







The collection holds much valuable information on the policy of Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee towards various manifestations of cultural opposition. The documents also reflect the situation of the Lithuanian intelligentsia, whose main goal was to preserve the Lithuanian cultural heritage. The documents cover the period of liberalisation, i.e. de-Stalinisation, in Soviet Lithuania.









The Lajos Vajda Studio was officially established in 1972 as a circle of visual artists interested in experimental practices. The origins of the cohesiveness of the group lie in the spirit of the place and the group’s attachment to Szentendre and its artistic traditions. At the end of the 1960s, a vital, informal counterculture-cell came into existence in Szentendre in part because of the activities of young artists who inspired one another. The archive documents the history and the activities of the studio and its members.





Artpool Art Research Center collects, archives, and makes available documents for researchers regarding marginalized art practices of Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s and contemporary international art tendencies. Topics in the archive include progressive, unofficial Hungarian art movements (such as underground art events, venues, groups, and samizdat publications between 1970 and 1990) and new tendencies in international art beginning in the 1960s.
In addition to functioning as a research center, Artpool considers itself an active archive. It organizes events in search of new forms of social activity, participates in the process in a formative way, and simultaneously documents and archives these process in order to promote the free flow of information.





The founder of the Folk Dance House Movement was Béla Halmos. Halmos, as a musician, a folklorist, an instructor, an organizer and the leader of the Hungarian revival movement, supported the Hungarian folk culture and Dance House Movement. The Folk Dance House Archives started to function in 1999. The root of the Archives was the private collection of Béla Halmos, and it continuosly grew thanks to gifts and donations.







The crackdown on the Croatian Spring and the repression against its members came in December 1971, after the twenty-first session of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, held in Tito's residence in Karađorđevo. Croatian political leaders were removed from their posts and banned from engaging in any public work. On the eve of the twenty-third session of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia held in Zagreb on 12 December 1971, where they formally resigned, as a show of support students organised various activities. According to the report written by Valentin Huzjak, secretary of the Republic Internal Affairs Secretariat of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, early in the morning on that day, approximately 1,000 students gathered in three student dormitories in Zagreb and then went to demonstrate in front of the Central Committee's headquarters, but were halted by police forces. In the student dormitories they shouted and wrote slogans on the walls in support of Savka Dabčević-Kučar, Miko Tripalo, Pero Pirker and other political leaders dismissed from their posts. Huzjak also reported that later in the afternoon, approximately 500 students demonstrated, shouted and posted slogans and distributed handwritten pamphlets on Zagreb’s main square. According to the report, a few dozen people were arrested, and while breaking up the demonstrations, the “police used nightsticks.ˮ Besides the staff of the Public Security Service in Zagreb, 812 police officers from other towns and cities were engaged to suppress the demonstrations.
The document is available for research and copying.









The Nelu Stratone collection is one of the most impressive collections of rock, jazz, and folk records created in communist Romania, as a result of the happy combination between its owner’s exceptional passion for alternative music and his ability to acquire records that were not imported officially. The collection is important not only for its size, but even more for the significant number of albums of Western provenance, which were unavailable in shops in Romania but could nevertheless be obtained due to the existence of an alternative market for such products. The creation and preservation of such a collection were activities regarded with suspicion by the communist authorities in Romania, because they proved the younger generation’s fascination with Western cultural products, in contravention of the spirit of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Theses of July 1971.





The collection, which is the private property of István Viczián, illustrates the history of the Calvinist youth organization of Pasarét under socialism. The collection includes letters and photographs, which provide insights into the aspirations of the group to create an active religious community in an era when such communities were a threat to and contradiction of official communist youth policy.









Vjesnik Newspaper Documentation is an archival collection created in the Vjesnik newspaper publishing enterprise from 1964 to 2006. It includes about twelve million press clippings, organized into six thousand topics and sixty thousand dossiers on public persons. Inter alia, it documents various forms of cultural opposition in the former Yugoslavia, but also in other communist countries in Europe and worldwide.




The video and audio library of the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature consists of audio and video recordings of Czech poets and writers from 1932 until 2013; the collection also covers the literary scene in Czechoslovakia before 1989, including the activities of unofficial or “banned” writers and artists and their work in exile. One important part of the collection are recordings made between 1990 and 2013 as part of the Authentic project, which focused on recording videos and audios from various spheres of the Czech literary scene.




20 x 34 cm (29 x 43 cm framed), photos, cardboard, velour, acrylic, pearls
Three photos underlie the composition, arranged onto one surface, decorated with paint and pearls. The main members of the circle of friends are shown in the photos: Prince January (János Baksa Soós) in the upper section, Zuzu (Lóránt Méhes) and his girlfriend, Kriszta Kecskés, in the middle, and János Vető below.
The composition evokes an ideal situation where companionship is complete. Prince January lived in Berlin, visited Budapest only once a year, mostly in autumn, stayed usually for a month. He sent the featured photo by mail, an intentionally decomposed snapshot made with an instant camera; only half of his face is seen in the frame.
Zuzu and Kriszta are in synch with each other in terms of clothes and attitude. The selection criterion for the photo was that it emanates the atmosphere of the era. Zuzu smokes on his joint, Kriszta embraces him, as the love seat embraces them too.
The photo of János Vető is dramatic, not only because it is black and white: the image was taken after a serious car accident (a couple of years ago), his shoulder, chest, and left arm are in cast. Appropriate to the situation, his face is serious, and he is the only one looking into the camera.
According to the author’s comment, it is a spontaneously created, handcrafted composition. First the photos were attached to the cardboard, then the paint, pearls, glass, and velour were added. “I felt like a folk artist during production,” commented Zuzu, “like a shepherd, decorated as much as possible.”
The finished picture was then hanged in the hall of his apartment. January was moved a bit by seeing it. Later he also made a composition in response, with an image of Zuzu also sent to him in the mail. He too cultivated a craftsman’s attitude. They were following the work of each other. He even depicted Zuzu as a duke for his drawing series, “Primeval Light – Pathway.”


The Second Directorate of the Soviet Lithuanian KGB (Fond No 41)
The documents in the collection represent KGB activity in the sphere of counter-intelligence, persecuting various forms of expression of the anti-Soviet movement, as well as KGB work against what was understood as cultural opposition. Until the autumn of 1967 (when the 5th Department of the KGB was established), the 2nd Directorate was responsible for counter-intelligence work in ideology. From 1967, its main direction was the security of state secrets. The KGB continued to use the 2nd Directorate to fight against dissidents and opposition, but it applied a new interpretation: the underground and expressions of nationalism were seen as a danger to state secrets.




The poster gives details of two extraordinary concerts held on 10 and 11 May 1985 by some of the most appreciated rebel artists and rock groups of that period. Among the participants were the bands Roșu și Negru (“Red and Black”), Hardton, Post Scriptum, Celelalte cuvinte (“The Other Words”), Compact, Progresiv TM, Vali Sterian și Compania de Sunet, (“Vali Sterian and the Sound Company”), and the soloists Florian Pittiș and Alexandru Andrieș. All these participants were in the grey zone of tolerance admitted by the communist regime in Romania, and numbered among those that the younger generation considered nonconformist in comparison with the musical landscape of the period. The poster is not spectacular: on a white background, the text is printed in two colours, red and blue. The rock concerts announced by this poster were held in the Polyvalent Hall. Completed in 1974 and inaugurated under the name of “Palace of Sport and of Culture,” this hall was the largest performance space in Romania at the time, with a capacity of over 5,000 places. At both concerts, the auditorium was completely packed, due to the fact that they brought together an unusually large number of stars of nonconformist music. Such concerts with a very large audience posed a particular problem for the communist authorities, who were afraid that any crowd gathered at a performance might turn into a collective protest against the economic crisis, which was weighing more and more heavily on the population of Romania. The moment at which the concerts took place is also significant, because 1985 marked a turning point. On the one hand, for fear of revolt, such shows with large numbers of stars were not organised again after this event. On the other, the years that followed up until 1989 were the most difficult for the majority of people in communist Romania, who saw the growing discrepancy between their daily lives and those of people not only in the West but also in all the other communist countries.



János Gémes (“Dixi”), the poet. Here he is in live speech, constantly provoking situations around him, like it is depicted in the photo, on the terrace of the Kárpátia restaurant, most probably in 1969. Dixi was a well-known, ubiquitous persona of the Budapest nightlife for decades.
He delivered endless monologues, orated in an associative manner, creating connections between the beginning and the end of a sentence with word play, twirling a few times the texture. He was a baffling personality, often grandiose, many times provocative, sometimes aggressive. He saw through people and never cared about the consequences.
The author of the photo is unknown. It is probably cut out from a larger photograph, as the edge is jagged. The most interesting feature of the photograph is that someone pegged out the eye of the protagonist with a needle. According to Zuzu this gesture is feminine.
Gábor Bódy introduced Dixi to Zuzu in 1971. At that time Dixi lived temporarily across the street from Zuzu at a guy’s apartment who was in the business of tailoring blue jeans—a hot, rare commodity at that time. He was a habitué at the Kárpátia, and people favored his company. He usually sat on the terrace, close to the entrance, from where it was possible to look into the restaurant as well as onto the street. He was older than them (they were still in high school, Bódy a university student).
Many students, artists, writers, poets, and musicians were hanging out at Kárpátia in those times, practically forming a regular audience. Zuzu, together with his friend Gomba (Erzsébet Gombás, one of the main characters of the film The Third by Gábor Bódy), went there often after school. This photo has preserved the familiar setting.
The figure of Dixi (1943–2002) is preserved in some photos and stories, appearances in six feature films, and a few videos and music recordings. Together with Zuzu they impersonated the characters Antoine and Désiré on the record cover of Tamás Cseh. He also provided inspiration for Géza Bereményi as one of the main protagonists of the novel Baby Vadnai.





