The temporary collection "Forms of Resistance" is dedicated to the artistic opposition against the communist regime in Bulgaria from 1944 to 1985. The exhibition highlights different forms of repression against particular artists at particular moments during the period of state socialism. It also shows the active role of some painters, as well as their forms of resistance against the dogmas of Socialist Realism and against ideological guidance. The upper time limit is the beginning of the perestroika in the Soviet Union, which marks the beginning of the final disintegration of the system of state socialism, also with regard to the political control of arts.

Digitalisation was initiated by two different parties. Ante Lešaja and Nikola Mokrović decided to digitise the collection as part of the activities of the Human Rights Archive operated by the Documenta Center for Dealing with the Past.  At the same time, unrelated to the initiative by Lešaja and Mokrović, Tomislav Medak began to digitise all Praxis editions independently. Medak's activity was a part of the project of digitisation of works in Marxology conducted since 2012. He was scanning books at the Cultural Centre MAMA (Multimedia Institute) in Zagreb as a result of a series of left-wing initiatives after the student blockade of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. After two years of coordinated and enthusiastic work by Nikola Mokrović and Tomislav Medak on digitisation, the digital archive of the collection is now available for the public at the Public Library website (www.memoryoftheworld.org)..The Archival Collection of Praxis and the Korčula Summer School in digital format includes all editions of the journal Praxis, the journal Pogledi, the documentation of the Korcula Summer School, books about Praxis and the Korčula Summer School, writings by members of the editorial staff, periodicals, press articles, photos and movie clips. The physical examples used for digitalisation came primarily from the collection gathered by Ante Lešaja.

Since 2014, the Foreign Croatica Collection has organised a series of public debates on the topic of the Foreign Croatica Collection. Željka Lovrenčić was behind this idea, with the initiative coming from the former director of the Library, Dunja Seiter Šverko. These cultural and educational forums host and promote famous Croatians living and working abroad. Debates are moderated by Željka Lovrenčić who is also the creator and organiser. The discussions are held on the first floor of the Library where the Foreign Croatica Collection is located.

Video interview with Embiya Çavuş, an artist working with ceramics, painter and Bulgarian dissident. Now he lives in Izmir.

Embiya Çavuş was born in 1926 in the village Todor Ikonomovо (former name Mahmuzlii, Turkish Mahmuzlu), Shumen district in Bulgaria. He and five of his friends established the secret “Organisation of Defending Turkish Existence and Personality”. Accused of creating a secret Turkish organization and espionage in favor of Turkey, Çavuş was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent sixteen years, from 1947 to 1961, in different prisons and in the forced labor camp in Belene (1949–1956). However, in 1961 he was conditionally released. In 1964, after an amnesty law was passed, Çavuş was granted amnesty. In 1965 Çavuş began to work as a porcelain expert in a porcelain factory in the small town of Novi Pazar, Bulgaria. As a porcelain artist, he visited Poland in 1974 and the USSR in the years of 1976, 1977. In 1978, in the framework of an emigration agreement between Bulgaria and Turkey, Embiya Çavuş moved to Turkey and settled in Izmir.

Embiya Çavuş has double citizenship, Bulgarian and Turkish.

The book "The Performance Lesson: Game Method of Inclusion in Literature" was published shortly before Sevdalina Panayotova's death on 27 September 2014. Sevdalina Panayotova was the founder of the "Spectacular Lesson" method for teaching literature through theater.The book contains a description of the "lesson-spectacle" method developed by Sevdalina Panayotova, and six scripts for dramas adapted from Bulgarian and classic word literature. Sevdalina Panayotova's reading of the literary works is unconventional: she enriched the scenes with descriptions of the time period, she used forbidden literature (works of symbolists, for example), and she directed attention to forgotten or forbidden stories about authors such as the proletarian poets Hristo Smirnenski and Nikola Vaptsarov. Through her works, she taught critical thinking, and civic responsibility.She began writing theatrical scenes in 1960s and they developed over the years. Each class performed The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; About the Letters, based on texts of medieval Bulgarian literature; Vaptsarov - Eternal and Contemporary and The Mansard of Dreams from verses by symbolists, and other works. Her productions enjoyed great success among her students. The performances of these scenes were innovative, highly artistic, acknowledged by lecturers at the Krastyo Sarafov Higher Institute for Theater Arts (now known as the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts) and directors, and commissions which reviewed amateur theater. Nevertheless, her works also drew the suspicion of the state authorities.

The Rock Museum was established in 2014 as a grassroots initiative by former musicians, experts, and collectors. The museum is the first collection in Hungary that presents documents and items of importance to the Hungarian rock and popular music scene (with an international and primarily regional focus) from the late 1950s to the present. Generally, the phenomenon of rock music under state socialism is considered a form of cultural resistance.

