COURAGE

connecting collections

In 2013 the cooperation between the Chancellery of Senate of Poland and Chancellery of the President was formally established with signing the Agreement on the realisation of "Archives of Transition 1989-1991 Project". This cooperation includes:

• publishing on-line digital versions of the documents, visual and audio-visual materials, as well as the photographs of objects from the period of Polish transformation;
• granting access to the materials on the modern Polish history for the wider public and the researchers; 
• saving the heritage of the first years of transition.

Both Chancelleries declared full support and cooperation in realising the project and its dissemination, i.e. organisation of conferences and seminars devoted to the first years of Polish post-socialist state.

In 2013, the research materials of sociologist István Kamarás (which are based on qualitative techniques) were donated as a deposit to the Voices of the Twentieth Century Archive and Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Science’s Sociological Research Institute, which is processing the documents. Physically, the collection is held in the Open Society Archives.

The exhibition “Roads to 1989. East-Central Europe 1939-1989” is an international initiative to commemorate the 25 year jubilee since the fall of the Berlin Wall, organized by the European Network for Remembrance and Solidarity. The exhibition tours around the capitals and major cities of East-European countries. The initiative combines various topics on the essence of the totalitarian regime in the second half of the 20th century, focusing on some of the main reasons for the system’s collapse. The exhibition focuses on the various ways in which different types of freedom were curtailed in the former communist bloc and on the attempts made to regain them. So far the display has been presented in Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, Bucharest, Krakow and Prague.  

The environmental protests in Ruse, as well as the Goryani movement in the 1950s, are Bulgaria’s contribution to the topic. The ecological protests are presented with photographs from the collection.

The scientific conference “Dispersed Archives of the Solidarity Trade Union” was the first meeting to comprehensively discuss the state and the variety of documents and other archive resources dedicated to "Solidarity"’s activities in Poland and among Polish émigrés.

During the conference archivists and librarians of the "Solidarity" Trade Union from foundations commemorating the opposition in Polish People's Republic, from State Archives, and from Institute of National Remembrance’s Archives presented information regarding the "Solidarity"-related resources collected by these institutions. The sessions of the conference were facilitated by, i.a. Dr Andrzej Biernat (Deputy General Director of State Archives), Dr hab. Mirosław Golon (Director of Institute of National Remembrance Gdańsk Branch Office) and Mr Stanisław Flis (Archives of the National Commission of the "Solidarity" Trade Union). The event gathered archivists and historians from outside of Gdańsk and the region, as well as representatives of Senate Archives, National Library, State Archives from Warsaw, Elbląg, Słupsk, Koszalin, and Scientific Libraries.

The speakers presented information on different collections managed by by the Archives of National Commission of the "Solidarity" Trade Union. Thus the Archives joined the mainstream of archives dedicated to Solidarity’s legacy and presented itself as a fully professional body boasting substantial and structured resources. The discussion during the meeting also focused on the need to elaborate a printed guide and an internet portal dedicated to the contents of the collection related to the "Solidarity" Trade Union. At the time the Conference took place, "Solidarity"’s activities became not only a subject of political science’s analyses but more importantly, a subject of scientific research for historians or sociologists of social movements. The conference, apart from serving as a platform for discussion on the available Solidarity-related materials, also presented a variety of angles and contexts for studying the phenomenon of democratic opposition in socialist times.