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András Stark (1948-) is a doctor, psychiatrist, and professor. Together with Ferenc Erős, he led the interview project on the experiences of second-generation Holocaust survivors.

Stark completed his PhD at the medical university. He graduated in 1972. He is an expert on psychoanalysis. In 1979, Stark and Erős decided that they would do interviews with second-generation Holocaust survivors. The idea was prompted primarily by their family histories. Their Jewish origins played a major role in their scientific interests. As a psychiatrist, Stark dealt with the Holocaust and traumas which ensued from the suppression of the memories of these traumas within families.

Judith Kestenberg’s study on the children of people who had suffered persecution was an inspiration for them. They planned similar research. Initially, they held lectures in a professional circle about their conclusions. The first public presentation was organized as part of an event held by the Hungarian Psychiatric Society in 1983. (The title of the presentation was “A társadalmi diszkrimináció hosszantartó hatása a személyiségfejlődésre: A holocaust utáni nemzedékek identitásproblémái” or “The Effect of Social Discrimination on Personality Development: Identity Problems of the Generations after the Holocaust.”) Some of their colleagues were disgusted by this topic, and they contended that it was not “relevant” and would foster the Antisemitism.

Iryna Stasiv-Kalynets (b. 1940-d. 2012 in Lviv)  was a poet, philologist, member of the „sixtiers” and human rights movements in Ukraine. She was arrested in 1972 along with much of her social circle for „anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation.” Stasiv-Kalynets studied Slavic languages and literatures at university in Lviv in 1959-1964, after which she worked as a teacher and librarian in local schools. In 1969, she began teaching Ukrainian language and literature at Lviv Polytechnic Institute and also published a number of children’s books at this time. As a result of Khrushchev’s thaw, she took great interest in developments in neighboring Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which radicalized her. In 1970, she and nine others signed a letter of protest in response to the arrest of historian Valentyn Moroz, after which she was fired from her job. The following year she and her husband declared their public support for the microbiologist Nina Strokata, a human rights activist arrested in 1971.

After her own arrest in 1972, along with many of her other dissident compatriots, nearly 100 of her students were interrogated by the KGB, of which only a handful submitted denunciations against her. She was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment in a forced labor camp and three years of exile in the far reaches of Siberia, in the village of Undino-Poselye, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia (with her husband Ihor Kalynets, who was arrested and sentenced to a similarly long imprisonment). Her sentence was not commuted despite exhortations on her behalf that this verdict was far too harsh a response for writing non-conformist poetry. 

After her release in 1981, she returned to Lviv, where she returned to active life but struggled to find employment. She was finally able to find work after the intervention of the KGB itself, as a cashier and secretary in the regional teachers’ center. In 1987, Stasiv-Kalynets played an active role in reviving cultural and civic life in Lviv. In November, she and her husband Ihor were among the founders of a Ukrainian association for an independent creative intelligentsia. She gave public lectures about Vasyl Stus, worked with independent cultural journals, helped found the Ukrainian branch of “Memorial” as well as the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh), which was part of the republic’s democratic opposition.

Stasiv-Kalynets was also involved in the revival of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC). In 1988-1989, she participated in many rallies and meetings, many of which had not been sanctioned by the authorities. She was detained on several occasions as a result. Her participation in a rally on January 22, 1989, which marked the 80^th anniversary of the 1919 declaration of an independent Western Ukrainian National Republic, resulted in 10 days of custodial arrest. She was also detained in February 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev visited Lviv.

In 1990, Stasiv-Kalynets was elected a deputy to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada. In May 1990, she became head of the Lviv Regional Department of Education, playing an active role in school reform.  In 1992-1994, Stasiv-Kalynets served as chairperson of a parliamentary subcommittee on education. Prior to her death in 2012, she also played an active role in making the Prison on Lonskogo St. a museum-memorial for all the inmates incarcerated there. 

