From 1964 until the end of the 1970s, Hedwig Ulrike Ruşdea, a museologist at the Museum of Folk Technics, conducted multiple pieces of field research on the technology of windmills and on their history and role within rural communities in the region of Dobrogea. In this file, she compiled specification sheets for the researched windmills, notes on the history of artefacts, interviews with former owners, who had been labelled as kulaks (chiaburi in Romanian) by the communist regime because of their owning a windmill, observations on the economic and social role of windmills, analyses of their numeric evolution, photographs of windmills rescued from the villages of Enisala, Dunavăţ, Frecăţei, and Mahmudia in Dobrogea, and reports on the acquisition of these windmills. The information included in this file persuaded the leadership of the Museum to rescue and reassemble the four mills at its open-air exhibition located on the outskirts of Sibiu. The various data gathered in the file are also a valuable historical source on the history of the region's cultural heritage and on the impact on this heritage of the economic and social modernisation policies implemented by the communist regime.

This collection consists primarily of the items confiscated by the Securitate on 1 April 1977, on the occasion of the house search and arrest of the driving force behind an emerging movement in defence of human rights in Romania, Paul Goma, a writer censored in Romania but successful abroad. A particular feature of this collection is that the confiscated items were not destroyed, but were preserved by the Securitate and finally transferred to CNSAS in 2002, from where they were returned to Goma in 2005. Thus, the collection is one of the few which travelled after 1989 from Romania into exile and is now to be found in Paris, where Goma was forced to emigrate a few months after his arrest and the confiscation of the collection.

Charter 77 was an informal Czechoslovak citizens' initiative that criticised state power for the non-recognition of basic civil and human rights, following the movements of the CSSR and their signing of the Final Act at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe on 1^st August 1975 in Helsinki.

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.”

A Securitate report contains information about a bunch of leaflets which were found somewhere near the Timpuri Noi (Modern Times) factory in Bucharest. The Securitate report says that the manifestos were found on 10 May 1977, in fact four days after Goma’s release. However, the date it is not randomly chosen because this was Romania’s National Day before communist rule, which was significant because it symbolised the Royal Family of Romania, which was forced into exile by the communist authorities. The Securitate officers noted that the pieces of paper were found by some workers in a small perimeter, between two factories situated quite close to the city centre. The report states very clearly that manifestos like these were not found in other neighbourhoods or out of the city. The little hand-made manifestos contained the following text: “To the Romanian state: We ask for the release of Paul Goma and those who are under arrest. We ask for respect of Human Rights! Respect the Constitution of Romania in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act. We want freedom!” Two of these leaflets have been preserved in the original in the CNSAS Archives. These leaflets illustrate that the impact of the Goma movement on Romanian society was more significant than the statistics compiled by the Securitate indicate (ACNSAS, Informative Fonds, File I 2217/10, f. 337-338).

The informal group of the Six Artists consisted of Raša Todosijević, Era Milivojević, Marina Abramović, Zoran Popović, Neša Paripović and Gergelj Urkom. The work of these artists began with the establishment of the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade in 1971. It lasted to 1973, when each of them started working independently. Their artistic activity was above all a resistance to the existing practice that was being taught in the framework of school programs at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. They advocated the establishment of a modern approach to the reconstruction and functioning of artistic institutions, as well as to redefining the effects of art. The accent started to be set on the artist as a subject and to his authorial speech, "speech in the first place". The artists began to introduce new media into art (installation, bodybuilding, photography, film, text ...).

The Goma Movement Ad-hoc Collection includes numerous plans of action against the individuals involved in supporting the open letter of protest against the violation of human rights in Romania which was to be addressed to the CSCE Follow-Up Conference in Belgrade. Each Securitate informative surveillance file contains periodically updated plans of action, but these usually required only the approval of the high-ranking Securitate officer in charge of the case of the person in question. What is remarkable about this plan of action, which is part of Goma’s personal file, is its endorsement by the highest possible office holders in the Ministry of the Interior, to which the Direction of State Security was directly subordinated in 1977: the plan was countersigned by Nicolae Pleșiță, first deputy minister, and finally approved by Teodor Coman, the minister of the interior himself. Obviously, the hierarchical level of those who endorsed this plan indicates the great importance attached to this case. It is worth noting that the “successful” handling of the Goma Movement, in which Pleșiță involved himself and acted as Goma’s head interrogator, led to his promotion to the rank of lieutenant general in 1977. The same year, he coordinated the repressive measures taken by the regime in the aftermath of the Jiu Valley miners’ strike of August. Pleșiță remains notorious, however, for his actions while head of the Centre for Foreign Intelligence between 1980 and 1984, in particular for the 1982 failed attempt at suppressing Goma while in exile in Paris, and for the 1981 bomb attack on the RFE headquarters in Munich, for which the Securitate seems to have hired the infamous terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. After 1989, Pleșiță showed no remorse for his misdeeds, and all attempts to hold him legally responsible for these wrongdoings eventually failed.     

