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.

The round-table discussion “In the Name of the People! – Trials against Homosexuals and Lesbians in Croatia, 1945-1977”, on the first cluster of sentences for homosexual behaviour found in the Croatian archives. Knowing that male same-sex sexual relations in Croatia were criminalized until 1977, the Domino Association began to search for sentences that would demonstrate the severity and scope of the persecution of homosexuality in socialist Croatia. In 2009, with the help of volunteers, and under professional guidance of a historian, research was conducted in the Croatian State Archives (HDA), in the Supreme Court of Croatia archival collection (HR-HDA 1596, VS NRH). During this first phase, a dozen sentences for “unnatural fornication” were found, mostly verdicts dating back to the initial post-war years. These sentences showed that by the mid-1950s in socialist Yugoslavia, homosexuality was branded as a “corruptor of youth” and a “decadent, rotten remnant of the old, overthrown bourgeois regime.” The authorities were convinced that the homosexuals came from the ranks of “decadent intellectuals,” the urban middle class and the clergy, all of whom were perceived as “corruptors of healthy working-class youth.” Especially important was the finding of the complete materials from the probably largest trial against homosexuals ever held in post-war Yugoslavia, when in February 1950, seven men were found guilty of “unnatural fornication.” Moreover, their full names were published in the press where they were called out as enemies – and even saboteurs – of socialism. All of this indicates that the entire proceeding had elements of a show trial, with a clear ideological message (Dota 2017, 167-177). The materials from the trial contained statements that were given by the accused themselves, and even complaints they wrote against the verdict. These documents bear witness to the forms of resistance some men engaged in against the anti-homosexual policies to which they were subjected. Some argue that homosexuality does not pose any kind social peril but is rather a natural predisposition that should not be punishable in a socialist country. Others cited progressive sexological and other scientific works in order to prove they were neither sick nor perverted. In January 2010, following the initial phase of research in the Croatian State Archives, a roundtable discussion was held under the title “In the Name of the People! –Trials Against Homosexuals and Lesbians in Croatia, 1945-1977.” This event presented the public with copies of retrieved sentences and summarized the preliminary results of the research project. The speakers were Gordan Bosanac, the director of Domino and research project coordinator, two historians working on the history of homosexuality in socialism, Dean Vuletic and Franko Dota, and Andrea Zlatar-Violić, a literary theorist and, later, Minister of Culture. Furthermore, an article on trials against homosexuals in socialist Croatia was published in the press (Dota 2010a). Subsequently, the research was expanded to the State Archives in Zagreb (DAZG), where 30 more sentences for “unnatural fornication” were found, mostly from the 1950s and the 1960s.

The compendium “Czech-Polish Literature in Samizdat and Underground: A Study, Interviews with Translators” accompanied the Polish Underground Library in Prague project, supported by the Czech-Polish Forum of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and was published by the Prague library Libri Prohibiti in 2010. This publication analyses Poland and Poles within the Czech samizdat in the 1970s and 1980s. It includes interviews with Czech and Polish translators, a study of Polish literature in the context of the Czech samizdat and of Czech literature in the context of the Polish underground. Moreover, the exhibition “Polish Underground Library in Prague in Libri Prohibiti’s Collections” took place from December 2009 to January 2010. The exhibition presented materials of the Polish Underground Library that are part of Libri prohibiti’s collections – mainly Polish underground and exile publications.

Gabriel (Dinu) Zamfirescu is one of the most representative figures of the Romanian exile community. Imprisoned for his anti-communist convictions at the end of the 1940s, he was continuously harassed until his emigration in 1975 by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, due to his “bourgeois” family background, political sympathies, and connections with former National Liberal Party. The interview with Dinu Zamfirescu included in The Oral History Collection at CNSAS has three parts. Each of these video recordings has a duration of almost 120 minutes and they were made on three different days of July 2010. Following the logic of a life-story interview, Dinu Zamfirescu draws a comprehensive image of his early life, his family, and its connections with the most important political figures of interwar Romania. Special attention is given to his anti-communist activities, which influenced his decision to join the ranks of the National Liberal Party and provided the Securitate with another reason to put him under informative surveillance after the establishment of the communist regime in Romania. Harassment by the secret police and finally imprisonment prevented him from completing his university education. After his release, his many requests for a passport to visit his relatives only intensified his surveillance by the Securitate. In 1975 he was finally granted an exit visa and he settled in Paris, one of the most important centres of the Romanian anti-communist exile community. In his interview, Dinu Zamfirescu remembers how he met well-known figures of the Romanian exile community in Paris, such as Monica Lovinescu, Virgil Ierunca, and Sanda Stolojan, and joined their collective effort of organising opposition to the communist regime at home. As a member of the Romanian exile community, he used every opportunity to raise the awareness of international public opinion about the Ceaușescu regime. As a result, Dinu Zamfirescu signed and sent memoranda to Western governments that continued to consider Nicolae Ceaușescu  a “good communist” in view of his anti-Soviet stance, ignoring his disastrous internal policies. He also participated in conferences and programmes broadcast by the Romanian department of Radio Free Europe and used his position as a BBC correspondent in Paris for fourteen years to denounce the abuses and the repeated violations of human rights by the communist regime in Romania. More importantly, Dinu Zamfirescu joined Operation Villages Roumains, a transnational network of support for the Romanian villages whose existence was endangered by Ceaușescu’s systematisation plans. As a result, between 1988 and 1989 he contacted mayors and local communities in France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland and asked them to “adopt” Romanian rural settlements as a means of preventing their destruction by the Ceaușescu regime.

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

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.

The collection of Milan Uhde documents the life of an important writer, later a signatory of the Charter 77, who at the time of normalisation could not officially publish, and after 1989 a parliamentary deputy and a minister of culture. The collection is composed of Milan Uhde's sequencing material, covering the period predominantly from the 1960s to the present.