COURAGE

connecting collections

Vanda Zaborskaitė (1922-2010) was a professor of Lithuanian literature. In 1961, she was dismissed from her position as a lecturer at Vilnius University because of her 'nationalism'. After that, she found a position at the Lithuanian Institute of History. While she had other research topics at the institute, she also worked on Lithuanian literature, researching a very disapproved of topic at the time, the work and activities of the Lithuanian poet Jonas Mačiulis-Maironis (1862-1932). Maironis was a Catholic priest, who used strong patriotic and nationalist expression in his works, and the Soviet regime had to consider how to interpret his legacy, what parts of his work should be available to society, and what should be seen as religious.

The collection reflects the variety of religious dissent in communist Romania, and illustrates the underground religious practices and overt religious oppositional activities from the late 1940s until the 1980s. The collection comprises, on the one hand, documents and other cultural artefacts created by various religious denominations and confiscated by the Securitate and, on the other hand, documents created by the secret police. The latter illustrate the intense surveillance and the repressive policies of the secret police directed towards those religious activities that opposed the policies of the communist regime in Romania.

Vasyl Stus was an iconic figure of the human rights movement in Soviet Ukraine and one of the leading Ukrainian poets of his generation. Volumes of his poetry circulated widely through samizdat in the 1960s-1980s. While conducting searches, the KGB would  find his works in the homes of every writer, artist, chemist, and human rights activist, whose activities were cause for concern. As with many writers, Stus’s struggle with the Soviet regime, particularly his brutal incarceration and torture in a Soviet prison camp, which led to his death in 1985, have in many ways overshadowed his human and artistic legacy. The Vasyl Stus Collection at the T. H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature in Kyiv was donated by the Stus family after Ukrainian independence in 1991, with the aim of popularizing and making more accessible his writings. These materials include previously unknown works, volumes of Stus’s vast correspondence, as well as fragments of writings that survived his imprisonment in strict-regime hard labor camps in Mordovia and Perm.

The Velid Đekić collection covers beginning of rock and disco culture not only in Rijeka but also in the former Yugoslavia. While working on the books 91 decibels (2009) and Red! River! Rock! (2013), Đekić collected materials on many of Rijeka's bands that have existed from the late 1950s until the early 1980s, and on the places where young people gathered. That is why this collection testifies to the unique history of rock 'n' roll behind the Iron Curtain.