This collection of the historian, teacher and politician Milan Hübl consists of a unique collection of archive materials, which includes the correspondence and documentation of the Political University of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and a large collection of ego documents, samizdat volumes and materials related to Charter 77, the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS).

The collection of Ilona Liskó is the legacy of the oeuvre of a sociologist who tried to shed light on the problems in Hungarian society which, according to the official stance of the regime, did not exist. Liskó felt a sense of solidarity with the poor and marginalized in part thanks to her family upbringing, and her desire to shed light on their sufferings came from her deep sense of social obligation.

István Bibó (1911–1979) was a Hungarian political scientist, sociologist, and scholar on the philosophy of law. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Bibó acted as the Minister of State for Imre Nagy’s second government. When the Soviets invaded and crushed the revolution, he was the last minister left at his post in the Hungarian parliament building. Rather than flee, he remained in the building and wrote his famous proclamation, “For Freedom and Truth,” until he awaited arrest. Bibó became a role model for dissident intellectuals in the late communist era and a symbol of non-violent civilian resistance based on a firm moral stand. Since Bibó’s death in 1979, the family collection of his bequest, which includes personal documents, photos, manuscripts, books, and video and sound recordings, has been in the care of art historian and educator István Bibó Jr., who keeps the materials in his home in Budapest.

Vaclovas Aliulis (1921-2015) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest. During Soviet times he participated actively in underground catechisation, and was a lecturer with the Underground Catholic Seminary, which was established to train priests for Catholic parishes in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Aliulis is the author of a number of books and other publications; and during the times of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement), he was the initiator and organiser of Catholic publishing. He started to collaborate with the Lithuanian Central State Archives from 2003, transferring files from his private papers to the state archives. The documents in the collection show the situation of the Catholic Church and the community of believers in Soviet Lithuania, and Soviet policy on religion.

One of the documents in the Alexandru Călinescu private collection reflects the perspective from which this critical intellectual in Iaşi was regarded by the authorities in the last years of communism, when the dissidents in the city, including Alexandru Călinescu, became radicalised in their attitude towards the Ceaușescu regime. The document was discovered on 23 December 1989, in the cabinet of the person who had been propaganda secretary for Iaşi county up until the previous day, and thus came into the possession of Alexandru Călinescu. It had also been sent, as Alexandru Călinescu recalls, to the then rector of A.I. Cuza University of Iaşi, “so he would work on me, but without success, of course,” he adds. This document was published by the former dissident in 2018 under the suggestive title “My life told by the Securitate,” together with other documents of the same type and an article summarising the context of the last two years of communism in Romania.

The Securitate informative note begins by recalling the intellectual origins of the person in question and emphasising that “he has always manifested a particular interest in entering into relations with foreign citizens of all categories, especially language assistants, diplomats, reporters, journalists, writers, etc., but with many of these he exceeded the official context, […] repeatedly transgressing in a flagrant and ostentatious manner the provisions regulating relations with foreigners.” Because he had “cosmopolitan” ideas and implicitly a “communion of ideas” with some of these foreigners, “he particularised the relations in such a manner that they developed from simple friendship to seriously affecting the interests of the Romanian state,” the document continues. The informative note on Alexandru Călinescu emphasises his role as the leader of the oppositional group around the magazine Dialog: “He has been considered the mentor of a group of young people with literary ambitions, launched by the above-mentioned publication, and has appointed himself a ‘school leader’ of the so-called ‘1980 generation,’ to whom he has passed on his harmful ideas.” The articles published in Dialog under the direction of Alexandru Călinescu by him and his disciples are characterised as being ‚ “of a contestatory character, which has attracted the attention of reactionary circles in the West, who provided them with publicity through the ill-famed radio station Free Europe.” As the leader of the new generation at Dialog, which he directed towards “hostile activities,” Alexandru Călinescu was considered to have “arrived at the threshold of treason,” resulting – according to the note – in no more than a sanction through Party structures with a “vote of blame.” The note goes on to emphasise that the individual in question “has not drawn appropriate conclusions from the measures taken in 1983. Making a mockery of the good advice and disregarding the clemency that was shown in his case, he has continued to maintain the same position, at first more prudently, then more and more openly and ostentatiously.” The document then recounts how Alexandru Călinescu “has gone further down the slope of treason,” by facilitating Dan Petrescu’s and Liviu Cangeopol’s meetings with French journalists to whom they granted interviews “with a particularly hostile content,” and thus becoming “the coordinator from the shadows of the alleged Iaşi dissidence.” Moreover, the document states, Alexandru Călinescu has shown solidarity with the dissidents in Bucharest, who have taken a public position in defence of Mircea Dinescu. The conclusion of the informative note with regard to the individual under surveillance is that “he more and more often exteriorises ideas inciting opposition to the socialist regime in our country, […] letting himself be influenced by what is happening in other socialist countries.” It is interesting to observe the interpretive key in which the Securitate informative note narrates all these real actions of contestation of the regime, as a result of which Alexandru Călinescu had become at the end of the 1980s one of the most heavily surveilled critical intellectuals in Iaşi and indeed in the whole of Romania. In the words of the secret police documents, “by the hostile actions he has carried out, especially in the last two years, […] Alexandru Călinescu has proved [...] that he has crossed the threshold of treason to the country and has become a tool of reactionary circles in the West, through which he has seriously compromised his status as citizen, Party member, and university teacher.” In other words, all that after 1989 became an act of courage was considered an act of treason before 1989.