At the InterContinental Hotel in Prague on 1 March 1977, Czech philosopher and dissident Jan Patočka met with Max van der Stoel, the Dutch foreign minister, who was at the time on an official visit to Czechoslovakia. The meeting was initiated by the Dutch journalist Dick Verkijk at a time when the Charter 77 signatories were persecuted and silenced by the police. This was the first official meeting of a Charter 77 spokesman with a foreign political representative who recognized Czechoslovak dissent.

Patočka explained in German to the minister and, through a recording, to the international public, that the aim of the Charter 77 was not to fight against the regime, but to demand the observance of the valid constitution and other laws. A day later, President Gustáv Husák called off official talks with the Dutch minister. Jan Patočka was ill at the time and after this meeting he was subjected to days of interrogationby the State Security. Eventually, on 13 March 1977, he died.

This unique sound recording documenting the meeting between Patočka and van der Stoel was made by Dick Verkijk, who initiated and attended the meeting. The recording is stored in the Jan Patočka Archives, which has also decided to make it public and uploaded it to YouTube.

Dick Verkijk played this sound recording during a ceremonial meeting organised on 1 March 2017, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of this event, in InterContinental Hotel in Prague. Several high representatives of the Czech Republic took part at the ceremony, including the Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lubomír Zaorálek. The ceremony was also attended by, among others, the Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans and by the director of the Jan Patočka Archives Ivan Chvatík. Frans Timmermans stated at the ceremony that the activity of the Charter 77 Czech dissident movement had a significant influence on the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War in Europe.

This chart epitomises the typical and efficient method which the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, used against those who attempted to establish networks of dissent in Romania. It seems to have been drafted for the Securitate officers who prepared the operative decision-making process regarding an emerging human rights movement in Romania, inspired by Charter 77. The driving force behind this movement was the writer Paul Goma, who initiated the movement in February 1977 by drafting a collective letter of protest against the violation of human rights in Romanian, which he and more than 200 other individuals eventually endorsed and addressed to the CSCE (Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Follow-Up Meeting in Belgrade. It was the first time that the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, had faced such an enormous challenge, and thus it had to react quickly in order to curtail the spread of the movement. In order to counteract this movement, the secret police had to collect in two months complex information about all those involved. 

This chart and its annexes epitomise the collection of these complex data in the short time span between 9 February, when the collective letter was first broadcast by Radio Free Europe, and 1 April 1977, the day when the secret police arrested Paul Goma. The first thing one notices about this chart is its resemblance to the drawings made by high school teachers to facilitate a better understanding of a topic. The chart actually highlights Goma’s connections with the internal and external supporters of this movement which at that time constituted a collective action of unprecedented magnitude in communist Romania and implicitly a novel challenge for the Securitate. The chart only contains a schematic representation of Paul Goma’s relations with other persons (schema legăturilor lui Paul Goma). The central field, which features Paul Goma, is connected left and right with two columns of differently coloured fields. The left-hand column seems to represent a typology of individuals whom Goma had contacted in order to send documents relating to the activity of the emerging movement across the border to a Western country. They are divided into four categories: diplomats, foreign journalists, “reactionary elements from the emigration” and “autochthonous elements.” The right-hand column seems to categorise all those who had contacted Goma with the purpose of endorsing the movement. At the time when this chart was drawn, the Securitate had been able to scrutinise only 288 persons out of 430; the number of those identified to date is added in pencil. About these persons, there are three types of information offered: the actions taken (against them), their method of contacting Goma, and their political background (antecedente politice). The complex data collected about all these, which is included in annexes to this chart, included age, ethnicity, profession, education, place of residence and political background, meaning information about previous anti-regime activities.

