COURAGE

povezovanje zbirk

Vytautas Skuodis (1929-2016) was born in Chicago. His family moved to Lithuania in 1930. In 1948, he graduated from a gymnasium in Panevėžys, and in 1948-1953 he studied geology at Vilnius University. In 1953-1969, he worked as a researcher and manager in the all-union institute Hidroproekt, organising geological investigations for building various power stations in Latvia, Russia and Belorussia. In 1964-1968, he was a PhD student in Moscow, and obtained his PhD degree (in the Soviet research system, he was a ‘candidate of science’) in geology and mineralogy in 1969. In 1969-1979, he was a lecturer and associate professor at Vilnius University. He published 30 research articles. In 1972, he started his dissident activities.
In 1979, Skuodis joined the dissident organisation the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, which aimed to register violations by the Soviet regime, to inform society and Western countries about the condition of human rights in Soviet Lithuania, and to make written protests about violations of human rights. At the end of 1979, he was dismissed from his position at Vilnius University because of his anti-Soviet attitudes and activities. In 1980, he was arrested and sentenced to prison. KGB investigators used Skuodis’ collaboration with the underground publication Alma Mater, and initiating and editing the underground intellectual journal Perspektyvos, as criminal evidence against him. During its search of Skuodis’ flat, the KGB found the manuscript of his book Dvasinis genocidas Lietuvoje (Spiritual Genocide in Lithuania), which was added to the evidence against him. 
At that time, Perspektyvos was the most sought-after underground publication among the Lithuanian intelligentsia.
The KGB monitored Skuodis, and he remained in jail until 1987. After that, he went to the USA, where he joined Lithuanian and international organisations involved in promoting the freedom and democracy movement in Eastern Europe. He gave a number of public lectures in the USA, Canada, South America, Australia and Europe. In 1987-1988, he met Pope John Paul II, and the US president Ronald Reagan.

Otakar Slavík was a Czech painter. He studied for a professorship in painting at Charles University’s College of Education in Prague and afterwards made a living doing manual labour. He was one of the artists connected to the UB 12 group. His first solo exhibition was in Prague in 1964 and from the mid-1960s Slavík began to devote himself to painting and drawing. He met with the artists from the Křížovnik School. During Normalization he was banned from exhibiting his work and he turned once more to manual labour. He signed Charter 77 and decided to leave Czechoslovakia in 1980. He moved to Vienna and became a member of the Künstlerhaus art association. His works were exhibited abroad and in Czechoslovakia after 1990. Colour and the human figure were at the centre of Slavík’s work (which is why he is sometimes associated with the “new figuration”).

Dušan Slávik was born in Bratislava on January 10, 1922. During the Second World War, he participated in the Slovak National Uprising, was captured, and sentenced to death. However, he managed to flee and in the spring of 1945, he joined the Czechoslovak army fighting alongside its allies. After the war he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Comenius University in Bratislava. In 1949, for the second time in his life, he was sentenced to death for political reasons, allegedly for spying and treason. His punishment was later changed to life, and in 1960 he was granted amnesty. While in prison, he was trained in using a lathe and upon leaving prison, he worked as a manual labourer; only at the time of political liberation in 1968 was he allowed to become a lawyer. He worked as a corporate lawyer in the construction company Investprojekt only until the beginning of normalization, he was still referred to the workers' profession, and later he managed to become a lawyer for the newly established SOS villages. Dušan Slávik joined the political prisoners club K 231 in 1968. In 1988 he belonged to the founding personalities of Masaryk's Society in Brno and at the end of 1989, he participated in the re-establishment of the CSSD. He died on April 19, 1992 in Brno.

Antanas Sniečkus was the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party from 1936 till his death in 1974. After the First World War, he returned with his family from Russia to Lithuania. By 1920, he was already a member of the Bolshevik Party, and started his anti-government activities, for which he was arrested. After his release from prison, he fled to Moscow, where he became an agent of the Comintern, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania. From 1926 to 1930, he engaged in subversive activities in Lithuania, and was again arrested and held in prison in Kaunas in 1930. In 1933, Sniečkus was released in exchange for Lithuanian political prisoners held in the Soviet Union.

After the 1940 Soviet ultimatum to Lithuania and the subsequent military occupation, Sniečkus became head of the Department of National Security. As the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, he was the initiator of the mass deportations of Lithuanians during the first and the second occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union. In 1948, Sniečkus started the collectivisation of agriculture. Most peasants were collectivised by 1952, through terror, killings and deportations.