Kazys Boruta (1905-1965) was a famous Lithuanian novelist, poet and translator. The Kazys Boruta collection holds various documents: his diaries, correspondence and manuscripts. The documents illustrate the situation of the writer in Soviet Lithuania. The government tried various means to control and restrict the writer’s creative initiatives. During the period of Stalinism, Boruta was arrested, accused of collaborating with bourgeois nationalists, and imprisoned. After he was released, he had problems publishing his work.
‘Književne novine’ [Literary News] was one of the leading cultural and literary journals in Yugoslavia. It was often the target of criticism due to views that were not always in line with the communist party, causing it to be banned several times. The available editions are kept in two libraries in Belgrade: the National Library of Serbia and the University Library "Svetozar Marković".
Knuts Skujenieks (b. 1936) is a Latvian poet, a dissident who was sentenced in 1962 to seven years in prison for anti-Soviet activities. The collection holds manuscripts from all his creative life, but the most powerful are the manuscripts he created during his imprisonment: poems and other literary texts, correspondence with his wife and colleagues, and many other documents that reflect the development of his poetic language and political consciousness.