The chart is an unusual type of document in the archives of the Securitate. Its unique character is directly related to the novelty of the challenge which the Securitate had to confront with Paul Goma’s attempt to establish a Romanian Charter 77. The novelty was twofold: it consisted both in the network established and the ideas expressed by this movement. Such a rapid solidarisation of individuals around a common purpose did not occur in communist Romania either before or after the Goma movement. At the same time, the defence of human rights was a totally alien idea and ideal in the political traditions of Eastern Europe in general, and of Romania in particular, even considering the period before the communist takeover. Thus, this emerging movement which implied the defence of a political idea (and not a material benefit) must have been really puzzling for the Securitate officers, who did their best to grasp the situation and understand the “real” motivations of the individuals protesting for the observance of such an “abstract” issue as human rights. This coloured chart and its annexes testify to the methods used by the Securitate in order to disaggregate a collective action for a common interest, the observance of human rights, into a multitude of individual actions, driven by personal interests and thus easier to break apart. In Goma’s words, “this is the use of statistics in the house of terror” (Goma 2005, 412).

The Goma Movement was a genuine moment of strong mobilisation against the communist regime, but it is canonised in the Romanian national narrative as a one-man collective protest. The overlapping is inevitable, since few of the other proponents were public personalities, while Paul Goma was indeed the driving force behind the short-lived movement. For instance, Goma’s open letters, such as the one he sent personally to the Czech writer Pavel Kohout, a signatory of Charter 77, to express his solidarity or the one he addressed to the secretary general of the Romanian Communist Party, Nicolae Ceaușescu, to ask him to join the movement for human rights in Czechoslovakia, are usually considered the main documents of the Romanian Charter, although they were not collectively endorsed. However, their content is certainly spectacular due to Goma’s talent as a writer, and thus more interesting to quote. Particularly interesting is the open letter to Ceauşescu in which the author makes a comparison between the defiant attitude of the secretary general of the Party in 1968, when he seemed to support the Prague Spring, to the silence of 1977 around Charter 77. In this letter, Goma invites Ceaușescu to follow his initiative of publicly expressing solidarity with the Czechs and Slovaks who have signed Charter 77. Through a much-quoted phrase, Goma drew the attention of his addressee to the simple fact that “in Romania, [only] two people are not afraid of the Securitate, your excellency and myself.” Thus, Ceaușescu, just like himself, was practically free to write to the Charter signatories, Goma’s argument continued. If he does this, all Romanians will be able to overcome their inherent fear of the Securitate and follow his and Goma’s example. As far as Ceaușescu is concerned, Goma underlines, the letter will illustrate “consistency with the declarations of 1968” and the secretary general’s genuine desire to “fight for socialism, democracy and humanity.” At the same time, “Romania will be able to participate in the [Helsinki Follow-Up] Conference in Belgrade with dignity.”  The text of this letter is both amusing and mocking; it is illustrative of Goma’s literary talent and it is quoted by most analysts due to the unusual style for an official (though open) letter to Ceaușescu. The letter was preserved by Goma in copy and was confiscated by the secret police in 1977, in the moment of his arrest. It was returned to Paul Goma in 2005. Thus, the letter is now part of Paul Goma Private Collection in Paris, but copies can be found in the CNSAS Archives in Bucharest (ACNSAS, Informative Fonds, File I 2217/7) and the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest (OSA/RFE Archives, Romanian Fond, 300/60/5/Box 6, File Dissidents: Paul Goma).

In the film, the actor roams the city and uses the opportunity to overcome various obstacles that lie before him (walls, fences...). He walks aimlessly. Speed walking, the artist passes though various surroundings. In motion, he marks his own individual path of movement through the city. He jumps across obstacles, representing a symbolic act of defiance and appropriation of the micro-space, of the free subject. This work is a statement on the intertwining of art and an everyday action – walking. In his works, Neša Paripović creates an intimate atmosphere. He did not perform in public. Movement, like the actor's roaming, represents deviation from a stable place in society. The actor conquers the public space precisely through his own private space of action. Rhythmicality is immanent in the work as the rhythmic film shots match the motion of the artist.

The collection illustrates Alojzij Šuštar's theological and pastoral work as a priest and archbishop who led the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Ljubljana despite the restrictions on freedom imposed by institutions under the communist government’s control. The Collection includes books, original manuscripts, Šuštar’s published articles and his correspondence and polemics, which demonstrate his critical stance toward Slovenia’s communist regime in the late years of the regime and in the period of transition to democracy.

