COURAGE

connecting collections

In 1969, Reverend Canon Dr. Michael Bourdeaux, along with political scientist Peter Reddaway, diplomat and writer Sir John Lawrence and Soviet historian Leonard Schapiro, set up the Center for the Study of Religion and Communism, later known as Keston College and Keston Institute. It soon grew into a widely known British human rights organization and a resource center, unique in a way, as its field of expertise focused on church-state relations and persecutions of religious believers behind the Iron Curtain. From its foundation, the creation and development of an archive of documentation was a primary aim for Keston. Today, the Keston Archive and Library remains a unique collection of primary-source material on religious life and religious persecutions in socialist countries, containing, among other things, the world’s most extensive collection of religious samizdat. The Keston collection fills an important gap between state historical records and official church histories, giving voices to ordinary believers in their everyday struggle to freely express their faith.

The Kiáltó Szó – Balázs Sándor Private Collection in Cluj-Napoca contains the second Transylvanian Hungarian samizdat magazine issued under Ceaușescu’s regime and offers insight into the democratic resistance and the human rights struggle of the time. At the same time the samizdat is an example of the pre-1989 Hungarian–Romanian rapprochement, in which the idea of shared destiny secured a common ground for minorities and the majority alike.