The collection holds various documents (manuscripts, letters, etc) relating to the Lithuanian historian Ignas Jonynas. His works written in the interwar period laid the foundations for modern Lithuanian national historiography. During Soviet times, Jonynas was a professor of history at Kaunas and Vilnius universities. In 1949, he was severely criticised by Party activists for ‘bourgeois objectivism’ and nationalism. However, Jonynas was still very popular among students, and had a huge influence on the younger generation of Lithuanian historians.

The collection of Milan Jelínek documents in detail the Communist thinking of a formerly protected linguist, and the later, a critic to the regime, becoming a samizdat publisher and co-organiser of lectures at the underground university.

Since there were no underground organisations or networks of Soviet Lithuanian philosophers, Lithuanian lecturers and scholars of philosophy accommodated Soviet ideology, and used legal forms of activity in order to pursue the aims of cultural opposition. Philosophers played an important role in Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement) in 1988-1990. One of the key figures among Lithuanian philosophers was Romualdas Ozolas. During Soviet times, he occupied nomenklatura positions, such as adviser to the deputy chair of the Council of Ministers, but at the same time he was deeply involved in various cultural initiatives that went far beyond the Soviet ideological line. Being a very scrupulous collector, Ozolas left extensive papers that are still waiting for investigation by researchers.

The collection reflects, on the one hand, the oppositional activity of the Romanian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church towards the communist regime, and, on the other hand, the intense surveillance and harsh repression of this Church carried out by the repressive apparatus of the communist authorities. The Romanian Greek Catholic Church Ad-hoc Collection represents the most comprehensive collection of documents, which illustrates the multilayered resistance to dictatorship of one of the most repressed religious groups in communist Romania and its vivid underground religious activity from 1948 to 1989.

Limes was a circle of Hungarian dissident intellectuals which operated more or less actively from 1985 until the 1989 Romanian revolution. The aim of the circle was to provide a pluralist platform of cooperation for Hungarian intellectuals, which meant holding monthly/bimonthly organized meetings and publishing a journal dealing with the history and actual situation of the Hungarian minority from Romania, as well as other outstanding research work pertaining to other domains. The circle was also devoted to maintaining high standards of scientific work in Romania. As there was no chance of getting anything past the censors in Romania, the plan was to smuggle manuscripts to Hungary and to publish the journal there.

The initiator was Gusztáv Molnár, who mostly due to his job as a literary editor at the Bucharest-based Kriterion publishing house had a large personal network among Transylvanian Hungarian critical intellectuals. The core of the group was represented by the following individuals: Vilmos Ágoston, Béla Bíró, Gáspár Bíró, Ernő Fábián, Károly Vekov, Levente Salat, Csaba Lőrincz, Ferenc Visky, András Visky, Péter Visky, Levente Horváth, Sándor Balázs, Sándor Szilágyi N., and Éva Cs. Gyímesi. Through the process of editing the journal, many more intellectuals became acquainted with the activity of the Limes group.

Between September 1985 and November 1986, six meetings were held in four different localities in Romania in the homes of members of the group. The meetings encompassed a presentation (usually of a manuscript) followed by a debate, and all proceedings were recorded. The series of meetings was interrupted by a search and seizure performed by the Securitate in Molnár’s apartment in Bucharest. All documents related to Limes were taken and later studied by the authorities. By this time, the plan to make four Limes issues had already been completed, and the manuscripts for the first two issues had already been collected. The contents included transcripts of the Limes debates and studies and documents covering topics such as “national minorities,” “nationalism,” “totalitarianism,” “autonomy,” and “Transylvanianism” as a guiding ideology for the Hungarian minority in Romania. The topics also included the situation of the Csángó Catholic (Hungarian-speaking) population in Romania.

