Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Press Room
Posted: 02/December/2020
“Labor Research from Planned Economy to Savage Capitalism” is the title of a workshop conference organized by Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group together with Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives.
The conference is in Hungarian.
Date: December 3–4, 2020
Hungarian sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s conducted an immense amount of interview research concerning workers and broader topics of the world of labor, which would be close to impossible today. These researches, by the 2000s, became the standard professional sources of social history. Archives hold several collections that were and could become relevant sources of research. Based on these collections, this conference explores a significant tradition of Hungarian sociology; the research on labor and workers’ everyday circumstances, which began in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as its interpretations in social history and the history of sociology. The conference is inspired by the new collections acquired by the Voices of the 20th Century and the Centre for Social Sciences Research Documentation Centre.
Posted: 02/December/2020
To mark the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, when prosecutors used film as evidence for the first time in international criminal prosecutions, having set an evidentiary cornerstone in the foundation of justice, the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights launched the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations.
Posted: 01/December/2020
In November, 2020, Blinken OSA received the personal papers of Ádám Modor (1958–2009), publisher, the head of Katalizátor Office, further enriching the Archives’ collections presenting the activity of the Hungarian democratic opposition.
Ádám Modor worked primarily as samizdat editor and distributor, briefly contributed to Beszélő as a printer, and assisted the Áramlat Publisher as an editor.
Posted: 27/November/2020
Blinken OSA—the Archives and gallery at Central Europen University—participates in the CEU Virtual Open House. This is the first-ever virtual CEU Open house, taking place on November 27, 2020.
Anyone can join the program online! Live stream sessions on degree programs, students sharing their CEU experiences, departments showcasing their teaching programs, Q&As and roundtable discussions, and much more.
Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives - Schedule
Posted: 26/November/2020
Blinken OSA colleagues participated at the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Virtual Convention, 2020.
Oksana Sarkisova, Research Fellow at Blinken OSA, was the convener of the panel session “Socialism and the Human Face: The Present of the Past through the Prism of Private Photographic Archives” which included presentations by Maria Gourieva, Friedrich Tjetjen, Monica Ruthers, and Oksana Sarkisova and comments by Gil Pasternak and Galina Orlova. The panel explored multiple approaches to private photo collections as rich primary sources that can help reconstruct various facets of the recent past.
Posted: 23/November/2020
Verzió awarded six creators of outstanding documentary films at the annual awards ceremony on 20 November. This year, over 20,000 viewers attended the festival virtually, which exceeds both the number of previous Verzió festival attendees and the expectations of the organizers.
Thanks to the online nature of the festival, the films this year have been accessible to more people than ever before. Virtual visitors have come not only from throughout Hungary, but from around the world, especially the United States, Romania, the United Kingdom and Austria.
The Award Recipients of the 17th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival are the following. Heartfelt congratulations to the filmmakers! You can read the full jury statements here.
Posted: 21/November/2020
The 17th VERZIÓ Human Rights Documentary Film Festival showcases 50 films from 39 different countries, online, 10–22 November. These films bring us closer to topics such as climate change and its consequences, freedom of the press today, political abuse of national resources, and the ongoing struggles of refugees.
Documentary filmmakers capture the transformation and challenges of humanity. By highlighting and celebrating these films, VERZIÓ aims to bring viewers closer to each other’s reality, to provide reliable information, and to raise awareness about common joys and sorrows around the world, and in doing so, to contribute to a more supportive society. This year, to achieve these goals, the festival, founded by the Blinken OSA Archives, presents films in the following sections: International Competition, Student and Debut Film Competition, Hungarian Competition, Anthropocene, In the Name of Justice, and Archive of the Planet.
Join the live events through Verzió's website or Facebook page. During the live discussions ask the guests in the chatbox or record your questions to the filmmakers and share them through the Vialog app, that you can find on the individual films’ pages and the front page as well.
Tickets and passes
Posted: 17/November/2020
Blinken OSA colleagues participated at the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Virtual Convention, 2020.
The convention hosted over 500 roundtables and panels, a film series, receptions, entertainment breaks, and affiliate group business meetings. With over 2,500 session participants and attendees, the 2020 Virtual Convention was a dynamic and productive event.
Yulia Karpova, Assistant Archivist at Blinken OSA, planned to present her new research findings on furniture design for the Research Institute for Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Leningrad in 1938. However, she writes, “because my research trip to St. Petersburg in the spring was canceled, I could not carry out a case study. Instead, I presented a new research project entitled ‘The Aesthetics of Biopolitics: Design for Reproductive Healthcare in Denmark and Russia, 1920s–90s’.”
