Annual Reports

2023 was another year of uncertainties: unprecedented global warming with uncertain but frightening consequences; wars with rapidly growing numbers of casualties, and the looming possibility of the extension of violent atrocities; political claims without factual basis; lost trust in the beneficial effects of unseeable natural forces; the uncertainty about the future of CEU and as part of it, the Budapest campus. Official rewriting of history continued in different parts of the world, but prominently in Hungary. Universities, schools, and public institutions are wary of any visible contact with CEU and the Blinken OSA Archivum; this is why we have decided to organize a highly visible public lecture series on twentieth-century Hungarian history, with the title: “One History – Multiple Explanations”. We invited Krisztián Ungváry, the respected and popular historian, perhaps the most visible historian in Hungary, to give a 12-lecture course. Hundreds followed every lecture in the CEU auditorium, while tens of thousands watched them on YouTube. The Archivum managed to fill the campus once more with students, real life, which we would do regularly if we had permission from the leadership of the University.

In 2022, the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives lost a great and unswerving friend. On November 20, Donald Blinken, philanthropist, art collector, businessman, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, passed away. Russia’s unjustifiable aggression against Ukraine, the most tragic international event of the year, that started on February 24, makes it even more important to remember Donald Blinken’s important and fine diplomatic service. As the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, Donald Blinken played a role in signing the Budapest Memorandum on December 5, 1994 that, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal, guaranteed the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine.

"Difficult years, in this part of the world, do not pass but multiply. 2021 was the second year of the pandemic, with Hungary having the fourth highest per capita Covid-related mortality in the world. Public institutions, especially public collections, had to remain closed for long periods of the year. Blinken OSA Archivum – while making use of all available safety measures – tried to go on serving the public: during low tides of the pandemic, the archive was open for researchers, who could reserve seats in the research room in advance. There was no summer recess in 2021; the research room remained open during the summer months when the virus retreated for a while, providing a window of opportunity in-between subsequent waves."

"A Dreadful Course of Calamities" befell us at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives last year. Some of them were foreseen and expected: following the eviction of CEU from Hungary, the move of the University from Budapest to Vienna; the difficulties of providing access to archival materials to the students and faculty of CEU; the intensification of the government’s war on culture, research, education and civility; the government’s growing impatience with the past, and the efforts to rewrite wholesale the history of both the country and Europe. Some of the calamities, however, were (for most of us) unexpected: the fast-emerging indifference, both local and global, to historical facts; and obviously the plague, the pandemic that paralyzed the globe.

2019 was a dark year for Hungarian history (-writing), for the historical consciousness and historical self-awareness of the Hungarian public. This was the year when the government effectively abolished the Historical Institute of the 1956 Revolution, one of the most important research centers of recent history. The Institute with its irreplaceable oral history archives was “integrated” into the “Veritas” Institute, one of the centers of official historical revisionism and a source of blatant lies. The research institutes, including the Historical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, were forcibly taken over by the government, which, among a dozen other dubious “research” centers, established the Hungarological (Magyarság) Research Institute with an enormous budget. This so-called Hungarological research center is tasked with reframing and rewriting the history of the nation, the country, Hungarian ethnicity, both the recent and more distant past, starting with the ancient history of the Hungarian tribes, in order to claim – on the basis of non-existent sources – that the Hungarians are the descendants of Attila, the Hun, the Scourge of God. The future and fate of the National Széchényi Library is uncertain; several important archives, essential source-collections, among them the Lukács Archive, have been dispersed or have become unavailable. The Blinken Open Society Archives has once more become the archive of last resort, as we have tried to provide help, shelter, and refuge for endangered archival collections and documents.

2018 was not a year having been taken lightly in the Blinken Open Society Archives. The nationalist, anti-intellectual government of Hungary was granted a two-thirds majority at the spring election, and thus the artificially induced uncertainty of the status of Central European University continued. OSA is not only part of the University, but provides essential sources of research both for students and faculty. Members of the Archive’s staff teach courses at different departments; OSA offers a specialization for the students of CEU. The intention of the government to make the existence of CEU impossible in its home, to force the University to join the hundreds of thousands Hungarians who, having no other alternative, had to emigrate in the past decade, set new tasks for the Archive. We have decided not to leave, but to keep the collections connected to the recent history of Hungary, Central Europe, the Cold War, and grave violations of human rights in Budapest. We are convinced that the need to study the original documents, the primary sources, at the time of official campaigns of misinformation, whole-sale historical revisionism, and single, officially approved school textbooks intended to serve as for political propaganda, is more urgent than ever before.

