Raţiu–Tilea Archives of the Romanian Exile Collection at BCU Cluj–Napoca

The collection comprising the documents collected by Ion Raţiu and Viorel V. Tilea gives detailed insights into the activities of its two creators, who were key political and cultural personalities of the Romanian diaspora. It represents one of the most valuable sources of documentation for the history of the Romanian exile community in the West during the Cold War period.

Location:
- Cluj-Napoca Strada Clinicilor 2, Romania 400000
Topics:
- democratic opposition
- emigration/exile
Date of founding:
- 1939
Featured items:
- Raţiu, Ion. Memoirs: 1944–1954, N.D., in English. Manuscript
- Raţiu, Ion. The Drafts of the 1977 Memorandum, in English and Romanian, 1977. File

Raţiu–Tilea Personal Library Collection at BCU Cluj–Napoca

The Raţiu–Tilea Personal Library Collection reflects the academic interests of two Romanian intellectuals living in exile, both involved in the political organisations of the Romanian Diaspora in the West and authoring relevant works on twentieth century Romania. The collection brings together a large number of publications dealing with postwar Eastern Europe, including the most appreciated academic contributions on the history of Romanian communism published in the West.

Location:
- Cluj-Napoca Strada Clinicilor 2, Romania 400000
Topics:
- democratic opposition
- emigration/exile
Date of founding:
- 1939
Featured items:

Records of the Union of Free Hungarian Students – Julius Várallyay’s collection, 1957-1967

The Union of Free Hungarian Students, UFHS (also referred to using the Hungarian acronym, MEFESZ), was a worldwide association of Hungarian refugee students who had fled to the West after the revolution in Hungary had been brutally suppressed by Soviet tanks in late 1956. For a decade after the revolution, the UFHS represented some 8,000 Hungarian students in sixteen countries on three continents. It held yearly congresses, self-organized study and cultural programs, international press campaigns, protest demonstrations, and solidarity actions in order to ensure that the democratic and patriotic spirit of the revolution survived. In the Fall of 1956, Julius Várallyay, a second-year student at the Technical University in Budapest, was one of the most active and devoted leaders of the émigré student movement. He was elected president of UFHS in 1959. Sixty years after the defeat of the revolution, he donated his collection of UFHS records, until then had been stored in his Washington home, to the 1956 Research Institute, Budapest.

Religious sociological collection of István Kamarás

This interview collection provides fascinating insights into the barely known everyday culture of grassroots Catholic communities under late socialism. Sociologist István Kamarás’ research collection represents an alternative lifestyle which never suited the official communist ideology.

Location:
- Budapest Arany János utca 32, Hungary 1051
Topics:
- religious activism
- youth culture
Date of founding:
- 2013
Featured items:
- Kamarás, István. 'Catholic youth meeting in Nagymaros', 1988. Archival documents

Reports of the state security about the ’Közgáz-klub’

The reports that agents compiled about the Közgáz-klub were saved at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, or ÁBTL). Through these documents, we can gain an insight into the critical and free-spirited debates that took place among students and these sources also show us what the state security thought to be a dangerous phenomenon in the 1980s. The task of the agents was to observe the students whom were regarded to be opposition figures, finding the main actors and preventing the association of young people from different universities.

Location:
- Budapest Eötvös utca 7, Hungary 1067
Topics:
- student movement
Date of founding:
- 1973
Featured items:
- Agent Lantos. Experiences, Facts, Tendencies, 1983. Manuscript