The Limes group ceased its activity after the intervention of the Romanian secret police, and in 1987, summons and warnings were issued to the members of the group. Though no more meetings were organized, after a while, Limes members resumed work on the texts. Molnár moved to Hungary in 1988, but the editorial work was continued in Romania by Éva Cs. Gyímesi Éva and Péter Cseke in Cluj. The first issues of Limes was published by Molnár in Budapest in late 1989. The content does not coincide with the initial first volume of the Limes, but the issues did contain excerpts from the debates which were held at the first two meetings.

Invaluable insights into the details of the Limes story and other events in the lives of outstanding Hungarian intellectuals are provided by the Securitate files on professor of philosophy at the Babes Bolyai University Sándor Balázs (1928–), which are available for research in the Historical Collection of the Jakabffy Elemér Foundation. This is because the Limes activities in Cluj were recorded by the county agency of the Securitate as part of the information surveillance files on Sándor Balázs. His code name was “the Sociologist” (Sociologul), but the table of contents at the beginning of the dossier refers to “the Sociologists” (Sociologii), the code name used to denote the Limes group.

Sociology, along with other social sciences, was under a strong political pressure in the socialist era. After the foundation of the Sociological Research Group (1963), sociologists tried to make room for more autonomous academic activities. “Critical sociology” formed in part because many sociologists refused to legitimize the communist regime through their work. This collection gives insights into this controversial dynamic, i.e. the struggle between scholars on the one hand and political institutions on the other.

The personal collection of Croatian philosopher and sociologist Rudi Supek contains documents and photographs that testify to Supek's intellectual activity, which had been prevented in some phases of his life. Supek was the editor of two critically-oriented Marxist journals, Pogledi and Praxis, and as one of the main protagonists of the Korčula Summer School of Philosophy, he expressed views that did not align with those promoted by the Communist authorities. Supek's disagreement with the practices of the communist regime stemmed from his understanding of the position of intellectuals in society and his stance that there is no socialism without democracy. This collection also illustrates Supek's work as one of the pioneers of the environmental movement in Yugoslavia.

The document that records the extent of the search carried out at the home of the Petrescus on 18 May 1983 is in the family’s private collection in an original copy, made out by the officers who took part in the event. Another two copies were kept by the communist authorities of the time. The minute records that the Petrescus were present at the search, as were two witnesses. It consists of four pages, very clearly written, and is made out in the name of the Iaşi County Inspectorate of the Securitate. Each page is signed both by the representatives of the forces of control and repression and by the witnesses and the couple themselves. The document lists the objects that were kept by the Securitate on this occasion: books; audio cassettes, including one containing a recording of Virgil Ierunca’s broadcast on Radio Free Europe in which he highly praised Dan Petrescu and other young intellectuals in Iaşi for their articles in the student magazines Dialog and Opinia Studenţească; rolls of recording tape; photographs; letters from various people; pages of notes; and a folder labelled “Furrows across the baulks – feuilleton novel of the collectivisation,” containing forty-five leaves of the manuscript of this collective novel. Among the books confiscated were some that later became classic works of critical analysis of the communist system, but which were very recent publications at the time, for example La Nomenklatura, les privilégiés en URSS  by Mikhail Voslensky (1980) and L'Union soviétique survivra-t-elle en 1984? by Andrei Amalrik (1977). There were also critical works on Romanian communism published by Romanian writers in exile, such as La Cité totale by Constantin Dumitrescu (1980). The couple managed to save some books from confiscation, but of those removed from their home by the Securitate only one was given back to them, though it is not clear on which criteria this particular book, Les Sources et le sens du communisme russe by Nikolai Berdyaev, was returned – perhaps because it dated from 1938, so was much older than the others. Thérèse Culianu-Petrescu recalls how they managed to hide some of the most critical, and implicitly the most incriminating books: “The next day, 18 May 1983, at six o’clock sharp in the morning, the guys burst in. […] At first they were very pleasant. They gave us time to get dressed, and those minutes gave us a chance to remove some books, to give them to my aunt, who stuck them under her jacket, under her overcoat. Solzhenitsyn, for example. We saved the Gulag and a few others. My aunt took them into her room, where they had no mandate to enter and where they didn’t think of entering. [… Wherever they had a mandate,] they left nothing untouched. Nothing, nothing. You realised that you could hide something anywhere, in the garden, in the house, in the woodshed, and they would rummage around and they could find it. They were capable of moving everything, of going through everything.” And regarding the immediate consequence of the search, interrogation at the Securitate headquarters, she adds: “The search lasted approximately five hours. From six in the morning to eleven. […] Then they took us up – ‘up’ meaning to the Securitate. It was on a street named Triumfului. Now after 1989, the gangs of Securitate people have built a district of apartment blocks that they own.” Dan Petrescu adds, with regard to the manner in which those who came conduct the search acted in order to find what interested them, underlining that the Securitate was particularly interested in a cassette with the recording of a Radio Free Europe broadcast, in which some young Iaşi writers had been highly praised, among them himself, and in the manuscript of the collective novel: “They had come on the basis of information, for they were looking for certain things. They were looking for a recording of a broadcast on Radio Free Europe where [Virgil] Ierunca praised us and… they were looking for books […] They confiscated a lot of books from us. Only one was given back to us, after the search. Berdyaev – his book about the sources and the meaning of communism. At the same time they asked me about the novel [“Furrows Across the Baulks” revisited]. I said to them: ‘Why are you still looking for it? Because you’ve already got it.’ They had taken it from George Pruteanu. […] It didn’t exist in more than one manuscript. There were no copies. It passed from one to the next and each one added to it. They were also looking for letters in the search.” Dan Petrescu adds, to give a clearer picture of those months, another detail that casts a new light on that moment: “The search took place, at our home, in May 1983. In March, I found out later in documents at CNSAS, the Securitate guys had made new recruits in literary circles in Iaşi. Ten new names. In editorial boards of periodicals, publishing houses, that sort of thing.”