Post-conceptual artist Mladen Stilinović was born in Belgrade in 1947 and spent most of his life in Zagreb. As a young man he left high school and opted for self-education. He was interested in history, theatre and the visual arts, and he wrote poetry. From 1969 to 1976, his primary field of interest was experimental film. He was a member of the Group of Six Authors (1975-1981) together with Vlado Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedor Vučemilović. He was one of the co-founders of the Podroom Gallery, and ran the Extended Media Gallery in Zagreb from 1981 to 1991. He cooperated with the IRWIN group on the Retroavangarde project in 1994.

Stilinović's artwork ˝Work is a Disease. Karl Marx˝ was censored by the Party in 1981. It was exhibited at the Youth Salon, and removed by Party. But he exhibited it again in the group exhibition in the SC Gallery three months later. “Work” aroused great interest among experts, and Stilinović described it as follows: ˝When I started making artworks about work, like ‘Work is Disease (Karl Marx)’ (1981), in Yugoslavia it was interpreted in two ways: the first was that it was an actual Karl Marx citation; the second interpretation argued that I signed it as Karl Marx, which was true. I was making fun. During the socialist regime, anything signed by Karl Marx was taken as an absolute truth. So I was being ironic˝ (link: http://www.flashartonline.com/article/mladen-stilnovic/).

Stilinović's artistic work includes collages, photographs, artist's books, paintings, installations, actions, films and video features. He continued the tradition of avant-garde art by advocating the social dimension of art. Consequently, he was critical of the artistic establishment of the 1970s and 1980s, and critically, cynically and ironically commented on social reality. His most renowned artistic cycle is the "Exploitation of the Dead", with other recognizable works such as "Money", "Death" and "Economy".

Stipčević attended primary school and the classics gymnasium in Zadar, and graduated with a degree in archaeology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Zagreb in 1954. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Zadar in 1977. He worked at the National and University Library (1957-1974), and was a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Priština (1970-1973), the head of the Library of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Science (1974-1983), the editor-in-chief of the Croatian Biographical Lexicon (1983-1989, volume 2) at the Yugoslav Lexicography Institute, and a professor at the Department of Librarianship at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Zagreb (1987-1997). His academic interests included the culture of the Illyrians, ancient bibliography and encyclopaedism, and the history and sociology of books. He was a member of the Academy of Arts and Science in Kosovo.

As a social historian of books, Aleksandar Stipčević (1930–2015) was among very few Croatian scholars who approached the topic of censorship from the scholarly standpoint after the fall of communism in 1990. He wrote several books about it, both theoretical-historical as well as biographical, in which he related his own experience of censorship during the Yugoslav socialist period (e.g. On the Perfect Censor, Censorship in Libraries, The Story about the Biographical Lexicon). His personal collection, consisting of 66 archival boxes when handed over by his widow to the Croatian State Archives in 2015, reflects this interest, because the materials in 17 boxes are devoted to the topic of the “general history of censorship.” As a librarian, Stipčević was especially interested in different forms of censorship, and, as a hobby, began taking clippings from different types of journals and periodicals, both national and international. Eventually, this passion for collecting information enabled him to write several books on the topic of censorship.

Stipčević was interested in censorship as a means of repression because he experienced its violence on several occasions. In 1944, when Partisan troops liberated Zadar they purged libraries of “fascist” books, which were burnt just because they were written in Italian. In 1955, libraries had to be purged of books by Party dissident Milovan Đilas (1911-1995). At that time, Stipčević was serving in the Yugoslav People’s Army and was ordered to remove Đilas’ books (if he was the author) from the military library and to cut his pictures out of books by other authors. Finally, he experienced the force of censorship when he became editor-in-chief of the second volume of the Croatian Biographical Lexicon in 1983. The previous, first volume was withdrawn from bookshops at the request of certain Party members and members of the World War II veterans association due to alleged nationalism and non-Marxist standpoints. This is why a great deal of material in his folders is dedicated to the topic of “purges” in libraries, which he metaphorically called “the castration of books” (Stipčević 2008: 345).

