Mihai Dolgan (b. 14 March 1942, Vladimirești / Vladimireuca, Sângerei district – d. 16 March 2008, Chișinău) was a prominent Moldavian composer and singer, who became famous as the founder and uncontested leader of the musical band Noroc in 1966. Dolgan’s family was deported to the Buriat ASSR in 1949, as part of the wave of massive deportations affecting the MSSR during the late 1940s and early 1950s. After his family returned to Soviet Moldavia in 1956, Dolgan worked as an accordionist in his native Sângerei (1958–1959). In the late 1950s, he enrolled in the Ștefan Neaga Musical College in Chișinău (1959–1962). Although he was not allowed to study the accordion due to the lack of this specialisation at the college, he became one of the most accomplished accordionists in Soviet Moldavia, being part of several groups organised under the aegis of the Chișinău Philharmonic Orchestra (1964–1967). With the crucial support of the Philharmonic’s director, Alexandru Fedco, in 1966 Dolgan was allowed to form his own band, which was meant to perform “Moldavian songs with a modern rhythm” (as the Soviet press of the era phrased it). In fact, Dolgan’s initial idea was to create a jazz band, following his earlier experience as a jazz performer during his service in the Soviet Army, when he had been a member of the military orchestra in Kiev (1962–1964). However, under the influence of his colleagues and fellow Noroc members Valentin Goga and Alexandru Cazacu, Dolgan gradually understood the public’s demand for contemporary “commercial” music. Noroc thus came under the sway of British and American beat and rock music, notably The Beatles. Dolgan’s band pursued a “double strategy” during its performances within and outside the MSSR. While in Soviet Moldavia the singers had to abide by strict censorship rules and a pre-approved official programme, during their shows in other Soviet cities they deviated significantly from this model, peppering their performances with fashionable Western hits and their own songs. This strategy ultimately backfired in the summer of 1970, during Noroc’s tour of Ukraine, when the Party authorities in Odessa and Vinnitsa were appalled by the violent incidents at their concerts and by the “unacceptable” contents and stage behaviour of the band. Noroc was dissolved by a special order of the Minister of Culture on 16 September 1970. After Noroc’s banning in the MSSR, Dolgan worked in various philharmonic orchestras in Russia and Ukraine (notably Tambov and Cherkassy, 1971–1974). In 1974, he was allowed to return to Chișinău and to form another musical group, called Contemporanul (The Contemporary), this time under closer supervision by the authorities. Although the new band included many of the original Noroc members (notably, the brothers Alexandru and Anatol Cazacu and Ștefan Petrache), it never reached the heights of popularity achieved by its predecessor. Dolgan continued to enjoy a high reputation in musical circles throughout the 1970s and 1980s, while Contemporanul helped launch a number of prominent Moldovan artists, some of them still active. However, he was never entirely “rehabilitated” in the eyes of the communist regime, receiving public recognition only during the Perestroika period, when he was made a People’s Artist of the Moldavian SSR (1988). In the late 1980s, Dolgan and his colleagues were also active in the national movement. In 1987, they launched one of the first patriotic songs with a clear pro-Romanian message – Basarabia (lyrics by Dumitru Matcovschi, music by Mihai Dolgan). Although Dolgan collaborated, during his musical career, with a number of politically conscious poets and song writers (e.g., Andrei Strâmbeanu and Efim Krimerman), he rarely expressed an openly anti-Soviet stance. However, as he noted in a later interview, music was for him an unmistakable form of protest: “How can one play The Beatles and be a communist at the same time?” Dolgan’s music was emblematic for the tendency of the “last Soviet generation” to live outside of official constraints and norms. He remained famous as the author of such hits as: De ce plâng ghitarele? (Why the Guitars Cry), Dor, dorule (O, Longing), Cântă un artist (An Artist is Singing), Primăvara (Spring), etc. In the 1990s, Dolgan became less visible as a public figure, struggling to keep afloat the revamped Noroc project (Contemporanul had reverted to the old name in 1985), but with little success. In 2001, he was decorated with the highest Moldovan state distinction, the Order of the Republic, for his entire musical career. Two years after his death, in 2010, a commemorative plaque was installed on his apartment building in central Chișinău (executed by the sculptor Valerian Doicov). Mihai Dolgan remains one of the most original Moldavian musicians of the last fifty years, symbolising the creative synthesis of local musical traditions and Western-style modernity.
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Hely:
- Chișinău, Moldova
Matthias Domaschk was a member of the Jena City Youth Parish (JG). After signing the petition against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976 he had his first experience with the Ministry for State Security of the GDR. He was barred from completing his school leaving exam (Abitur), his friends were involuntarily deported to West Germany and he was drafted into the National People’s Army. He continued to invest his time in the ‚open work‘ of the Youth Parish. Although the State Security Service portrayed him as a conspiring underground activist, this was far from the truth. Following long interrogation sessions on the 12 April 1981, Domaschk passed away under still-unsolved circumstances. According to the official report, Domaschk committed suicide, however, his friends disputed this and numerous protests were organized.