Problemos (Problems) is a Lithuanian academic philosophical journal published by Vilnius University. The journal was reorganised during the 1960s and 1970s, when the community of Soviet Lithuanian philosophers made attempts to produce a serious academic journal, with critical articles, reviews and translations of Western authors. This initiative was seen very negatively by cultural administrators at that time. The minutes of a meeting on 27 November 1972 demonstrates the attempts of the government to direct Problemos the ‘right way’. Philosophers, the authors of papers in Problemos, were criticised at the meeting for their passive ideological stance, and their lack of publications on communist ideology. After the meeting, the control of Problemos became stronger, and the content of its volumes was thematically limited. According to the philosopher Algimantas Jankauskas, after strengthening the controls, a core group of Lithuanian philosophers, including Romualdas Ozolas, started to think of producing an underground samizdat philosophy journal. But they later decided to keep to legal cultural opposition. They initiated and established a series of books on the history of philosophy ‘Filosofijos istorijos chrestomatija’ (Chrestomatia of the History of Philosophy), which resulted in a number of volumes being published in 1974-1987. 

The thirteenth volume of the series entitled Áron Márton’s Legacy comprises those of the bishop’s writings that had been addressed to the state authorities. As a bishop, Áron Márton represented the diocese of Alba Iulia for forty-two years and on occasion the other Transylvanian Roman Catholic dioceses as well. His episcopate was not free of cares; following the years of royal dictatorship, he remained in Southern Transylvania after the Second Vienna Award to offer hope for his congregation members, who held a minority status. Then, following the Second World War, the much-awaited peace failed to arrive and the religion-persecuting dictatorship inherent in the Romanian version of Soviet power came instead. Throughout these years, the supreme power in Bucharest proved helpful or tolerant for only very short periods as there was a twofold pressure on the Hungarian Roman Catholic congregation members, clergy, and bishop, as a minority both through confessional otherness and through differences in mother tongue.

In the four years between 1948 and 1951, besides the nationalisation of ecclesiastical schools, the conversion of Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy by force, and the abolition of monastic orders, priests and monks had to face imprisonment, forced labour, and persecution. After Áron Márton’s release in 1955 he was the only active Roman Catholic bishop in Romania. He had to establish contact with both the local and central authorities, and, considering the correlation of forces, this relationship was a subordinating one and, consequently, marked by struggle and compromises. In this struggle the bishop had only two instruments to resort to: asking and protesting. Surrender was not possible as he had to undergo all the hardships for his priests and congregation. His letters are classic examples for minority leaders regarding the nature of their attitude toward the government. The letters in which he asked for something were written in such a manner that he never humiliated himself; at all times he maintained his human dignity and his episcopal stance and remained unbiased. The official letters published in the volume represent testimonies to the bishop’s straightforwardness, honesty, sense of responsibility, empathy, and regard towards the authorities. They speak about people who suffered, in whose interests he intervened before the local authorities or the Ministry of Religious Affairs and later before the competent authorities of the Office of Religious Affairs. He had to defend his congregation members against national oppression, rather than against purely religious offences. The letters arranged in chronological order according to the changes in history reflect the serious problems characteristic of the period and reveal the relationship between State and Church through time. The bishop’s official writings and letters published in the volume help readers to “get acquainted with and make out” the laws regulating the ecclesiastical life of the time, considering that their application produced mostly negative effects and led to restrictive consequences. 

