COURAGE

connecting collections

The lieutenant, István Kurta (1951–), was one of the state security photographers of the demonstrations in 1989 in Budapest. He was hired by the political police in 1985. Initially, he worked as a graphologist. In 1987, he was advanced as an operative officer. He had experiences in hidden, camouflaged photo taking. We know little about his career in the Ministry of Interior. His personal folder was not saved in the Historical Archive. He may have remained in the staff of the Ministry after the abolishment of the state security department, or he may have been sent to some secret service successor organization after the political change.

Živko Kustić was a Greek Catholic priest, theologian, journalist and writer who was born in Split on 12 December 1930. In his early youth, he was already involved in organizations within the Croatian Catholic Movement, such as the Križari (Crusaders), so he was the leader of one of its sections called Mali križari (Little Crusaders) in Pag. After World War II, he attended to the classics school in šibenik until 1949. He then studied theology in Zagreb, but then left in the 1950s and focused on studying mathematics and physics. He was ordained as a Greek-Catholic priest in 1958, and after that he resumed his study of theology, with a special emphasis on the Eastern rite. As a Greek Catholic priest, he presided over several parishes in the Žumberak region, not far from Zagreb, where he became acquainted with the future archbishop of Zagreb, Franjo Kuharić.

He worked in the weekly newspaper Glas Koncila from its beginnings in 1962, and he was its editor-in-chief from 1972 to 1993. Writing under the pseudonym Don Jure (Rev. George), his columns and articles in Glas Koncila under the heading ‘Letters from a Village Pastor’ dealt with the position and role of the Christian faith in socialist society. This polemical and satirical column appeared in 1964 and was the most feature in that Catholic weekly until the end of the socialist era. Due to the communist calls for hostility toward religion, the columns were often a topic of discussion in the Commission for Religious Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which monitored and analyzed these and all of Kustić's other journalistic work.

In 1972, the government prosecuted Kustić for his editorials in Glas Koncila, in which he widely criticized socialism and disseminated nationalist propaganda according to the communist authorities. The verdict only came in 1975, when Kustić was banned from writing for a year. Kustić took part in a series of initiatives. For example, in 1968 he was one of the co-founders of the Christian Modernity Theological Association and the founder of Catholic Information Agency in 1993. After retiring from his journalist career, from 1998 until his death he wrote a column entitled ‘Morning Homily’ in the Zagreb daily newspaper Jutarnji list. He died in Zagreb on 19 July 2014.

Vincas Kuzmickas was a philologist and researcher of Lithuanian literature. He graduated from Vilnius University in 1967, and worked as a researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature until 1976. While there, he prepared a selection of the writings of Vincas Pietaris. The volume was published in 1973. (But Pietaris' major work Algimantas, the first historical novel in the Lithuanian language, was not included.) Kuzmickas and Ilgūnas were both interested in Pietaris' life and work. They organised trips to places where he had lived in Russia and was buried, and they both collected material about him.

Jakša Kušan, Croatian journalist and writer, was born in Zagreb on April 23, 1931. In 1950, he graduated from the Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb. As a pupil, he often came into conflict with philosophy teachers on ideological issues. At the University of Zagreb, as a law student, unlike most of his colleagues who wrote about Marx's texts for seminar papers, he was interested in topics related to the work of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky. His persecution began when he defended a fellow student before the University’s Disciplinary Committee. As a result of his engagement, from the beginning of 1954, he was harassed by other students - members of Party organisations. Soon, he was put on trial at the University and was charged a small fine, so he left Zagreb and continued his studies at the University of Belgrade in 1954. In Belgrade, according to Kušan, there was a completely different atmosphere, and he did not feel such strict control as in Zagreb (Interview with Kušan, Jakša_2).

Even during his student days in Zagreb, he was part of a circle of young intellectuals who were dissatisfied with the closed socialist system in the Yugoslav state and the lack of cultural ties to Western countries. They organised an illegal organisation called the Croatian Resistance Movement (HPO), which had a political platform. Stanko Janović, Ivo Kujundžić, Tvrtko Zane (Branimir Donat) and his wife Zorka Bolfek were some of the members. They were also disappointed with the poor information Croatian émigrés and the Western public had about the situation in Croatia in Yugoslavia. They were also dissatisfied with the lack of Western criticism of the regime in Yugoslavia, and so they decided that someone from the group should go to the West and continue engaging in journalistic work there. Kušan agreed that he would be that person because he was already under surveillance by the Yugoslav secret police (UDBA) (Interview with Kušan, Jakša_1).

