The photo archive of the periodical Beszélő was transferred to the Collection of Political Transition. It contains tens of thousands of photos from the first year of the publishing of Beszélő as a samizdat newspaper (1981), but there is also substantial material from the period when it was published legally after the political transition.
The photo archive of
Beszélő as well as the documents concerning the liberal party SzDSz were stored originally in seven places. When in the Spring of 2010 the documents of SzDSz were officially given to the founder of the collection with a donation agreement, the size of the collection raised storing problems. József Marelyin Kiss asked the leaders of SzDSz for a secure room to store the documents; therefore, the former office of the party on Dob Street became a temporary place of storage. At the same time, from the 24
th of November 2008, negotiations with István Rév, the director of the Open Society Archives (OSA), went on concerning the moving of the entire Collection of Political Transition to the headquarters on Arany János Street. In the end, the documentation concerning the party leader and the leader of the parliamentary group of SzDSz, amounting to 176 archive boxes, was taken to OSA for storing In the end, howver, this plan failed, and all the material which was taken to OSA, including the documents of the editors of
Beszélő, was further delivered to the party depository on Dob Street. When SzDSz was dissolved in 2014 and the proprietary rights of the depot on Dob Street reverted to the council of District VII of Budapest, the collection including the rest of the correspondence and photos of
Beszélő, the remaining copies of the magazine, some 2,500 volumes published by Beszélő Publisher, as well as some of the (formerly culled) administrative documentation, was transported to the depository of the National University of Public Administration (NKE) and the photo archive is currently accommodated at the Hungaria Campus.
The founder recollects the circumstances of how the documents were transported again and again, as follows: “We had to take them, otherwise it would have gone to the dustbin. The furniture belonging to SzDSz,
Beszélő, and JELAL were transported on lorries to the depositories of charitable organizations and were given to them. Crates of beer were offered to the movers. We took everything that had some value for research (documents, photos, books, periodicals). Everything was put under a roof and by now has been registered.”