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.

In the period from 1975 to 1976, William Totok spent more than eight months in arrest at the Securitate for his involvement in the Aktionsgruppe Banat literary group, considered subversive by the authorities,and for his criticism of Ceaușescu’s political regime. Totok was released in June 1976 after the publication in the newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Le Monde of articles presenting the abuses of the communist authorities in his case. After his release, Totok drew up a manuscript of memoirs entitled Projekt für eine intellektuelle Extermination (A project for an intellectual extermination), in which he recounted his experience as political prisoner. In May 1982, the Securitate carried out a search at his domicile and at that of one of his friends, the Romanian-German writer Horst Samson. On this occasion several documents were confiscated, including one copy of the manuscript of these memoirs (ACNSAS, I 210 845, vol. 2, 265–66; Totok 2001, 107–108).

In this manuscript, Totok recounts in detail the conditions in the political prison in Timișoara, the interrogations carried out by the Securitate, and the story of a letter drawn up between the two periods of arrest (Totok was released for a short period in October 1975, only to be arrested again in November 1975). In this letter, sent by his mother to the Federal Republic of Germany after his second arrest, Totok related the dramatic events of the abusive arrest of his colleagues and himself  in October 1975 and all the harassments of the secret police. Fortunately, the copy of the manuscript of this memoirs that was confiscated by the Securitate was not the only one. Totok managed to hide a copy and to smuggle it out of the country to the Federal Republic of Germany after his emigration in March 1987. In 1988, Totok published a revised and extended version of this manuscript under the title: Die Zwänge der Erinnerung: Aufzeichnungen aus Rumänien (The constraint of memory: Recollections from Romania).

This index was created during the systematization of the oeuvre of Lajos Szabó, following the principles worked out by György Kunszt. It specifies a surprisingly long list of names and subjects compared to the length of the whole document, one typed page, created during the second year in emigration. It lists many names from their circle of friends in Budapest (but not only them). The list of subjects includes promising items, as “analysis of damnation” and “Genealogie der Moral.” It is a nice coincidence that the word “destruction” appears smudgy on the paper.

The Czecho-Slovak poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and “guru” of the Czechoslovak underground, Egon Bondy (real name Zbyněk Fišer, 1930–2007), is well known as the author of dozens of collections of poems and novels. His philosophical texts, however, are an equally significant part of his work. Bondy, who graduated in philosophy from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, was also interested in Eastern philosophy, in particular Buddhism. He wrote several academics studies on this topic in the first half of the 1960s, and published the book “Buddha” under his real name in 1968 through the publishing house Orbis. This significant study on the founder of Buddhism and his teachings caused a sensation in Czechoslovakia. The book was later republished twice (1995, 2006) in the Czech Republic and still remains topical.Bondy’s manuscript of his study of Buddha and his teachings was bought by the Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) in 1986 and is now part of the Egon Bondy collection deposited in the Literary Archive of PNP.

The Memorandum addressed to the president of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly on 29 March 1948 by the six Romanian Greek Catholic bishops concerns those aspects of the project of the 1948 Romanian Constitution which hampered religious freedom in Romania. The six Romanian Greek Catholic bishops who signed the document and assumed the risk of being arrested were: Valeriu Traian Frenţiu (Bishop of Oradea), Iuliu Hossu (Bishop of Cluj-Gherla), Alexandru Rusu (Bishop of Maramureş), Ioan Bălan (Bishop of Lugoj), Ioan Suciu (Auxiliary Bishop of Oradea) and Vasile Aftenie (Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar Bishop of Bucharest and the Old Kingdom.This risk was materialised in the autumn of 1948 when they were arrested and imprisoned by the Securitate for their obstinate resistance to the abusive policies of the communist regime towards their church (Vasile 2002).

In the introduction of the Memorandum the leadership of the Church emphasise the importance of the new Constitution and the real need for social reforms in the country, which the 1948 Constitution included. After this captatio benevolentiae, the six bishops bring to the fore those stipulations which in their opinion could “violate natural and perennial human rights” and the international obligations assumed by the Romanian state through international treaties (ACNSAS, Fond Documentar, dosar FD 8792, ff. 359–360). Their criticism targets especially article 28, the third part of the project of the 1948 Constitution, which stated: “No congregation or religious denomination may establish and administrate institutions of general education, but only special schools aimed at training the staff of the religious denomination under the control of the state” (f. 361).

