Press Room

As a result of the Slavic Archival Collection internship program at the Blinken OSA (started in December 2021), metadata was significantly enhanced for several archival series in the subfonds HU OSA 300-80 Soviet Red Archives (SRA) and HU OSA 300-85 Samizdat Archives (SA). Both SRA and SA were separate units within Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and operated between 1953/1956 and 1994.

Providing insight into the post-dissolution period of the Dialogue Peace Group, a unique actor in the 1980s political scene of Hungary, the photo series digitized and processed by Blinken OSA capture the street happening titled Funeral of the Known Soldier.

Blinken OSA’s Chief Archivist and Head of Human Rights Program Csaba Szilágyi gave a talk at the Divided Societies XXIII: Myths and Media course for international MA and Ph.D. students at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik (May 9-15, 2022).

As a result of the Rival Communist Parties internship program first advertised in 2020, the archival series HU OSA 300-5-90 Records of Kevin Devlin and the Communist Area Analysis Department on Non-Ruling Communist Parties has been processed, with its detailed description and finding aids now available in the online catalog.

Overseas B.A., M.A and Ph.D. students in history, international relations, government, sociology, public policy, area, and regional studies awarded the Cold War Archives Research (CWAR) Institute Fellowships by the Wilson Center conduct on-site research at the archives and present their research and findings at the Cold War-themed conference at Corvinus University, Budapest.

The Blinken OSA Archives - a Unit of the Central European University - has been participating in the Night of Museums since 2009, but this will be the first time that visitors will be invited not to the Archives themselves but to the CEU Nádor Street complex. The focus of this year's program is on the exiled university and its fascinating and troubled fate in Budapest. Programs: The programs start on June 25, 2002. at 4:00 p.m. Venue: 1051 Budapest Nádor u. 15.   Guided tours: CEU Campus Tour every hour from 4 pm to 9 pm; English language guided tours on demand! Film screening: A longer version of the film "Free University" will be screened in the CEU Auditorium with English and Hungarian subtitles; the film is 55 minutes long. The first screening starts at 4 p.m. and the film will be shown every hour until 9 p.m. The tours start at the Nádor u. 15 building, which opened in 2016. Chamber exhibition about the history of the building complex and the University.

The next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA lecture series at 3.30 pm on Friday, June 10, 2022, in CEU Room 302 at 13 Nádor u. Budapest The link to the Zoom meeting is: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/91664418322?pwd=bkxkVzh5SVE0REpLdE40Q080RkM4UT09 The Hidden Lives of Data: Social Research During the Cold War by Alexander Langstaff, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, New York University and Between East and West. The entangled reception of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn in the Cold War 1970s by José Luis Aguilar López-Barajas, Postdoctoral researcher, Masaryk University      

In the Arany János Street building of Blinken OSA, an organizational unit of CEU, reconstruction works are taking place. During the reconstruction, the Archives’s staff and researchers will continue working in various offices in the Nádor Street campus buildings and in a designated area of the CEU Library. Working in common spaces will further enrich the professional and personal connections between colleagues working and studying in the Archives and the university. Those working on the CEU Budapest campus now will have the opportunity to get an insight into the activities of Blinken OSA’s researchers. Those colleagues who would like to do research in the collections of the Archives, can do this on the third floor of the Library. For further information, please visit the webpage of Blinken OSA.

Research Room temporarily relocated from May 16, 2022. Due to construction works in the building of Blinken OSA, all staff and the Research Room will relocate to CEU's main campus as of May 16. The Reading Room will operate within CEU's beautiful new library, while archival materials will be transferred regularly from the stacks of Blinken OSA. We will do everything we can to continue to offer the usual quality services under the changed circumstances. The following apply until September 30, 2022:

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Blinken OSA has been determined to help and find new ways to host scholars threatened by the war. Also, as archives, we preserve sources documenting the development of the events. Besides its own initiatives, the Archives also joined CEU’s Invisible University for Ukraine.

Important notice regarding the opening hours of the Fearless Exhibition The exhibition will be closed  on april 27th , from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and on april 29th from 4:00 p.m.

The next presentation of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA lecture series is Managing Young Adulthood Under State Socialism by Orel Beilinson, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University on April 20, 2022, at 1:30 p.m.

We are happy to announce that a longtime colleague Csaba Szilágyi—who was Acting Chief Archivist for some formative years—has been appointed as Chief Archivist at Blinken OSA. The Chief Archivist is responsible for the professional archival program, along with this new responsibility Csaba is the Head of the Human Rights Program. Csaba Szilágyi started working at Blinken OSA soon after its establishment in 1996.

“Visegrad Scholarship at OSA” presentations at 2.00 pm on Monday, March 21, 2022 Székelykapu, Turul Madár and Kopjafa: Reinvention of Turanism at the beginning of 1990s in Hungary by Tatyana Szafonova AND Across the Nylon Curtain: Transnational Cultural Exchanges between Italy and USSR. The role of Italian Cultural Actors in the diffusion of samizdat and tamizdat by Ilaria Sicari entitled