In order to introduce you to life and personality of Đoka Pavlović, we have selected this excerpt from the Official PTT Gazette (1955), published with intent to mark the decade of the PTT Cultural-Artistic Society:

"This year in March, the Cultural-Artistic Society Đoka Pavlović will celebrate their jubilee marking ten years of work. The advanced pre-war Association of PTT Workers was considerably engaged in the cultural, educational, and artistic fields. Their artistic efforts intensified significantly after the Congress in Aranđelovac in 1935, that is to say after overthrowing the reactionary regime administration of the Society. Since then and until 1941, our Society cultivated their cultural, educational, and artistic tendencies in various shapes and forms, organizing different artistic circles (such as reading and literary groups or debate clubs), creating wall newspapers, promoting the AMBIB travelling library, and maintaining events such as recitals, solo performances, quartets, and organized cultural-artistic groups with choirs and drama sections. From obvious reasons, the pro-fascist regime did not allow public concerts and performances with revolutionary character. We were nevertheless the witnesses that congresses, assemblies, and meetings of post office workers often included the Internationale and other revolutionary songs, promoted and prepared at the headquarters of the Central Administration of the Society in Belgrade. Soon after the liberation of Belgrade, while our Army was still engaged in bloody battles at the Srem Front and our soldiers struggled to drive the enemy out of the country, the Cultural-Artistic Society of Belgrade Workers was founded under the name of KUPROD Cultural-Educational Society. It consisted of several groups such as the choir, the drama section, the music section, the folklore section, and the reciting section, and was later renamed as Đoka Pavlović.

Why did the Society obtain such name? Who was Đoka Pavlović and in what way did he contribute to the cultural, educational, and artistic activities of PTT workers?

Comrade Đoka Pavlović was a PTT worker and one of the first younger postmen who, inspired by revolutionary teachings and striving for freedom, understood and accepted the ideology of the workers' movement. His responsibilities in the Syndicate were manifold: Apart from engaging in arranging and planning of different activities intended for strengthening syndical organization, comrade Đoka struggled tirelessly to stir up the revolutionary spirit among his fellow workers, as well as to improve their working and living conditions. He devoted himself selflessly to building of holiday resorts for PTT workers and summer camps for workers' children, and strived to create suitable conditions for improving the cultural, educational, and artistic segment of workers' lives.

We mustn't forget that Đoka, along with organizing the communal summer resort for children, also made sure that children of PTT workers were educated in a modern way by revolutionary teachers. He had considerable success in organizing reading groups, wall newspapers, performances with artistic and/or entertaining character, and other similar activities. His greatest success was perhaps the organization of AMBIB travelling library. The library, which contained some 700 selected revolutionary and political books, travelled through the entire country from one post office to another. It had a very important role in raising the revolutionary spirit of post office workers, and was especially useful to workers with weak financial capabilities who were unable to obtain those books by themselves.

Already weakened and in a bad health condition due to constant torture during his imprisonment in the Glavnjača prison in Belgrade, comrade Đoka was heavily wounded during the bombing of Belgrade in 1941. Nevertheless, as a true a member of the Communist Party he decided to answer the call of the Motherland and join the Partisans. As soon as the autumn of 1941, Đoka was ambushed, captured and handed over to the Germans, who finally executed him with 350 other patriots in Valjevo."