A Junior Research Fellow at Blinken OSA, Ioana Macrea-Toma participated in the panel Cold War Archives: Sources, Silences, Interpretations, and Ethics, with the presentation ‘Cold War Archives: Ethics and Poststructuralism.’
Posted: 09/November/2020
The timetable of the Opening Night
The Opening Night will be broadcast live on our website and on our Facebook page.
7:00 pm Opening speech by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova, Festival Director
7:10 pm Opening performance by FreeSZFE
The Opening film 76 Days, a Chinese documentary shot in a Wuhan hospital during the first months of the coronavirus outbreak (Viewer discretion is advised.) will be available from 7:00 pm November 10 at festival.verzio.org.
Go to the site and register with a free user account.
To watch 76 Days for free, go to the film’s page, click on the “Kölcsönzés” (Rental) option, and enter the promo code: 76NAPVERZIO
Once the first 200 viewers have “rented” the film, another 400 tickets will be made available at the price of 900 HUF.
More information about tickets and passes can be found here.
9:30 pm Q&A with Hao Wu, director
During our online discussions, you will have the chance to ask your own questions in real-time but you can also prerecord questions and messages to filmmakers on the films' page
Posted: 04/November/2020
We are happy and proud to announce that Samizdat Archives section of our archival catalog has been replenished with 6 more archival series descriptions in the past few months. We have introduced archival descriptions that are available in English and Russian for the newly processed unique archival series that shed light on the convoluted period of Perestroika and transition to post-Soviet reality in Russia and other newly independent states. The Samizdat Archives series newly published in our catalog introduce the public to the informal and regional press, letters addressed to the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty by its audience from across the (former) Soviet Union, and multiple diverse documents that witnessed the transition era from political and social viewpoints. The new content can be a very useful help for researchers, journalists, and educators interested in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the aspects of regime change in the entire East European region.
Posted: 29/October/2020
We are happy and proud to announce that our thematic website, 1989: lesz-e? (Will There Be A 1989?) has been seriously upgraded in the past few months. We have uploaded the meticulously rearranged and humungous Hungarian Press Survey from Radio Free Europe, which contains more than 15.000 pages of Hungarian press clippings from the year 1989.
Hypers:
The website: https://1989.osaarchivum.org/
New Content: https://1989.osaarchivum.org/szer-sf
Posted: 27/October/2020
We are happy to announce the second call for the Visegrad Scholarships at OSA in the fall of 2020/21!
Submission deadline: November 15, 2020
We invite applicants from the fields of history, the arts, philosophy, and sociology to reflect on the conditions of knowledge production during and after the Cold War. Scholars and artists are invited to analyze the documentary practices of different agencies and persons on both sides of the Iron Curtain and assess the truth value of related documents/ artifacts.
Visegrad Scholarship at OSA
For a better and deeper understanding of the interdependent recent history of (the center of) Europe, the International Visegrad Fund offers 15 research fellowship grants annually in the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest on a competitive basis to support scholars who wish to conduct research in the holdings of OSA, and whose current research projects are relevant to the holdings and the given research priorities of the Fund and OSA.
For detailed information of the call, please check the official OSA Visegrad Scholarship website.
Posted: 26/October/2020
Closer to Each Other’s Reality
The 17th VERZIÓ Documentary Film Festival announces this year’s films
The 17th VERZIÓ Human Rights Documentary Film Festival showcases 50 films from 39 different countries, online, 10–22 November. These films bring us closer to topics such as climate change and its consequences, freedom of the press today, political abuse of national resources, and the ongoing struggles of refugees.
Posted: 21/October/2020
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, Fabián Salvioli has recently presented his report to the Human Rights Council on “Memorialization processes in the context of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law as the fifth pillar of transitional justice”. The report contains several recommendations on the role and importance of archives in post-conflict memory work that Blinken OSA has continually promoted through its human rights archiving and archival activism.
The report establishes that since “memorialization is linked to the ability to obtain access to the archives”, the safeguarding and unrestricted availability of records related to gross human rights abuses is a matter of paramount importance in enabling societies to learn the truth about, regain ownership of and engage with their past(s). It further formulates the following recommendation:
“113. In order for memorialization processes to be effective, it is essential to protect the archives of State agencies and civil society organizations, especially those that work in the area of human rights. Archives should be accessible in accordance with established standards, and Governments should remove obstacles to such access.”