Krzysztof Skiba's archive is a private collection of photos, movies, zines, books, articles, and leaflets documenting the alternative culture phenomena that Skiba participated in during the 1980s. The majority of the collection covers the street happenings created by the Gallery of Maniacal Activities in Łódź, the activities of anarchist Alternative Society Movement in Gdańsk, the very first years of the punk cabaret Big Cyc, and the first exhibition of the third circuit papers and magazines co-organized by Skiba in 1989.




The Velid Đekić collection covers beginning of rock and disco culture not only in Rijeka but also in the former Yugoslavia. While working on the books 91 decibels (2009) and Red! River! Rock! (2013), Đekić collected materials on many of Rijeka's bands that have existed from the late 1950s until the early 1980s, and on the places where young people gathered. That is why this collection testifies to the unique history of rock 'n' roll behind the Iron Curtain.





The Doina Cornea Private Collection is an invaluable historical source for those researching the biography and especially the dissident activities of the person labelled by the Western mass media as the “emblematic figure” of the Romanian resistance to Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. This collection comprises manuscripts of her open letters of protest, her diary, samizdat translations, correspondence, drafts of her academic works, photos, paintings, video recordings, and her personal library. This private collection is by far one of the most significant and valuable collections reflecting the cultural opposition to the Romanian communist regime.





The unique resource value of the collection stems from the historical fact that the continuity of Hungarian scouting established in 1910 was in fact maintained by the émigré Hungarian scouting movement worldwide for more than four decades, from 1948 to 1989, in a period when it was prohibited in communist Hungary. According to Hungarian émigré scout leaders, the movement was intended to serve a two-front struggle of cultural resistance: on one hand against the official forgery of “the real” national heritage in communist Hungary; and on the other against the linguistic and cultural assimilation of Hungarian émigré youth within the multi-ethnic environment of some 20 countries of 4 continents worldwide.




The Alternative Theatre Archive is a research and archival project led by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw with support of the KARTA Center Foundation. Its aim is to collect, gather in one location and digitize documents, prints, recordings, photographs and all other archival materials on the alternative theatre movement in Poland in the 1970s and the 1980s.




The beginnings of the Video Studio Gdansk are connected to the I National Congress of “Solidarity”, organised in Gdansk in 1981. At first, the independent “Solidarity” filmmakers documented the union’s most important events, however soon the first documentaries were produced. Video Studio Gdansk has been operating for almost 40 years, and its archive today consists of several thousands of video materials. It mostly comprises own videos, created by the Studio: raw footages (of the most important oppositional events, like strikes, clashes, protests), documentaries, reportages, few feature films, and numerous recordings of television theatre, public debates, cultural events, etc.








The concert poster giving details of the concerts that were to be held as part of the first Jazz Festival in communist Romania is one of the earliest in the Mihai Manea collection. It is almost half a century old; it dates from 1969 and is preserved in very good condition. The poster provides concert information for the days of 4, 5, and 6 April 1969, when a series of jazz performances took place in the Philharmonic Hall in Ploieşti. Among the participants were a number of prestigious groups and artists in the genre from various places in Romania, who gathered for an exceptional show at a jazz festival that was very well-known and appreciated in communist Romania. Among them were the Richard Oschanitzki quartet and the Ștefan Berindei sextet, both from Bucharest, Jazz Club from Roman, Big Band from Cluj-Napoca (at the time simply named Cluj), the Choralys octet from Constanţa, the Robert Kovacs trio and the Robert Movsessian trio, both from Ploiești, the Free Jazz trio from Timișoara, and the soloists Elena Constantinescu and Aura Urziceanu. The concert poster is printed on thick paper and has a white background on which horizontal yellow lines are discretely traced. The text is placed within a well marked frame and is in the two colours that are most common in the Mihai Manea collection: red and blue. The quality of the poster, even if it is not extraordinary, contrasts with that of those from later years, which were printed on paper of worse and worse quality and became less and less elaborate from an aesthetic point of view.









The Libri Prohibiti’s collection of Czech exile monographs and periodicals contains over 8100 publications including the complete works of many publishers. More than 940 titles of Czechoslovak exile periodicals, some of them complete editions, are part of this collection as well.




The Elza Rudenāja and Vladislavs Urtāns collection at the Madona Museum of Local History and Arts shows how much devoted and resourceful people could contribute to the preservation of the local and national culture by working within the system, even in an inhospitable political environment.




This offset poster represents a significant event both in the history of the Hungarian new wave and in Tamás Szőnyei’s personal story. This was the first item of Szőnyei’s collection. He received it as a present from his painter brother, György Szőnyei. The poster advertised an art-punk act by a certain “Anton Ello” and “Pierre Violence,” who are Gergely Molnár and Péter Hegedűs of the band Spions. They used pseudonyms and their band’s name, Donauer Video Familie (that eventually turned into the not less ironic Spions), was not displayed either. The potential audience would have had little clue of what to expect.
The event was entitled Anne Frank Memorial Evening, and the name Anne Frank appeared on the poster as well. One of the band’s songs was “Anne Frank’s Dream,” which is a violent apocalyptic vision: it is initially about a coercive sexual act with Anne Frank before the Nazis discover her. The text is also open to a variety of figural meanings, one being that the perpetrator is the totalitarian political power itself and listeners of the song are all Anne Franks whose best chance for gratification is to be assaulted before the quickly approaching death. “No future?”—the poster questioned with an homage to the Sex Pistols.
The band Spions had a huge impact on the new wave in Hungary, despite the fact that they could not release an album, and performed no more than two (!) times in Budapest and on one single occasion in the city of Pécs. The band grew out of a lecture series on the history of rock music that was held under the auspices of the Society for Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (TIT), an institution of public education supervised by the Ministry of Culture. The lecturer was Gergely Molnár, who analyzed texts by Lou Reed, David Bowie, Roxy Music, and the Kraftwerk in an event at the Ganz-Mávag factory, House of Culture in April 1977. The opening and closing acts were songs performed by students of the Music Academy, Péter Hegedűs and György Kurtág Jr. Hegedűs approached Molnár to start a band, and they wrote a bunch of songs together. The event advertised on the poster was their first performance. It happened at the University Stage (Egyetemi Színpad) that was founded in September 1957 by the Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest. The Stage was one of the few official spaces where alternative performing acts and concerts could be held. The proto-Spions was the first art-punk band on this venue. The audience was small, but the songs had a greater impact than they ever imagined. These were formative experiences for such cult bands as Kontroll Csoport, Európa Kiadó, or URH, and their inspirational, witty songs were played throughout the 1980s.
The performance at the University Stage, however, was interrupted by the director of the venue, who went to the stage and explained that the concert had to be cancelled because of “technical reasons.” There is no clear evidence that the disruption was politically motivated, though witnesses say that it did sound bad. Nevertheless, it was made into a political issue by the artists when the next concert was advertised with a poster that used the image of the director of the University Stage interrupting the first performance. The poster contained another direct provocation to the officialdom of the regime. It featured the song “Ungvári Tamás” that bears the name of a famous public intellectual of the Kádár regime as its title. Ungvári was notorious for committing large numbers of factual mistakes in his works, which was noticed by many at the time; but this alone, perhaps, would not have provoked Molnár to devote an entire song to him. But Ungvári also aspired to write on popular music and counterculture with no fewer mistakes: fans, for instance, counted over 3,000 factual mistakes in his bestselling book on The Beatles. Such things, and Ungvári’s antipathy towards the alternative scene, inspired the lines by the Spions: “you mixed up, Tamás / Lennon with Lenin, Tamás / alliteration, Tamás / not politika, Tamás / but poetica, Tamás.”
The Spions provoked the interest of the political police, and there is extensive reporting on Molnár and his circle’s activities in the Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL). For instance, Molnár’s private English teacher regularly informed on him, and the agent was instructed to provide a lot of homework for the musician in order to keep him busy and prevent him from “subverting” the system. Extensive practice of verb conjugation paid off well for Molnár: he emigrated to Canada in 1978 and never looked back. Hegedűs also left Hungary, coming back only after the regime change. The memory of the short-lived Spions and their songs, however, remained in the country and inspired an entire generation of new wave artists.



The Vilnius University Party Committee collection reflects the official policy and attitudes towards teachers, researchers and students. The university administration and Party Committee tried to control the educational process and the creative expression of scholars and students. On the other hand, documents from the collection help us to better understand the creative ambitions of Lithuanian researchers and even students, which did not always comply with the official ideology.



This photograph is from the ‘Red University’ series that shows scenes of the clashes between militia and students in 1968. On June 3, 1968, students from Belgrade University set off from New Belgrade towards the building of the rector’s office located in the old part of the city with the intention of demonstrating and stating their demands. They were soon stopped by a militia cordon. Veljko Vlahović and Miloč Minić, top officials in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, spoke to the students and tried to convince them not to rally. However, militia and students clashed, resulting in injuries to at least four people. The following day, the students occupied the building of the rector’s office and proclaimed their programme. One of their demands called for changing the university’s name to the ‘Karl Marx Red University’. The occupation lasted seven days, while the protests spread to Yugoslavia’s larger university centres. It was ended by a television address by Josip Broz Tito in which he allegedly supported the students, acknowledging that irregularities did exist and should be removed. At that time a photo reporter with the Belgrade weekly ‘NIN’, Tomislav Peternek recorded the shocking scenes of the riots at the overpass in New Belgrade.










The collection of the significant Czech journalist, dissident, signatory to Charter 77 and politician, Jiří Ruml, contains both published and as yet unpublished texts from 1967 to 1989, correspondence, Czech and foreign samizdat and exile publications. There are also writings by his friends, many of whom were also important signatories of Charter 77.






In 1979, the Museum of the River Daugava (then the Dole History Museum) decided to organise the River Daugava Festival. The event was a great success, thanks to the involvement of many creative and competent personalities. Afterwards, the director of the museum was reprimanded by the authorities, because the festival did not have any Soviet content. Items in the collection reflect the festival and its political aftermath. The museum was formed in the 1970s in order to preserve the archaeological and cultural heritage of this part of the River Daugava, as well as Dole Island, which was partly flooded after the construction of the Riga HPP. It is located at the former Dole manor building.







