COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

Zsolt Horváth is historian, editor, and teacher. He was born in 1964 in Szombathely. He received his degree in literature, history, and museology from the Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest. He was member of the Eötvös College. Later he completed his PhD in contemporary history at the Loránd Eötvös University. From 2002 to 2011, he was member of Social Research Center Science Library. Since 2012 he has been working for the Institute of History and in 1990 he joined the Foundation of Contemporary History.

Petr Hrabalik is a musician, composer, lyrics author and singer. Since the first half of the 1980s, he was active in music bands influenced by underground, and later, punk. He is well known mostly because of his activity in the hard-core music band “Našrot”. Petr Hrabalik is also a music historian. He collaborated on the making of the documentary TV series Bigbít (1998, Czech Television). He has been responsible for the website of that TV series since 2001, including the broad overview of world rock music in the twentieth century that was added later on. He initiated the founding of the museum and archive of pop music (the Popmuseum), where the archive materials were originally stored after they were collected for the filming of the TV series. He also collaborated on the making of the documentary series “Fenomén Underground” between 2012 and 2014, for which he also created a website.

Marko Hren was born in Ljubljana on 26 April 1959. At the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing, he graduated with a degree in applied mathematics and computer science. From 1984 until 1990, he was employed in Iskra Delta and Mikro Ada, enterprises specialized in computer equipment and software development. At Mikro Ada, in which Hren became chief of the software development department, Janez Janša and Igor Omerza were fellow employees. Mikro Ada served as an “infrastructural base for alternative politics in Slovenia.” The State Security Service raided Mikro Ada on 31 May 1988, and special attention was accorded to a document entitled “Call for Non-violent Resistance in the Case of Repression,” written by Marko Hren, about which a report was sent to Stane Dolanc. Hren was a co-founder of the Centre for the Culture of Peace and Non-violence established in 1989, which was registered as a political organization in June 1990, immediately after the onset of democratic changes. He also co-founded the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, whose foundation he initiated in June 1990, and the process was successfully completed in June 1991. From 1991 to 2000, he was an activist of the centre in Metelkova Street in Ljubljana, in which he organized a number of NGOs. Since 2000, he has worked in the civil service of the Republic of Slovenia.

In the 1980s Hren was the leader of the Peace Movement in Slovenia and the liaison for contacts between the Peace Movement in Slovenia and the War Resisters' International (WRI), in which he was a board member. The flagship project of the Peace Movement was the promotion of the right of conscientious objection to military service by conscripts. The Peace Movement in Slovenia was institutionalized within the framework of the Republic Conference of the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia as the Working Group for Peace Movements and as the Section for the Culture of Peace by the Student Culture Centre. In 1986, Hren became the editor of the Peace Movement Information Bulletin, published under that title since 1985. Eventually that bulletin evolved into Independent Voices from Slovenia. In February of 1988, Hren initiated the establishment of the Coordination of the New Social Movements, which demanded a referendum on new constitutional amendments, and in March 1988 it publicly announced the Call for a Referendum on Constitutional Amendments. Hren was also a member of the Committee for the Preservation of Human Rights, on whose behalf he maintained contacts with the members of similar foreign institutions as well as European parliamentarians. During the Congress of the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia in Portorož on 3 November 1989, he called for the demilitarization of Slovenia, aimed against the Yugoslav People's Army. The project was presented to the public on 15 November 1989, and on 28 March 1990, a few weeks before the first democratic elections, the public signing of the project was organized by new political groups under the title “Slovenia Abolishes Military Apparatus.” In these elections, Hren was a candidate of the Independent Slate of New Social Movements. Immediately after the elections, the new Executive Council of the Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, or in simpler terms, the Slovenian government, was keen on cooperating with the Peace Movement, but already in October 1990, Peace Movement activists began to perceive reserve among politicians and the necessary funding to fulfil action plans was granted at much smaller percentages than requested and required by the Peace Movement.

Hren felt defeated inasmuch as he could not prevent the outbreak of the war, but he is proud of the effectiveness of the Peace Movement and its publications as a platform for communication between democratic forces in Slovenia and the world public during the struggle for the democratization of Slovenia. Hren considers research and preservation of the material about anti-communist movements in Slovenia, including the peace movement as the most serious opponent of the Yugoslav People's Army, important, and he personally contributed to its preservation by guarding the collection's documents in his private archives for decades. This particular collection is seen as “extremely important” by Hren, because through it the activity of the Peace Movement is clearly illustrated, as are its contacts with numerous international factors and the coordination of activities of most of the regime's opponents. To him, cultural opposition vis-à-vis the communist regime means opposing militarism and totalitarian consciousness. His main criticisms of the communist regime are related to its militarism and lack of freedom. The Peace Movement was institutionalized through the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia, which was an organization subordinated to the League of Communists of Slovenia.

His work was very critical of the regime, to such a degree that the State Security Service raided the enterprise in which he worked and confiscated the materials that he wrote. At the time of the raid, he was in the USA, beyond the reach of the repressive organs of Yugoslavia. Hren was not only a member of the critical movements, he was also their leader and the initiator of contacts with transnational organizations such as European Nuclear Disarmament, East-West Network, and the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly. Marko Hren was under operative surveillance by the State Security Service as case number HSM 098600470, which means that he was subject to searches and seizures of his property, and that under the threat of the arrest he had to flee abroad to safety.

László Hubai is a historian, researcher, and academic. He graduated from secondary school in Szolnok. He received his degree in mechanical engineering in 1979 from the University of Miskolc and became a teacher of history in 1985 in Budapest. In 1992 he launched research on parliamentary elections (1920–1947, 1990), setting up several relevant databases. In 1993 he joined in the research of Parliamentary Almanacs for the Foundation of Contemporary History, and in 1998 became the editor of the Almanac series. He has lectured at ELTE since 2007, at the Corvinus University Faculty of Administration (2008–2011), and at the National University of Public Administration and the University of Szeged (2010–2013). Since 2001 he has been lecturing at Milton Friedman (previously King Sigismund) University in Budapest. His main research fields include the history of parliamentary elections, archontology, and geoinformatics.

Jaroslav Hutka was a Czech folk musician, writer and signatory of Charter 77. He studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague from 1962–1966, however he did not finish his studies. After leaving the academy, he became involved in music. He performed solo or with other folk musicians (e.g. Vladimír Merta and Vlasta Třešňák). In 1972 Hutka founded the music association Šafrán with like-minded musicians, which operated for six years. Under this name, a record label producing songs by banned Czechoslovak musicians was also founded in exile. After signing Charter 77, Hutka was prevented from performing publicly and was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in 1978. He settled in Rotterdam where he founded the Fosil record label (1986), producing mostly his own songs. He spent the final phase of his exile in Cologne (1988–1989). In Czechoslovakia Hutka published his texts in samizdat volumes. After his forced emigration from Czechoslovakia, he contributed to Czechoslovak exile periodicals (e. g. Listy, Zpravodaj, Obrys) and collaborated with Radio Free Europe.

In November 1989 he returned to Prague and was one of the most important musicians of the Velvet Revolution. He also continued writing music and literature, which included a critical social tone regarding the newly establishing society. He published several books. He also co-operated externally with Czech Radio and Czech Television. In 2012, he received an award from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes for the Freedom of Democracy and Human Rights. Six years later, he was awarded the honorary citizenship of the City of Prague.

Jaroslav Hutka’s songs are very melodic and inspired by folk songs. His song lyrics are often nostalgic, humorous, ironic, with a certain amount of social and political protest. Hutka’s poetry is more intimate and reflects the inner doubts, searching and torment of an individual in a totalitarian world.