Opanas Zalyvakha's "Zone" ("Zona") is a featured item of the permanent exhibition at the Sixtiers Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine. This painting depicts a crystalline labyrinthine construction, with figures passing in front and outside the enclosure, while others are only able to peer over the tops of volumetric poles, resembling wooden fences that surrounded hard labor camps in Siberia and also the pipes of an organ. Some of these figures blend more readily into the background, while others stand out. The narrow slats between the poles obscure the central figure, who seems to be peering out with eyes downcast and despondent demeanor and is, most probably, a prisoner in the zone. A flurry of figures moves around him in complete anonymity, without the least bit of contact. Art historian Myroslava Mudrak notes that the colors are on the bluish-gray side to underscore the effects of being closed in, and the orange of a setting sun also gives the sense of finality and denouement. The sharp verticality and harsh, repetitive linearity of its component forms gives the painting a sense of tactility—a kind of physicality to the experience of being cut off from everything.Fellow dissident Mykhailo Horyn' considers the verticality of Zalyvakha's paintings to be an indicator of the latter's general philosophy. "There is almost no horizontality to his work...the vertical rays produce a rhythmic-energetic pulse... giving his canvasses a sense of higher meaning and purpose." Another fellow dissident, the literary critic Yevhen Sverstiuk, compares Zalyvakha's approach to that of the poet and political prisoner Vasyl Stus, who always sought "to dig deeper rather than wider." What Stus expressed semantically, Zalyvakha portrayed visually, "hands and forms outstretched, reaching toward the heavens to a higher power, the only force that could defend the individual against tyranny." 

The Nelu Stratone collection is one of the most impressive collections of rock, jazz, and folk records created in communist Romania, as a result of the happy combination between its owner’s exceptional passion for alternative music and his ability to acquire records that were not imported officially. The collection is important not only for its size, but even more for the significant number of albums of Western provenance, which were unavailable in shops in Romania but could nevertheless be obtained due to the existence of an alternative market for such products. The creation and preservation of such a collection were activities regarded with suspicion by the communist authorities in Romania, because they proved the younger generation’s fascination with Western cultural products, in contravention of the spirit of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Theses of July 1971.

The collection stores about 250 photos made by Tomasz Sikorski during the Fifth Biennial of Spatial Forms known as Kino Laboratorium (Cinema Laboratory), in 1973. The pictures documented the 1973’s sculptures, objects, and performances, as well as artworks created in the earlier years. There are also some photos from 1972 when Sikorski came to Elbląg to document the preparations for the event. The Biennial, organized in Elbląg from 1965, was one of the crucial neo-avantgarde events in Poland. Cinema Laboratory was the last edition of Biennial in Elbląg; soon after its end Gerard Blum-Kwiatkowski, initiator and founder of the event, moved abroad to Germany.

The first private dance house was opened on 6 May 1972 in the Book Club at Liszt Ferenc Square in Budapest, where Ferenc Novák and his followers showed the simple form of the “széki” dance (Szék, Sic is a Romanian village). The event was organized by dancers of the Bihari Dance Ensemble, Jolán Foltin, Lajos Lelkes, and Antal Stoller. The dancers of the Bartók, the Vadrózsák, and the Vasas Dance Ensembles also took part in it; the music was provided by Béla Halmos, Ferenc Sebő, and Péter Éri. The main supporter of the event was György Martin. He helped Béla Halmos and Ferenc Sebő too. Martin showed them the Collection of Szék by László Lajtha and other records what later became the music collection of the dance house movement. Halmos and Sebő learnt from Sándor Tímár in 1971 how to play music for dancers.

“Music and dance like in Szék” was written on the invitation for the first private dance house in 1972. Opposite the entrance, there was a photo by Péter Korniss who also spent a lot of time in Szék and documented traditional Transylvanian peasant culture. At the door, Lajos Lelkes and Antal Stoller gave the guests a welcome similar to the welcome they would get in Szék. Originally the organizers wanted to reconstruct the traditional dance house of Szék, but later there were also ethnographical and sociological lectures at the dance houses.

In 1972, there were three more private dance houses at the Book Club.

At the end of 1972, Béla Halmos, Ferenc Sebő, and Mihály Sipos traveled to Szék because they wanted to learn about the dance house. Here Béla Halmos heard the band of István Ádám "Icsán,” and he started to learn folk songs from them. In Budapest, when Béla Halmos organized the dance houses, the model for him was the dance house of Szék, where that was a natural event every time.

