When the National Legionary State was proclaimed in Romania in September 1940, Ion Raţiu chose to resign from the post he occupied at the Romanian Legation in London and asked for political asylum in the United Kingdom because he did not want to serve the new fascist regime in Bucharest. He became involved in the organisation of the Romanian exile and worked as a journalist specialising in topics related to Romania. In this position he acquired a good knowledge of postwar East European political affairs. Besides radio shows and newspaper articles, his expertise was also materialised in various academic works such as: Policy for the West (1957), Contemporary Romania: Her Place in World Affairs (1975), and Moscow Challenges the World (1986). Although published in 1986, the first draft of the book entitled Moscow Challenges the World was written in the period from 1946 to 1950, when due to health problems Raţiu spent long periods in a sanatorium in Switzerland. Raţiu launched his own business during the late 1950s, and thus for a time invested less effort in continuing his researches. He resumed these academic activities during the 1970s and the opportunity to publish the book in an updated form occurred during mid-1980s. At that moment the intensification of the Cold War during the Reagan administration aroused the interest of the public in contributions concerning the Soviet Union and its foreign policy. The book reflects the theoretical approach to communist regimes marked by the concept of totalitarianism that was dominant in Western academia during late 1940s and 1950s. In its four parts, Raţiu offers a critical overview of the intellectual sources and the main components of the Marxist-Leninist official ideology; he provides an explanation why the 1917 Revolution succeeded in Russia, analyses the strategies and techniques used by Moscow to “export” the revolution, and delivers a complex insight into how the economy works in communist societies and what the social effects of their economic system are. The most relevant contribution of Raţiu’s book to a better knowledge of the Soviet System consists in his analysis of the strategies developed by Moscow of manipulating communists and communist sympathisers abroad in order to reach its goals: “In communist thinking there is no division between domestic and foreign policy. The world is divided vertically into chunks. It is divided horizontally into two layers: the exploiters and the exploited. There is only one ‘nation,’ the proletariat, and one foe, the capitalists and their lackeys. Consequently, the true home of the ‘nation’ is the land where the foe is defeated” (Raţiu 1986, 106). Following this argument, Moscow presented the “defence” of the Soviet Union as “the first duty, therefore, of all communists, whether they live inside Russia or outside it” (Raţiu 1986, 166–168). According to Raţiu’s analysis, these Soviet strategies represented effective tools for influencing public debates in the West and expanding its system of satellite countries in the developing world.

Pope John Paul II sent a letter to Split Archbishop Franić on the 50^th anniversary of his ordination as a priest. It is clear that he was quite familiar with Franić's resistance to the atheistic regime and his defence of the Church's rights under the socialist dictatorship. The pope pointed this out in this letter when said that "you have certainly proven your faithfulness and loyalty to this Holy See." According to the pope, Franić's resistance to the communist regime was fruitful in the sense that the Church in Split in the 1980s recorded numerous clerical and religious vocations despite attempts at the de-Christianization of society.

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

The protest campaign against the construction of the Daugavpils hydroelectric station in 1986-1987 was the first issue during perestroika in Latvia to involve the wider public, especially the intelligentsia, and it was the first step on the path that led to the restoration of national independence. This was the first case during the Soviet occupation when the endeavours of the intelligentsia to defend the natural and historical riches of Latvia were successful. The collection consists of material gathered by the staff of the Museum of the River Daugava, and donated to the museum in 1987-1998 by several people who were involved in the 1986-1987 protest campaign, mostly among the protesters, but there is also material provided by their opponents too. 

In the case of the screenplay My Uncle’s Legacy, film director Krsto Papić was the main opponent of Ante Kesić and SUBNOR because he sought funding from the council of Jadran Film to make the film. Papić responded to the news that Ante Kesić had interpreted the screenplay for the film at the meeting of the SUBNOR presidency (Vjesnik, 28 November 1986), and asked for the opportunity to give his account of events in the newspaper Vjesnik because Kesić’s view was full of “lies, insinuations and deceptions.”He explained the writing of the screenplay, which he adapted from the novel by Ivan Aralica and named it My Uncle’s Legacy. Since Papić alone carried the project, he asked that all objections and criticisms be addressed to him. Moreover, he sharply criticised Kesić and his “ideologised” reading of the screenplay: “Ante Kesić either did not understand the text or he deceived not only the SUBNOR Presidency as a  person of ill will, but also the entire Yugoslav public by means of newspapers and other media with unbelievable fabrications, which he “read” from the screenplay My Uncle’s Legacy. He concluded that this case would end up in court.The press clipping is important because it contains arguments, which Krsto Papić as an exponent of the cultural opposition used against the objections of Ante Kesić. It illustrates the role of public media such as the newspaper company Vjesnik in providing space for such debates. Otherwise, the intervention in the screenplay of the feature film My Uncle’s Legacy was considered as the last attempt of this kind in Yugoslav cinematography before the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990.

