Leipzig ist nicht nur die Stadt der Montagsdemonstrationen, die sich im Herbst 1989 schnell auf die gesamte DDR ausweiteten und das Regime kollabieren liessen. In der Stadt waren auch die Jahre zuvor zahlreiche Jugend-, Friedens-, Umwelt- und Menschenrechtsgruppen aktiv. Mit seiner Dokumentensammlung besitzt das Leipziger Archiv Bürgerbewegung die größte Sammlung zu ihrer und der Geschichte der Montagsdemonstrationen.
For two years, starting in March 1987, Határ/idő/napló: Erdélyi Figyelő(Deadline Diaries: Transylvanian Monitor), was the only independent, Hungarian periodical founded solely to report on the hardships of misery-stricken Romania during the last years of Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. Nine issues of the small samizdat paper, edited in Budapest, were initially published and distributed as 150 photocopied editions, and later as 2,000 printed copies. The copies were distributed in Hungary, among Hungarian émigrés in the West, and also in Romania through activist channels in the grassroots movement ETE (Erdélyt Támogatók Egylete – Association for Aiding Transylvanians), registered in early 1990 as Transylvania Caritas (Transcar).
Doina Cornea was a leading dissident in communist Romania, who started by criticising the educational and cultural policies of Ceaușescu’s regime and issuing some modest samizdat materials, and ended up as the driving force behind several collective actions against the arbitrary actions of Ceaușescu’s regime and the trigger of the most significant transnational network in defence of the Romanian villages menaced with destruction by the regime. Accordingly, the Doina Cornea Ad-Hoc Collection at CNSAS constitutes one of the largest collections of documents referring to one single individual and includes not only records created by the secret police while trying to counter her actions, but also materials confiscated as evidence of those actions.
The Doina Cornea Private Collection is an invaluable historical source for those researching the biography and especially the dissident activities of the person labelled by the Western mass media as the “emblematic figure” of the Romanian resistance to Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. This collection comprises manuscripts of her open letters of protest, her diary, samizdat translations, correspondence, drafts of her academic works, photos, paintings, video recordings, and her personal library. This private collection is by far one of the most significant and valuable collections reflecting the cultural opposition to the Romanian communist regime.
Miklós Duray is a Hungarian politician, writer, and teacher from Slovakia. He is the founder of the Coexistence political party and he is one of the signatories of Charta 77. Under the communist regime he was a well-known opposition politician. His political career started in 1965; for a short time he was a secretary in CSEMADOK, and later a head of the Hungarian Youth Organization (MISZ) and the head of the József Attila Youth Club in Bratislava. From 1978 he was a deputy chief of the Hungarian minority’s legal protection committee. In 1990 he established the Coexistence party and was head of the party until 1998. After 1998 he was an important member of the Party of the Hungarian Community.