COURAGE

connecting collections

Lantos was the codename of an agent who worked for the secret service in the early 1980s. His real name is unknown. Lantos wrote reports about student life and political discussions at the Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences (Marx Károly Közgazdaságtudományi Egyetem, or MKKE). He was a student and an active participant in university club life and served as one of the editors of the Közgáz-klub’s bulletin Klub Közlöny (Club Gazette). His file contains 212 pages of reports written between 1979 and 1985.985.

Amantius Akimjak (born in 1961, in Levoča), prof., PhDr., ThDr., PhD., developed contacts with the underground movement in the Catholic church already during his studies at the Faculty of Roman Catholic Theology of Cyril and Methodius at Comenius University (from 1980 to 1985). He conducted the Schola Cantorum, a church choir consisting of theology students. Together with them, he compiled 7 collections of songs with notation for children and young people, which became the basis of a wide-scale popularization of the European version of gospel music at a time when the religious movement could address children and young people only illegally. After graduation, he became a chaplain in Levoča (1985) and the administrator of the parish in Haligovce (1989) and in Veľká Lesná. From 1990 to 2000, he studied at the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland. He was a vice-rector of the Catholic University in Ružomberok and a Dean of its Faculty of Education.

The writer David Albahari was born in 1948 in Peja (Kosovo).

He studied English literature and language at the University of Belgrade. His first published book was a collection of short stories in 1973. Among various prizes for his work, the most important are the Ivo Andrić Award for the novel Opis smrti [Description of Death] in 1982 and NIN Award for the novel Mamac [Bait] in 1997. In between 1973 and 1994, Albahari worked in editorial board of many Belgrade and Novi Sad based magazines and publishing houses, such as Književna reč, Pismo, Kulture Istoka, Politika, Mezuza, Prva knjiga Matice srpske, among which the most important in the context of cultural opposition was the magazine Vidici.
Polja was among the first magazines to publish his stories. Albahari reflected on this on the fiftieth anniversary of the magazine, stating how much did this support mean to him. (Polja 435, September/October 2005).

His work has been translated into 14 languages. Albahari was translated among others by Nabokov, Updike and Shepard. Although he moved to Canada in 1994 with his family, Albahari does not consider himself a writer in exile and spends time in Serbia too.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was one of the most prominent figures in the history of cultural opposition in the Soviet bloc. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer and novelist whose book The Gulag Archipelago - which was inspired by and documents his own imprisonment in Stalin's labour camps - was one of the most widely distributed literary works via transnational samizdat/tamizdad networks. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974.

In 1937, Vaclovas Aliulis (1921-2015) joined the Marian Order. He completed his studies at the Marian Catholic Gymnasium (an independent religious secondary school) in 1940, and at the Kaunas Seminary in 1945. Aliulis became a Catholic priest in 1944.

Aliulis served as a Catholic priest in various Catholic parishes in Lithuania: in Varėna and Marijampolė (1945 to 1948), and from 1948 in a number of parishes in the Vilnius diocese. At the same time, he was secretary (1965-1979) and chair (1980-1990) of the Liturgical and Church Music Commission of the Lithuanian Conference of Bishops. In 1970-1974, Aliulis was vice-rector of the Kaunas Seminary. In 1974, he was dismissed from the position at the demand of the Soviet government. From 1979, Aliulis lectured on theology and the catechism on underground courses for nuns. He participated actively in underground catechisation, and was a lecturer in the Underground Catholic Seminary, which was established to train priests for Catholic churches in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Twenty priests were prepared in the seminary to serve in Catholic parishes. Knowing that during Soviet times the official training of priests in the Kaunas Seminary suffered from frequent intervention by the government, the activity of the Underground Catholic Seminary was important to the church and the community of believers. 

During the times of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement, 1988-1990), Aliulis was an organiser of the Catholic press. In 1989, he founded the journal ‘The Catholic World’, and was its editor-in-chief. In 1988-1991, he was a member of the Sąjūdis Council. In 1993-1996, he was the superior of the Marian monastery in Rome, and since 1999 the superior of the Marian monastery in Vilnius.