According to his wife, Aleksandar Stipčević was a “harmless anti-communist”; he did not call for revolution, he opposed the communist ideology only in his head, and more openly after 1990, which is apparent in his books. He was never a member of the Communist Party. However, a direct conflict emerged during his editorship of the second volume of the Croatian Biographical Lexicon, when in 1985 the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia held a conference dedicated to the ideological situation in Croatia. The speakers identified the penetration of nationalism in culture and science, with the Croatian Biographical Lexicon as the most prominent example, wherein Croatian national history was interpreted without a Marxist approach. It was not enough to say that the edition was scholarly, for its Marxist orientation had to be specifically emphasised.

In 1989 Stipčević applied for a job at the Department of Librarianship at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, where each candidate had to have ”moral and political character.” In other words, he/she had to be a sympathiser of communism, but the dean accepted Stipčević’s application, although obviously lacking these qualifications, because of his contributions to Croatian culture.

Aleksandar Stipčević was against the suppression of all manner of freedom under any regime (not only communism, but also fascism, because he was born in Zadar in 1930 and lived his youth under the Fascist rule.) He condemned both communism and fascism because they were both totalitarian regimes. Even so communism, especially the Stalinist type, was in his view even worse because Stalin killed his own people (Interview with Stipčević, Anđelka).

Lazar Stojanović was a director, journalist, intellectual, anti-war activist and one of the most prominent cultural dissidents of socialist Yugoslavia. He spent several years in prison. Lazar Stojanović graduated from the Academy for Film, Theatre, Radio and Television in Belgrade in 1971. In parallel to studying at the Academy, he was near completion of a degree in Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy. 

Stojanović became politically active in the early 1960s, and in 1966, he joined the Communist party from which he was excluded in 1972. He explained his Party membership as stemming from his interest in politics and the fact that many other youth from his millieu joined the Party in the hope that this would be one of the ways societal change could be brought about. Stojanović was active in the Yugoslav student movement and was one of the leaders of the organizational board at the Academy during the protests in 1968. In the interviews with COURAGE, Stojanović considered the broaching of questions of political, sexual and gender rights and freedom, relevant issues to this day, and as the most important legacy of the 1968 student movement. During this period, he was both an active author for and later editor of student magazines “Student” [The Student] and “Vidici” [The Views] (1968-1971). The first controversy he caused while editor of “Student” when he published “The letter to young Gorani: go forth in forestation of the Otok” in the “It will get better” column. This was a satirical critique of the political detention camp “Goli Otok” [Bare Island]. In 1971, Stojanović was again at the heart of a larger scandal, this time while editor of “The Views” when he dedicated one issue to the political, legal and press systems of the Third Reich. The cover of the magazine showed a post stamp depicting Adolf Hitler in a frighteningly similar way to one of Josip Broz Tito. The intention was to compare and highlight the similarities between the two cults of personality and between Nazi German and socialist Yugoslav propaganda. This issue of “The Views” was instantly banned while Stojanović was arrested. In the end, however, he was not put on trial.

At the end of the 1960s, Stojanović dedicated himself to the study of film. He devoted his first student film to a critique of the communist regime. This film, “The Healthy Offspring” [Zdrav podmladak] ridiculed the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) [Savez komunističke Omladine Jugoslavije] and its labour actions. When Stojanović was later arrested, this film was confiscated and remains lost to this day. His second work, produced for his graduate final project at the Academy, “Plastic Jesus”, was filmed in 1971. Although the film was never screened publicly in Yugoslavia, it was produced at a time in which Party-infighting was calling the regime into question. The subsequent backlash led to supression of artistic liberties. Against this background, Stojanović’s trial and prosecution of his film were used as warnings to other potentially critical artists. Stojanović spent full three years in prison, between 1972 and 1975. He was accused and convicted of the criminal offense of “hostile propaganda”. His verdict (delivered on 14 June 1973) stated that the artist “represented the socio-political situation in the country maliciously and falsely,” that he depreciated the socialist revolution, its fighters and self-governing socialist system, and that he had insulted the figure of the President, Josip Broz Tito, “the most distinguished representative of the Revolution and of the construction of the socialist social relations.” After serving his sentence of three years of prison, Stojanović was released in 1975. His passport was withheld, similarly to other persecuted artists and intellectuals of socialist Yugoslavia. Only a few years later, in 1978, amid mounting international pressure did such artists and intellectuals have their passports returned. Stojanović seized this opportunity to leave the country. He spent the following years in London, Afghanistan, India and Iraq, with several shorter stays in Belgrade.