Blinken OSA tried to prepare for the notable events, anniversaries and programs of 2017. Then something unforeseen, unexpected, and inexplicable happened: without warning, the Hungarian government pushed a new higher education law through Parliament in just a few days in order to make the work of Central European University impossible in its hometown, Budapest. The immediate reaction was a huge, spontaneous demonstration in Budapest with tens of thousands of demonstrators, a world-wide reaction of solidarity from hundreds of the best universities of the world, petitions were signed by dozens and dozens of Nobel laureates. The University decided not to give in, and its fight became the global symbol of the defense of academic freedom against populist, demagogic state intervention. The Archives, as part of the University, works and lives in a deliberately maintained state of existential uncertainty, but it is determined to continue its important, high-quality and unorthodox activities in Budapest, whatever new tricks the government may try to invent to make our work impossible.

The focal points of the year 2016 were the 60th anniversary of the 1956 revolution and, obviously, the continuing refugee crisis. The year, however, started in Mexico, far away from these concerns. In cooperation with the International Center of Photography in New York, OSA brought the Mexican Suitcase to Budapest. The legendary Mexican Suitcase containing Robert Capa’s Spanish Civil War negatives, considered lost since 1939, was exhibited in the Galeria Centralis. The Suitcase is in fact three small boxes containing nearly 4,500 negatives, not only by Capa but also by his fellow photojournalists Chim (David Seymour) and Gerda Taro. These negatives span the course of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), through Chim’s in-depth coverage from 1936 and early 1937, Taro’s intrepid documentation until her death in battle in July 1937, and Capa’s incisive reportage until the last months of the conflict. Following the end of the war and amid the chaos of the Germans entry into Paris in 1940, the negatives were passed from hand to hand for safekeeping, and ultimately ended up in Mexico City, where they resurfaced in 2007. As part of the exhibition events, in collaboration with the Spanish Embassy in Budapest and the Cervantes Institute, the Archives presented a film series, “Eye on Spain” with rarely seen films, including home movies on the Spanish Civil War.

OSA has never had a secure, indisputably accepted name. Just like its character, its real identity, its mission and ambitions and even its name has always been somewhat uncertain - open to different readings and interpretations. The Open Society Archive or the Open Society Archives, the Open Society Archives at (or) @ CEU (or) @ Central European University or as we have affectionately been known to the general public, simply as OSA or The OSA is a different institution/organization/thing for different audiences. It is an archive, a research institute, a teaching unit of CEU, a public institution, a gallery, and an exhibition and public space that exists in different realms. OSA is a private Hungarian institution open to and serving the public, which legally exists in Hungary only via its parent institution, the Central European University, chartered and accredited in Hungary (besides having been chartered and accredited in the US.) OSA has decided not to seek Hungarian accreditation as an official, privately run, Hungarian public archive due in large part to one of the initiators and original signatories of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, in a sense, the founding document of the world-wide open access movement. In other words, we wanted to guard our independence and flexibility which would have been constrained under Hungarian archival law and regulations.

Life in OSA was centered around major crowd sourcing public activities while, at the same time, its professional archival activity took an important turn. OSA’s Yellow Star Houses project, a grassroots memorial project which aimed to increase public awareness of Hungary’s complicity with Nazi Germany, mobilized tens of thousands of Budapest citizens, became the initiator of several similar though smaller-scale projects, received great international acclaim and earned the Archives a major prize for Jewish education in Hungary and another one for the most innovative community project of the year. In its Eawareness/Europeana 1989, a three-year collaborative EU-supported best practice network project, OSA invited people who lived through the fall of the Iron Curtain to share and digitize their experiences, stories and memorabilia... Our 2014 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

In the life of the Archive “consolidation” is the word that best describes 2013. OSA went a long way in maturing in the execution of the ternary role of an archive in the 21st century as seen by OSA, where archivists are users, researchers and creators at the same time. The successful completion of the Heritage of People’s Europe (HOPE), a 3-year collaborative EU-supported best practice network project secured the steady presence of the Archives on the international professional scene as well as in the network of leading archival institutions in Europe. On the home front it facilitated the consolidation and processing of OSA holdings, a process which culminated in presenting OSA’s digital collections online and launched a series of related professional activities from data normalization to in-house professional development seminars. 2013 OSA’s research capacity was further strengthened. The increased professional research and development activity was manifested in the record number of conferences, on-line and on-site courses, lecture- and seminar series and summer university courses attended, run or organized by OSA, in the growth of OSA’s academic staff, in the vigorous professional development and educational activity and in the integration of research related activities in OSA’s annual public programs evidenced, for example, by OSA colleagues curating exhibitions based on OSA research like Don – A Tragedy and Its Afterlife, or film screenings offered to support research activity, like Cold War Fantasies, or by the launch of utánlövés (afterthought), a Hungarian-language blog so that historians and archivists who work here can, in relation to their other activities, publicly express their own opinions on current historical questions, generally on the basis of archival sources... Our 2013 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

