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The first private dance house was opened on 6 May 1972 in the Book Club at Liszt Ferenc Square in Budapest, where Ferenc Novák and his followers showed the simple form of the “széki” dance (Szék, Sic is a Romanian village). The event was organized by dancers of the Bihari Dance Ensemble, Jolán Foltin, Lajos Lelkes, and Antal Stoller. The dancers of the Bartók, the Vadrózsák, and the Vasas Dance Ensembles also took part in it; the music was provided by Béla Halmos, Ferenc Sebő, and Péter Éri. The main supporter of the event was György Martin. He helped Béla Halmos and Ferenc Sebő too. Martin showed them the Collection of Szék by László Lajtha and other records what later became the music collection of the dance house movement. Halmos and Sebő learnt from Sándor Tímár in 1971 how to play music for dancers.

“Music and dance like in Szék” was written on the invitation for the first private dance house in 1972. Opposite the entrance, there was a photo by Péter Korniss who also spent a lot of time in Szék and documented traditional Transylvanian peasant culture. At the door, Lajos Lelkes and Antal Stoller gave the guests a welcome similar to the welcome they would get in Szék. Originally the organizers wanted to reconstruct the traditional dance house of Szék, but later there were also ethnographical and sociological lectures at the dance houses.

In 1972, there were three more private dance houses at the Book Club.

At the end of 1972, Béla Halmos, Ferenc Sebő, and Mihály Sipos traveled to Szék because they wanted to learn about the dance house. Here Béla Halmos heard the band of István Ádám "Icsán,” and he started to learn folk songs from them. In Budapest, when Béla Halmos organized the dance houses, the model for him was the dance house of Szék, where that was a natural event every time.

The five-page first version of the Charter 77 Declaration was established in the second half of December 1976 (date 26 December 1976), its basic content was agreed on the 11^th December of the same year. Red notes were from Václav Havel, pencil notes from Paul Kohout. The declaration is a founding document of the Charter 77, which criticised state power for the non-observance of human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia. Originals of three drafts of this Declaration was handed over by Pavel Kohout to the contemporary Swiss Ambassador and after Kohout´s forced exile the texts were returned to him. About next 25 years these versions were deposited in Vienna and in Prague and since 2012 have become a part of the Moravian Museum´s collections. Because of the material’s high value, a copy of the Declaration is very often exhibited, illustrating the mapping of the Communist regime.   

The first issue of the bulletin of the Committee to Aid Democratic Dissidents in Yugoslavia (CADDY) was published immediately after Tito's death in early May 1980. This committee was headed by Mihajlo Mihajlov in cooperation with two dissidents, the most famous Yugoslav dissident and Tito’s former closest associate Milovan Đilas, and former Yugoslav Army general but later leading Croatian dissident Franjo Tudjman. Through the Democracy International organization, Mihajlov took the initiative to set up such a committee and organize a bi-monthly bulletin that would provide information on dissident movements in Yugoslavia in English, intended for the American and international public.

The first issue of the CADDY bulletin contained, besides a report on Tito's death (a major turning point in Yugoslav history), a brief outline of the committee's mission statement: “Our committee is formed out of concern for the lack of the freedom of expression in Yugoslavia. It is to serve as the conscience and guardian of fundamental human rights in that country, which exists only as their negation since the regime persecutes all those who disagree with it” (Rusko Matulic Papers, box 3).

‘Goli Otok’ 1–5 is a five-volume book of memoirs comprising almost 3,000 pages.  It includes the memories of Mihailović himself as well as of others who survived Goli Otok. Mihailović explores the topic by combining research and a journalistic approach. His research efforts and work to shape the material into a book took a full 37 years. He has mentioned several times that he modelled his work on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his ‘Gulag Archipelago’. ‘I chose a journalistic form of dialogue about Goli Otok with people who had survived it themselves, and who are able to formulate some conclusions about this terrible experience.’ He had gathered, ‘ten people whom he respected, liked, and who trusted him’.[1]

Mihailović admitted that he had waited a long time for someone else to tackle the topic. ’I expected, maybe for a whole twenty years, that some other person would tackle this, someone with sufficient talent and patience to commit to it, but that didn’t happen, and then I concluded that I would have to start myself.’ He believes that Goli Otok is not particularly topical today and is not given enough attention. This is one of the reasons why he decided that he would take up the task of writing about Goli Otok himself. Another lies in the significance of the topic in his personal history. ‘For me, this is directly relevant. I don’t have the right to allege that it’s important for everyone, because that would, perhaps, be immodest. But it’s important to me, why I, as a young person, was arrested and sent away to Goli Otok,’ Mihailović explained.

Through the combination of documents and oral history, Mihailović has created an original work – a ‘history-memory’, a memoir based on facts and real-life testimonies – and in this sense the five-volume opus represents an indispensable work for investigating the history of Goli Otok.    

Mihailović’s five-volume work is accessible to researchers and is kept in the Goli Otok collection in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade.

[1] http://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/kultura/dragoslav-mihailovic-o-petoknjizju-goli-otok_324436.html