COURAGE

connecting collections

This collection comprises documents (including trial records) relating to the group known as the “National Patriotic Front,” which are currently held in the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova (ANRM). These materials were transferred to the ANRM from the Archive of the Intelligence and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova (formerly the KGB Archive). This group operated in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in the late 1960s and the early 1970s as the only significant organisation in the MSSR with a clear-cut and coherent oppositional message. 

The Collection of The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) contains mainly numbered published materials called ‘Communications’ (Sdělení), which were prepared by the members of VONS in which they described cases of individuals or groups, who had been prosecuted or imprisoned because of their opinions.

Vaclovas Aliulis (1921-2015) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest. During Soviet times he participated actively in underground catechisation, and was a lecturer with the Underground Catholic Seminary, which was established to train priests for Catholic parishes in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and other Soviet republics. Aliulis is the author of a number of books and other publications; and during the times of Sąjūdis (the Lithuanian national movement), he was the initiator and organiser of Catholic publishing. He started to collaborate with the Lithuanian Central State Archives from 2003, transferring files from his private papers to the state archives. The documents in the collection show the situation of the Catholic Church and the community of believers in Soviet Lithuania, and Soviet policy on religion.