The Polish Underground Library was set up in 2009 in collaboration with the The Karta Center Foundation in Warsaw. It is comprised of Polish underground and exile publications, Polish flyers, posters, sound and visual recordings that are part of the Libri Prohibiti’s collections.









The Memory of Nations is an extensive online collection of the memories of witnesses, which is being developed throughout Europe by individuals, organizations, schools and institutions. It preserves and makes available the collections of memories of witnesses who have agreed that their testimony should serve to explore modern history and be publicly accessible. The collection includes testimonies of communism resistance, holocaust survival, artists of alternative culture and underground and many others.



The twelfth issue of the “Sci-fi magazine” was published in Teplice in 1983 and was the last to be published by the sci-fi club in Teplice. In this issue, a religious story was published that caused the founder to prohibit further publishing of the magazine, which in the short term led to the club being closed. It was probably due to the story of Eva Novakova, which she called "How It Was with the Whale" and refers to the Old Testament story of Jonah and the Whale. This event did not slow the activity of others, rather the fanzines grew throughout the country.











The exhibition entitled “A harcoló város/The Fighting City, 1986” was organized by the amateur artist group Inconnu to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The police banned the event on the opening day and destroyed the artworks. However, before that, an agent took photos of the compositions. Thus, the secret police itself created, through the act of destruction, a group of sources which is today the single visual trace of the exhibition. This photo collection is kept in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Forces (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára – ÁBTL).






The Mihai Moroșanu Private Collection comprises various materials relating to the anti-regime activity of Mihai Moroșanu, one of the most famous Moldovan dissidents of the Soviet period, well-known for his staunch criticism of the regime and for his strong nationally oriented views. The collection consists of a number of personal files, interviews, photos and judicial materials relating to Moroșanu’s case, spanning the period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Due to his uncompromising resistance to the Soviet regime, Moroșanu is one of the very few authentic dissident figures in the Moldovan context.




Krišs Rake (1897-1965) was a professional photographer who was popular in Riga in 1920s and 1930s due to the high quality of his photographs. During his lifetime, Rake's clients included many thousands of people, members of professional and civil organizations, etc. His clients also included people and organizations of independent Latvia who were considered suspect by the Soviet authorities. After Rake's death, from 1976 to 1981, his son Ilmārs Rake presented his collection of more than 3,000 glass photographic negatives to the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation. In the summer of 1990, photographs from the collection were widely used in the exhibition ‘Student Organizations in Latvia’, in which for the first time since 1940 a broad picture was presented of student fraternities and other organizations that were banned and closed down by the Soviet authorities. Although they were widely used in recent representations of the past (such as the Latvian National Library project ‘Zudusī Latvija’ [In Search of lost Latvia], http://www.zudusilatvija.lv/), and his work has been put on the Joint Catalogue of the National Holdings of Museums of Latvia (https://www.nmkk.lv/), Rake’s contribution to Latvian photography and his holdings in museums have so far not been paid much attention in academic publications.




The collection consists of documents from various KGB departments, found in its rooms and offices in 1991. This material gives good information about the last days of the KGB: what kind of files were on the desks, on the shelves and in the cupboards of KGB officers.




The poster for the first feminist-lesbian cultural night, organized by the Lilith Women’s Club, was made by the artist known under the pseudonym Jona Veronika Rev. This event, held in Ljubljana April 1984, is considered the first public lesbian gathering in Yugoslavia. The poster is a unique piece of art, currently exhibited at the Lesbian Library and Archive in Ljubljana. The painter, Jona Veronika Rev, was a frequent collaborator of Lilit and, later on, Section LL of the ŠKUC Association. Since 1984, Rev has made several posters and visuals for their events, including the front-page illustration for the special issue of Mladina, dedicated to lesbianism with the title ”We Love Women“ (”Ljubimo ženske,” Mladina, no. 37, Oct. 30, 1987, Ljubljana). The poster, alongside an invitation for the event and a round table discussion on sexuality, contains feminist and lesbian visual cues and symbols, decorated with a hammer and sickle, the symbol of the international workers’ and communist movement. A leaflet, lost since then, was handed out with a copy of the poster. It referred to various modes of lesbian gender expression so as to communicate the nature of the event clearly to lesbians, without explicitly calling it lesbian. Such semi-clandestine means of communication demonstrate the necessity of keeping lesbian identity hidden in the then predominantly homonegative social context.





















The photo collection of the painter Lóránt Méhes (“Zuzu”) portrays the personalities and events of the Budapest alternative art scene from the beginning of the seventies. The images arranged into scrap books in chronological order can be called social albums on the analogy of family albums, and present a composed, personal, visual imprint of the style of living of the nonconformist community.





Artpool Art Research Center collects, archives, and makes available documents for researchers regarding marginalized art practices of Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s and contemporary international art tendencies. Topics in the archive include progressive, unofficial Hungarian art movements (such as underground art events, venues, groups, and samizdat publications between 1970 and 1990) and new tendencies in international art beginning in the 1960s.
In addition to functioning as a research center, Artpool considers itself an active archive. It organizes events in search of new forms of social activity, participates in the process in a formative way, and simultaneously documents and archives these process in order to promote the free flow of information.


The Estonian Student Building Brigade collection contains material about the activities of the Estonian Student Building Brigade, a feature of student life in Soviet Estonia. The activities of this organisation are sometimes described as a free space, which is also reflected by this collection. The documents and artefacts show how students used the summer not only for building work but also for provocative entertainment and irritating the authorities. The Estonian Student Building Brigade has a relatively positive image, and is the only remarkable phenomenon from Soviet times which has ever been celebrated since the restoration of independence.




The ‘Fuck 89’ collection is an archive of Warsaw anarchistic movement from the last years of state socialism and the beginning of capitalism. It documents activities of groups such as A-Cykliści (A-Cyclists), Alternative Society Movement, Wolność i Pokój (Freedom and Peace), Intercity Anarchist Federation, and others.



This interview collection provides fascinating insights into the barely known everyday culture of grassroots Catholic communities under late socialism. Sociologist István Kamarás’ research collection represents an alternative lifestyle which never suited the official communist ideology.









Artpool Radio 1-8 (1983–1987) One of the important results of the activity of György Galántai in the 1980s was the birth of the Artpool Radio, the first Hungarian phonic publication. The 8 cassette-issues, which were brought out between 1983and 1987, are unique original documents of the Hungarian underground cultural scene in the form of edited sound materials, concert recordings, talks, and interviews. The issues were compiled by György Galántai using his own original recordings. No. 1: pseudo radio • cassette edition • first experimental broadcast; No. 2: Nights at Tompa Street / ambient musics & suffixes; No. 3: Budapest - Bécs/Vienna – Berlin Concert Over the Phone 1983. April 15. /April 15th 1983; No. 4: Natural Radio; No. 5: ARTPOOL´S ART TOUR 1982; No. 6: Recorded for the Hungary Can Be Yours exhibition - presented at the opening of the banned exhibition at the Young Artists' Club of Budapest (01.27.1984.); No. 7: GALOPPING CORONERS; No. 8: The story of Galantai’s sound sculptures






Collection of documents from the independent association of students and graduates of the Faculty of Arts, UJEP. The Collection of artefacts includes: handwritten posters, prints and typography documents, collated from a dramatic period, 1968, and the beginning of the normalisation (mainly at the Faculty of Arts in the City Brno and all of Czechoslovakia).




Liget Gallery is a small non-profit gallery operated by the Cultural House of the 14th district of Budapest. Since its founding in 1983, it has arranged approximately 450 exhibitions and events in the gallery and elsewhere. In the 1980s, it started to present solo shows of works by radical artists from the region and exhibit new tendencies within the local scene. The archive documents these activities.







The collection was created in the Ukrainian diaspora by the Smoloskyp Publishing House. Deeply involved in political and cultural opposition in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine, Smoloskyp built a communication channel between Ukraine and the international community, making the Ukrainian oppositional movement internationally known. In 1998, the collection was institutionalized as the Museum-Archive and Documentation Centre of Ukrainian Samvydav in Kyiv. It holds the most extensive collection of Ukrainian samizdat; Ukrainian diaspora periodicals; the collection of Ukrainian tamizdat (samizdat materials published abroad in Ukrainian, Russian, English, French, German and other languages); hundreds of photos of Soviet-era political prisoners and dissidents; the archives of several committees for human rights in Ukraine from the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and other countries.




The founder and member of one of the most well-known Romanian rock bands, Phoenix, Nicolae (Nicu) Covaci granted a video-recorded interview to the researchers of the Centre of Oral History at the CNSAS (Romanian acronym for the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives) on 5 May 2009. The interview was recorded after Covaci read the personal file about him created by the former Romanian secret police, the Securitate, and expressed his discontent regarding its content, which covered only parts of the artistic life of the band. The interview follows a semi-structured format and falls into the category of life-story interviews. Nicu Covaci spoke about his early life in Timișoara, his educational background, his family and friends, how he became interested in music, and the beginnings of his band Sfinții (The Saints), later renamed Phoenix. Special attention was given to his relations with the communist authorities, especially the Securitate and the communist Militia, given his public profile and non-conformist stance as the leader of Phoenix. Consequently, Nicu Covaci spoke about how surveillance by the Securitate and Militia intensified as the band gained popularity among young people and how he and other members of Phoenix felt their presence during concerts, and he underlined the fact that authorities feared that their concerts might trigger young people’s revolt against the communist regime. Regarding this last aspect, he spoke about the influence Phoenix had on Romanian teenagers and how they filled the concert halls and stadiums where the band played. Moreover, Nicu Covaci described how Phoenix concerts were used by the same young Romanians to carve out a space for personal freedom and self-expression through nonconformist dressing style and behaviour, and especially through singing lyrics that contained hidden messages against the communist regime and its restrictive policies regarding the consumption of Western music. Censorship was another subject of the interview and the leader of Phoenix remembered their complicated relations with it. Sometimes they managed to trick the censors by coating the anti-regime messages of their lyrics in figures of speech, but in other instances, some of Phoenix’s songs could not be included on their albums. The non-conformist stances of Nicu Covaci also brought him into direct conflict with the authorities, as he refused publicly to became a member of the Romanian Communist Party and play an obedient role in relation to the communist authorities. The frequent harassment he was subjected to by the Militia and the Securitate influenced his decision to emigrate in 1976. After the earthquake of 4 March 1977, Nicu Covaci returned to Romania to participate in a fundraising concert for the numerous victims of the natural disaster that had devastated the southern part of the country. In fact, he took advantage of his return home to help the other members of the Phoenix to flee the country. In his interview, Covaci recounts in great details the movie-like story of how he helped the rest of the Phoenix band to get out of the country illegally, hidden in huge loudspeakers.