In 1976, before being able to leave the country, Stojanović took part in the creation of the “Open University”, together with Ilija Mojković, Voja Stojanović and Vlada Mijanović. The “Open University” was a specific form of intellectual oppositional activity, modeled after similar concepts in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and organized as gatherings in private apartments with discussions regarding different topics. Apart from the political issues, discussions of historical and philosophical topics as well as of the sciences were held. The “Open University,” as Stojanović noted in an interview in the weekly “The Time” [VREME] on 16 February 2016, functioned for several years with 750 people passing through it. A police raid in the apartment of Dragomir Olujić in 1984 marked the end of the “Open University”. On that occasion, Lazar Stojanović was also arrested; yet, he was released a few days later without charges being filed. However, the state began proceedings against six other members (Dragomir Olujić, Miodrag Milić, Pavlušk Imširović, Gordan Jovanović, Milan Nikolić i Vlade Mijanović). Nevertheless, since the witnesses refused to testify and owing to public pressure, the charges were dropped. 

In the 1980s, Stojanović returned to Yugoslavia and worked as a director in a theatre. He was also one of the founders of “The Time” [VREME] magazine for which he also wrote as a journalist. From the beginning of the 1990s, he was an anti-war activist. He worked as journalist for “Ship” [Brod] radio, and later as a freelancer for “Radio France Internationale”. Afterwards, he left the country and moved to New York City. In the US, he worked as a translator and was a guest lecturer at several American universities. During the conflict in Kosovo at the end of the 1990s, Stojanović worked for the OSCE and UN missions. During this period he also made several documentaries: “Serbian epic” [Srpska epika] in 1993, “Almost Serbs” [Približno Srbi] on the status of Roma population in 1997, “The rise and fall of general Mladić” [Uspon i pad generala Mladića] in 2005, “The life and adventures of Radovan Karadžić” [Život i priključenije Radovana Karadžića] in 2005 and “The Scorpions - A scrapbook” [Škorpioni-Spomenar] on the crimes of Serbian paramilitary formations in 2007. Since 2011, he lived and worked in Belgrade.

Stojanović claimed that his dissident activism was constant. Even after being released from prison, he continued to be active socio-politically. However, after he was expelled from the Party, he was never again a member of any movement or of any official organization. In the interviews with COURAGE, he described the dissident movement as a network of individuals who were friends connected by their shared political views. They were not, however, a structured and organized opposition, but they maintained contact and shared critical attitudes towards the socialist regime. In Stojanović’s opinion, there were at most two hundred active individuals who can be considered dissidents and a cultural opposition. In an interview for the newspaper 24sata on 29 November 2016, he expressed his attitude on repression, stating that it “only shows the real boundaries of civic freedom, especially the freedom of thought and expression.”

He believed that the borders of freedom should always be reconsidered and shifted, and that he dedicated his life to this cause. Stojanović stated his opinion on courage in the same interview: “Courage is a mental attitude, not a part of the character. It neither presupposes education nor talent. It is not made of testosterone but of beliefs and decisions. You are not born with it – you either learn it or you don’t. You choose it or it chooses you. Of course, the authors are brave, when they decide to be. Everybody has to decide for themselves.”
Stojanović believes that studying the dissident movement is of great importance for understanding socialism but also, to a large degree, to understand the present. He considers learning about the culture of resistance crucial, especially for the young and future generations. In the interview with our researcher conducted on 10 December 2016, Stojanović maintained: “Utopia stands for the only solid bridge, the only trodden path which takes you from the past to a future of any kind, because if you do not reflect on utopia, you have no idea of future whatsoever."