COURAGE

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Zhelyu Zhelev was born on 3 of March 1935 in the village of Veselinovo, Shumen region, Bulgaria. In 1958 he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Sofia State University (today St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia), joined the Communist Party in 1960, and in 1961 he became a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy. Because of an article (blocked from publication) in which Zhelev disputed Lenin's ideas on philosophy, his dissertation was not accepted, and he was expelled from the Party in 1965. He was deprived of his right to reside in Sofia, and with his wife, Maria Zheleva, he was forced to relocate to the village of Grozden in Burgas region (1966–72). Zhelev managed to publish, in samizdat form, a number of his main ideas and parts of his dissertation in Bulgaria and also abroad (Germany and Yugoslavia). This earned him recognition in philosophical circles.

Zhelev was allowed to return to Sofia in 1972. He was then allowed to defend his dissertation and began to work as a scholar at the Research Institute for Culture at the Committee for Culture. He became head of the Culture and Personality Department (1977–82) and rose to the position of Senior Research Fellow (1979).

At the beginning of March 1982, the People's Youth [Narodna mladezh] publishing house published Zhelev's book Fascism. The text was written during Zhelev’s time in Grozden, with the original title Totalitarian State. The monograph was ready at the end of 1967, but no publishing house would accept the manuscript for publishing. In this work, Zhelev analyzes the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Franco Spain, and describes the basic principles of fascist regimes. Without directly referring to communism, he presents obvious analogies. Three weeks after publication State Security ordered its confiscation because of its "lack of a partisan class approach". Zhelev was removed from the Scientific Council of the Research Institute for Culture at the Committee for Culture. Additionally, the department he led was closed by a so-called “reorganization”. However enough copies (approximately 6000) had been printed that it could be circulated through unofficial channels in Bulgaria and abroad in the following years. The book thus received a large positive response.

In the following years, Zhelev continued to publish his works as samizdat. At the same time, he became a Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, although he criticized the aesthetic education programs of the government’s Committee on Culture's in his work.

Around the beginning of 1988, Zhelev organized the first collective dissident actions. He participated in the organization of the Public Committee for the Environmental Protection of Ruse [Obshtestven komitet za ekologichna zashtita na Ruse]; he was a co-founder of the Club for Support of Openness and Reconstruction [Klub za podkrepa na glasnostta i preustroystvoto]. He gave numerous interviews for radio stations such as Deutsche Welle, The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the BBC. He was among the dissidents who condemned the so-called Revival Process, i.e., the forceful assimilation of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, which he called "one of the most terrible crimes" of the communist regime. In September 1989, Zhelev initiated of negotiations between leaders of various informal movements to build a common coalition against the Communist Party. From these talks, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) emerged in December 1989 as the first anti-communist coalition. Zhelev was unanimously elected its chairman. As chairman of the UDF, Zhelev participated in the roundtable negotiations with representatives of the Bulgarian Communist Party regarding the transition towards parliamentary democracy (January–May 1990). In August 1990, the newly elected parliament elected him as president and in January 1992 he became the first president of Bulgaria elected by popular vote. After the end of his presidential mandate (January 1997) he devoted much energy to fostering regional and international cooperation. Zhelev was the founder and president of the Balkan Political Club, a union of former political leaders from Southeast Europe, and served as an Honorary Co-Chair of the World Justice Project.

For more information, see Description of Fond 1512, Zhelyu Mitev Zhelev – Central State Archives at Archives State Agency (in Bulgarian) at http://212.122.187.196:84/Process.aspx?type=Fund&agid=41&flgid=11959292

Binka Zhelyazkova is the first female director of Bulgarian feature films, one of the few women-cinematographers in the 1950s and 1960s on a world scale.

B. Zhelyazkova graduated in stage production from the State Higher Theatrical School in Sofia in 1951 and began working as an assistant director at Boyana Film Studios. She directed two documentaries and seven feature films five of which together with her husband, the script-writer, poet and writer Hristo Ganev. The two artists belonged to the first generation of communist intellectuals trained by the new authorities. They were both convinced communists, participants in the communist resistant movement during World War II and in the establishment of the new authorities. (Bonka Zhelyazkova became a member of the Labour Youth Union in 1939; since 1947 she was a member of the communist party, at that time Bulgarian Workers Party (communists)

However, with their very first movie, "Life Flows Quietly By..." ("Partisans") (1957), the artistic couple became inconvenient for the totalitarian authorities. The film was one of the first in the Eastern Bloc which revealed the gap between the socialist state and the communist ideal, presented the crisis in the ethics, the moral lapse, the corruption and abuse of power by the former partisans who filled high posts in the party. The movie provoked an ideological scandal, it was banned by a ministerial decree and there was a prohibition of talking/writing about it. It finally reached the public in 1988, 31 years after its creation.

Binka Zhelyazkova made engaged vanguard cinema. With all her works, the director related about her disappointment in the totalitarian regime and the dogmatism of the socialist realism, strongly criticizing the methods and policies of the Party, giving and searching answers to existential questions about freedom and compromise, the value of life and the meaning of ideals. In her feature films Zhelyazkova experimented with daring artistic techniques and profound metaphors and developed her own artistic style comparable to the one of Federico Fellini and Andrei Tarkovsky. Most of Zhelyazkova's films were made up to the standard of surrealism and the so-called magic realism which were opposed to the socialist realism with their way of thinking and aesthetic.

The two documentaries of Zhelyazkova, "Obverse and Reverse" (1981) and "Lullaby" (1982), are philosophical essays on crime and punishment, guilt and redemption in which the author uncompromisingly shows the attitude toward female prisoners in a socialist prison.