The Section LL archive contains material produced by an important part of the Slovenian lesbian and gay movement and its activist groups since their establishment in 1984. The collection primarily holds documents and other materials related to the activities of Section LL, comprehensive press-clippings, underground magazines, promotional materials (posters, leaflets, etc.) and a variety of visual material, some with artistic merit. The archival materials testify to the first lesbian and gay organizations established not only in Yugoslavia, but also in socialist Europe. Moreover, the Slovenian gay and lesbian movement in the 1980s was somehow unique in the socialist context, since its activities were completely public and it enjoyed extensive, often even rather positive media coverage.







The base community named Bokor was established by Roman Catholic people and was very active in the 1970s and 1980s, functioning according to the guidelines given by Pious monk György Bulányi. Bokor members were considered a dangerous by the communist regime, which regarded them as a suspicious group because they sought to live their religion as part of their everyday lives.





On 11 December 1971, the Public Security Secretariat in Zagreb filed criminal charges with the District Public Prosecutor in Zagreb against student leaders Ivan Zvonimir Čičak, Dražen Budiša, Ante Paradžik and Goran Dodig on grounds of enemy propaganda and “criminal offences against the people and state by a counter-revolutionary attack on the state and social order.ˮ They were charged, inter alia, for incitement by “speeches and textsˮ calling for “violent and unconstitutional changes to the state and social order,ˮ “disrupting the fraternity and unity of Yugoslav nationalities,ˮ as well as “undermining the economic basis of socialist development.ˮ All four were convicted: Dražen Budiša to four years in prison, Ivan Zvonimir Čičak and Ante Paradžik to three, and Goran Dodig to one. Their prosecution is an example of the repression at the end of 1971 and in 1972 against members of the student movement, and participants in the Croatian national movement and the Croatian Spring in general. It resulted in several hundred convictions for political offences and the purge of several thousand members of the League of Communists of Croatia (Croatian Encyclopaedia online. “Hrvatsko proljećeˮ. Accessed on 30 May 2018). This collection includes over 1,000 pages pertaining to such indictments and criminal indictments.
The documents are available for research and copying.





Artpool Art Research Center collects, archives, and makes available documents for researchers regarding marginalized art practices of Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s and contemporary international art tendencies. Topics in the archive include progressive, unofficial Hungarian art movements (such as underground art events, venues, groups, and samizdat publications between 1970 and 1990) and new tendencies in international art beginning in the 1960s.
In addition to functioning as a research center, Artpool considers itself an active archive. It organizes events in search of new forms of social activity, participates in the process in a formative way, and simultaneously documents and archives these process in order to promote the free flow of information.

















The Hungarian Provincial Archive of the Society of Jesus holds sources on the members of the forbidden and persecuted Hungarian Jesuit Order (1950–1990). The archival documents represent the Jesuit monks’ efforts to preserve their identity in the face of pressures from the Communist dictatorship.




The informative file on the creator of The Club of the Free Kings, Puiu Apostolescu, contains five photographs of two badges made of wood. They were carved by Apostolescu and sent to his friend, Eugen Mircea, in Târgoviște. The insignia were confiscated by the Dâmbovița county branch of the Securitate on the occasion of a search at Eugen Mircea’s home. The badges were one of the distinctive elements of a member of The Club of the Free Kings. They were supposed not only to differentiate the Free Kings from their peers but also to underline the hippy character of the group. Thus, on one side, the badges contained the name of the group, and the word “hippy.” The word “free” is written twice in the combination, with “The Free Kings” and “The Free Club.”On the reverse, the badges are individualised, as they contain the English nicknames of Eugen Mircea (Christ) and Puiu Apostolescu (O’Brien McHarrison) as a way of stressing their friendship and membership of the group (ACNSAS I 3032, ff. 128–132).





Artpool Art Research Center collects, archives, and makes available documents for researchers regarding marginalized art practices of Hungary in the 1970s and 1980s and contemporary international art tendencies. Topics in the archive include progressive, unofficial Hungarian art movements (such as underground art events, venues, groups, and samizdat publications between 1970 and 1990) and new tendencies in international art beginning in the 1960s.
In addition to functioning as a research center, Artpool considers itself an active archive. It organizes events in search of new forms of social activity, participates in the process in a formative way, and simultaneously documents and archives these process in order to promote the free flow of information.





The Istrian Fighter Digital Collection is available at the University Library of Pula website. It is the collection of the first Croatian youth journal Istrian Fighter/IBOR, which was published in Pula from 1953 to 1979 (with two minor interruptions). The journal was published by the Istrian Fighter Literary Club with the objective of preserving the Croatian language in Istria. The journal developed a reputation as a critical media in the 1970s, covering more and more cultural, local and social themes whose tone was not well-received by the socialist authorities, so the financing of the journal was cancelled in 1979 after which it ceased publication.












The FV 112/15 Group Collection is a blend of artistic materials representing the time, social movements, and lifestyle of young people in Slovenia in the 1980s. It documents a central part of Ljubljana’s subculture and the alternative youth movement through the work of an amateur theatre group called the FV 112/15 Theatre and through the activities of three alternative clubs. The group cultivated an ironic attitude toward socialism and deconstructed bourgeois stereotypes.






This unique collection of samizdat literature (1972-1989) contains samizdat books by Czech and Slovak authors whose works could not officially be published in socialist Czechoslovakia, as well as a collection of samizdat periodicals and individual texts.





This ad-hoc collection comprises a series of archival materials relating to the activity of the musical band Noroc (officially known as the Noroc Vocal-Instrumental Ensemble). This group of young musicians reached the peak of its popularity during the period 1968–1970. Noroc represented one of the most important examples of an alternative musical style and subculture not only in the Moldavian SSR, but also at the all-Union level. Its members practised an original genre mixing local folkloric elements and Western influences (mostly jazz, rock, and beat). Due to the ”subversive” character of their music, the band was dissolved by the Soviet Moldavian authorities in September 1970. The materials in this collection were selected from Fonds No. 51 (Fonds of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia), which is currently held in the Archive of Social-Political Organisations (AOSPRM) of the Republic of Moldova. These documents reflect the emergence of a mass youth subculture in the USSR in the late 1960s and the ideological constraints placed by the regime on such displays of an alternative lifestyle.


![Marošević, Toni. Notes for “Frigidna utičnica” [The Frigid Socket] radio show. 1984. Manuscript](/courage/file/n9768/Frigidna+uticnica.jpg)

“Frigidna utičnica” [The Frigid Socket] was the first and only radio show dedicated to homosexuality in socialist Yugoslavia. The show, created and hosted by Croatian journalist Toni Marošević, was first aired in the spring of 1984 on Zagreb’s Omladinski radio [Youth Radio, later Radio 101], which in the 1980s was known for stepping out of the official boundaries of socialist journalism. Homosexuality in Yugoslavia was socially mostly unacceptable, almost invisible in the media, and negatively perceived both by most of the population and the ruling Communist Party. Even if it appeared in newspapers and magazines, the topic of homosexuality was usually presented with pity or ridicule (Kuhar 2003). Marošević conceived of “Frigidna utičnica” [The Frigid Socket] as a relaxed, humorous, but also very direct and provocative show, with a simultaneously strong educational component (Bosanac 2013). The first show sparked huge interest and dozens of listener phone calls and comments were aired live. Some were very aggressive, even vulgar, while some expressed support and approval. Also, some negative reviews appeared in the daily press (Tomeković 1984). Even though Marošević was not personally subjected to any sort of pressure from the communist authorities, due to the public controversy the show sparked, the broadcast was cancelled after the fourth week (Dobrović and Bosanac 2007, 233-236). Marošević entrusted his personal bequest to Domino (now part of the History of Homosexuality in Croatia Collection), together with a handwritten note for one of the “Frigidna utičnica” [The Frigid Socket] broadcasts from 1984.



This ad-hoc collection was separated from the fonds of judicial files concerning persons subject to political repression during the communist regime which is currently stored in the Archive of the Intelligence and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova (formerly the KGB Archive). It focuses on the case of Gheorghe Zgherea, a person of peasant background who was a member of the Inochentist religious community, a millenarian and eschatological movement active in Bessarabia and Transnistria mostly during the first half of the twentieth century. The collection materials are revealing for the repressive policy of the Soviet regime in the religious sphere, showing the Soviet authorities’ hostile attitude toward non-mainstream and marginal denominations, which were perceived as a particularly serious threat. Zgherea, a preacher within his community starting from late 1950, was accused of “roaming the villages” of the Moldavian SSR and spreading “anti-Soviet ideas” among the local populace by “using their religious prejudices.” Arrested on 2 May 1953, he received a harsh sentence of twenty-five years of hard labour. His sentence was reduced to five years of hard labour in June 1955, when he was also amnestied according to a special decree of March 1953. Zgherea’s case thus points to the changing strategies of the regime applied after Stalin’s death, but also to the continuity of repression and to the shifting practices of stifling dissent in post-Stalinist Soviet society.

