COURAGE

connecting collections

István Bibó (1911–1979) was a Hungarian political scientist, sociologist, and scholar on the philosophy of law. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Bibó acted as the Minister of State for Imre Nagy’s second government. When the Soviets invaded and crushed the revolution, he was the last minister left at his post in the Hungarian parliament building. Rather than flee, he remained in the building and wrote his famous proclamation, “For Freedom and Truth,” until he awaited arrest. Bibó became a role model for dissident intellectuals in the late communist era and a symbol of non-violent civilian resistance based on a firm moral stand.
Since Bibó’s death in 1979, the family collection of his bequest, which includes personal documents, photos, manuscripts, books, and video and sound recordings, has been in the care of art historian and educator István Bibó Jr., who keeps the materials in his home in Budapest.

Ferenc Fejtő was an original, democratic leftist thinker. His library is a unique trace of the criticism of Eastern European rightist, authoritarianist, socialist dictatorship, and Western European leftist romanticism. Fejtő, who maintained strong connections with European intellectual elites, left Hungary for France in 1938, yet remained deeply committed to the fate of freedom-lacking Eastern Europe.

The website illustrates the life path and evolution of Franjo Tuđman’s ideas. Tuđman was a historian and politician who was twice sentenced to prison and banned from engaging in any public activity because he published and defended the results of his historical research, which contradicted the prevailing narrative promoted by the regime. The website contains digitised photographs, excerpts from Tuđman's diary, manuscripts and published works. The material testifies to his academic and political activities and his transformation from a relatively high-level communist official to a party dissident and finally the leader of the political opposition which overthrew the communist regime in Croatia.