The picture shows Hristo Ognyanov during a Radio Free Europe broadcast. Ognyanov was a long-time contributor to the Bulgarian language program of Radio Free Europe.

One of the programs of Radio Free Europe was called Bulgarian Literature under Communism, which Ognyanov created in 1964 (CSA F. 1264, op. 1, a.e. 289). The featured item contains the program transcripts, totaling about 375 pages. The Ognyanov’s broadcasts provided a broader picture of the development of literature in Bulgaria, while at the same time condemning the restrictions imposed by the government. He specifically presented works from Bulgarian literature and culture that the communist regime had banned in Bulgaria. In the series, Bulgarian Literature under Communism Ognyanov reported on official decisions of the Bulgarian Communist Party and revealed lies in the party’s propaganda.

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 sentence in the case of Nicolae Dragoș and his oppositional group was pronounced on 19 September 1964, following a final round of testimonies that the main defendant and his associates provided in court. The main defendants, Nicolae Dragoș and Nikolai Tarnavskii, were accused of “common anti-Soviet views” that prompted them to “create an underground organisation on whose behalf they [intended] to undertake agitation and propaganda activities with the aim of undermining and weakening Soviet power.” Judging by the summary of their actions in the text of the sentence, the two main protagonists and initiators of this group started to discuss concrete plans for spreading their message in the summer of 1962, when the plan to set up a clandestine printing press emerged. It is interesting to note that initially Dragoș planned to print the leaflets a bit later, in 1965 or 1966, after a longer period of preparation, but, “due to the difficulties of provisioning the population with foodstuffs, which emerged throughout the country because of a poor harvest, decided to do this in 1964.” This passage is especially revealing both as a rare admission of real economic problems (albeit in a secret document) and as an indication of a direct stimulus that prompted Dragoș and his collaborators to act when they did. The sentence also carefully summarises the main stages of the organisation’s activity, i.e., the collecting of addresses to which the leaflets were to be sent in several Soviet cities (including Lviv, Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, Dnepropetrovsk, Rostov-on-Don, Kharkiv, Odessa, Chișinău, etc.) and the recruitment of new members who were entrusted with practical tasks. The sentence also clarifies the structure of the organisation’s core, which seems to have included an inner circle (composed of Dragoș, Tarnavskii, and Cherdyntsev) and an “outer ring” consisting of the other three defendants (Postolachi, Cemârtan and Cucereanu), all of them students at the Institute of Fine Arts whom Dragoș recruited through his brother, Vladimir. The text of the sentence also provides a chronological narrative of the printing and dissemination of the 1,300 leaflets produced by Dragoș and Tarnavskii between February and 15 April 1964. Dragoș’s situation was aggravated by the accusation that, while trying to recruit new members, he “attempted to create the impression that a widespread clandestine organisation purportedly existed,” thus “camouflaging his own role in its founding and in the producing of the anti-Soviet leaflets.” Dragoș and Cherdyntsev were also accused of writing a letter to the First Secretary of the CPSU, Khrushchev, in which they purportedly “articulated calumnies concerning the policy of the communist party, against Soviet democracy” and “threatened the CPSU, on behalf of the clandestine organisation that, if repressive measures were to be applied against the DUS, the latter’s members would respond by similar measures, up to and including organising strikes and public demonstrations.” Several copies of this letter were later confiscated by the KGB from the defendants’ apartments. Given the fact that over 850 leaflets were distributed in various Soviet cities, it is obvious that the Soviet authorities were worried about the potential impact of the organisation and about the extent of its informal network. Despite Dragoș’s insistence that he did not pursue the goal of “undermining Soviet power,” all the defendants were found guilty of distributing anti-Soviet leaflets in which they propagated “vicious calumnies concerning the policy of the party and of the Soviet government, the Soviet state and social order, and the living conditions of the workers in the USSR.” The group was accused of extrapolating from certain particular problematic issues in the economic sphere and the “temporary difficulties” faced by the regime in order to recruit “politically unstable” citizens, mainly from student circles, and to manipulate them so as to achieve the organisation’s “hostile goals.” Consequently, Nicolae Dragoş and Nicolae Tarnavskii were sentenced to seven years in a high security labour camp. Ivan Cherdyntsev and Vasile Postolachi were sentenced to six years in a high security labour camp, while Sergiu Cemârtan and Nicolae Cucereanu received a five-year prison term, under similar conditions. Additionally, Dragoş and Tarnavskii were condemned to three years of prison according to article 81, paragraph 2, of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, for stealing the printing equipment from Tatarbunar. The sentence also included a provision relating to the confiscation of the property belonging to the main defendants. As the latter possessed no significant property, the confiscation measure was suspended. The sentence was annulled in February 1989 by a special decision of the Supreme Court of the Moldavian SSR, by which Dragoş and his co-accused were rehabilitated. However, the additional three-year prison term for stealing the printing equipment was left standing by this court decision. The case of the Democratic Union of Socialists, closely linked to the context of the “thaw,” is emblematic for its openly political focus, its supra-national scope, and the possible parallels to much more significant similar cases in the Soviet Bloc. It is also interesting because of its “transitional” character. Although a direct product of Krushchev’s era, it also foreshadowed some of the topics that would be salient in the “dissident” movement on the Soviet periphery in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