The argument of the Memorandum is that the stipulations of the third part of article 28 is in contradiction with another part of the same article, which stipulated freedom of religion. By these limitations concerning the education system, the Greek Catholic bishops considered that an important aspect of the freedom of religion was violated. Thus, in their opinion the third part “suppresses those generous stipulations proclaimed previously” (f. 362).

The Memorandum emphasises the natural right of citizens to educate their children according to their values and convictions. The bishops invoke the long tradition not only of Greek Catholic but also of Orthodox confessional schools in Transylvania, and emphasise their importance in the affirmation of Romanian national culture and identity in Transylvania (f. 363). The bishops also emphasise that the confessional schools were attended during the nineteenth century mainly by children of peasant origin and represented a lever for social emancipation for the Romanian population of this region.

In conclusion, the text points out that the decision to abolish the confessional educational system in Romania will be an act of injustice from many points of view and states that: “For our part, we stand firm to declare that we will never give up, in any circumstances and on any conditions, what we believe is the inalienable right of our Church.” All the six Greek Catholic Bishops signed the document, which was addressed to the communist authorities. A copy of this document was attached to the files of the Documentary Fonds, created by the Securitate in order to document the “Greek Catholic issue”.

Doina Cornea was a leading dissident in communist Romania, who started by criticising the educational and cultural policies of Ceaușescu’s regime and issuing some modest samizdat materials, and ended up as the driving force behind several collective actions against the arbitrary actions of Ceaușescu’s regime and the trigger of the most significant transnational network in defence of the Romanian villages menaced with destruction by the regime. Accordingly, the Doina Cornea Ad-Hoc Collection at CNSAS constitutes one of the largest collections of documents referring to one single individual and includes not only records created by the secret police while trying to counter her actions, but also materials confiscated as evidence of those actions.

As a continuation of the eleventh volume covering the time interval between 1938–1947, the twelfth volume of the Áron Márton’s Legacy series, based on the materials stored in the Archiepiscopal and Capitular Archives within the Archdiocesan Archives in Alba Iulia, respectively, in the Áron Márton Museum, contains the bishop’s circulars written during the communist era, between 1948–1980.

Despite the guarantee of “freedom of conscience and of religion” laid down in the text of the new Constitution published in 1948, laws and decrees restricting the rights of churches were passed one after the other. In attacking the Catholic Church the Party first eliminated the formal obstacle: on 19 July 1948 the Presidential Council of the Romanian People’s Republic unilaterally cancelled the concordat concluded with the Holy See in 1927. Then they proclaimed the so-called “School Law” no. 175 of 3 August 1948 and the associated Decree no. 176, which was followed by the so-called “Law of Religious Denominations” of 4 August. The latter law, beside imposing a strict control over religious denominations, prohibited, by its Article 41, the enforcement of papal jurisdiction in the Romanian People’s Republic, thus rendering the existence of the Catholic church impossible. As opposed to the other thirteen denominations operating on the basis of rules of organisation and operation, this article of the law was immediately responsible for the “tolerated” status of the Catholic church until 1990. Already from the very beginning the communist system closely monitored persons and institutions that held different views, and these included, apart from the Catholic clergy considered as an enemy of popular democracy, also the Catholic church, which lacked a Statute.

In these hard times, amidst the attacks and warnings, Áron Márton could resort only to his circulars in order to encourage and spiritually strengthen his priests and congregation, as he had no alternative than to deal with the existing laws. In 1948 – according to the twelfth volume – he issued twenty circulars, the contents of which shed light on the violent nature of the dictatorship and its anti-religious manifestations. After the nationalisation of church schools, the operation of the Seminary was also of pressing concern to the bishop, as due to the elimination of financial support, the maintenance of the institution became the task of the diocese. He successfully asked for help from congregation members: “Please be of help in our poverty even amidst your own poverty.” Religious teaching is, after the preaching of the Gospel, the most important field of pastoral service. The new system primarily targeted young people with its materialistic teachings and it was not accidental that by means of the law of public education it banned religious education from the institutional curriculum, finding ways and means to interfere also in extracurricular education. Áron Márton recognised and put on paper the road to escape: “After the elimination of religious education from the school curriculum, Catholic families are facing a new task,” and called upon parents asking them to undertake the religious education of their children in a conscientious and responsible manner. He also used circulars to indicate the proper Christian conduct for the difficult times that awaited his priests and congregation members, preparing them for the challenges and all the while cautioning them against opportunism. At the same time in his circular from 6 October 1948 he adopted an adequately strict tonality: “I hereby inform all Catholic congregation members, that any Catholic priest or believer, irrespective of Catholic ritual, who participates in any assembly held with the purpose to promote his/her break-away from the Catholic church, shall be immediately ostracised from the Church without the need for any further measures.” The same circular stipulated the support to be offered to the Greek Catholics, too: “I hereby call upon and ask my R[espected]. Priests, to display courteous love in offering the greatest possible religious support and help to our Greek Catholic brothers, and whenever necessary, to readily put our churches, chalices, and ecclesiastical equipment at their disposal so that they can officiate masses according to the Eastern rite. Let us pray for them!” On 20 October 1948, the bishop repeated the issue of support, clarifying things: “My R[espected]. Priests may only grant permission to Greek Catholic priests to officiate masses in our churches, if the Greek Catholic priests in question are prevented by external circumstances from officiating masses in their own churches and if they have indisputable, positive knowledge of the fact that they had not signed the declaration of schism, or that they have received final absolution from ostracism, and in case of suspicion in this respect, we must await the up-to-date certificate issued by the competent Ordinarius regarding the fact that the persons in question are not under ecclesiastical punishment.”

