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“Once, I attended such a meeting, in the postgraduate organization at the Faculty of Law. After several of us opposed the brutal suppression of press freedom, the majority supported the official proposal. At this time, a cabaret scene was performed. The chairperson, Milan Milutinovic, proposed a concluding commission, left briefly, and very quickly returned to announce: ‘In the spirit of democracy in our party, different opinions were heard, and most of the proposals were adopted.’ It was my last party meeting, I felt like a puppeteer that entertained the audience while the puppeteers did their work; I dropped out quietly, after 12 years, without the ceremonial return of the booklet of party membership, etc.” (Popov, Kako Smo Dospeli Dovde - Peščanik. 2016).

In 1975, Nebojša Popov was removed from the faculty, along with seven other professors (see more in Groups). This instance is a key example of how repressive actions of party authorities affected life at Belgrade University in the mid-1970s.

Due to problems in Belgrade in 1976, Popov was forced to complete his doctoral degree  at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb.
Six years later, Popov became director of the Center for Philosophy and Social Theory, where many other displaced professors from the Faculty of Philosophy were also employed. The Center later became an independent institute where Popov spent most of his working life. At the beginning of the 1980s, Popov was arrested and sentenced to 25 days imprisonment as a member of the so-called “petition movement” that supported the Polish movement Solidarity.

Popov also was very active outside scientific institutions. He was secretary of the magazine Praxis, member of the board of the Korčula Summer School, and one of the initiators of the Winter Philosophical Encounters (Tara, Vrnjacka Banja and Divčibar). Popov organized a series of non-institutional gatherings for sociologists and philosophers in Cres, Lošinj, and Komiza. He was also one of the organizers of the 'Open University', in which the intellectual opposition gathered together in private homes in Belgrade.

Kristina Popova was born on 11 January 1955 in the town of Ihtiman. In 1976 she graduated with a degree in History from St. Cyril and Methodius Veliko Tarnovo University, then earning a PhD in history since 1987. Since 1978 she has worked at the Neofit Rilski South-West University - Blagoevgrad (earlier known as the Higher Pedagogical Institute) and since 1999 as an Associate Professor of New and Recent History of Bulgaria. Since 1991 Kristina Popova has been a member of the team of the International University Seminar for Balkan Studies and Specializations at Neofit Rilski Southwest University, and has been its chairwoman for many years. 

Kristina Popova is involved in a number of international research networks: the European Network for the History of Social Work (since 2002), the Athena Advanced Thematic Network for European Women's Studies (since 2002), the 2001-2009 Phoenix European Thematic Network on Health and Social Policy and others. She was a guest professor at the University of Vienna, Austria (2000/2001); Leipzig University, Germany (2003);University of Siegen, Germany (2003/2004); and participates in numerous international projects such as the History of Social Work in Eastern Europe 1900-1960 (2005); Policies and Practices of the Socialist State to the Muslim Population of Georgia and Bulgaria (Adjara and Blagoevgrad County) (2008); Women and Minority Documentation and Digital Presentation - from Fragmented Data to Integration in the Information Society, ASO-Austria, 2007-2008; Case work and social control in the 20th century (within the Phoenix TN Project) 2008-2009; (Re) vision of Social Policy in the Post-Soviet Space: ideologies, actors and cultures HESP CEU Project (2009 - 2012); To Come Out of the Shadow Supporting the Social Integration of People Threatened with Marginalisation Caused by Their Nationality (2011-2013, Grundtvig Program); Politics of Memory Cultures of the Russian-Ottoman War 1877-1878: From Divergence to Dialogue 7th Marie Curie Framework Program (2012-2016, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IRSES Marie Curie Action International Research Staff Exchange Scheme); Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th - 21st Centuries (2017-2020, Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie RISE) , among others.
The studies of K. Popova in the field of the history of social work, which she has analyzed in a broad international context, are pioneering. In this area, K. Popova has created a school of thought, uniting innovative working scholars. Kristina Popova's is has also made impressive contributions to the development of the biographical method, the promotion of the popular autobiography and oral history in Bulgarian science.