In May 1955, he left Yugoslavia via Italy, moved to The Hague, where he received a scholarship at the Academy of International Law. At the beginning of 1956, he moved to the UK and in London he continued his education at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1957-1961), but he did not complete his studies because he was too busy working as a journalist and editor (Interview with Kušan, Jakša ). In 1958,  he was the founder of the periodical Hrvatski bilten (Croatian Bulletin), which was renamed Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia) in 1959. Although initially conceived as an informative overview of current events in Croatia, from the mid-1960s onward it became a critical and polemical magazine that published debates on the solution of the Croatian national question in Yugoslavia. The magazine was published until 1990, and had its most massive reach in Croatian emigrant communities (some issues even had a circulation of 20,000). Through Nova Hrvatska and throughout his work, Kušan advocated democratic and pluralistic principles and the freedom of the individual and freedom of peoples.

When he emigrated in 1955, he was not yet an advocate of pluralism or antagonistic toward socialism. He considered that, due to the character of the regime, it was impossible to expect the introduction of pluralism, but he believed that a big step would have been to allow factions within the Party. "I thought that it was necessary to expand the space for freedom within the League of Communists because Party members were then those who were responsible for doing something for their people" (Interview with Kušan, Jakša_2). Although he sharply criticised the communist regime, he also called on Croatian communists to resist the hegemony of centralists in Belgrade (Krašić 2016, 34). He advocated the need for reconciliation between nationalists and communists, and he felt that the radical methods used by some Croatian émigrés were not good. He constantly tried to prove that radical methods (terrorist attacks) were unacceptable to the world's political blocs, which preferred the preservation of Yugoslavia. He advocated a strategy of gradual development of democratic consciousness, co-operation among democrats, nationalists and reformist Croatian communists, and a transition to the rule of law throughout the Yugoslav federation. In that sense, he saw the mission of Nova Hrvatska - to "encourage democratisation within the League of Communists of Croatia, to reveal what was still hidden or censored in the homeland, to affirm the Croatian reform movement in the West to gain international sympathy and support" (Krašić 2016, 54). Even abroad, he was under surveillance by the UDBA.

After the fall of communism, he returned to Croatia in 1991 and became editor-in-chief of Hrvatski tjednik (Croatian Weekly) published by Matica hrvatska. In 1993, he became president of the board of directors of the Open Society Institute of Croatia, and from 2000 to 2004 he was chairman of the board of directors of the Croatian Heritage Foundation. He published his memoirs in 2000 in the book Bitka za novu Hrvatsku (The Battle for New Croatia).

He is familiar with the term/concept of cultural opposition. He thinks that the idea changed over time and that it has gained increasing importance (Interview with Kušan, Jakša_1).

He donated the archive and correspondence of the Nova Hrvatska editorial board to the National and University Library in Zagreb, but he still holds his papers at his home in Zagreb, which includes books, correspondence, brochures and photographs which testify to his oppositional activities. 

Kwiek was born to a family with pre-war medical traditions. Both his parents were doctors, involved with the communist system. Kwiek’s mother was a high-ranking party activist in health care administration. His father was a colonel in the army.
As a teenager he joined extracurricular sculpture classes at a Warsaw cultural centre. There he met Zofia Kulik.

He studied at the at the Faculty of Sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He found himself in the studios of Oskar Hansen and Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, whose didactic and theoretical activities had transformed into a multigenerational tradition, which to this day remains important for a number of outstanding Polish artists. Zofia Kulik has also passed through both of these studios.

After he had artistically parted his ways with Zofia Kulik in 1987 and discontinued joint actions, he did not abandon his strategies of arranging interventions, which he had elaborated in the 1980s.
Maryla Sitkowska wrote:

“He attaches great importance especially to a thread, which Zofia Kulik has abandoned, that is reacting directly and intervening (through letters, protests, and actions) to pathologies observed in social life. 
Similarly as in the years of KwieKulik’s activities, Kwiek continues to treat such «actual life cases» as a material for art Actions. 
His performances cover a variety of multimedia art genres, and since the very beginning of his independent activities he has been using the term «appearance». […]
Moreover, both in his artistic milieu as in his own neighbourhood, Kwiek is renowned as an organiser and social activist.”

In 1988 he founded the Association of Artists of Other Art Forms.

