - priroda i kultura u savremenoj socijalnoj antropologiji” [The dialectics of sex and gender - nature and culture in contemporary social anthropology] and earned the position of assistant professor at the same department. Žarana regularly taught social and cultural anthropology and gender studies as a special subject. In 1997 her doctorate was published under the title “Polnost i kultura: telo i znanje u savremnoj antropologiji” [Gender and Culture: Body and Knowledge in Contemporary Anthropology].

Žarana Papić belonged to the first post-war generation of Yugoslav feminists and had a huge influence on the development of younger generations.

Vasile Paraschiv was one of those who repeatedly protested publicly against the Ceauşescu regime, from 1968 to 1989, for which reason he was several times admitted to psychiatric hospitals and diagnosed as mentally ill. Despite the abuses he suffered, he continually testified about the use of this barbarous method of reducing to silence all those who criticised the communist regime in Romania. Vasile Paraschiv (born 3 April 1928, Clinceni, Ilfov county, died 4 February 2011, Bucharest) was by occupation an electromechanical worker in Ploieşti and, politically speaking, a member of the Communist Party from 1946. In his biographical record at the Sighet Memorial it is mentioned that in 1968, when many others had only just entered the party because Ceauşescu had condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Paraschiv renounced the status of Romanian Communist Party (PCR) member, because, according to his own account, he had come to understand that the party no longer represented the workers. Consequently he was arrested on 29 July 1969 and admitted to the psychiatric hospital at Urlaţi, Prahova county, but he was discharged after he declared a hunger strike. From this time on, the experience of psychiatric repression became recurrent in Vasile Paraschiv’s life, and in time he became the most well-known witness to this type of forced marginalisation of those who publicly criticised the communist regime, which was practised constantly in Romania as in the Soviet Union, and to which there are a considerable number of testimonies.

Neša Paripović was born in 1942 in Belgrade. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1969, and studied in the master class of Krsto Hegedušić in Zagreb from 1971 to 1973. He collaborated with the Group of Six Artists that gathered at the gallery of the Student Cultural Centre between 1971 and 1973. From 1975 to 1980, he worked with Group 143, which was dedicated to the linguistic and semiotic exploration of art. From 1991, he was a member of the theatre ensemble of Belgrade’s Dah Teater. He has shown his work at numerous group exhibitions in Yugoslavia, Serbia and abroad.  

Andrei Partoş (born 1949) is a journalist and musical commentator who practically founded Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti. Born in Braşov, Partoş graduated in psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest and practised for ten years as a clinical psychologist. In 1985, he gave up this profession to dedicate himself entirely to musical and journalistic activities.

In 1979, the year in which he first set up Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti in a tiny doughnut shop, he made his first appearance on Romanian public radio, and he was soon invited to join its Youth division. After a pause of two years, he returned to Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti in 1982, and became the most representative face of the station, making an impression on a whole generation with his summer programmes through the 1980s. In the period 1985–1989, he was banned from national radio and TV.

Andrei Partoş is conscious that his activity at Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti before 1989 had a discreet but constant subversive character, which he describes in a nuanced manner: “I do not put what I did under the umbrella of a radical position. I was not an illegalist fighter. I was not a radical guy. But I was conscious that what I was doing there at Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti, together with my colleagues, was very different from what the official state culture offered. I knew, I was conscious that it was an alternative to the minus that young people got from public TV and public radio, and from public cultural institutions in general. And we were different; it was a distinct alternative.”

With regard to what he did consciously and subversively, Andrei Partoș comments: “above all I let the music speak instead of me.” As far as Romanian music was concerned, it was obtained through official channels: shops dealing specifically with music, the Electrecord record company, public radio, public TV. However, Romanian groups that were banned at the time were also played on Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti, and this was observed with displeasure by those charged with monitoring the radio station. “I would play Phoenix,” says Andrei Partoş, “although I wasn’t allowed to [they had been banned since they left for the West in 1976] – and I said I was playing Mircea Baniciu [the only member of the group who had not emigrated]. There was no proof cassette, but there were records and tapes there. Sometimes they came and scolded me for playing that sort of thing. They said they had ‘taken note’ – and they wanted to show that they were clever too. If they had wanted to make things very nasty, they could have done so – they would have found arguments for it. At the same time, what we had there was an outlet. A zone that functioned by a more permissive logic.” The group Phoenix was one of the most influential rock groups in pre-1989 Romania. It was first banned from radio and TV following the departure of Moni Bordeianu, one of the group members, to the USA in 1970. Then, the group reinvented itself, switching from being a Western-oriented rock group to becoming the main promoter of ethno-rock in Romania, which was apparently in tune with the cultural policy of the regime. They registered a huge success with this type of music, which was accompanied by verses inspired from pre-Christian folklore, and formulated in such a way as to imply double meanings. After their emigration and final interdiction, Phoenix reached a mythical status among Romanian rock groups, while their vinyl records were only sold on the black market.