Posted: 19/October/2020
Sándor Révész – István Dobi – The Forgotten Head of State
Online book launch
András Mink, the historian talks with the author.
Who was István Dobi? It is not easy to decide who this seemingly familiar head of state really was, who at the end sank into obscurity. Perhaps ‘the youngest son of the poor man’, who struggled with poverty and nominally won half of the kingdom but could not even be a real king on his throne. Perhaps the politician, who understood Hungarian land and peasants the most, who by representing cooperatives though, has worsened the situation of those living from the land. Perhaps the puppet of Rákosi and Kádár, who struggled with alcoholism, and who clearly saw many signs of the system’s inability to function, yet his role consisted of handling the negligible cases eagerly. Perhaps one of our most popular head of state, since before ‘Uncle Árpi’, he was ‘Uncle Pista’ for the rural peasantry, and was even called ‘My Beloved Leader’ at times.
Behind the scenes of his life – his ascension and his quiet downfall –are all the peculiarities, compulsories, and compromises of the system. All such contradictions, the understanding of which brings the reader closer to the understanding of the history of Hungary.
Sándor Révész is a Pulitzer Memorial Prize-winning journalist and historian. Editor of Beszélő, then Népszabadság, currently a colleague of HVG, and the columnist of Mozgó Világ. Thousands of his articles and studies have been published in various Hungarian newspapers, as well as in newspapers in Esperanto.
Posted: 19/October/2020
From Harvest to Harvest – Hungarian Calvary, 1918–1919
Blinken OSA, Galeria Centralis
October 15, 2020 – January 10, 2021
Hungarian Calvary – Hungarian Resurrection is the title Oszkár Jászi, the Hungarian civic radical politician chose for his book on the history of the Aster Revolution and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Jászi spent most of his life after 1919 as a political emigré; his book was published in Vienna in 1920. He concluded that for Hungarians, the Bolshevik attempt—which had “run amok,” as he put it—had for years to come discredited all democratic, liberal political ideas, movements, and any hope of a freer and more just society in Hungary.
Curated by András Mink
Co-curator: Mihály Dobrovits
Design by Virág Bogyó
Posted: 16/October/2020
This Saturday, Blinken OSA starts its accredited education program for teachers in its original format for the last time. A new course is being prepared, we will report about it soon.
Titled “Scopes and Constraints in 20th-Century Hungarian History,” the 30-hour long, free-of-charge, accredited teacher education program for history teachers will start on this Saturday. The two lecturers of the course are historians András Mink and Krisztián Ungváry, the course will run between October 17, 2020 and February 20, 2021.
Posted: 12/October/2020
From Harvest to Harvest – Hungarian Calvary 1918–1919
Blinken OSA – Galeria Centralis
October 15, 2020 – January 10, 2021
Online Opening Event
October 15, 2020, 6:00 p.m.
https://www.osaarchivum.org/
opening remarks by
MINK András
curator of the exhibition
opening remarks by
CSUNDERLIK Péter, historian
The event closes with two rarely seen/heard contemporary pieces.
Posted: 11/October/2020
Besides institutional donations, private people turn to the library of Blinken OSA with offers of book donations. This time Elissa Helms and Michael Szporluk donated important books and periodicals enriching the Yugoslav collection of the Archives.
Sociological studies of interethnic relations, publications from the Serbian antiwar movement, Bosnian-language magazines, or the history of Bosnia will be an excellent additional source for social historians of the former Yugoslavia.
Posted: 09/October/2020
Blinken OSA offers postgraduate academic courses and specializations to the students of its mother institution, the Central European University (CEU). The courses are organized in cooperation with the departments of Legal Studies and History, and also for CEU's annual Summer University (SUN). Recently, a new cooperation was formed with the Media Design program at the Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design (MOME). The first such course was held in 2019. For the second time, students from MOME will come to Blinken OSA in the Fall Term of the 2020/21 Academic Year, to participate in a course specifically designed for them.
The title of the course is MA Project Development, and instructors include Miklós Erhardt, Krisztina Erdei, János Szirtes, lecturers from MOME, and Kálmán Tarr and Zsuzsa Zádori from Blinken OSA.
Posted: 07/October/2020
Two presentations at the 1st PoSoCoMes Conference
At the 1st PoSoCoMes – Memory Studies Association Working Group conference Post-Socialist Memory in Global Perspective: Postcolonialism, Post-transition, Post-trauma (21 September – 1 October 2020) - organized online due to the COVID-19 pandemic - two colleagues from Blinken OSA gave presentations: Oksana Sarkisova and Anastasia Felcher.
