COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

The Victor Frunză Collection is an important historical source for understanding and writing the history of that part of the Romanian exile community which was actively involved in supporting dissidents in the country and in publicising in the West the repressive or aberrant policies of the Ceaușescu regime. In particular, the collection illustrates the activity of the collector and other personalities of the exile community for respecting human rights in Romania. Also, the documents of this collection reflect the involvement of Romanians from abroad in the reconstruction of democracy in their country of origin.

This ad-hoc collection was separated from the fonds of judicial files concerning persons subject to political repression during the communist regime, which is currently stored in the Archive of the Intelligence and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova (formerly the KGB Archive). It focuses on the case of Viktor Koval, an engineer of Russian ethnic background who expressed ”anti-Soviet” political opinions during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he was working at an electrical equipment factory in the city of Bălți. In August 1982, Koval was found guilty of  “spreading calumnies and lies aimed at discrediting the Soviet state and social order.” However, instead of being sentenced to prison, he was sent to a special psychiatric facility of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), where he spent almost eight years before being released in May 1990. Koval’s case is a revealing example of the use of punitive psychiatry in order to suppress voices critical of the Soviet regime. His file is also significant in the context of the early 1980s, usually viewed as a period featuring few open manifestations of oppositional activity.

Vytautas Skuodis (1929-2016) was a Lithuanian scientist, Soviet dissident and former political prisoner. From 1979, he was a member of the dissident organisation the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. In 1978, he initiated and edited the journal Perspektyvos (Perspectives), the most recognised underground publication among the Lithuanian intelligentsia.
The Vytautas Skuodis collection holds various manuscripts of Skuodis’ monograhs, a PhD dissertation, articles, lectures, letters, reviews of diploma works by students, notes, memoirs and diaries. These documents are relevant to the topic of cultural opposition, because they reveal personally the involvement of Skuodis and other people in anti-Soviet activities.

The Václav Havel Collection at the Museum of Czech Literature contains letters of the dramatist, poet and president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel (1936–2011) to his wife Olga, written from prison between 1979 and 1983. Havel’s unique prison correspondence documents the life of this significant artist and philosopher, as well as the life of his wife before 1989.