When it comes to foreign music, however, the story of how it was acquired is itself an exemplary tale of Romanian communism. There were various methods, as Andrei Partoş recalls: “sometimes [it came] from the American Library: everything on the Top 100 Billboard. They would always give you the new songs that appeared in the charts. They wouldn’t give the tapes to just anyone – but they did give them to me. Generally I took them home, copied them, and took them back. The irony is that there was a Securitate investigation room just ten metres away. Then there was a trade in tapes copied by various guys that they used to call ‘mafiosos’ at the time because they didn’t know what the Mafia really was. I also had very good relations with some people who received music on vinyl records, and I copied those too. I should also mention the connection through people on aeroplanes and ships. Pilots, stewardesses, sailors – I gave them money and a list of what exactly I needed, and they would come with the music. In addition, around 1984, even the BTT (Biroul de Turism pentru Tineret – Youth Tourism Office) started to order music, through a contract with a company in Germany. They brought in singles, small vinyl discs, good ones. I was at a discotheque where you paid in hard currency, and when I was leaving, the boss there let me have several hundred singles.” At times this activity was not without its risks: “Those of us who bought foreign music, of course we were followed. But I had no problems with the people who were on the watch – because I wasn’t selling, just broadcasting. I was, so to speak, in the accepted zone.” Even some of the Securitate people asked for music from the West. It was said that one of those who gave approval, tacitly, to the large-scale broadcasting of foreign music was Nicu Ceauşescu, the eldest son of the presidential couple Elena and Nicolae Ceauşescu, who was practically a sort of unofficial “patron” of Radio Vacanța-Costinești. It is a fact that the acquisition of the latest-generation equipment that made the Vox Maris discotheque in Costineşti the most advanced and most sought-after discotheque in the summer season in Romania before 1989 was approved by the son of the then Romanian dictator.

Andrei Partoş was not a member of the Romanian Communist Party. “Seemingly my Hungarian and Jewish origins didn’t inspire sufficient trust, and I didn’t ask or want to be a member of the party anyway.” As regards his relations with various institutions of the communist regime, Andre Partoş adds: “I had a tense relationship with the Securitate. I always felt they were nearby, and sometimes I had dealings with them. In 1976, my sister emigrated to the USA – so I had an additional vulnerability. I don’t say of myself that I was a hero. Perhaps I was just a bit reckless, but no way a hero. I didn’t make crazy, radical gestures; I was a lucid, calculated, rational person. The music I played was my constant way of being subversive towards that regime. When I played ‘I want to break free’ [by Queen] at a discotheque or on Radio Vacanţa, everyone knew what we were referring to. And at the discotheque they sang along from the heart. Or on 23 August [the national day of Romania before 1989] I would put on ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath. What more was there for me to say? There was no need to say any more.”

Andrei Partoş believes in the benefits of recovering the memory of problematic times, and pleads this cause: “It is important to know what it was like then – both for us and for the generation that will come after us, because otherwise the history of this country will not be understood. For example, there were lots of drastic restrictions – and perhaps those of us who experienced the Costineşti episode are in a position to appreciate freedom differently. And to talk about it as something very precious. Apart from that place, Costineşti, you had all sorts of restrictions – the problem with water, with light, with food. At Costineşti you forgot them, you were in another world. And the memory of that world has to be told.”

Currently, Andrei Partoş is the presenter of a well-known marathon programme on Romanian public radio. This, he says, is a natural continuation of what he did, in the summers of the 1980s, on Radio Vacanţa. He believed then and now he is convinced that “radio must be dialogue. Not talking on your own, but talking with people, for people.”

Pioneer of Polish performance art, body art and feminist art. She was also engaged in “conceptual poetry” or “visual poetry” and created “poetic objects”.

Born in 1945 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, she graduated from the Łódź State Art School (PWSSP Łódź) and at the Department of Painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Julia Paruszewska is the head of the Polish Rock Granary in Jarocin. She began her work at Granary in 2012 as a coordinator. Paruszewska finished pedagocial studies at the University of Zielona Góra and is a culture activist with extensive experience in the field.

Prior to her employment at the Polish Rock Granary Paruszewska worked i.a. in the Friends of Nowomiejski Region Society (Stowarzyszenie Miłośników Ziemi Nowomiejskiej) and was a board member of several cultural NGOs. Paruszewska also worked at several public institutions. She participated in several local, regional, and national projects, organised promotional campaigns, headed and financially settled publicly funded projects, including EU funding. Her experience as a coordinator and a fund raiser for cultural projects is invaluable for the Granary, which itself is a young institution, whose establishment was co-financed from regional and European funds.

