COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The collection of completed investigative files at the National Archives of Estonia is an extensive set of investigative files about people who were persecuted during the Soviet period. A significant part of the collection is made up of files about persecuted cultural figures. The files in this collection are complete, which means that the interest of the authorities towards a person (or persons) had ended, due to death, rehabilitation or other reasons, and the cases were closed. 

The Confiscated Manuscripts Collection at CNSAS was not assembled by the creators of content or by collectors who valued the works they preserved, but by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate. It includes items confiscated from their rightful owners. More precisely, the collection contains unpublished manuscripts of literary works, diaries, memoirs, correspondence, forbidden books and publications, and open letters of protest, which the Securitate confiscated from 105 persons, survivors of the Stalinist persecution, human rights activists, priests and religious thinkers, non-conformist writers, or generally complying individuals who nonetheless attracted the attention of the secret police. These items are archived in 330 volumes, which include 50,000 pages.

This collection contains lectures and papers prepared and organized by the Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU), a prominent organization in exile which brought together scientists and artists originally from Czechoslovakia. It contains unique manuscripts and publications from 1957 to 1977, including the series entitled “The Czechoslovak State Idea 1938-1948”. The authors of these papers were important representatives from the Czech and Slovak community in exile –  former politicians and diplomats from before the Communist coup of 1948.

The Eastern Archive, initiated in 1987, is a collection of testimonies gathered from former Polish citizens, repressed by the Soviet Union after the 1939, imprisoned, resettled, etc. Their remembrance was excluded from the official view of the past during the communist era. At the end of the Polish Peoples’ Republic it became possible to make it more public.