Domaschk’s death radicalized youth opposition to the GDR; his name became a symbol and manifested into legal proceedings which continue to this day. Both „Artists for others“ and the Berlin Environmental Library have named their collections detailing the History of Opposition and Non-violent resistance in the GDR after Matthias Domaschk.
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Hely:
- Jena, Germany
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Hely:
- Chișinău, Moldova
Pavel Doronin (born in 1905, Bukhedu Railway Station of the Eastern Chinese Railway, Manchuria, now Boketu, Nei Mongol Province, China) was a railway worker and engineer who came to Chișinău in 1960 after working for over three decades in various positions within the railway system throughout the Soviet Union. Doronin was of Russian ethnic background and had a “healthy” social origin from the perspective of the Soviet authorities. In his youth he was a worker at various branches of the Soviet railway network in the Far East, first in Blagoveshchensk on the Amur River and then in the Khabarovsk region. In 1934 he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Railroad Transport Engineering and subsequently worked in the railway system in various regions of the Soviet Union. In the late 1930s he married and settled in Vladivostok for several years. In February 1941 Doronin was transferred to Lviv, in Western Ukraine, where he arrived later that spring. The initial phase of the Soviet-German War caught him there. He was drafted into the Red Army in the summer of 1941 and sent to the front as a military engineer. His family, who had stayed behind in Vladivostok, was subsequently evacuated to the Altai region. In late 1942 and 1943 his unit operated in the Kursk region. He became commander of a railway engineering battalion. In November 1943 he was arrested and convicted by a special military tribunal to ten years of hard labour as a result of purportedly conducting ”anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” among the soldiers and officers of his unit. He was sent to a forced labour camp in the Russian Far North, in the Pechora region, where he served his sentence while also being employed as a railway worker starting from the late 1940s. He was reunited with his family in 1953, after his release from the labour camp, and was rehabilitated in 1955 by a special military court of the Voronezh military district. In the late 1950s he worked as a railway engineer in Kotlas, in the Russian Far North, building a successful professional career. In 1960 he came to Chişinău, where he was first employed at the city’s railway station and then moved to the Luch factory in late 1963. Doronin retired in 1965. His opposition to the regime becomes less surprising if his earlier prison experience is taken into account. During the preliminary investigation carried out by the Stalinist penal system in 1943, it was revealed that Doronin exhibited ”anti-Soviet” opinions as early as the late 1920s, when he was denied party membership, and relapsed into his earlier anti-Soviet stance after graduation, in 1934. However, it is not clear if his condemnation in 1943 had any substance. Although he was denounced by several fellow-officers for ”anti-Soviet propaganda,” this charge seemed highly dubious given the context and the practices of the time, as well as his later rehabilitation in 1955. It is obvious, however, that Doronin resented his conviction and thought he had been punished unjustly. After his retirement, around 1967, Doronin became even more disenchanted with the Soviet state. During the preliminary investigation, it transpired that his discontent toward the regime was also fuelled by his listening to Western radio stations (mainly Voice of America and the BBC), as well as by his earlier conviction. His criticism of the regime was exacerbated by his precarious living conditions, as well as by a series of personal and family crises that he suffered after his retirement. All these factors resulted in the active phase of his ”anti-Soviet” behaviour, which he displayed from late 1967 to early 1971. His psychiatric assessment concluded that, while completely sane, he displayed a ”heightened sense of social justice,” which might also explain the gradual radicalization of his views. Doronin was also a voracious reader and a highly articulate person, a fact which is proven by the content of his letters and petitions. This probably enhanced the apprehension of the Soviet authorities, despite the isolated character of his actions and the lack of any hint at the propagation of his views. His criticism of the hypocrisy and corruption of the Communist Party and of the hollowness of Soviet official ideology was enough for him to be regarded as potentially dangerous. After the preliminary investigation, which lasted for three months – from 6 December 1971 to 6 March 1972, followed by the trial, held on 24-27 March 1972 – Doronin was sentenced to one and a half years in a high-security prison, according to article 67, part 1, of the Criminal Code of the Moldavian SSR (“anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda aimed at undermining Soviet power”). Doronin’s fate after his sentence and arrest is unknown.
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Hely:
- Chișinău, Moldova
Lidija Doroņina-Lasmane is a well-known Latvian anti-communist dissident. Born into a Baptist family, she was imprisoned for the first time at the age of 21 for five years in 1946 for taking medication to national partisans. Her father was detained for ten years, but her mother was handed a three-year suspended sentence. In 1951, Lidija was forced to stay at the settlement in Vorkuta, and only returned to Latvia after the death of Stalin. In 1970, she was detained for two years for reading and disseminating forbidden literature. The third time she was detained was for five years in 1983, for participating in the 'Action of Light', but she was released in 1987. Returning to Latvia, she became one of the publishers of the Auseklis review. In 1994, Doroņina-Lasmane was awarded one of the highest decorations of Latvia, the Order of Three Stars, but she refused to accept it, because, according to her, several former KGB informers had also been awarded the Order.
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Hely:
- Riga, Latvia