In the attitude of Binka Zhelyazkova, convinced communist, toward the authorities one could trace the moral uneasiness and the withdrawal of the left-wing intellectuals from the totalitarian power. At the same time, in the attitude of the authorities toward her work one could clearly see the means used by the socialist state against the intellectuals: ban of films and creative projects, dismissal, attempts at "buying" someone's loyalty/obedience by honouring or appointing to a good post. Because of her declared civil stand and vanguard creative decisions, Binka Zhelyazkova was put under a constant pressure – periodical punishments such as bans of her works, temporal prohibition of working, publishing of assigned articles on her films in the specialized press criticizing the wrong political stands or the "political mistakes". At the same time, in the 1960s Binka Zhelyazkova received a Dimitrov Award, the highest state honour of People's Republic in Bulgaria for contribution to the field of science, art and culture.

The distinguished creative personality, a bright example of professionalism and creativity, replied to the constant pressure with an invariable refusal to make assigned films; thus, she found herself in a situation where it was impossible to realize her ideas. In all her works Binka Zhelyazkova put to the fore the discrepancy between the communist ideal and the reality, the use of power for personal purposes in favour of "retail" life, the accommodation and conformism; she searched for answers to existential problems about freedom and compromise. Sanctioned and restricted in socialist Bulgaria, Binka Zhelyazkova's films made up to the standards of the vanguard metaphorical-expressive style defined as the "Bulgarian new wave" were highly acknowledged at various international festivals – in Cannes, Moscow, Montreal, Berlin, Brussels, Cartagena, Karlovy Vary.

Because of her constant efforts to break the dogmatism of the ideology and the socialist realism, Binka Zhelyazkova was referred to as "the rebellious" and "the disobedient girl of the Bulgarian cinema". As a script-writer, her husband, "the uncompromising stoic", the dramatist, the poet, the writer Hristo Ganev, was always by her side throughout her creative way.

For a short period of time Binka Zhelyazkova was director of the Bulgarian section of the international organization "Women in Film" established during the conference of the women in cinema – KIWI, in Tbilisi (1989). In 1996 she was proclaimed the face of cinema in Eastern Europe; her portrait appeared on the cover of the collection "MovEast" but soon after that she retired into private life for health reasons.

For their artistic and civil stand, in 2007 the artistic duo Binka Zhelyazkova and Hristo Ganev were awarded a Prize of the Ministry of Culture for overall contribution to the Bulgarian cinema.

Today, the work of Binka Zhelyazkova is examined more broadly, beyond the ideological views, as posing the question of the diluting of the moral frames in the modern society, of the degrading of the ideals to the everyday comfort.

Filmography:

- Life Flows Quietly By... (1957)

- We Were Young (1961)

- The Tied Up Balloon (1967)

- The Last Word (1973)

- The Swimming Pool (1977)

- The Big Night Bathe (1980)

- On the Roofs at Night (1988)

- Lullaby (1981), documentary

- Obverse and Reverse (1982), documentary

Osyp Zinkevych was a Ukrainian migrant, human rights activist, literary critic, founder of the human rights publishing house Smoloskyp and co-founder of several human rights organizations: Smoloskyp Organization for the Defence of Human Rights in Ukraine, Washington Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, and the Committee for the Defence of Ukrainian Political Prisoners in the USSR.

As a young migrant student, Osyp Zinkevych set up a Ukrainian youth organization in Paris in 1950, and started a special column for the Ukrainian youth in the émigré newspaper “The Ukrainian Word” (Ukrainske Slovo), the main periodical of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. From around that time until his death, Zinkevych was the leading figure and the ideologue of Smoloskyp’s metamorphoses: from a column in a newspaper to an independent quarterly (1956), a publishing house in the US (1967), an information service (1967), a human rights organization (1970), and finally an international charitable foundation and a museum-archive in Kyiv (1998). Zinkevych was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Until his final breakup with the OUN(M), in 1974, he was a member of its governing body.

Osyp Zinkevych took an active part in the campaigns for human rights in Ukraine, organized a series of protest campaigns against political repression in Soviet Ukraine, and fought for the independent participation of Ukraine in the Olympic games. He cooperated with international human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International) and widely disseminated factual information on political repression and dissident movement in Ukraine.

Olbram Zoubek was a Czech sculptor. He was known as the creator of Jan Palach’s death mask. After finishing grammar school, he studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague from 1945–1952, where he met his future wife, the artist Eva Kmentová. Until 1969, Zoubek could publicly present his work, however he did not belong to the group of “pro-regime” artists. In 1958 he became a member of the art group Trasa. He exhibited with this group until the end of the 1970s. His first solo exhibition was held in 1963 in Prague. A major turning point in his life was the death of Jan Palach in January 1969. Zoubek made his death mask and designed Palach’s gravestone at Olšany Cemetery. However, the gravestone was soon removed by the police. It was not returned to the grave until 1990.

Zoubek’s activities supporting anti-regime protests prevented him from officially exhibiting his work for several years. He turned to restoration work. From the 1980s his work gradually began to return to the public space. After the Velvet Revolution, he was acclaimed by professionals and the public, and a number of exhibitions of his works were organized. Zoubek was also the creator of the Monument Dedicated to the Victims of Communism in Prague and the gravestone of Milada Horáková – a politician who was executed in the 1950s.

Large-scale figural sculptures are typical of Zoubek’s artistic work. He usually worked with cement, but later also with bronze. From the 1970s, his statues were polychromed or gilded. Inspiration from Greek and Celtic mythology, as well as from the Old Testament, is visible in Zoubek’s work. Zoubek’s figures are characterized by the symbolic gestures of the hands or the whole body.