The results of the so-called “rearrangement” operations in the centre of Bucharest was as follows: 5.86 km² of the historic centre of the city were demolished; 1.66 km² remained waste ground overgrown with weeds; approximately 20,000 properties were destroyed; over 60,000 families were forced to move; 19 streets were blocked or ceased to exist. The following Orthodox churches were demolished: Enei, Albă Postăvari, Old Spirea, Well of Healing, St. Nicholas Sârbi, Gherghiceni,  St. Nicholas Jitniță, Lady Oltea, St. Vineri Hereasca, Olteni, Old St. Spiridon Vechi, Holy Trinity Dudești, and Bradului (Bradu Staicu). The following monasteries were wholly or partially demolished: Cotroceni, Nuns’ Hermitage, Mihai Vodă, Văcărești, Antim, and St. Pantelimon. The following synagogues were demolished: Aizic Ilie, Rezith Doadh, and Malbim. Other historic buildings were also demolished: the Brâncoveanu Hospital, the great covered market in Unification Square, the Mina Minovici Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Yellow Inn, the Republic Stadium, and the Military Museum. Eight churches were translated from their original sites and hidden among apartment blocks: St. John Moși, Schitul Maicilor, Olari, St. Ilie Rahova, Mihai Vodă, St. John Piață, New St. George Capra, Stork’s Nest; so was the synodal building of the Antim Monastery. “The great merit for the translation, and thus saving from demolition, of these monuments is due to the engineer Eugen Iordăchescu of the Project Bucharest Institute,” says Andrei Pandele. This operation of saving cultural heritage that had been destined for destruction indeed called for professionalism on the part of those who conceived it, but also the courage to propose a compromise solution that would have a chance of being accepted by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was personally supervising the construction of the House of the People.

The image captured by Andrei Pandele illustrates the translation of the church of the Mihai Vodă Monastery, an emblem of pre-modern Bucharest, originally situated on the hill where the Palace of the Parliament – built during the Ceauşescu regime under the name of the House of the People – now stands. The monastery buildings, which surrounded the church and were completely demolished to make way for the House of the People, were the first location of the State Archives after the founding of the modern Romanian state in the nineteenth century. The monastery was founded in 1594 by Michael the Brave, an extremely important figure in the national past, as he is considered the first to have unified, for a short time in 1600–1601, the territories that now make up Romania. In spite of the fact that during the Ceauşescu regime Michael the Brave became even more important in national history than he had been before, the monastery fell prey to the so-called “urban systematisation” programme promoted by the regime. The monastery church was saved from demolition by the operation of translating it, which in this case was one of the most laborious actions of this kind as it required it not only to be slid along a distance of 289 metres, but also lowered by 6.2 metres. Andrei Pandele’s photograph shows the Mihai Vodă church still on the rails used for the translation, already at the foot of the hill, close to its present position, although it is now hidden behind apartment blocks taller than it, which were built after this image was immortalised.

The depiction by Péter Bokros shows the figure of Lenin, naked, with a Coca-Cola in his hand. The subtitle cited an altered version of the first sentence of the communist manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Instead of the original opening sentence of the manifest, the infamous lines “A spectre is haunting Europe,” he wrote “An experiment is haunting Europe.” The graphic was created for the exhibition of Inconnu entitled “A harcoló város/The Fighting City, 1986,” which was a commemoration of the 30^th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. This artefact, like the other items which were going to be put in display in the exhibition, was confiscated and destroyed by the political police. We know this from the photo documentation made by the secret security forces.

Glavlit documents were transferred to the Lithuanian Central State Archives in 1986. This was related to the decision to create a separate Glavlit fond in the archives (the first transfer of documents was a purely bureaucratic decision). After Glavlit was liquidated in 1990, its documents in the archive were complemented with new documents.