In the early 1990s, Kristina Popova, together with Anastasia Pashova and Petar Vodenicharov, organized student expeditions to collect life stories, to enhance sensitivity to the life of "ordinary" people. They drew attention to the importance of people and groups that have not been at the center of classical historical knowledge, developing scientific approaches to autobiographical texts so that the different views of the past could be understood. 

Kristina Popova is among the more active participants in the civil movement in Blagoevgrad at the beginning of the so-called "transition” from 1989-1990, as well as in initiatives of enriching archives by collecting documents, life stories and life histories. 

As a co-founder of the Balkan Society for Autobiography and Social Communication (BSASC), member of the International University Seminar for Balkan Studies and Specializations and as head of the Multimedia Center for Computer Archives, Digital Archives and History of Local Self-Government, together with Mariana Piskova, Kristina Popova contributes to its establishment as a scientific and educational dialogue center, which through numerous exhibitions, lectures, meetings, etc. is deepening the public debate on the recent past.

Miodrag Mića Popović was a painter, art critic, writer, film director and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. As a student, he joined a group of young artists whose views overwhelmingly departed from the frame of hard-line socialist realism. This group of young post-Second World War intellectuals was actively involved in debates in which they expressed opinions on topics in the framework of the new cultural and political climate and their discontent with the dictates of socialist realism. Young, independent intellectuals who shared similar political and critical attitudes gathered in Belgrade at Simina Street 9a, opposite the 'Glavnjača' prison where the communist authorities settled accounts with non-conformists. Writers, painters and critics articulated their standpoints in the face of restrictions on the freedom of creative thought and of free artistic expression. The entire situation and socio-political climate after the war led to first disappointment with the new doctrine of Stalinist ideology and socialist realism.     

In 1947, due to the poor material conditions prevalent at the Art Academy in Belgrade, Popović, together with a group of fellow students, sought permission to take a break from tuition in order to go to the Adriatic city of Zadar where they would orient their work and studies more towards nature. For the group of young students, later known as the 'Zadar Group' (Petar Omčikus, Bata Mihajlović, Mileta Andrejević, Vera Božičković, Kosa Bokšan, Ljubinka Jovanović), art was an act of freedom. The artists studied nature, distancing themselves from the principles of socialist realist painting. Very soon, they were accused by the authorities of neglecting work discipline and of unauthorised absence from the Academy. On returning to Belgrade, the members of the group were expelled from the Art Academy. Soon all were reaccepted with the exception of Mića Popović.

In the catalogue accompanying his first independent exhibition in 1950 in the Art Pavilion, Popović expressed his standpoints and his discontent with socialist realism. In 1974, his exhibition to be held in Belgrade’s Cultural Centre was cancelled at the last moment due to some works perceived as ‘dangerous’ by the Yugoslav regime.  

Mića Popović spent several periods abroad; in France between 1951 and 1958, while from 1980 to 1982 he lived and worked in the United States. He became a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1986, and of the Berlin Academy of Arts in the same year. He supported the protests against the regime of Slobodan Milošević in 1996. During his lifetime and as an artist he opposed the regime and authorities that imposed their ideological models. Until the end, he clearly stated his implacable position on the system, remaining true to the ideal of freedom of thought and expression. He died in 1996 in Belgrade. 

Zoran Popović was born in 1944 in Belgrade. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1969, and completed a master’s degree in 1973. Together with other artists of his generation, he was one of the key figures in the ‘New Art Practice’ movement of the 1970s. His activities in the sphere of art are significant, where he employed diverse approaches to breaking with the materiality of the art object. Popović has taken part in numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums in Yugoslavia, Serbia and worldwide, and his work is housed in numerous collections. Zoran Popović lives in Belgrade.