COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

Jan Eliáš was born in Olomouc on September 10^th, 1944. A year after graduation at the Slovasnke náměstí in Brno (at that time named the Secondary General Education School), he started to study archiving at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Brno (nowadays Masaryk University). The final years of his studies (1963-1969) took place in the turbulent period of the Prague Spring. Jan Eliáš was both among one the founders of the Independent FF UJEP Students' Association, and the leading members of the FF UJEP, in 1968. After the defeat of the process of revival in Czechoslovakia, in 1970, the society was dissolved and Jan Eliáš was left to the marginal sphere of historical research. He became an employee of the “Stavoprojekt“. At this time there was targeted activity against the rest of the background from the activities of the association, which Jan Eliáš gathered, organised and wrote down and catalogued. The work on the creation of the collection ended in 1971, which is the date of the handwritten catalogue. He kept his gathered and scattered collection in his possession until the early 1990s, when he agreed to store them in the Masaryk University Archives, which took place in 1993. The period after 1989 meant a great career advancement for Jan Eliáš as he became the director of the state archives in Brno. The Brno state archives has the largest collection in the Czech Republic, and owing to Jan Eliáš, it was changed to its original name, the Moravian Land Archive, despite various disagreements and financial sanctions made by the Prague forces, and in dealing with the local police forces who were running it. As Jan Eliáš failed to defend his uncompromising attitude towards the security authorities of the post-totalitarian state, the Czech archival services remained under the Ministry of the Interior, and he gave up his position in the institution. In 1994 he began working as a self-employed person as a historical researcher, focusing on buildings.

Kalle Istvan Eller studied Estonian and English philology at the University of Tartu, but never graduated. He was active in the almanac movement, publishing poetry and essays in manuscript magazines, and as an editor. From 1973, he worked as a forester. He is currently actively engaged in maintaining the Võro language, which is a minor language spoken in southeast Estonia. He is also an activist and leader of the Estonian native neo-pagan faith, and a member of the Estonian Defence League. In 2001, a collection of his poetry written during the Soviet era was published.

Elza Rudenāja (1911-1998) was born in the Madona district. She was a graduate of the University of Latvia, where she studied history and developed an interest in archaeology. After graduating, she also gained some experience in museum work. In the summer of 1944, she approached the first secretary of the Madona district Communist Party Committee with a proposal to organise a local history museum in Madona, and received support for the proposal. The museum was established in September 1944, and Rudenāja was its director until 1990, when she was forced to resign due to ill health. Although the attitude of the local authorities towards the museum from the 1940s to the 1960s was very often not supportive, Rudenāja managed to create one of the best local museums in Latvia. She was never a Communist Party member, which was rather rare for directors of museums, and she employed several people who were persecuted by the Soviet authorities for political reasons. Nevertheless, despite occasional attacks against the museum, Rudenāja managed to retain her post, which was largely due to her sociability, and her wide range of supporters and friends in cultural milieus, some of whom were respected by the authorities. The situation became easier in the 1970s, when Rudenāja established a reputation for herself as an important personality in the field of culture. Rudenāja's main interests in local history were in archaeology and pre-Soviet history in general. She was also genuinely interested in and devoted to literature and art. Thus, the preservation of the historical and cultural legacy, participation in the establishment and running of memorial museums to personalities who were important to the national culture, became the focus of her efforts. Apart from overseeing the collecting work and holding of artefacts, Rudenāja devoted a lot of energy to dissemination and educational activities. Although she never tried to challenge the Soviet regime openly, she often had to balance between the ideological demands of the local and republican authorities and supporting the national culture.