COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

The Collection of Jindřich Chalupecký at the Museum of Czech Literature testifies to the life of this important literary and art critic who was “banned” during the communist regime and it represents a valuable source documenting the entanglements between non-official Czechoslovak art and leading world artists and theoreticians. 

Jiří Lederer (1922-1983) was a Czech journalist and publicist, one of the most prominent journalists during the "Prague Spring" in 1968. In the 1970s he participated in the work of the Czechoslovak opposition and was one of the first signatories of Charter 77. During the 1970s he was imprisoned several times. In 1980 he went into exile. The collection mainly contains materials and notes from the period around the Prague Spring.

The collection of the significant Czech journalist, dissident, signatory to Charter 77 and politician, Jiří Ruml, contains both published and as yet unpublished texts from 1967 to 1989, correspondence, Czech and foreign samizdat and exile publications. There are also writings by his friends, many of whom were also important signatories of Charter 77.

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.