Andrej Aplenc’s testimony of captivity on the island of Goli was held in front of a young audience in Ljubljana on August 27, 2014. Aplenc was detained twice on Goli. The first time, he went to Goli otok in 1949 for a year, and the second time was in 1952 for two years. The reason for his first imprisonment was his criticism of the lack of freedom of speech in Yugoslavia, as he advocated greater freedom of expression for young people. The second time he was imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with the state security service, which tried to recruit him as an informer.

The event was organized by the Study Centre for National Reconciliation and is listed in their Archive of Testimonies as one of the testimonies about the post-war rigidity of the communist system that also impacted young people, resulting in disillusionment with this system and Aplenc's emigration. The testimony is publicly available by prior arrangement but has not yet been used.

A bust of the revolutionary hero and rebellious poet Ion Monoran was unveiled on 16 December 2014, exactly twenty-five years from the start of the Revolution of December 1989 in Timişoara. A quarter of a century earlier, Ion Monoran had cried: “Down with communism!” close to the home of Pastor László Tőkés, where a crowd had gathered to prevent the pastor’s forced removal from Timişoara. The same day, Ion Monoran took the initiative of stopping the first trams in Timişoara’s Maria Sqare, a moment that would later be considered particularly significant for the catalysing of popular discontent and implicitly for the later course of the events of December 1989 in Timişoara and later in Bucharest.

The bust, the work of the sculptor Aurel Gheorghe Ardeleanu, is situated near the Flora restaurant, very close to Maria Square and to the place where, on 16 December 1989, Ion Monoran stopped the trams. Ana Monoran, the poet’s widow, said in the documentation interview that she highly appreciated  Aurel Gheorghe Ardeleanu’s sculpture, and that it is a place where she often goes to recover her peace of mind. The cost of the work was 13,000 lei (approximately 2,700 euro), and was supported entirely by the local authorities of the city of Timişoara. The material in which it is cast is bronze.

In addition to this bronze bust, there is also a street in Timişoara that bears the name of Ion Monoran, and the reading room of the Revolution Memorial in Timişoara also bears his name. There is a commemorative plaque on the facade of the house where Ion Monoran lived, and he is, post-mortem, an Honoured Citizen of the city of Timişoara.

The private collection contains materials documenting the celebration of the Grand Jubilee, when 100,000 pilgrims gathered in Solin in Dalmatia on 12 September 1976. The Grand Jubilee celebrated the thirteen centuries of the first contacts of the Croats with the Holy See and 1,000 years of the construction of the first known Croatian Marian shrine. By commemorating the Croatian Catholic medieval rulers and statehood, the Church articulated a collective identity rooted in the past and tradition. As such, it was inherently opposed to the socialist imagery offered by the Yugoslav state. Some Communist Party members saw in the massive mobilisation of believers the “escalation of nationalism” as a follow-up to the Croatian Spring.

The exhibition “Samizdat the Creative Power of Resistance” was prepared by the library Libri Prohibiti in cooperation with the National Library of the Czech Republic in the spring of 2014. The exhibition held in the Klementinum Gallery in Prague presented samizdat as a social phenomenon within the context of the 1970s and 1980s. Among the exhibits, the most important editions and authors of Czech samizdat literature could be found. Visitors could also learn about various ways of the production and reproduction of samizdat, and about the persecution of samizdat publishers and distributors.

As government violence increased against pro-Europe activists involved in the Maidan protests of 2013-2014, demonstrators began building barricades for defense. The Ukrainian Museum-Archives has in its permanent collection a park bench from Kyiv, which was used as part of EuroMaidan barricade. Harlan Crow, an eccentric real estate developer from Texas, purchased the bench in 2015 through channels that remain unknown and brought the item back to Dallas. Crow has particular interest in pro-democracy movements worldwide and has a vast personal collection of toppled statues of authoritarian figures and other memorabilia from former communist countries.  He is also a staunch Republican and supports campaigns like those of Senator Rob Portman, who is big supporter of the UMA. Portman suggested that Crow donate the bench to the Ukrainian Museum-Archives, an institution that collects and preserves artifacts that are important for Ukrainian history. Portman is co-chair of the Senate caucus on Ukraine and feels that it is important to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and democratic development. Therefore, he and members of his staff are frequent visitors to the UMA and have also traveled to Ukraine to observe firsthand what is happening there.

This piece in the UMA’s collection demonstrates that its mission also aims to engage the present historical moment, which involves grappling with Ukraine’s difficult past and complex relationship to communism. The Euromaidan caused a fissure in Ukraine, further polarizing conversations about history, memory and the crimes of communism. Moreover, this featured item also further underscores the importance of the Ukrainian community’s relationship to Ohio’s Congressional leadership, who through crucial interventions and ongoing engagement continue to support the UMA’s mission to preserve and disseminate Ukraine’s archival heritage.