Zsolt Krokovay

* 1946

  • "In the samizdat Diary every possible issue was treated. The Diary was a real jungle. It was a common writing of people with very different tastes, views, interest and educational background. I may say that it was unique in the world, it was the product of a Soviet type society. The ideology behind the „Diary” was also officially the „second public”. Let’s create our own society and let’s not care about the outsiders."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Budapest, 11.12.2006

    (audio)
    délka: 02:27:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Oral History Archive - Budapest
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The ideology behind the „Diary” was also officially the second public. Let’s create our own society and let’s not care about the outsiders.

1984.jpg (historic)
Zsolt Krokovay
zdroj: családi

Philosopher. He was born on August 19, 1946 in Budapest. He graduated from high school in 1965 in Érd. He got university degree of Hungarian literature and history at Loránd Eötvös University in 1972, and a degree of philosophy in 1974. Between 1974 and 1979 he was lecturer of philosophy at the Philosophy Department of Budapest Technical University. Since he joined the democratic opposition movement among the first activists, in the coming years he could teach only occasionally. He‘s translated different writings and he‘s written several studies on ethics, legal philosophy, constitutional law and political philosophy since 1972. He gave lecturers at the flying university of the underground and organized private seminars, some of them in his own flat. He published in samizdat periodicals since 1977, his „A letter from Budapest on censorship“ was one of the first samizdats. He signed the petition in solidarity with the Charta movement in 1979. He contributed to the Bibó Memorial Book published in samizdat, too. Since 1977 he was one of the authors of the underground Diary. He got his PhD degree in 1980. 1985 he spent some months in Leicester (United Kingdom) thank to a scholarship given by the Soros Foundation in Paris. Later he was given an other scholarship by the same foundation and between 1986 and 1989 he could make researches at the Philosophy Department of the University of Arizona in Tucson (United States). He was advisor of the parliamentary group of the Association of Free Democrats between 1990 and 1994. From 1990 to 2011 he was lecturer at the Philosophy Department of the University of Pécs. In 1996 he defended his thesis „Freedom and Censorship“ and he got the degree of Candidate of Sciences. He retired in September 2011 and since then he gives lectures at the Philosophy Institute of the Faculty of Arts of ELTE and at the Phisosophy Department of the Faculty of Law as associate professor with habilitation.