This letter from Juliana Jirousová (then Stritzková) to Ivan Martin Jirous, the key figure of the Czechoslovak underground, from 10 September 1974 is the first of the letters stored in the library Libri Prohibiti. This letter was not sent to prison, unlike the rest of the collection. This is perhaps why it has not yet been published and is unknown to most people. The letter was written before the wedding of I. M. Jirous and J. Stritzková in 1976 and was not the subject of censorship. There is some interesting information about relationships in the underground, friendships, as well as the everyday life which I. M. Jirous and Juliana Stritzková led. In the letter, Stritzková mentioned songs by Karel Soukup (alias Charlie, a Czech underground songwriter), the married couple the Daníčeks (Jiří Daníček was a poet, playwright, script writer, translator and political prisoner. His wife Vlasta, called Amálka in the letter, was Juliana’s best friend), and also about the psychiatric sessions Jirous had to attend.






Students also demonstrated their support for Croatian reformist and nationally-oriented political leaders by distributing handwritten pamphlets on different types of paper. This collection includes several examples of such pamphlets, and one mentions Savka Dabčević-Kučar and Mika Tripalo, both removed from their posts in December 1971. On the pamphlets themselves or in separate notes, the State Security Service recorded where and when the pamphlets were found. Together with other materials collected during Operation Tuškanac, these pamphlets were used in the prosecution of participants in the student movement.
The documents are available for research and copying.









The Andrei Pandele private collection is the most significant testimony in pictures, mainly black and white, to the demolition of historic monuments and districts in the Romanian capital in the period of late communism. Together with photographs that are essential for the preservation of the memory of a mutilated city and a vanished cultural heritage, the collection also includes a series of images capturing aspects of the degradation everyday life throughout the profound crisis of the 1980s. These suggest both the absurdity of the policies of the Ceaușescu regime and the grotesque mutations in the everyday routine of ordinary people to which these policies gave rise.




The second issue of the magazine Viks, entitled “Homosexuality and Culture,” came out on April 24, 1984, the opening day of the Magnus Film Festival, the first cultural manifestation dedicated to homosexuality in any socialist country. The magazine was edited by a group of gays and lesbians who gathered around the youth cultural center ŠKUC and organized the festival. This special edition of the magazine was printed in 600 copies and handed to audiences at the festival. It contains 42 pages, and approximately 20 illustrations with contemporary, easily recognizable European gay subcultural motifs. Over the three following decades, this issue of Viks gained a cult status in Slovenian and the post-Yugoslav LGBT community, and was exhibited at events dedicated to the history of homosexuality and the LGBT movement.
Alongside the festival’s program and a schedule of affiliated cultural and club events, in an effort to appeal to the younger generation of Ljubljana’s gays, lesbians and artists, Viks also carried several lengthy programmatic articles and interviews with emancipatory, educational and mobilizing overtones. Thus it aligned itself politically and theoretically with contemporary liberationist, leftist and counter-cultural movements in Slovenia and Western Europe. These texts promote an ideal of freely and openly lived (homo)sexuality. Non-normative sexual practices were viewed as strongly dissident in nature, but not so much against socialism as against patriarchal and traditional forms of sexual and family life.
The article “Pink Love under the Red Stars – Homosexuality under Real Socialism” (“Roza ljubezen pod rdečimi zvezdami – homoseksualizem pod realnim socializmom,” pp. 18-21) delivers a historical overview of the legal and social status of same-sex sexual and emotional relationships in socialist countries. The anonymous author is equally critical of the 20th century discrimination of homosexuality both in western liberal democracies and socialist countries. However, the Stalinist period in the USSR was seen as especially brutal and arduous insofar as it attributed negative political meanings to homosexuality, declaring homosexuals “traitors,” foreign “spies,” decadent bourgeoisie, and enemies of socialism. Soviet homosexuals, the article suggests, were not able to recover from this traumatic period, and were still unable to engage with emancipatory social movements and practices. At the same time, the example of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, known also as East Germany) is held as an example of both positive changes in communist stance on homosexuality, and a way in which, since the late 1970s, a dialogue could take place between the government and gay and lesbian groups.











Frantisek Starek was one of the leading figures of the Czechoslovak underground movement and culture. Due to his long-lasting activity, he has built a very rich and interesting collection. In this collection, a lot of material – often unique – about Czechoslovak counterculture and personal resistance can be found. The collection covers the time period from the seventies to the nineties.




The periodical “Student” was one of the most important magazines in socialist Yugoslavia. The magazine was published by students of Belgrade University and dealt with student problems as well as with broader social and political issues. It was often critical towards the regime and the communist party authorities, which resulted in its being banned several times. The collection is kept at the National and University Library in Belgrade.



Norijada is the colloquial name of the celebration day for Zagreb secondary school students, which usually falls on the May 30. On that day, seniors from all around Zagreb are officially entitled to mark the end of their schooling, and "go crazy" (noriti or ludovati) for the last time before setting out for more serious business, preparation for graduation and university studies. Anthropologically speaking, it was a kind of a rite of passage toward adulthood. This ritual – most probably originating in the post-war period – in the classics program secondary school in the late 1980s was especially colourful because the students would wear ancient Roman costumes in order to highlight the orientation of the school. These were typically white togas for boys and luxurious white long dresses for girls. One also had to pay attention to authentic hairstyles and jewellery, because it significantly contributed to the overall impression. On this occasion the school students would act out rather loudly and colourfully.
The standard activities generally transpired as follows: first, the students would gather on the main staircase of their school, and begin singing songs that usually describe different (bad) traits of their teachers, who had to remain quiet for the sake of peace. The ties with their student status were visibly broken, and equality with the adult world, which allowed some degree of criticism, was perhaps the inherent meaning of this procedure. At the end of this event, one of the students, usually the funniest, would read the ‘last testament’ of the departing generation to the younger ones. The testament usually consisted of the ten commandments, which reversed the house rules of the school (for instance, “Never greet a teacher when one passes by or near you,” etc.). The first part of separation was thus finished, and the students would finally leave the school. They went out to the streets to meet students from other schools and display solidarity with them. This was the moment when real Norijada began, and students officially announced their separation from their previous life. On that day the students were allowed to do anything (except commit crimes). They would wander around, or swim in the wishing well and other fountains, or tease chance passers-by. They would usually get dead drunk and smoke heavily, and everybody was invited to do so because everybody was supposed to feel the same way. Moreover, in order to leave some trace of their “crazy” generation, students usually wrote graffiti on walls, citing their class, school and the year of the Norijada.




This collection expresses the artistic tendencies in the last decades of Polish reality under socialist regime. It includes a huge number of graphics, posters, paintings and drawings, as well as some items produced by opposition members held under detention.




The private collection of musician, DJ, radio journalist, and educator Attila Koszits is the primary source on rock and underground (especially New Wave) culture of the last half century in Pécs, a city in southern Hungary. The collection contains periodicals, photo documentation, literature of music, bootleg recordings, and music recorded on discs and cassette tapes.




The History of Homosexuality in Croatia Collection covers some of the most salient aspects of Croatian gay and lesbian private and public life in the socialist period (1945-1990). Court verdicts for same-sex sexual relations testify to the active institutional persecution of homosexuality, mostly in the immediate post-war period, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Personal memories and oral history recollections illustrate the harsh everyday life reality of homosexuals in socialist Yugoslavia, but they also tell amazing stories of individual or collective resistance to institutional and social homophobia.




The Husar Club was founded by the Club of Friends of Popular Music Rijeka in 1957. In the Husar, young people gathered to "dance to music from LP records." Beginning in 1962, the first rock bands in Rijeka performed in the club. The club operated until 1964 and is considered as the first disco club in Croatia and one of the first in Europe. The establishment of this club heralded the creation of the rock and disco culture movement as a counterculture in socialist Yugoslavia.




According to the testimony of the Aktionsgruppe Banat members, the poem was the collective work of the entire group, which they assumed and published as such (Totok 2001, 22). The text was sent for publication in Romania in 1974, but the censorship prevented it. It was first published two years later in a changed form in the West German cultural magazine Akzente: Zeitschrift für Literatur (No. 6/1976; Totok 2001, 22–23).
The poem uses wordplays to suggest the omnipresence of coercion in the society they lived in and it represent a subtle critique of the state–citizens relation in Ceaușescu’s Romania. The authors played with the meanings of the German word Engagement which in the poem could be understood both as employment and (ideological) commitment. In the second part of the poem, the authors suggest overtly and ironically the coercive character of the state–citizen relation in the society they lived in and the impossibility of the latter modifying this relation either in ideological or in practical terms:
“I’ve been engaged for too long
I don’t want to be engaged anymore
I have also been engaged too long
yes
with you
also with you
I am no longer engaged
I am not engaged either
yes yes, me neither
in vain, who was once engaged
remains forever engaged.”




The Mērija Grīnberga Jr (1909-1975) collection is a testimony to the rescue by museum employees of cultural values threatened by both the Second World War and by political change. It is also a testimony to the persecution and distrust of members of the 'old' Latvian intelligentsia in Soviet Latvia, despite their sometimes desperate attempts to accommodate the political demands of the regime.




The collection reveals the life and work of the famous Lithuanian theatre director Jonas Jurašas. He was expelled from the position of director of the Kaunas State Drama Theatre in 1972. Jurašas did not agree to work under the proposed conditions of ‘Soviet theatre director’. He expressed his own view of what kind of working conditions and rights artists, and specifically theatre directors, should have. His terms were rejected by Soviet cultural administrators. Jurašas became unemployed, and had to endure poor living conditions. He and his family were among the first people in Soviet Lithuania to request permission to emigrate to the West, and received it from the Soviet government.





The collection of manuscript magazines at the Estonian Cultural History Archives reflects the samizdat activities of writers and other cultural figures during Soviet times. It was formed in the 1990s after several donations, mostly from Jaan Isotamm. Nevertheless, the ‘almanac movement’ had numerous authors, outsiders as well as those recognised by the authorities whose works are now available in this collection. The collection contains manuscript magazines, poetry written in refugee camps, and material about religious movements and groups dealing with esoteric issues, etc. It also includes underground almanacs from Soviet times. These handwritten journals were not censored, and contain literary essays and poems, as well as socio-critical writings.







Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of independent Congo and was assassinated in 1961, only 67 days after taking office. This event triggered protests in Belgrade which fast grew into larger clashes between the demonstrators and police. The biggest riot took place at Tašmajdan Park. The police used water cannon against the protestors. Thirty-five protestors, 51 police officers and nine members of the fire brigade were hurt. The demonstrations were mainly organised in front of the Belgian embassy since it was believed that Belgium, the former colonial power in Congo, had orchestrated the murder. The demonstrators took over and ransacked the embassy. These events in front of the Belgian embassy in Belgrade were recorded and documented in the photographs of Tomislav Peternek, at that time a reporter with the newspaper ‘Borba’. The police used the opportunity to confiscate his films, but later returned them.



Normally a climbing harness is made from materials tested according to international (UIAA) standards, light, and very comfortable. However these could not be found in the last decade of communism in Romania. The solution achieved by improvisation by Dragoș Petrescu has the following characteristics: “The climbing harness was a very important part. Precisely because you could never be sure of the object you had improvised, you made a combination of chest harness and seat. Out of worn rope, usually six lengths placed parallel and sewn together with synthetic surgical thread, you made a sort of waistcoat with braces made of tape for blinds, which you wore around your chest and with which you tied yourself into the rope. Initially, mountaineers climbed with only the chest harness, only that they realised that once you were hanging on the rope, the chest harness became very tight; the circulation stopped and that could be fatal. Then they came up with the idea that it was good to have a seat as well as the chest harness. The so-called seat was usually made from strapping for car seatbelts sewn with surgical thread, which looked like a belt with two loops for the feet, into which you fastened yourself together with the chest harness. For the seat, you got hold of various materials. Principally seatbelt strapping. Ideally, we used the seatbelts for Dacia cars, but these were quite expensive. Many ‘got hold of’ one of these straps from the people that worked in the factory in Braşov where they were produced and where the unfinished product was sold illegally by the metre. As a rule, we made ourselves both seat and chest harness.” The original complete harness, composed of chest harness and seat, exists in Dragoş Petrescu’s private collection of improvised gear, but it can no longer be used for climbing as the materials from which it is made have deteriorated.

Immediately after the founding of the Society of Students of the Faculty of Arts of UJEP Brno, the first issue of the magazine "Ruch" was published (15 March 1968). The magazine provided the information on the reasons for establishing the association and its internal structure. It gave information about events at the university, petitions, public letters, and contacts with other universities in the Czechoslovakia and abroad. In addition to the predominant political focus of this paper, poems, parodic texts, illustrations appeared. The first issue was followed by the second after three weeks. The print had not been published regularly (was published about once a month), and was officially referred to as an interviewer. It was printed in hundreds of copies (400-600) and was sold at the faculty for CZK 1. The authors of texts and graphics were a changing group of students - usually members of the association.









Milan Knížák is a significant Czech action artist. Since the beginning of the 1960s, he started with performance art – happenings, that were realised mostly in the streets of Prague. Their goal was to connect art and common life. Participants, that were, according to Knížák, the main and irreplaceable bearers of actions of these performances, were engaged in the game while the happenings interfered their lives. The events, according to Knížák’s interpretation, therefore could not have been fictive but had to be what they really were. Knížák also realized several installations – short-term exhibitions – in the streets of Prague, some of them were photographically documented. Knížák and his friends founded a group called “Aktuální umění” (Actual Art), later known as “Aktual”, in 1963. At the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, Knížák’s actions got more ceremonial and ritual character. Some of the actions of the group Actual from 1962–1969 were documented by Knížák in a unique documentary book “Útoky" (The Attacks) with original and nonconformist artistic concepts; he sold the book, together with another one – “Hry a obřady” (The Games and the Ceremonial) – also documenting actions of Aktual during the 1960s, to the Museum of Czech Literature in March 1971. Similar documentary books were created by Knížák starting in 1964 and became a medium of the artist’s expression and documentation of his work, thoughts and feelings. The books used to have impractical covers (made of cement, wires or nails) to “not die in a library”. They contained original documents, scripts of the actions, texts, photos, drawings, collages, personal belongings or pieces of art works. Knížák’s documentary books (he created dozens of them) were therefore documents and pieces of art at the same time. “Útoky: Kniha akcí Aktualu 1962–1969” is a part of the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature until today and together with Knížák’s book “Hry a obřady Aktualu 1963–1969” forms the Milan Knížák Collection.




The Circle of History Students was a society for history students and lecturers at the University of Tartu during Soviet times which was officially part of the Students' Scientific Union. Although it was an official organisation, the Circle of History Students offered space for relatively free discussions between students and lecturers. It was a breeding ground for the growing protest spirit in the late 1980s. The Circle of History Students archive, which is preserved today in the National Archives of Estonia, contains various documents about its activities. Although it followed the formal rules for Soviet public speaking, these documents also display ironic and critical attitudes towards the regime, and reflect the free atmosphere for research and communication in the society.





Among the open letters addressed by Doina Cornea to Ceauşescu himself, that entitled “Stop the demolition of the villages” (Opriți dărâmarea satelor) was among the most significant and certainly the one that aroused the greatest international reaction. The letter opposed the programme of “rural systematisation,” which entailed the planned demolition of more than 7,000 Romanian villages (Ceaușescu 1989, 395). Cornea drafted the open letter in July 1988 in a period when the demolitions had been intensified. The letter was also broadcast by RFE in September 1988 and published later by the French newspaper Le Monde (Cornea 2006, 220).
In comparison with other open letters that focused more on future-oriented reforms (such as those dealing with the educational system), this letter is “nostalgic and past-oriented,” and deals with the protection of the Romanian peasants’ habitat and way of life, which she argues is the core of Romanian national identity (Petrescu 2013, 314). This approach was based on her readings of Romanian philosophers and writers such as Lucian Blaga, Constantin Noica, and Nicolae Steinhardt, who dedicated many of their works to the “spirituality” of the Romanian village. She thus places herself in a cultural tradition which since the end of the nineteenth century had emphasised peasant culture as a key element for defining Romanian national identity (Hitchins 1994, 298–299). Consequently, she considers Ceauşescu’s plan to restructure most of the Romanian villages as a malicious attempt to destroy “the soul of the nation.” She also invokes the fact that the rural habitat is a part of world cultural heritage and criticises the demolitions from a preservationist perspective. Thus, she asks Ceauşescu to stop the demolition of the villages and to consult of the will of the Romanian people concerning the future of the national programme of “rural systematisation.”
At the end of the letter, Doina Cornea mentions another twenty-seven persons who had expressed their solidarity with the open letter of protest and agreed that their names could be included on the list. Most of them were either Cluj-based supporters of her oppositional activity, such as the dissident Iulius Filip (who in 1981 had addressed an open letter of support to the Polish free union Solidarity), or part of a group of workers in the town of Zărneşti (Braşov county, Romania), who had initiated a local free union. This open letter, together with her interviews granted to Western journalists, inspired the collective initiative Opération Villages Roumains (OVR), “the largest ever network of transnational support against the abuses of Ceausescu’s regime,” which opposed the demolition of Romanian villages by encouraging a symbolic adoption of the endangered Romanian rural sites by Western communes (Petrescu 2013, 317).




According to very early notes and recordings, István Darkó began work on Macskarádió (Cat radio) while at high school, in the early 1970s, using stories from his home-made paper Bendzin and his comic-experiment Utazás a világ körül (Journey around the world) together with other writings, and it continued to grow until the end of his university years, in 1978. Darkó's first tape recorder was the famous Hungarian Mambó, acquired from his parents; later he used a SANYO. He was very inventive, because he knew the technical possibilities of the poor-quality tape recorders. He worked not with the switch cabinet but with his hand, manually touching the tape to the recording head during recording. He did everything with one tape recorder and one microphone.
The audio recordings of Cat Radio are preserved on East-German-made tape with the series mark ORWO TYP 120/360 m Double Play, 5/482. The box is labelled “A MACSKARÁDIÓ különműsora” (Special programme of CAT RADIO). Macskarádió I. (Cat radio I.), the full story itself, is on the first track, and Macskarádió II. (Cat radio II.), which is looser in its structure, composed as an evening music programme, is on the second. On a second tape Darkó stored the various sounds needed for the radio play, for example the clacks of train wheels and animal noises.
Cat Radio is not only a studio, but a spiritual place, where things come together, meet, or break up, an occult place, where the arrangement and matching of the stories takes place. All the characters speak through the voice of Darkó, with the bon ton (mannered, polite) Hungarian movie voice of the 1940s. But these are experienced voices; the performer only ever spoke in the sanctuary of Cat Radio when sufficiently aroused. He made the audio recording in stages. The elaboration of each detail, each sequence is mental. According to Péter Egyed, the fact that Darkó created it over such a long period made it an endlessly complicated story. There are at least three levels, though this is hard to realise after hearing it once or even two or three times. Because of its metaphysics and because of its complicatedness it is obvious that the radio play was not made for a broad public audience. The constant element in the events is persecution. The characters are divided mainly in three groups. As a matter of fact there is a battle of intentions going on, in which the secret service type of deception is crucial. It is a matter of make-believe, gullibility; who is capable of reconstructing the true reality in virtual sound fields?
In Cluj and in Târgu Mureș the world, or rather worlds, constructed by István Darkó became known. When wanted to be in his element among his acquaintances and friends, he got out Cat Radio and let them listen to it. They listened to it, word leaked out, and the notoriety of Cat Radio exceeded theoretically and also practically the narrower circle of his friends. There was a mystical quality about it. It did not spread samizdat-like, because there was only one original tape, of which a copy was never made. But the fact that this tape was listened to by 10–20–50–100 people and so on made it a semi-public production. What runs on the tape is a continuous analysis of being. In Darkó's world there is a bit of the Orwellian, the hereafter, the world of passing, of things that have not come yet, that cannot be experienced by living people. In his view of life there is also an extraordinary closeness of death. Let's be careful, because we live in a world in which the other one is contained too, even if we don't want to acknowledge it!
When interpreting Cat Radio, Péter Egyed could not ignore the space and time parameters of its appearance. He believed that the material of Cat Radio could not exist independent of what István Darkó had experienced. Why did he not write something else? According to Egyed the Securitate, the state Party and other official agencies were not well-intentioned administrators of humanity, but people following orders and those orders were not about serving the good of civil society. They – contemporaries – were actually playing something according to the script of the multilaterally developed socialist society. It had to be played that things were all right, but everyone knew that it was actually about something else than what they were playing. In the script there is not real life, but Nothing – but where was real life then? Egyed thought that real life was located in what they experienced in intimacy, and what came up in intimacy, real friendships, love relations etc. Society had a life that supported this, as opposed to that which wanted to destroy it. In the army their officers told them that they, the intellectuals, were not needed for the country, either as intellectuals nor as soldiers. They were the "negligible quantity" and they were made to understand that they did not count from the point of view of the socialist future.