Josef Kytnar is a programmer and LP collector. His brother played in the band Makyota and Josef was a “non-playing” member of the band. He is the co-author of a discography overview of rock (and similar genres) recordings on LPs (Balák Miroslav, and Kytnar, Josef. 1998. Československý rock na gramofonových deskách: Rocková diskografie 1960–1997. Prague: Indies Records). Josef Kytnar was one of the founders of the Popmuseum, the institution owning a large collection of items connected to Czech and Slovak pop music, and he is active in its branch in Brno, where the archive of LPs is located, until today. Within Popmuseum, he is engaged in the digitization of music records, mainly LPs. He has a collection of almost 10,000 LPs, especially Czech and Slovak rock, pop and jazz music.

Photo artist and journalist Ferenc Kálmándy (b. 1950) started to do photography in 1973. He is a member of the Mecsek Photo Club and a founding member of the photographers’ group Focus, founded in Pécs in 1978. He started his career as a printshop photographer, and he worked for the Baranya County Museums Directorate (1979–1981) and at the Gallery of Pécs as an exhibition designer (1981–82). The Gallery provided a safe background for his art work. On the one hand, portraits made of his colleagues were a typical component of his Focus group photographs. On the other hand, until the mid-1990s, the Pécs Gallery was one of the most influential centers of local underground/alternative cultural life. Many of the employees at the gallery played in new wave bands, which often performed in the Gallery at exhibition openings and also independently.

In 1982, he began to work as a photo journalist for the Hungarian Telegraph Bureau (MTI), and he continued to work in this position until his retirement in 2012. His works were displayed in Hungarian and international exhibitions, both individually and together with compositions by other Focus group members. Members of the Focus group (Tamás Borbély, László Cseri, Örs Harnóczy, Ferenc Kálmándy, Dr. László Lajos, and Péter Marsalkó) considered their most important feature, independent of the genre, the preset arrangement of their photos. As Borbély notes, “We shot pre-planned, pre-arranged pictures on various themes.” Their works featured photo actions, city images, and portrait concepts.

Károy Kály-Kullai (1954– ) is a librarian and one of the creators of the popular music collection in the library at Rottenbiller Street in Budapest (the branch library of the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library/Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, FSZEK). He was also the initiator of the social service offering support for drug addicts, which worked in cooperation with the music collection.

Kály-Kullai graduated as a Hungarian-Russian teacher, but his interests soon turned to research on drug addiction and mental hygiene. He worked as a librarian between 1981 and 1992. He then served as a leader in the branch library at Rottenbiller Street. He and his colleague Péter Hont began to collect popular music recordings and created a unique collection in the 1970s.

Angelica Károlyi is a French political scientist with German roots. She was born in Paris, in 1947. She studied political science and history at the University of Paris, and later worked at the Institute of Political Sciences, where she served as director of one of the Institute’s libraries. In 1965 she met György Károlyi, who came from a noble Hungarian family, at the University. They married in 1971. In 1994 they founded the Joseph Károlyi Foundation after renovating the Károlyi castle at Fehérvárcsurgó, and turning it into a cultural meeting centre. Angelica Károlyi is currently the cultural director of the Foundation.

György Károlyi is a French diplomat, jurist and economist of Hungarian origin. He was born to a famous Hungarian noble family in 1946. The following year, his family was forced to leave Hungary due to the rising power of the communists. Károlyi grew up in France, and studied economics, political science and jurisprudence at the University of Paris. He was a salesman at the Aerospatiale Company (1971–1974), and legal adviser to the Chamber of Commerce and Trade of Paris (1974–1978). From 1978 through 2005 he worked in different leading positions at the Parisian branch of Fiat Automotives. In 1994 he founded the non-profit, Joseph Károlyi Foundation, and the Corporation for Developing and Operating the Károlyi Castle of Fehérvárcsurgó, in 2000. He became the general manager of the corporation. Since 2014 he has served as the ambassador of Hungary in France.

Kaja Kärner was an Estonian artist. She studied at the State Industrial Art School, the Pallas Art School, and the Tartu State Art Institute between 1937 and 1948. After finishing her studies at the Tartu State Art Institute, she worked there as a drawing teacher. She also became a member of the Estonian Artists' Union. She was a member of the Tartu Circle, of which most were arrested in 1949. Although she was not sent to prison camp, she was expelled from the Artists' Union, lost her job as a teacher, and had to work as a label painter at the Trade Administration in Tartu.