Since the 1960s, Communism in Romania, 1944–1962 has been the classic monograph on the first two decades of postwar Romania, setting the frame for subsequent research on the topic not only in Western academia, but also in post-1989 Romanian historiography. The book was written between 1960 and 1963 (before the relative liberalisation of the late 1960s that allowed Western scholars to conduct field research in Romania). The author therefore had limited access to Romanian sources such as the official press and official statistics, and relied rather on memoirs and various publications of Romanian exiles in the West. However, many of his conclusions are still valid. His life experiences in both interwar Romania and Western exile provided him with deep insights into the key events of the period he was researching. Before 1945, he was well acquainted with some communist Romanian intellectuals, such as Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, one of Gheorghiu-Dej’s competitors for the leadership of the Party during the period from 1945 to 1948. As a person involved in the political organisations of the Romanian exile, Ionescu had the opportunity to meet people that had held key positions in the period of the communist takeover in Romania (1944–1947) and had managed to escape to the West. He benefitted also from his experience as head of the Romanian service of Radio Free Europe where he had the occasion to access valuable information and to acquire a broader comparative perspective on the communist regime in Romania in its East European context.

As with most Western contributions on the Eastern Bloc of the 1950s and 1960s, the conceptual framework of the book is provided by the theory of totalitarianism. He also approached the communist regime in Romania from a comparative perspective and tried to understand its evolution by paying special attention to Moscow’s strategies in the Eastern Bloc. The book is made up of three parts focusing on three distinct periods of postwar Romania, an introduction dealing with the history of the Communist Party of Romania during the interwar and war period, and conclusions. As the author explains in the preface, the book was structured chronologically because he considered that the turning points in the inner politics of postwar Romania were the results of Cold War shifts and Eastern Bloc disturbances (Ionescu 1964, xvi). Thus, the first part analyses the stages of the Communist takeover in Romania from the instalment of the Groza government in March 1945 to the forced abdication of King Michael in December 1947. The second part deals with key aspects of the sovietisation of Romania, such as the creation of the one-party system, the internal Party purges, the collectivisation of agriculture and the launch of intense industrialisation. The third part of the book covers the period 1956–1962, giving special attention to the effects of de-Stalinisation and the Hungarian Revolution in Romania and to the collectivisation and industrialisation drive of the period 1958–1962 and its impact on Soviet-Romanian political relations.

Communism in Romania, 1944–1962 is not only a comprehensive monograph on a period marked by radical political and social transformations, but also offers original insights into the turning moment of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Ionescu analyses how Gheorghiu-Dej skilfully eluded the de-Stalinisation wave in the mid-1950s and consolidated his position in the Party. He rightly observes the origins of the Romanian split with Moscow in the economic disputes over the greater economic integration of the Eastern Bloc countries into COMECON and predicted in Nicolae Ceauşescu the future winner of the internal competition to succeed Gheorghiu-Dej at the Party’s head.

This thematic collection documents the work of the Commission for the Examination of Nationalist Phenomena in the Emigrant Foundation of Croatia (EFC) of Executive Council of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia (EC CC LCC), in the period from 1964 to 1967. The commission was established solely to monitor the activities of the EFC's president, Većeslav Holjevac, and some of his associates, who were considered as opposition figures and nationalists. The collection contains documents that explicitly cite examples of oppositional activities in the EFC which testify to the role of the EFC leadership in opposition in the field of culture pertaining to Croatian emigrant communities, as well as the role of CC LCC in their condemnation.

The Czechoslovak Writer Publishing House collection deposited in the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature (LA PNP) contains sources documenting the course of review processes, which often led to demands for changes to literary works. This was also the case for the experimental text entitled “Dancing lessons for the advanced in age” (1964) written by the well-known Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997). This text was finally shortened by the author following the reviewers’ requirements. “Dancing lessons for the advanced in age” consists of the only continuous and unfinished sentence representing the monologue of the seventy-year-old uncle Pepin who recalls his past. Other sources stored in the LA PNP documents include the prohibition of Hrabal's collection of short stories “Lark on a String”.