During the six years following Áron Márton’s arrest his circulars ceased too. On 25 March 1955, a day after his return from prison to Alba Iulia, the bishop issued a new circular. In order to eliminate the atmosphere of distrust generated by the lack of priests and by the authorities he asked for two things from his priests: discipline and work. He received authorisation from the state authorities to turn to the pope first in a telegram, then in a letter. However, the maintenance of contact with Rome was rather difficult as in 1955 official records were delivered only haltingly. The bishop who animated even dormant souls continued to be not particularly welcome, and by virtue of the government decree of 5 June 1957 they restricted his free movement and office administrative work, confining the bishop to his room for eleven years by force. They supplemented this “punishment” by imposing a restriction on the subject-matter of his circulars, too. The bishop was only allowed to communicate measures regarding official matters to his priests: retirement, tax and financial rules, provisions concerning the preservation and restoration of monuments, dispositions regarding the liturgy and spiritual exercises for the clergy, priest training, chorister training, issues pertaining to religious education, etc. However, beyond this, the preparations for the second Vatican Council (1962–1965), his works and the implementation of his objectives, and the announcements of the holy years (1965–1975) encouraged him to write circulars. These circulars expressly contain ecclesiastical notifications and calls for prayer.

The volume also contains several draft circulars and documents written upon “request,” which can be explained by political historical factors. One of the manifestations of the political elite in Bucharest in its rapprochement efforts towards the West was that already from the early 1960s it sought the favours of churches, as with their mediation they could approach the more important countries and thus they could obtain the abolition of certain economic restrictions. It may be no accident that Áron Márton’s house arrest was also suspended precisely in November 1967. In February 1968 Ceaușescu summoned the Romanian religious leaders and in August 1968, at the time of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he initiated the issue of a common circular which Áron Márton also complied with. At the same time, grabbing the opportunity, the bishop also submitted a separate declaration to the government, in which he expressed his views regarding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1973, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the Romanian Socialist Republic, and in 1974, on the thirtieth anniversary of the liberation from German occupation, which was then the Romanian national day, the communist authorities also asked for festive manifestations from the bishop. However, these remained only drafts, as their contents (the bishop raised his voice in the interest of his people living with a minority status) prevented them from obtaining authorisation for distribution.  In 1974, following a serious surgical intervention, Áron Márton decided to adopt a more restrained work schedule and assigned part of his duties to his suffragan. From then on the number of his circulars decreased; he issued only a few of them in a year. His last circular, in which he said goodbye to his diocese, was drawn-up in 1980 by the suffragan Antal Jakab, theology professor József Huber, and office director Lajos Erőss on the basis of the bishop’s earlier circulars. However, it was still signed by Áron Márton himself.

The collection reflects the activity of the Romanian-German writer and journalist William Totok, persecuted by the communist authorities for the criticism towards Ceaușescu’s political regime expressed in his literary texts. The William Totok private collection comprises mainly books, literary manuscripts, drafts of academic papers, audio and video documents, and correspondence.

The High Consistory Collection includes mostly of documents issued by the High Consistory of the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession of Romania in the period 1922–1990, together with the minutes of meetings of the High Consistory and documents concerning institutional communication with parishes and with the state authorities. The collection illustrates the opposition of the Evangelical Church A.C. of Romania to the policies of the communist regime in certain domains, such as religious education.