The third volume of Herta Müller’s informative surveillance file (dosar de urmărire informativă) contains reports on and transcriptions of the conversations that she had with various persons inside her house. On 25 July 1986, Müller welcomed a German citizen called “Marișca.” The discussion started with the host showing her guest several reviews of her book and other publications by other German writers living in Romania. Herta Müller spoke about the success of her Niederungen (Nadirs) in West Germany and used this episode to describe the persecutions she was subjected to by the Securitate. Müller remembered that as she had turned down the offer to became its informer, the Securitate started to harass her and she lost her job as a translator at an engineering factory in Timișoara. Moreover, she was periodically summoned to the secret police and accused of “social parasitism” and unapproved contacts with foreign citizens. Following a visit to the local Party secretary, Müller received a new job but due to her conflicts with the director of the school, who objected to her wearing trousers during classes, she was removed from her teaching position. Müller also recounted her experience of social and professional marginalisation as she got fired from other jobs because of the intervention of the Securitate, which subjected her to constant physical and psychological abuse.

The Jazz Section Collection, now deposited in the National Archive, contains a transcript of a letter sent to the office of the president of the republic by the wives of the imprisoned members of the board of the Jazz Section from 7 September 1986; the transcript was made by Ivan Medek on 9 September 1986 in Vienna. Ivan Medek, a signatory of Charter 77 and a member of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS), who went into exile in Austria and established a press agency in Vienna, collected information about independent civic initiatives and political trials in Czechoslovakia and the violation of civil and human rights by the communist regime. He sent these messages on to Western organisations interested in human rights’ abuses; they organised campaigns in support of political prisoners and helped exert pressure on leading politicians in countries with totalitarian and authoritarian regimes to release political prisoners and to observe the basic rights of the civilians of their state. It is unclear if the letter to the president had any immediate influence on the fate of the detainees, however, there were several similar campaigns in Western countries that resulted in the release of many of the detained members of the Jazz Section, and much lower sentences were issued than had been proposed.

The novel “The Invalid Siblings” (Invalidní sourozenci) (1974) is one of the most important works by the Czecho-Slovak poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher and “guru” of the Czechoslovak underground, Egon Bondy (real name Zbyněk Fišer, 1930–2007). A manuscript of this dystopian novel, which depicts life around the year 2600 on the last piece of land surrounded by rubbish, was obtained by the Museum of Czech Literature (PNP) in 1986 from the antique bookshop Kniha (Karlova street, Prague 1). At the time, this novel had only been published as a samizdat (1974) and in exile (1981), and had not been officially published in Czechoslovakia. A manuscript of Bondy’s philosophical work “Buddha” (officially published in 1968) was bought by PNP together with “The Invalid Siblings”.

Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, a satire on the Soviet New Man, was written in 1925 in the Soviet Union, and it was immediately confiscated and banned until as late as 1987. From the 1960s it was circulated in the country in Western editions, but in Hungary very few people had the chance to read the novel. It was not known even among people who had access to sources of clandestine literature under the Kádár regime.

The situation changed a little when the Slovak journal Svetová Literatúra published the novel in Slovak translation in 1978. The Hungarian writer György Spiró thus could read the novel - strangely enough, upon the recommendation of the notorious hard liner cultural journalist, columnist of the party daily, and editor of the journal Szovjet Irodalom [Soviet Literature], Pál E. Fehér. Spiró started to work at the Csiky Gergely Theatre in Kaposvár as a dramaturge in late 1981 (officially from early 1982), and he encouraged the director to adapt it for stage. By then, the professor of Russian Zsuzsa Hetényi had already prepared the translation based on the 1969 Paris edition of the book, which Spiró had lent to her. The initiative nevertheless failed, and the Hungarian translation was put on file in the archive of the Institute of Theatre in Budapest. There was a second attempt to stage it in 1986, but the authorities intervened. The Hungarian translation, however, was published in the same year by one of the smaller samizdat publishers, Katalizátor Iroda.

The publication of the book caused some tensions within dissident circles. The book was brought to Katalizátor Iroda by Ádám Modor, who had until that point been involved in the printing of the samizat journal Beszélő since 1983. The editors of the journal had a rule: no other publication was allowed to be printed on the stencil machine of Beszélő located in the suburban workshop of painter Kitty Márczi. Modor, however, decided to print Heart of a Dog anyway that was noticed by the editors. In March 1986, the editorial team parted company with Modor, who brought the book to Katalizátor Iroda and published it under their brand.