After her friends were released from prison, she too could act more freely. She worked as a freelance artist until 1988. As a member of the Tartu Circle, she used an abstract and colourful style. In 1984, she returned to the Artists' Union. Since 1988 until her death in 1998, she worked as a teacher at the Konrad Mägi Studio.

József Kötő (1939–2016) was a senior theatre official, dramaturg, theatre historian, and politician. For about two decades (1965–1985), he was literary secretary of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, then the director of the same institute until 1990. After the change of the political regime in 1989, he acted as a politician representing DAHR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania). He was the president of the Hungarian Cultural Society from Transylvania between 1998 and 2008.

Paulis Kļaviņš (1928-2016) was a Latvian-born religious and political activist, who lived in the Federal Republic of Germany. He studied theology at Bonn University, and afterwards was active in the work of the Pentecostal Church. In 1968, Kļaviņš and his wife Zeltīte read the book ‘Tortured for Christ’ by Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who had been persecuted by the communist regime in Romania, and they were deeply impressed by it. In 1969, Kļaviņš met Wurmbrand, and in 1970 he and his wife started to work for the Christian human rights organisation Hilfsaktion Märtyrer-Kirche (HMK), which was part of the International Christian Mission to the Communist World founded by Wurmbrand. His main activity was working for HMK’s radio station, which broadcast programmes in nine languages in cooperation with the Swedish Pentecostal Church’s IBRA-Radio. Kļaviņš prepared the programme ‘Klusuma balss’ (The Voice of Silence), which was broadcast once a week in Latvian. He worked for the radio until 1992, when he moved back to Latvia.

In parallel, Kļaviņš founded the organisation Gaismas akcija (‘Action of Light’). It was registered in the USA in 1977, and in Western Germany in 1978. It had the same general aims as HMK, but it was aimed specifically at Latvia.

Zsuzsanna Kőrösi (1967–) is a sociologist. She graduated with a degree in Hungarian Language and Literature and Adult Education and Sociology. She has been an associate of the 1956 Institute since 1990. She conducts interviews and takes part in the research projects of the Archive and the work involving the collection. She has edited numerous publications and thematic volumes based on the interviews. She is one of the editors of the webpage: visszaemlékezések.hu – Személyes történetek a XX. századból (Remembrance.hu – Personal Stories from the Twentieth Century).

Kőszeg, Ferenc (1939-) a writer, editor, human rights activist and politician.

He was born in Budapest, as the only child of his parents. His father: Ferenc Kőszeg was a dentist, who died in the Sovietunion in 1943 as a Hungarian Jew forced for military labour service at the front line, his mother Lívia Eidus was a dentist too. He himself married editor Éva Fekete (1944-1997), they have three children.

Having passed his school leaving exam at ELTE János Apáczai Csere Secondary School in 1957 he started his university studies at ELTE in Latin as wll Hungarian Language and Literature. However, in October 1957 he was arested and spent two months in prison charged with his activities in students’ resistance movement, but as the purges ended in high schools and universities, he was released too. He received his MA degree in Latin and Hungarian Language and Literature in 1967.

Kőszeg started his carreer as an editor of Szépirodalmi Publishers from 1963 to 1975, then that of Europa Publishing House for another five years. During the 1960s and 1970s he published book reviews, and translated English and German literature. From the mid 1970s he got in close contact with the circles of Hungarian democratic opposition. Having signed the solidarity proclamation with the imprisonned members of the Charta ‘77 dissident group of Czechoslovaki, he lost his job as an editor at the state company. From 1980 he made his living as a free-lance translator, and a foreign language teacher, then took a job as an employee in a book shop. In the mid 1980s he received a few months long research grant from the New School for Social Research, New York, by returning home his passport was taken by the police and he was not alowed to travel abroad for years.  

He was an active member of Hungarian dissident movement as one of the founders of SZETA, the Fund for Aiding the Poor from 1979, and founding editor of samizdat periodical Beszélő from late 1981. He was also a founding member in 1987 of Asylum (Hungarian Association for Migrants), in 1988 of Independent Legal Aid Service, and in 1989 of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (of which he was later elected the Executor Director 1995-1999, and the President 1999-2007).

In 1988 he was also the founding member of Hungary’s liberal party: the Alliance of Free Democrats, (1988–2010), of which he was elected as a representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1990-1998). As an MP he held the post Vice President of the Committee on National Security (1996-1998).