The Irina Margareta Nistor Private Collection includes a series of written documents, together with a few dozen VHS video cassettes preserving a small part of the Western films that were introduced clandestinely into Romania between 1985 and 1989, to be translated and dubbed and then distributed on video cassettes (semi)clandestinely. This collection epitomises a popular culture phenomenon without any equivalent in Eastern Europe, which emerged in Romania as a reaction to the reduction of the official programme broadcast on television channels to just two hours per day and to news broadcasts about the activity of Nicolae Ceauşescu and the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party.








The collection shows the life, work and activities of the Lithuanian historian Rimantas Jasas (1929-2002). Jasas never called himself a dissident. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he did not speak much about his involvement in underground (samizdat) literature, and saw himself only as a professional historian. The files in the collection show his close ties with the dissident movement, especially with the Soviet dissident and political prisoner Vytautas Skuodis (1929-2016). Jasas was involved with the samizdat journal Perspektyvos (Perspectives), the most highly thought-of publication by members of the intelligentsia.












From the agents’ reports about the Orfeo-group, one gleans insights into one of the most unique alternative theatre companies in Hungary. These accounts were based on personal meetings and recollections of the performances. The secret police was interested in members’ political views, and they wanted to know how their ideas were presented in the plays and the talks and debates held after the performances. These documents are preserved at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL). The folder with the cover name “Community” shows how the political police created a picture about a group of “hostile” artists, who were perceived as dangerous to “the existing social order.”


The private archives of Ferenc Kálmándy contain the documents of his photo oeuvre since 1978. His photographs document transformations in Hungarian youth culture, underground pop, and intellectual art scene and also the integration of the visual aesthetics of punk, new wave, and post-avantgarde into everyday life.


Oto Tasinato (1921-2011) was one of the first open homosexuals in Czechoslovakia before 1989. He performed dressed in women’s clothing under the pseudonym of Countess Mondschein, and in the 1990s, he was regarded as a legend of the Czechoslovak queer community. The apartment of Oto Tasinato was unfortunately very quickly cleared out after his death in 2011. When the Society for Queer Memory tried to acquired his personal estate or at least part of it, it was regrettably found that all relevant objects of the Tasinato estate had been thrown away and destroyed. All the Society succeeded in securing were humble belongings as his glasses, a hand fan, his last pack of cigarettes, handkerchiefs with a monogram, visiting cards, an stamps. Besides these few belongings the collection also contains an interview with Oto Tasinato and various photographs of his.














The photo collection on graffiti in Poland has been gathered by Tomasz Sikorski since about 1970. The great part of the approximately 1 500 photos was made in years 1970-1990. Sikorski has been up-to-date documenting the paintings occurring on the walls of Polish cities, both artistic and dominated by the political message, created by professionals as well as people without artistic background. On his photographies, one can see works by, among others, Włodzimierz Fruczek, Faustyn Chełmecki, „Major” Waldemar Fydrych”, Jacek „Ponton” Jankowski, Alexander Sikora, Krzysztof Skarbek and Sikorski himself.





The results of the so-called “rearrangement” operations in the centre of Bucharest was as follows: 5.86 km2 of the historic centre of the city were demolished; 1.66 km2 remained waste ground overgrown with weeds; approximately 20,000 properties were destroyed; over 60,000 families were forced to move; 19 streets were blocked or ceased to exist. The following Orthodox churches were demolished: Enei, Albă Postăvari, Old Spirea, Well of Healing, St. Nicholas Sârbi, Gherghiceni, St. Nicholas Jitniță, Lady Oltea, St. Vineri Hereasca, Olteni, Old St. Spiridon Vechi, Holy Trinity Dudești, and Bradului (Bradu Staicu). The following monasteries were wholly or partially demolished: Cotroceni, Nuns’ Hermitage, Mihai Vodă, Văcărești, Antim, and St. Pantelimon. The following synagogues were demolished: Aizic Ilie, Rezith Doadh, and Malbim. Other historic buildings were also demolished: the Brâncoveanu Hospital, the great covered market in Unification Square, the Mina Minovici Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Yellow Inn, the Republic Stadium, and the Military Museum. Eight churches were translated from their original sites and hidden among apartment blocks: St. John Moși, Schitul Maicilor, Olari, St. Ilie Rahova, Mihai Vodă, St. John Piață, New St. George Capra, Stork’s Nest; so was the synodal building of the Antim Monastery. “The great merit for the translation, and thus saving from demolition, of these monuments is due to the engineer Eugen Iordăchescu of the Project Bucharest Institute,” says Andrei Pandele. This operation of saving cultural heritage that had been destined for destruction indeed called for professionalism on the part of those who conceived it, but also the courage to propose a compromise solution that would have a chance of being accepted by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was personally supervising the construction of the House of the People.
The image captured by Andrei Pandele illustrates the translation of the church of the Mihai Vodă Monastery, an emblem of pre-modern Bucharest, originally situated on the hill where the Palace of the Parliament – built during the Ceauşescu regime under the name of the House of the People – now stands. The monastery buildings, which surrounded the church and were completely demolished to make way for the House of the People, were the first location of the State Archives after the founding of the modern Romanian state in the nineteenth century. The monastery was founded in 1594 by Michael the Brave, an extremely important figure in the national past, as he is considered the first to have unified, for a short time in 1600–1601, the territories that now make up Romania. In spite of the fact that during the Ceauşescu regime Michael the Brave became even more important in national history than he had been before, the monastery fell prey to the so-called “urban systematisation” programme promoted by the regime. The monastery church was saved from demolition by the operation of translating it, which in this case was one of the most laborious actions of this kind as it required it not only to be slid along a distance of 289 metres, but also lowered by 6.2 metres. Andrei Pandele’s photograph shows the Mihai Vodă church still on the rails used for the translation, already at the foot of the hill, close to its present position, although it is now hidden behind apartment blocks taller than it, which were built after this image was immortalised.




The collection of Art on the Streets in Poland 1962-2015 is a unique collection of photos documenting various manifestations of creative activities in public space from the last few decades. The creator of the collection, Tomasz Sikorski has accumulated an extensive photographic collection, which also includes photographs made available by other artists. The concept of "art on the streets" allows you to juxtapose self-employed graffiti and happenings, performances and installations created in the public space by avant-garde and neo-avant-garde since the 1960s.










The Beatles were one of the formative groups for Nelu Stratone’s musical culture. The music of this band, about which it was known in Romania too that they were at the origin of an unprecedented worldwide phenomenon, was sought after and much desired by collectors at the time. “I think records of the Beatles were among the most listened to of all that I had in my collection. There were a number of groups or soloists who tried, by imitation more explicit or more discreet, to approach the music they made. But the Beatles were unique,” considers Nelu Stratone. The music of the Beatles was not forbidden in Romania, but their records could not be found for sale except on the alternative market. Even basic information about the group’s discography, about the songs included in each album, was a sort of alternative knowledge, which aroused envy among classmates, admiration among friends, and even attraction (generally on the part of the opposite sex). The Beatles were one of the most popular groups in communist Romania, perhaps precisely because their period of glory coincided with the period of liberalization in the 1960s. Many Romanian bands sang their songs, taking advantage of the lack of clarity concerning copyright, which was characteristic of the entire Soviet bloc. After the Theses of July 1971, which virulently attacked the custom of admiring Western cultural and artistic creations, the words of the Beatles’ songs had to be translated so that they could be sung by Romanian groups. On top of that, their music was broadcast in an utterly absurd form, under the name of the group translated into Romanian as “Scarabeii” (The scarabs) (Stratone 2016, 169). Gradually, radio and TV broadcasts almost completely eliminated Western groups, but the music of the Beatles continued to attract new generations of young people. In the 1980s, the communist authorities tolerated for a while a show put on by Florian Pittiş at the Bulandra Theatre under the title “Poezia muzicii tinere” (The poetry of young music), during which the great successes of the Beatles were presented, followed by playing of music from their repertoire. Young people crowded to get into the show, which quickly became extremely popular, despite the fact that it was not advertised in any way. Sometimes 900 spectators squeezed into an auditorium with 450 places, with the result that in 1985, after four years, the show was banned. In short, the Beatles were dangerous especially because, like other Western bands, they catalysed the energies of the younger generation. “At these shows you recovered your freedom and your dignity,” recalls Andrei Partoş (George 2007). The complete albums of The Beatles, so precious in the days of communism, are now only a memory for Nelu Stratone. At present not one album from this complete set is still in his collection, but all the music that the group performed, together with what their members produced in other musical combinations, can be found in his electronic archive.