The volume made up of the records of local presbytery meetings in the period from 1977 to 1983 reflects the difficulties faced by the parish of the Honterus Evangelical community in the restoration of the Black Church. Using the 1977 earthquake as a pretext, Ceaușescu dissolved the Directorate for Historic Monuments (Direcţia Monumentelor Istorice) because it had previously been opposed to demolishing the Enei Church in Bucharest, a historic monument from the eighteenth century (Panaitescu 2012, 224). After the dissolution of this institution, which had been responsible for financing and coordinating the restoration of historic monuments, the restoration of the Black Church was interrupted. Because of the complex restoration works which had been started, the church could no longer be used by the community. The record of the presbytery meeting of 27 January 1979 reflects the discussions of this management forum after it was informed by the High Consistory of the Evangelical Church of Romania that the restoration funds granted by the state had been stopped. At this meeting the presbytery members discussed the strategy that the community should adopt. It was decided to draft reports addressed to the authorities underlining the importance of the Black Church, one of the largest Gothic buildings in South–East Europe. Also, the architect Schuller proposed to send the authorities documentation including photographs of the construction scaffolding around the Black Church in order to emphasise the danger for the city’s population of stopping the works (Black Church Archives and Library, Presbyterium Protokolle 24 /1977–1983, 7).After state funding was stopped, the curator Otmar Richter initially requested the financial support of the High Consistory, the management forum of the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession of Romania. Because the church lacked the financial resources to continue the restoration project from internal sources, it resorted to private donations and obtained the support of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (Federal Republic of Germany). Richter visited the board of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland in the autumn of 1981 and obtained the financial backing to continue the restoration works. The fact that the regime tolerated this initiative can be explained by the importance of economic relations between Romania and the Federal Republic of Germany, but also by the foreign debt crisis which meant the authorities wanted the foreign currency donated by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland to be spent in Romania and to enter the national budget. In addition to the records of the meetings of the Honterus parish presbytery, this file also includes historical and technical documents drafted by historians and architects concerning the structure of the building and its evolution in time. These documents were used in making decisions about the technical solutions to implement in the restoration process in the period 1981–2000. The documents of the volume describe one of the key moments in the Black Church restoration process, when the radical change of the Ceaușescu regime’s policy concerning historic heritage endangered the local initiative started in the 1930s, whose purpose was to save one of the most important monuments of the historic heritage of the city and of the community. The fact that the Black Church restoration was successfully resumed illustrates the existence of the grey zone of tolerance which local communities could use to promote their own interests, even when these conflicted with the official communist policies.

The Mihnea Berindei Collection comprises a significant part of the founder’s personal archive. These materials were accumulated in exile during the period 1977–1989, when Berindei was actively involved in assisting Romanian dissidents persecuted by the Ceauşescu regime. He was also an important intermediary between the fledgling Romanian opposition movement and the Western press, public opinion, and political establishment, playing a crucial role in publicising and enhancing the visibility of the Romanian case in the West. The major part of Mihnea Berindei’s personal archive is currently stored at the Iași Branch of the Romanian National Archives (Serviciul Județean Iași al Arhivelor Naționale). These papers were donated to the archives in 2013 and 2016. They include a variety of materials relating to communist Romania, the policies of the Ceauşescu regime and various manifestations of Romanian dissent (including cases of specific dissidents). The collection features a rich selection of documents relating to the activity of Radio Free Europe (RFE) during the 1980s, when Berindei was closely associated with the station’s Romanian-language service. The collection also contains a series of materials dealing with Eastern European developments in the 1990s. This is one of the most important private archives concerning communist Romania created in exile. As such, it will be of utmost significance to interested researchers and the wider public.

The Theatre Association „Gardzienice” – the Centre for Theatre Practices was founded as a theatre and a performance group by Włodzimierz Staniewski in a small village Gardzienice near Lublin (Poland) in 1977. Since then, it has become one of the best known examples of experimental theatre, linking musicality, music, performance and close relationship between the artists and the audience. The Theatre, apart from producing new performances, is also very active in the field of artistic education – in 1997 it started the Academy of Theatre Practices, where students from different humanistic fields can develop their animation and performance skills.

Miodrag Mica Popovic (1923-1996) was a painter, art critic, writer and academician. Popovic's lifestyle itself can be described as in cultural opposition to the regime and government that imposed its own ideological forms. Until the end of his life, he clearly demonstrated his incompatibility with the system, which let him stay faithful to the ideal of free thinking and expression. The images from the series the ‘Scenes Painting’ [Slikarstvo prizora] stem from the period between 1968 to 1971. Through that series the artist critized the social and political circumstances in socialist Yugoslavia.