In early 1972, the Municipal Conference of League of the Communists of Croatia (LCC) in Zadar appointed a separate working group with the task of interrogating and assessing the political responsibility of 16 party members accused for escalating the “mass movement” in the city of Zadar. As most of the reformist communist leaders at the republic (Miko Tripalo and Savka Dapčević Kučar) and local level (those who were supporters of Tripalo and Dapčević-Kučar), Ivan Aralica resigned from his post as deputy chairman of the Municipal Conference of LCC - municipality of Zadar in the course of December 1971. Although not a single incriminating word was found in his texts and statements, the working group of the Municipal Conference conducted an inquiry and found evidence against him:

A) as a deputy chairman of the Conference of LCC of the municipality of Zadar, Aralica did nothing to prevent nationalist-chauvinist discussions at conferences, he participated in discussions in which he positively emphasized the activities of Matica hrvatska (MH), he did not condemn individual nationalist outbursts, he submitted papers in which he supported the endeavours of the [Croatian] national movement;

B) at the event “Croatia Yesterday and Tomorrow,” he persuaded the organisers to invite the writer Petar Šegedin regardless of his political qualifications; did not see anything negative in the “politicization of the masses,” although it was clear that this was the heart of the ideology of the mass movement;

C) as president of the MH branch in Zadar, he actively participated in its work and in the creation of its policies, and in the establishment of the special committee of MH in Nin and other villages. Although he knew that MH was turning into a political organisation, he positively assessed its work, although he should not have done so as a political leader;

D) he actively participated in the organisation of the event “Croatia Yesterday and Today” together with representatives of the League of Socialist Youth. The political consequences of this event are very well known;

E) he supported the student newspaper Zoranić and those standpoints in line with the mass movement;

F) he was engaged in overcoming the resistance of the editorial board of the weekly Narodni tjednik (People’s Weekly) in order to subordinate them to the attitudes and needs of the political forces in power;

G) he was an active member of the committee to rename streets and squares, which also had political consequences (Aralica 2014, 128-129).

Although the party cell of the organisation where he worked (the Pedagogy Gymnasium in Zadar) did not find any culpability in his actions, the working group concluded that “his contribution to the escalation of the ‘mass movement’ was immense” (Aralica 2014, 129). Because of this, Aralica was suspended from the League of the Communists of Croatia in May 1972.

Juozas Keliuotis (1902-1983) was a famous Lithuanian intellectual in the Catholic movement. He was founder of the journal Naujoji Romuva in 1930, and its editor-in-chief until 1940. After the beginning of the Soviet occupation, he was sent to Siberia as a political prisoner. After his return to Lithuania, the KGB still followed his every move, trying to force him to collaborate with the Soviet regime. Keliuotis refused to collaborate, becoming a well-known figure in the cultural opposition in Lithuania. KGB documents from the collection demonstrate the efforts by Soviet state security to break his anti-Soviet network. The KGB finally succeeded in 1972, and he agreed to make a public denunciation of his past ‘bourgeois’ activity. It was even presented to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party by Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB of the USSR, as a clear victory against the ‘nationalist intelligentsia’. Keliuotis’ case shows clearly the limits to freedom and self-expression under the Soviet regime. The document is the KGB operational plan for working against Juozas Keliuotis.

Vasyl Stus’ fourth volume of poetry was written under particularly difficult and unusual circumstances, during a nine month period in 1972, when he was held in isolation prior to his trial and sentencing. The poems were written in pencil (as he was forbidden from using pens) into a single notebook from January to September. Despite the austere conditions and near total isolation, Stus himself and literary scholars point to this period as one of explosive creativity in which he wrote nearly 200 poems and 100 translations. This notebook captures not only the circumstances under which these poems were written, but also Stus’ own extraordinary gifts as a poet and his strength of character. 

Modris Tenisons’ troupe worked in Kaunas Musical Theatre for only two years, between 1970 and 1972. During this short time, it received many invitations from cultural institutions in other Soviet republics. It is obvious from the documents in the collection that people’s opinions of the performances by the troupe were always high, and theatre managers received many letters about the good and interesting pieces that held the attention of audiences in various places. But the situation changed in the middle of 1972, after the self-immolation of Romas Kalanta and youth protests in Kaunas. In a resolution by the theatre's council, Tenisons and his troupe are accused of leading an un-Soviet way of life. The document makes a reference to the minister of culture Lionginas Šepetys, and says that the troupe had not found its place in the theatre company, and it disseminated strange ideas of bourgeois ideology. Thus, in a very short period of time, we can see a sharp change in opinions about the troupe expressed by theatre managers . The document is the last in the collection. After its dismissal from Kaunas Musical Theatre, no more documents were produced about Tenison's troupe.

The members of Orfeo built a semi-detached house in Pilisborosjenő (15 kilometers from Budapest) between 1972 and 1974, when they wanted to improve the conditions under which they worked. The first house became the home of the actors of the Orfeo Studio. The Orfeo Group constructed a commune, while also holding theatrical and musical performances and creating artwork and photos. The creation of a collection on their work is the result of ordinary activities and an alternative, opposition-cultural lifestyle, which was, in turn, embodied in a house and objects. The inner spaces, the furniture in the house, and the uses of the furniture themselves are artistic works. The houses were spaces of the alternative theatre work and alternative lifestyle of Orfeo, which was condemned by the state authorities as violating the norms and morals of social coexistence.