The Oral History Collection at CNSAS is a unique collection of this kind as it includes only interviews with individuals who are the subjects of personal files in the CNSAS Archives, and who after studying these personal files created by the Securitate agreed to narrate their own experience of entanglement with the secret police. The interviewees include not only individuals who were under surveillance and thus victims of the Securitate, but also individuals who collaborated with the secret police to provide information on others: family, friends, and colleagues. Both types of interviews represent the response of the interviewees to the narrative created about them by the Securitate.






The collection reflects the variety of religious dissent in communist Romania, and illustrates the underground religious practices and overt religious oppositional activities from the late 1940s until the 1980s. The collection comprises, on the one hand, documents and other cultural artefacts created by various religious denominations and confiscated by the Securitate and, on the other hand, documents created by the secret police. The latter illustrate the intense surveillance and the repressive policies of the secret police directed towards those religious activities that opposed the policies of the communist regime in Romania.





The Transnational Roma Networks Ad-hoc Collection at CNSAS comprises documents created or collected by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, about the transnational relations of the Roma community. From among the members of this community who willingly assumed this identity, two leaders and activists, Nicolae Gheorghe and Ion Cioabă, stood out during the 1980s. They were among the few people in communist Romania who had the courage to rise up against the aggressive policy of forced assimilation of Roma that threatened their survival as a distinct ethnic and cultural group. As a result, their stand against discriminatory treatment of Roma people in communist Romania brought them into close collaboration with foreign researchers and Roma transnational organisations, also interested in the fate of the persecuted Roma.





The Mirel Leventer private collection of photographs and films is the richest archive of images from the period of glory of Club A, 1969–1989, when it operated as a (semi-) clandestine and exclusive club, founded and administered by students of the Institute of Architecture in Bucharest (today the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism). Club A was an oasis of freedom created in a basement in the middle of the historic area of the capital of communist Romania for the purpose of being able to organise shows, debates, and concerts that would be an alternative to the officially promoted culture, and to offer young people a place where they could behave as if they were free. In short, the Mirel Leventer private collection preserves the memory of an essential place for the alternative culture of young people in the last two decades of Romanian communism.




The Women’s Activism in Kosovo collection belongs to the Kosovo Oral History Initiative, and contains Kosovan women's vivid personal stories, which often intersect with broader historic events within Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1999. It depicts women's specific forms of engagement and resistance in protests against the Yugoslav regime, as well as their fight for women’s rights. The Women’s Activism collection offers a unique online archive of oral records, giving visibility and permanence to a history of women’s experience, which has been consistently marginalized, if not forgotten. To date, the collection contains thirty interviews with women activists, of which twenty-five are Albanian, three are Serbian, and two are of other nationality.




The Ion Monoran Collection documents the intellectual profile of one of the leaders of the underground cultural movements in the Banat, who, thanks to his ability to catalyse the action of the crowd gathered in the streets of Timişoara on 16 December 1989, became one of the figures who incontestably made a mark on the Romanian Revolution.



The art collection of Indrek Hirv consists of works by artists who continued the spirit of art from before the Soviet occupation. Many of them were persecuted, and later they did not obtain official recognition. Some became reformers of art, who resisted the Soviet discourse and Socialist Realism. Although some works in this collection depicted directly forbidden subject matter, like prison camps and prisoners, resistance to the Soviet regime is expressed mostly through the style.



Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) was a non-institutional student movement in Tartu between 1979 and 1984 (from 1979-1981 it was called Kodulinn, or Hometown). It was formed mostly by history students who wanted to do something useful for their city, without being connected to any official institution. Arranging urban space, collecting antiquities and organising cultural events were the main activities of the movement. Various pieces of material (announcements, newspapers, overviews, photographs) about these activities have been preserved. Today, this material forms an unofficial private collection owned by the core group of the Noor-Tartu movement.














The No Art Collection is a part of the Anti-Museum founded by Vladimir Dodig Trokut. It consists of characteristic avant-garde and post-avant-garde artefacts. The Anti-Museum’s No Art Collection was established during the many years of Trokut’s activity as a member of the informal cultural opposition, which was supported by prominent individuals and public personalities, such as artists and politicians like Koča Popović and Jure Kaštelan.




The Rock Museum was established in 2014 as a grassroots initiative by former musicians, experts, and collectors. The museum is the first collection in Hungary that presents documents and items of importance to the Hungarian rock and popular music scene (with an international and primarily regional focus) from the late 1950s to the present. Generally, the phenomenon of rock music under state socialism is considered a form of cultural resistance.





Photographic collection of European Solidarity Centre documents the most important political events from the 1970s and 1980s in Northern Poland. They are a testimonial of suppression, fight and victory, but they also tell little histories: of alternative lifestyles and artistic sensibility. The still-growing archive resources contain over 63.000 items.





Wald old popp was one of the few musical samizdat publications in communist Romania. It was created in 1969 by Emil Hidoș, a twenty-year-old man from the town of Bistrița, who was passionate about foreign music. He was a faithful listener to Cornel Chiriac’s musical programme Metronom, broadcast by the Romanian department of Radio Free Europe (RFE). The copies of Wald old popp were confiscated by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, in June 1970, after a search at Hidoș’s home. The Securitate used the samizdat as the main evidence against him and for his prosecution under the charge of “propaganda against the socialist order,” and copies of the publication were included in his penal file.
The musical samizdat Wald old popp was a handwritten publication whose chief editor was “Braim Iones,” the nickname used by Emil Hidoș. The copies were made using carbon paper. The subtitle of the samizdat, The Bistrița supplement of musical information, gives a hint as to the purpose of the editor: “to help the young people of this backward town, to inform them about the latest musical news from the world of popp (sic!).” Very interesting is Emil Hidoș’s short self-description, which illustrates his revolt against the limitations the communist regime put on the consumption of foreign cultural goods, which were nonetheless highly interesting to young people: “I am a young man in Bistrița just like you, unhappy with the care shown to us… by the older people, with the way in which they understand how we should spend our free time, have fun etc.” After stating that Romanian youth needed a magazine, a radio or a television programme to get information about the latest musical developments, Emil Hidoș underlined once again his personal revolt against this state of affairs and the fact that he was forced to create “such miserable supplements, which resemble more closely a manifesto than a supplement of music information.” From his point of view, the forced isolation of youth from the outside Western musical world would only increase their revolt against the communist regime to the point where things would get out of hand and the authorities would not be able to silence the young people’s revolt.
This editorial was followed by several articles about the latest developments in “popp” music, as Emil Hidoș misspelled and mistakenly labelled all music played at RFE and other foreign radio stations at that time. The entries concerned the latest “El-PY” (LP or Long Play) of a former member of the British rock band Cream and new releases of albums. Other columns contained the addresses of fan clubs of the most popular bands of that time, such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and a musical chart. A special feature was dedicated to “Events in Bistrița,” where Hidoș described how the authorities had reacted negatively to the exaltation displayed by young people during the concert of Cromatic Group, a rock band from the nearby city of Cluj-Napoca. He used the event as pretext for fresh criticism of the communist regime, which labelled as “hooliganism” the patterns of spending their free time that many young people adopted in revolt against the older generation and implicitly the communist regime. From Hidoș’s point of view, the critical stance of the authorities toward this issue was unfounded, as the officially-sponsored relevant organisations failed to take into consideration alternative and more appealing modes of entertainment. He ended his article by wondering when youth in Romanian would enjoy “total freedom” (ACNSAS, P 14400 vol. 1, ff. 215–223 f–v).




The collection is an album of 24 photographs made by a KGB officer (or secret informer) about the youth protests after the self-immolation of Romas Kalanta in Kaunas in the spring of 1972. The album shows the attitude of the KGB towards the anti-Soviet event and youth protests. On the other hand, it also shows the attitude of the younger generation of Lithuanians towards the regime.







The digital collection of the Oral History Center contains more than 2000 interviews with twentieth-century witnesses, which are divided into different themes and topics, thus presenting a unique collection of professionally created interviews and memories, many of which are related to the theme of cultural opposition.





Petru Negură’s private collection includes a wide variety of materials (interviews and archival documents) related to the activities of the Moldavian Writers’ Union (MWU) from the early Soviet period to the late 1950s and early 1960s. The collection focuses on institutional history and on the relationship of Moldovan writers with state power.




The Art Collections of the Museum of Czech Literature contain works of art connected with the literary field (illustrations, visual works by writers, graphics, etc.). The collection has been built from inheritances; a number of works by officially non-approved artists from the period before 1989 are present here.




Klaniczay Júlia (ed..): A Muhina projekt. Létértelmezések Galántai György életművében / The Mukhina Project. Interpretations of Being in György Galántai's oeuvre, Vintage Galéria, Budapest, 2018, 146 p.
This book, which includes numerous photographs, places the performance “Homage to Vera Mukhina” in a theoretical, historical, and cultural context. Along with the photos, there are diary entries, reproductions of Galántai’s related artworks, and text excerpts and documents originating from Cavellini. There is an interview with Galántai which leads the reader through the book (editor: Júlia Klaniczay). The book offers insights into the creation and execution of the Mukhina performance and also a wider and more detailed picture of connections within the oeuvre. Galántai has always reflected on the world around him and the most important questions in concrete artworks, thus giving interpretations of being.





This collection of the Czecho-Slovak poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and “guru” of the Czechoslovak underground, Egon Bondy (real name Zbyněk Fišer, 1930–2007), consists of sources related to the history of the Czechoslovak literary underground and the left-wing opposition to the communist regime.



This collection contains letters which the Libri Prohibiti Library obtained from the estate of the poet and manager of the Czechoslovak underground band Plastic People of the Universe, Ivan Martin Jirous. These letters were written by his wife, the painter Juliana Jirousová, during his many stays in prison. However, we can also find several unknown letters which were written before their wedding. This collection contains over 120 letters.










The Brașov–Orașul Memorabil Collection gathers more than 4,500 scanned copies of personal and official photos illustrating the history of this Transylvanian city, everyday life in Romania under communism, the programme of so-called urban systematisation conducted during Ceaușescu’s regime, and the popular resistance to this arbitrary policy.