2012 was marked by changes, difficulties and new developments, some foreseeable and others not, and the staff of OSA had to invent new ways of dealing with them. In the changed political-cultural climate in Hungary OSA maintained its open institution profile with increased political and social sensitivity and turned itself into an alternative cultural-intellectual space, built exhibitions which challenged established historical thinking and encouraged discussion dedicated to the current cultural, political and economic situation. Emblematic of this endeavor was the exceptionally successful Manuscript A(u)ction organized in the Galeria Centralis, where manuscripts of outstanding contemporary writers, poets and composers were publicly auctioned and 2.4 million forints were raised in support of the Oltalom Karitatív Egyesület led by Gábor Iványi. With respect to OSA’s professional activity, 2012 was the year of breakthrough when the results of several years’ efforts to build a state-of-the-art archival laboratory became visible. OSA redesigned and restructured its website and launched its digital repository with 71,000 items available online and also through Europeana, the digital gateway to cultural heritage in Europe. In this way OSA secured its steady presence on the international archival scene and linked in with institutes in the forefront of archival development... Our 2012 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

2011 was a year of peaceful and uninterrupted development, a year of maturation, when OSA’s endeavours were quietly but steadily unfolding, in the same way as a well designed garden ripens – even if the weather conditions are not always favorable. Under the changed political climate in Hungary OSA managed to maintain its open institution profile by fostering critical thought and encouraging discussion dedicated to the current political situation. Its “blitzconferences”, constitutional lecture series and public political debates re-animated the Hungarian public spheres and attracted audiences that were actually often too numerous to fit into OSA’s Galeria Centralis. With respect to OSA’s professional activity 2011 was the year when its research capacity was slowly building up towards a state-of-the-art archival laboratory, became an integral part of large European archival and cultural heritage networks and the trusted research partner of several prestigious institutions. It also secured its place on the map of the international network of Human Rights archives by taking part in the work of the Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems and by hosting the 32nd Meeting of the European Coordination Committee on Human Rights Documentation (ECCHRD). These, supported by the popular OSA TV, the online showcase of OSA audio-visual gems, attracted several new, large and personal collections of mostly audio-visual documents... Our 2011 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

2010 centered around HOPE in every sense. The Heritage of the People of Europe (HOPE), a three year collaborative EU supported project, started in May 2010. It soon made its effect felt in all areas of activity in OSA and by the time of the traditional end-of-year stocktaking it was evident that already in the first year of its life cycle HOPE had substantially restructured OSA’s professional life. A professional HOPE team was built up, archival best practices were shared and the speed of processing and digitization improved considerably. Further cooperation in HOPE will hopefully make OSA fully accepted as an integral part of the European Archival Systems community. Past hopes, endeavors and hard work were recognized on March 21, 2010, when the OSA Archivum was awarded the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial Prize in the “History of the Press” category. The prize, established in 1989 in memory of the Hungarian-born Joseph Pulitzer, recognizes outstanding achievement among Hungarian journalists working in either the printed or online press. OSA received the prize for its highly professional and systematic presentation of documents, which was demonstrated in its “Was there a 1989?” online project. During this project, which lasted throughout 2009, OSA published and daily made accessible on its website documents dedicated to the regime changes. These documents had previously been largely or wholly unavailable: transcripts of radio broadcasts, news agency releases, secret police surveillance reports, press surveys, television news items, excerpts from documentary films and photographs, as well as audio recordings and transcripts of meetings of party organs and opposition groups. Istvan Rév, Director of OSA, received the prize at the ceremony... Our 2010 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

OSA’s advances in the year of 2009 were firm and secure in terms of its archival and research work, in its outreach programs and, above all, in its endeavors to create a new function for the recent history archive. This steady progress, the fruit of the work of many years, was recognized several times throughout the year. In 2009 OSA received the status of Research Center within the University, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic honored OSA with a personal visit, and the Executive Director of the International Visegrad Fund invited OSA to take part in a joint scholarship program. The year ended with the Romanian Cultural Institute awarding the Prize for Cultural Excellence to Professor István Rév and the Open Society Archive for exemplary moral conduct and unceasing work to strengthen Eastern and Central European democracies... Our 2009 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

