COURAGE

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The Democracy International (TDI) is a not-for-profit non-governmental organisation founded in 1979 in New York. It brought together democratic opponents of both right- and left-wing dictatorships from Asia and Latin America and from across the Soviet bloc.

The direct predecessor to the Institute of Cultural Research was the Institute of Folk Art, which was established in 1951 with Jenő Széll as director. Its mission was to research folk traditions and art. Despite the limitations placed on the Institute by the centralized cultural policy, it became a shelter for banned amateur art associations, which thus were able to survive within the state framework. Jenő Széll played an important role in this. He was able to harmonize his cultural policy concepts and work methods with the directives he got from the superior party organizations. Jenő Széll led the secretariat of Prime Minister Imre Nagy. He became the government commissioner of Hungarian Kossuth Radio during the 1956 Revolution. In the autumn of 1957, he was fired from the Institute. He was then imprisoned. After his release, he worked as a translator.

The atmosphere of the persecutions and reprisals influenced the work of the Institute. It was renamed the Institute of Popular Culture. In the 1960s, the forced political function was central, but this gradually started to weaken. Professionalization began, and the institute was able to secure protection and support for its ambitious and innovative initiatives. In this period, the dissemination and education of popular culture evolved dramatically with the help of public exposure through television programs. In 1963, the Ministry of Culture delegated research on popular culture to the Institute. The main tasks were the coordination of work of the research organizations and the research plans. Principally, they dealt with theoretical analysis and philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical topics, but they also began to pursue cultural and sociological research. Scientific research, adult education, and the study of local history were complemented with amateur artistic works. New genres and contents emerged because of contributions by people active in the alternative and experimental art movements of the 1960s. The appointment of Iván Vitányi’s in 1972 as Chief Director was an advantageous turn in the history of the Institute. 

The Institute for Cultural Research became independent in 1980. It seceded from the Institute of Popular Culture. Iván Vitányi remained the leader. Thanks to his open mindset, the institute hosted numerous projects which did not follow the mainstream directions. Vitányi supported the rethinking and reforming of culture, and he was positive about mediating high culture to the widest social strata. He supported the dance house movement, different amateur arts, sociological, pedagogical, music, and popular-culture research projects and empirical investigations. These endeavors focused on the mapping and dissemination of everyday culture, and this was considered pathbreaking in Hungary and abroad.

In 1986 the National Center for Public Culture and Education was established when the Institute for Cultural Research and the Institute of Popular Culture were merged. Iván vitányi maintained his leading position after this change, as well.

In response to the establishment of Charter 77 and the campaign against its signatories, the first major conference on Charter 77 and respect for human rights in Czechoslovakia was held at the Dauphine University in Paris on January 14^th, 1977. The conference was led by Pierre Emmanuel, a member of the French Academy, and Vladimir Bukovsky was also present. Directly at the conference, The International committee for the support of principles of the Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia was established at the initiative of Ivana and Pavel Tigrid, member of the French Academy of Pierre Emmanuel, secretary of the Socialist Party of Gillese Martinet and former editor of the Communist Party of France writer Pierre Daix. Membership of the Committee has received over thirty leading political and cultural figures in Western Europe and the United States, including the internationally renowned writers Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Arthur Miller, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Among the members of the Committee were three Nobel laureates, as well as well-known French actors Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Ivana Tigridová, who was elected as the Committee's honorary secretary, eventually resigned from this position, as because of her name, she did not want to compromise the work of the International Committee.

The International Committee for the promotion of Charter 77 focused its efforts on supporting the signatories of Charter 77 in their efforts to implement human and civil rights in the country. They held a series of protest events; one of the largest Czechoslovak campaigns that took place in the West was a campaign in 1979 against the prosecution of members of the Committee for the Defence of Unjustly Prosecuted Persons.

The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) curates and produces contemporary art events on a national and an international level. It organizes the annual international contemporary art festival SURVIVAL KIT, regular exhibitions at the Latvian National Museum of Art, and Latvia's representation at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, São Paulo Art Biennial, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Rauma Biennale of Contemporary Art, etc. It has digitalized an archive of Latvian contemporary art, and the LCCA library is accessible to the general public.

The universal convention of Hungarian Lutherans decided in 1802 to establish the archives of the Lutheran Church in Pest, the Archivum Generalis Ecclesiae. For one hundred years it was located in a school building of the Lutheran congregation on Deák square in the city of Pest. In 1908, it moved to the Church centre at Üllői Road 24, district VIII of Budapest. (Now the building is under reconstruction, and the archive is provisionally being held in the building of the City Archives of Budapest.) The material of the archive has been expanded by national collections, and in addition to the documents of church administration, many congregations and individuals have donated their documents to the archive. Because of the reorganization of church administration, the materials of the episcopal offices of the four Lutheran districts were delivered to the archive. The documents of dioceses, of the nationalized evangelistic higher and secondary schools (the secondary school of Fasor, the Faculty of Theology in Sopron, and the Academy of Law in Miskolc) and the materials of dissolved church congregations were also collected. The bequests of many important ecclesiastical figures were acquired by the archives. Now, the archives preserve about 1,000 meters of material. Special catalogues were made for materials concerning the history of congregations and the biographical data of priests.