Ferenc Pataki (1928–2015) was a Hungarian social psychologist and professor. In 1946, he began studying history, philosophy, and sociology at the university of science in Budapest. He took part in the so-called people’s college movement, and in 1948, he became the director of the Petőfi Sándor College for Historians. In 1949, he was made main secretary of the National Fellowship of People’s Colleges (NÉKOSZ). Between 1949 and 1953, he studied at the Lenin Pedagogical Academy in Moscow. After his return to Hungary, Pataki became the leader of the Agitation and Propaganda Class of the Fellowship of Working Youth (DISZ). In 1955, he became a stipend-holder at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). He was one of the leaders of Petőfi Circle, so after the Revolution of 1956, he could only work as a primary school teacher. In 1961–1965, he served as a member of the staff at the National Institute of Pedagogy. In 1965, he moved to the Psychological Research Institute of the Academy. In 1967, he began teaching social psychology and pedagogy at Eötvös Loránd University, and in 1984, he became a professor in the Sociology Department of the university. In 1972, he was made vice-director, and between 1975 and 1993 he served as director of the Psychological Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the founders of the New March Front in 1988, and he was a member of the Consultant Body of the Németh Government until 1990. Between 1990 and 1993, Ferenc Pataki was president of the Philosophical and Historical Class of the Academy. In 1993–1996, he served as one of the vice-presidents of the Academy. From 1996 until 2002, he was director of class again. His research focused on psychological theories of social effects, but he also dealt with theories and the history of education.

The Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1907-1977) is considered one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Patočka studied philosophy in Prague, Paris, Berlin and Freiburg by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. He dealt with the history of philosophy, philosophy of history, and phenomenological ideas which he applied to politics, culture, and history. He also studied philosophical works by J. A. Komenský, T. Masaryk and E. Husserl.

After the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, Patočka was labelled a “reactionary philosopher” and was not allowed to teach at the university anymore. So he instead worked in several Czechoslovak institutes, including the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, mainly dealing with Comenius studies. Patočka was appointed professor at Charles University in Prague in 1968 and began to teach again. However, four years later Patočka was dismissed from the university, officially because of his old age.

Despite his dismissal from the university, Patočka continued to hold regular consultations for his doctoral student Ivan Chvatík. Chvatík invited also other friends and classmates to these lectures and thus regular philosophical underground seminars, called later “Patočka University,” came into existence. Seminars, usually lasting until late at night, took place every week until 1977. Participants were mainly Patočkaʼs students (e.g. Ivan Chvatík, Pavel Kouba, Miroslav Petříček, Jiří Michálek, Josef Vinař, Marika Krištofová, Jaromír Kučera, Milan Sobotka, and Jiří and Jaroslava Pešeks). Lectures were organised secretly and each meeting was held in a different place. The participants were notified strictly by word of mouth, as there were suspicions that some of the members were being observed by the police. Ivan Chvatík recorded all eleven lectures that were later issued as the cycle, “Caring for the Soul” (now published under the title “Plato and Europe”). The following cycle of seminars was published under the title “Heretical Essays” in the Petlice samizdat edition by Ludvík Vaculík. These lectures and essays impressed the intellectual audience and Patočka was seen by the Police as an important dissident.

In 1976, Patočka supported the protest against the imprisonment of the members of the music band The Plastic People of the Universe. Then, he joined the famous protest petition Charter 77 and later became, together with Jiří Hájek and Václav Havel, its first spokesman. After the Charter was published, it was no longer possible to continue with the seminars. At the end of February 1977, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Max van der Stoel, accompanied by journalist Dick Verkijk, arrived in Prague for an official visit. Dick Verkijk persuaded Patočka to meet the minister and organise a joint press conference. It was the first time that a political representative of a foreign nation took official notice of the local dissident movement. Although Patočka was ill, he arrived at the InterContinental Hotel in Prague, explaining the aims of the dissidents and Charter 77. Patočka was thensubjected to a lenthy  interrogation by the police. Due to the interrogation and his poor health, he had to be hospitalized.

Jan Patočka died on March 13, 1977. His funeral became a symbolic manifestation against the communist regime.

Louis Pavel was an Estonian painter. From 1935 he studied at the Pallas Higher Art School, but his studies remained uncompleted due to the war. Before the end of the Second World War, he joined German armed units, and was later sent to a Soviet prison camp. He came back to Estonia in 1946. Starting anew as an artist was difficult, he could not get his work into exhibitions. Therefore, he also worked as a forester and a sailor.

He was the father of the poet Indrek Hirv, and the partner of the artist Helgi Hirv.

Goran Pavelić Pipo was born in Zagreb in 1954. He graduated with a degree in English and phonetics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Zagreb, where he also earned a master’s degree in general linguistics. As of 1991, he was a member of the Croatian Army, and in 2012 he retired with the rank of colonel. Although retired, he continued to engage in photography. He received his first lesson in photography from his parents, who worked as professional photographers. He became more seriously involved in photography in 1974. He soon became a member of the editorial board of the youth magazine Polet, and as a photojournalist he began to keep track of events on the Yugoslav new wave scene.

The quality of his photos was recognized by other Yugoslav newspapers, which began to publish his photographs. For the younger generation, the first encounter with the new wave, besides music, was through the photography of Goran Pavelic Pipo. Photos like Azra's performance at Kulušić or Jura Stublić in front of the Zvečka café  have become iconic because they best capture the spirit of the time. An essential determinant of the spirit at that time was the physical appearance of the youth, who were radically opposed to appearances promoted by the Communist Party. The picture of neatly dressed and combed youth was replaced by the image of sloppy and provocatively dressed youth who expressed their disgust with the regime through fashion. Goran Pavelić Pipo did not have conflicts with the regime, but certainly was an important protagonist on the alternative urban scene in Zagreb in the early 1980s.