The inhabitants of the team based in 32 Arany János utca, Budapest, 1051 agree that 2008 was the year when their earlier endeavors finally bore fruit: the numerous complex and innovative projects which were carried through with determination in 2008 were both signs and tools of successful developments from all aspects of OSA’s mission and practices. The “Archive”, which in the past existed as a rather unproblematic but marginal institution, in the last two decades has become a hotly debated notion, idea and symbolic space. OSA tries to respond to these developments and challenges by transforming itself into a laboratory, experimenting with new ways of collecting, processing, representing, and making publicly available and usable information, documents and objects. OSA is now considered, even beyond the region, as one of the preeminent archival institutions that respond to the new knowledge environment... Our 2008 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

The members of the team based in 32 Arany János utca, Budapest, 1051 spent 2007 determinedly working towards the goals they set to themselves when they moved into their new home: to make the collections and the institutional operations transparent, to meet the challenges of the digital era and to integrate public and archival programs in comprehensive, multifaceted projects, enabling and encouraging professional communities and the larger public to participate, to view and to comment both on and off-site. Figures of a brief archival stocktaking testify to a job well done. Success is proven not only by the number of distinguished visitors to OSA, the Czech Prime Minister or the Delegation of the Swedish Parliament among them, but also by the impressive number of exhibitions, workshops, film shows and public events, 29 in all, by the 9 international programs where OSA partnered with several institutions and the four major publications hallmarked with the OSA logo. Without exception all these activities were linked to OSA's professional archival routine work of collection development, accession and processing, but they all contributed to achieving OSA's ambitious goal; to be in the forefront of digital archiving. In 2007 digitization took the lead in archival accession and preservation in OSA. By the end of the year the Archivum had approximately 1,000,000 pages of documents scanned, preserved in both TIFF and PDF formats, and indexed. The ever-increasing role of digitization called for the creation of new internal policies governing digital preservation, access to and use of digital content, as well as intellectual property rights relating to born-digital and digitized materials and databases. In 2007 OSA compiled the first draft of its digital preservation policy and started the ground work in other areas, being well aware of the dramatically increasing needs of the digital era in this respect... Our 2007 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

2006 marked the first anniversary of OSA's arrival in its new home. How far did real life meet and answer the original expectations and hopes? Did the Archivum manage to take the long-planned turn to make both its collections and its operations transparent for professionals and laymen visiting physically or virtually in the new building with its glass roof and walls and its generous spaces? Did OSA manage to meet the challenges of the digital age, and the expectations of the local community and of society in its wider, European or even global context? Considering the number, the scope and the extent of events hosted by the Goldberger building and its inhabitants, the staff of OSA, the answer is definitely positive. The link between the inside and the outside is most happily symbolized by the opening of the Goldberger Bistro, a glass-walled café and restaurant on the ground floor of the Archivum, with an entrance from the street and a door opening into the Archivum itself... Our 2006 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

OSA ARCHIVUM is an institute of historical record, responsible for traces of the past in its care. It collects, processes (indexes and classifies), makes available (not only to its immediate patrons, the researchers, but) to the public, and actively interprets documents. The Archivum understands documents as meaningful physical artifacts, which function both as evidence and information. The archival document is a material proof, which exists in two contexts: it relates to and informs about the outside world, external to the archive, and at the same time it resides in the “documentary world”, and thus acquires proper documentary status and meaning in consequence of indexicality, in relation to the classificatory system of the archive. Records are archival documents in the web of meaningful relationships to other records. The priority of the Archivum is to remain a trusted institution, as only a flexible but transparent system of classification of the credible archive establishes the documentary status of the historical record. OSA Archivum is an archive of the copy. Already the bulk of the core Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty collection consisted of copies: clippings, biographical information, monitoring transcripts, samizdat carbon copies, etc; the film collection, the positives of the photo collection at OSA are naturally copies; while all electronic documents are, by definition, copies. The Archivum is less concerned with the materiality of the records than with the information provided by the content of the documents. Thus OSA is typically not interested in acquiring original documents, but to make relevant records publicly available. OSA Archivum is committed to open access. In lack of stated specific restriction by the donor, as a rule of thumb, documents at OSA are available without restriction... Our 2005 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