The philosophical notes of Lajos Szabó made in the years he spent abroad (between 1956 and 1967) fill more than one hundred and sixty notebooks. These notes in most cases are not contiguous texts, but groups of keywords and names, as Attila Kotányi drafted it, “systematizing scalings marked by abbreviations, paths of the branching correlations.” Szabó considered exact wording important, so he worked continuously on the purgation of language.

The Krunoslav Draganović Collection on World War II and Post-war Victims is an archive collection whose original collector was the priest Krunoslav Draganović, who, relying primarily on the testimonies of survivors and other witnesses, planned to publish a book on the crimes of the Yugoslav communists.

The collection includes the documents of the Danube Circle Association, which was a non-governmental organization in opposition to the government’s project to construct a River Barrage Dam near Nagymaros (Hungary) in the 1980s. The Danube Circle movement tried to prevent the construction of the dam with samizdats, public debates, and protests. The Circle was one of the new types of alternative movements, which expanded the base of the “traditional” intellectual opposition.

Szabolcs Vajay’s collection is the bequest of a Hungarian scholar who represented classic European erudition. It also documents the efforts to save a marginalized culture. The collection offers insights into a way of life in exile which is centered around efforts to preserve heritage abroad, a lifestyle which arose in part as a response to political assault on culture.

“Wieland durch die Lorgnette gelesen” (Wieland seen through the lorgnette) is a draft of a poem confiscated by the Securitate in June 1975 during their search of the Totok family house in Comloșu Mare. The search officially concerned his brother Gunter Totok, arrested for openly expressing his criticism against the Ceaușescu’s regime. However, the Securitate took advantage of the moment and picked up some literary manuscripts of William Totok’s, including this poem, without mentioning them in their minute of the home search as the criminal legislation stipulated. In October 1975, during a trip to Comloșu Mare, William Totok was arrested along with other members of Aktionsgruppe Banat (Wichner 2013, 7). After a short period of release, he was again arrested in November 1975 and interrogated about the content of his literature in order to prove an alleged guilt of “anti-state propaganda.” Among the texts of Totok on which the Securitate focused its investigation was the poem Wieland durch die Lorgnette gelesen, which contained some ironic critical remarks regarding Ceaușescu’s dictatorship (ANSAS, P 054927, f. 62–66).The lines of the poem tell the story of a “recently proclaimed leader of the republic,” an obvious allusion to Ceaușescu. Concerning his character and relations with the “people,” the poem stated that “When he started to work on the minds of people/ He was the most luminated head/That had ever staggered in the lead/ Thus nobody has anything/Against this amiable tyrant/Or against his patriotic sighs” (ACNSAS, P 054927, 64-66).

The poem was commented on by the informers of the Securitate, who were active in the Romanian-German literary milieu. They provided to the secret police the meanings that the latter were looking for in order to prove his “anti-state propaganda.”The Securitate attached the draft of this poem to the so-called “criminal file” on William Totok.

The private collection of historian Gábor Klaniczay (1950-) includes written, visual, and audio sources from the 1970s and 1980s. These sources all concern the alternative, underground cultural trends, art, music performances, and political oppositional movements of the period. The almost entire series of the samizdat publications from Hungary also constitute an important part of the collection, as do the leaflets and posters from his trips to Paris and New York.

The collection is about the activities of the Dziekanka Students' Art Center and Dziekanka Workshop (Pracownia Dziekanka) in the years 1976-1987. Under these two names was the same place, an extraordinary interdisciplinary artistic and educational laboratory, combining the debuting students of Warsaw's art academies and outstanding artists from Poland and abroad. Around the studio, a unique milieu was created, combining post-Fluxus artists interested in new media and avant-garde theatre ventures, but also painters and sculptors of new expression or punk music bands. The years 1976-1987 is the most intense, though the heterogeneous period in the history of Dziekanka, filled with exhibitions, performances, shows, discussions and social life. During this time Tomasz Sikorski was an active participant in events at Dziekanka, and from 1979 he was the co-director of the institution. Owing to his constant presence and managerial function, Sikorski gathered an extensive collection of photos and other materials documenting the functioning of the initiative, going beyond the definitions of independent galleries.

The collection documents the work of Croatian historian and political émigré Nikola Čolak (1914-1996). In 1966, he belonged to a group of academics and thinkers from Zadar, who officially sought to break the Communist Party's monopoly on truth by establishing the first journal not controlled by the Party. After the suppression of this initiative, Čolak was forced into exile in Italy. The so-called Movement of Independent Intellectuals represented the first attempt to create a formal cultural opposition circle not only in Croatia, but in Yugoslavia as a whole, which is recorded through this collection.