The Hungarian Soros Foundation (HSF), founded in May 1984, was George Soros's first pilote enterprise in the one-time Communist bloc, years before he would open his similar Beijing, Moscow and Warsaw offices in the late 1980s, or establish his foundation network in the early 1990s throughout Central and Eastern Europe. During its 23 years of public operation the HSF spent more than 150 million dollars by providing grants, stipends and other efficient means of support for artists, writers, scholars, students, ran several new cultural as well as educational, social and health projects, and remain the main supporter of NGOs and civil society in Hungary. By breaking many taboos before and after 1990 with its challinging new policies especially on the cultural field, the HSF was strongly opposed by both the Communist and nationalist protagonists of state-controlled culture, meanwhile its grantees and supporters saw its main mission in keeping up the spirit and values of an ongoing cultural resistance.
In 1984, the Soros Foundation in New York (funded by investment banker George Soros) and the Hungarian Academy of Science signed a contract to fund the Hungarian Soros Foundation. Following the concept of Karl Popper on "open society" since then, the Foundation has played an important role in the support of various cultural, social, and scientific activities in the transitional period in order to help the process of democratization. In 1993 Soros Foundation transformed to Open Society Foundation expanding its activites not only to Hungary, but to other Eastern European countries and the countries of the former Soviet Union.
OSF is still operating in many countries around the globe, focusing on human rights (rights of women, ethnic, racial, and religious minorities), drug users; sex workers; and LGBTQ communities, etc.
In the past years OSF is under heavy attacks in several countries (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Macedonia, USA) due to the assumed political role of OSF in the disentigration of given countries and Soros activities as a financial speculator.