The last, 73rd, issue of bi-weekly newspaper (Literaturni novini" ("Literary News") was published on February 2, 1964, almost three years after its first issue came out on May 24, 1961. Then the newspaper was discontinued by the state because it was declared "harmful and anti-party". In 1961 the head of the Bulgarian communist party, Todor Zhivkov gave his personal permission for the launch of this new literary newspaper in order to show his positive attitude towards intellectuals and to demonstrate the democratization of the artistic sphere. Vassil Akyov was selected as editor-in-chief of the newspaper. He gathered in his team people expelled from the "Narodna mladezh" ("People's Youth"" newspaper for their "anti-party behavior", such as Stefan Prodev and Simeon Vladimirov; the brave satirists Krum Valkov and Radoy Ralin; the then unknown, yet promising writers Ivan Paunovski, Yordan Vassilev and others. Akyov himself had been dismissed as head of the cultural department of the Communist Party's daily newspaper “Rabotnichesko delo" ("Workers deed”).

The new newspaper broke old stereotypes and personality cult clichés both in its graphic design and writing. It presented new books with poetry, fiction and literary criticism; it featured literary works, which had not been allowed to be printed (for example, the newspaper for the first time after September 9, 1944 published poems by the hitherto silenced poet Atanas Dalchev); it developed modern views on publishing and opened a column for young and talented authors; it also opened doors to contemporary Western European literature.  

All this predetermined the fate of the newspaper: the newspaper was banned without a scandal through a "silent murder". With the argument "to avoid unnecessary duplication [...], to improve and expand the information ..." the state order to unite "Literaturni novini" with the loyal to the regime weekly "Narodna kultura" ("People's Culture)". Zhivkov personally announced the ban of the newspaper to its staff. According to preserved memories Prodev said: "Comrade Zhivkov, the biggest mistake is to stop a newspaper. Every stopped newspaper remains in the history of a country!" Stefan Prodev and Yordan Vassilev acquired the text of the decision of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party to stop the newspaper and put it on the first page of the last issue - „Message" in black letters in the style of newspaper obituaries.

Although the editor-in-chief and the newspaper's associates were not subjected to repression, the ban on the newspaper functioned as an intimidation of the intelligentsia, imposing narrow frames on acceptable journalistic behavior.

Following his organisation of the wreath-laying ceremony at the statue of Stephen the Great on 11 October 1964, Moroșanu was severely reprimanded and subsequently expelled from the Polytechnic Institute several days later. The expulsion process followed a carefully staged ritual which involved, among other things, a decision of the “student collective” presumably taken from below. This stage was necessary as a formal preliminary step to the official decision signed by the rector. It also served as a confirmation of the loyalty and political reliability of the student body, which acted in solidarity in order to eliminate any “foreign elements” from its midst. A similar strategy was followed in other cases related to accusations of nationalism against Moldavian intellectuals in this period. The decision of the students’ “general meeting” was issued on 14 October 1964. This document is revealing not only due to its contents, but also because of the euphemistic language it used to argue for Moroșanu’s expulsion. After a preliminary report of the secretary of the Institute’s Komsomol cell, the meeting took note of Moroșanu’s “unacceptable behaviour.” This consisted, among other things, in his unmotivated absences, lack of academic discipline and poor performance, displaying of a rude attitude toward the head of department and his colleagues and, most importantly, in his “pernicious assertions concerning different questions related to the economic and cultural development of the republic.” Moroșanu allegedly dismissed, “rudely, incorrectly and with open contempt,” the attempts of his colleagues to point out his mistaken views and behaviour. The euphemism of the document reached its height when Moroșanu was accused of “performing a series of a-political actions” [a veiled reference to the incident at Stephen the Great’s statue] and of “attempting to assemble around himself a group of students, setting this group against the student organisations of the Institute and thus trying to position himself as a spokesman on behalf of Moldavia’s youth.” Moroșanu was also accused of an unhealthy reaction to criticism, “trampling upon” the student newspaper which printed his caricature. Despite his temperamental issues, it is obvious that his political behaviour was the real issue which led to his expulsion. Although the meeting concluded by recommending Moroșanu’s expulsion on the ostensible grounds of his “behaviour, which was incompatible with the rank of a Soviet student” and his “hooligan-like attitude toward the department’s staffand fellow students,” the invocation of his “a-political deeds” shows the limit of tolerance beyond which the Soviet authorities were unwilling to go. The meeting formally requested Moroșanu’s expulsion from the institute, deeming him “unfit to become a Soviet engineer and organiser of production.” Two days later, on 16 October 1964, the rector of the Polytechnic Institute, S. I. Rădăuțanu, signed an order expelling Moroșanu. Significantly, this document reproduced the decision of the student meetingalmost word-for-word, thus underscoring the staged character of the whole affair. However, in the late 1960s, after serving his prison term, Moroșanu succeeded in being readmitted to the Polytechnic Institute after an audience with the Union minister of higher education. This was due to his persistence and to his skilful manipulation of Soviet legislation.