Posted: 02/October/2020
Internship Program | Rival Communist Parties
Call for Interns | Part-time Intern Position at the Blinken OSA!
The largest collection of the Blinken OSA consists of nearly 3,000 meters of research materials accumulated by the Research Institute of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. This collection provides a unique insight into the social and political history of the Cold War era. One of the most important duties of the Archives is to make these documents available to researchers while providing an opportunity for young professionals to gain practice in archival work. The Rival Communist Parties Internship Program aims to make available an archival series that cover the history of communist parties in countries outside the Socialist Bloc. These documents have been compiled by Kevin Devlin, an internationally known and acknowledged expert at RFE, during his decades of work of research. In the program, the trainees' task is to process this collection.
Posted: 01/October/2020
The 17th Verzió Moves Online
This year, the complete VERZIÓ Film Festival is moving online! By doing so, Hungary’s only human rights documentary film festival will be available nationwide, 10–22 November. Fifty of the most enthralling and hottest international and Hungarian human rights documentary films will be available directly in your home, starting with the opening film, 76 Days, which provides an account of the early days of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan, China. The films are going to be available for almost two weeks.
Posted: 30/September/2020
New Visegrad Grantees begin their research at Blinken OSA
We are happy to announce that four new grantees of the Visegrad Scholarship at Blinken OSA, Zsuzsi Flohr, Ádám Farkas, Lucia Szemetová, and Péter Csunderlik have begun their research on-site, in the Research Room of Blinken OSA this September.
Posted: 27/September/2020
September 28 is the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that not only information has to be accessible (with favorable conditions to institutional transparency, journalistic work, and information requests), but it is the responsibility of governments, to proactively contribute to guaranteeing accessibility, by sharing information. “
Posted: 21/September/2020
Blinken OSA published a richly illustrated video guide to introduce its facilities to visitors who plan to do research in the Archives. The guide covers the building and the Research Room, and offers a journey through the website, including the online catalog and integrated search, the Digital Repository and Curated Collections, as well as the Audiovisual Collections and the Library.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUsdM_RyLVw
Text: Robert Parnica
Sound: Liz Hardiman
Visuals: József Gábor Bóné
Posted: 20/September/2020
The exhibition POST-SOVIET – The Photos of Lenke Szilágyi 1990–2002 at Galeria Centralis closed on September 20. However, we are happy to announce that those who did not have a chance to come and visit the gallery space can access the online version of the exhibition.
As a result of the pandemic situation, long before the show opened at Blinken OSA, our dedicated colleagues had prepared an online version of the exhibition for the 2020 Night of the Museums. Thanks to the online format, you can freely (re)visit Lenke Szilágyi’s journey and read her witty and genuine diary excerpts.
About the exhibition:
POST-SOVIET – Photos by Lenke Szilágyi 1990–2002
https://post-soviet.osaarchivum.org/
Posted: 17/September/2020
Since the launch of Budapest 100, a successful Budapest based urban festival, the Goldberger House, where Blinken OSA operates, has opened its gates to visitors. This year too, Blinken OSA participates in the program. The Goldberger House and the festival are strongly linked: the idea of Budapest 100, i.e. to celebrate 100-year-old buildings in Budapest, came up when the Goldberger House was 100 years old.
The first Budapest 100 festival in 2011 was organized by the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre and Blinken OSA Archives with smashing success. Since then this fantastic urban and civil festival has grown and has helped genuine urban communities to take shape. This year the festival celebrates its 10th anniversary and the Goldberger House will open its gates to visitors again.
Posted: 31/August/2020
Visegrad Scholarship at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
We invite applicants from the fields of history, the arts, philosophy, and sociology to reflect on the conditions of knowledge production during and after the Cold War. This reflection exposes the intellectual and professional practices (journalistic, sociological, artistic, political, archival) that both reflected and shaped the meaning and scope of the Cold War phenomenon.
We are happy to announce that the evaluation of the last submitted Visegrad applications has finished and the final list of winners and reserves has been approved by the Council of Ambassadors in December.
Visegrad Scholarship @ OSA – July 2020
Posted: 12/August/2020
We are happy to announce that the 2019 Annual Report of Blinken OSA is now available on our website. Similarly to the practice of previous years, the online publication is illustrated with photos and data, presenting a wide variety of activities performed at the Archives.