Physical plant: changes in OSA’s environment – both in the narrow and the broad sense, kept the date of OSA transfer to its new premises pending almost throughout the year until finally, in November 2004 the date was set for July 2005. The lack of external funding will make it possible for CEU Rt. to restore the building only at the most basic level. This leaves OSA with about as much storage space as it has now but if further funds could be secured – at current estimates $300,000 –, and the structure adequately reinforced, OSA would be able to almost double its storage area. Under the given, strained situation OSA had to abandon the idea of building a new top floor with lecture halls and a screening hall, but until OSA finds new resources the functions of these halls will be taken over by other OSA units within the building. Professional challenges: in anticipation of the changes to come in 2005 and also to keep pace with the technological development of the world OSA decided to move towards digitizing, and as one of its first digitizing projects chose the Background Reports of the Radio. Also digitized were the records of several human rights organizations, the photo archive of the Hungarian Soros Foundation and records of the Soros Foundations in Serbia, Mongolia, Latvia, Estonia etc.) The move towards digitizing made it necessary to address burning digital preservation issues like ensuring long-term use of the digital records and the purchase of adequate hardware and software, not to mention the customization of the in-house databases for digital image processing. OSA’s audio-visual unit is also keeping up with the new trends and is switching over from VHS to DVD. In 2004 not only were new copies made on DVDs, but several collections were transcribed from VHS to DVD... Our 2004 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

In 2001 OSA decided to search for new premises in order to find a new home which would accommodate its holdings, which by then had outgrown OSA’s storage space, and which could adequately serve OSA’s new public role, extending the target groups of its activities beyond the members of narrow professional scholarly communities to university students and junior scholars throughout the region, to teachers, and to the interested public at large. In 2002 OSA’s search for its new premises was crowned with success and the Archives signed the lease for a two-story, flat roofed Art Nouveau edifice, a listed historical building in the heart of Budapest, with CEU Rt. for an indefinite period. Year 2003 was spent saving and raising funds for the renovation and reconstruction of the building. OSA managed to save a substantial amount out of its own budget, which brought OSA’s cash contribution towards the building costs to USD 0.66 million. As part of its fundraising campaign OSA submitted applications to various foundations in Europe and in the US, seeking contributions both towards construction costs and program extension. The Fritt Ord Institution granted USD 50,000 for processing and exhibition programs related to the freedom of speech, the Kresge Foundation encouraged OSA to re-apply to them with the same package after CEU had been fully accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (Philadelphia), and OSA hopes for a favorable reply to its application for USD 1 million from the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad USAID program... Our 2003 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

At the end of 2001 OSA decided to redefine itself, its mission and its position, in both professional and the political terms. OSA had reached the conclusion that, as one of the largest archives of the history of Communism and Human Rights in the world, and definitely the most important in the former Communist part of Europe, it has no choice but to address those burning political and human rights issues that emerged and came into focus during the years of transition. OSA therefore now seeks to extend the target groups of its activities beyond the members of narrow professional scholarly communities to university students and junior scholars in the region, to teachers, and to the interested public at large. This calls for a larger storage area, more room for researchers, seminar rooms, spacious common areas such as an exhibition hall, a projection room, and a public auditorium. The search for new premises, which started almost a year ago, has been successful. The building, the former Goldberger textile factory, is a rare piece of Art Nouveau industrial architecture in the heart of Budapest, five minutes’ walk from the CEU complex. After renovation and appropriate reconstruction the Goldberger building, with its large atrium and unusual spatial possibilities, would serve as an ideal multifunctional site for the extended mission of OSA: expanding its public programs, enlarging the exhibition space, organizing permanent exhibitions and regular lectureand film series, involving the students and scholars of the region in its research programs, and also for housing the constantly growing collections of OSA in one single location... Our 2002 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

According to the decision of the CEU Board of Trustees a certain portion (USD 2,000,000 annually) of the income from the endowment that was laid down to support the Central European University is dedicated exclusively to financing the operations of the Open Society Archives. OSA is still comfortably settled within the large downtown CEU complex, though it is constantly looking for new storage place opportunities in the vicinity. This is necessitated both by the space required for storing incoming donations and by OSA’s intention to move the external storage facility at Kerepesi Dormitory closer to the main offices. There have been some changes in the organizational structure of the Archives. The staff of 31 was reduced to 29: two full time posts (those of the junior librarian and the reference services supervisory archivist) were abolished, and the duties belonging to these posts were taken over by other staff members. This of course meant that the job descriptions of the majority of OSA staff had to be revised and rewritten. The Archives decided to streamline its organizational structure in order to increase effectiveness and mobilize its intellectual capital to a greater extent. The cuts proved to be justified: OSA has not only maintained the pace of its daily routine activities but has actually increased the intensity of its related activities both on the local and the international scene... Our 2001 Annual Report is available in PDF format.

The core of the Open Society Archives (“OSA”) holdings is formed by the historical file collection of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute. As discussed below in greater detail, these holdings have been supplemented with other records to achieve OSA’s mission of obtaining, preserving, and making available research resources for the study of communism and the Cold War and for the study of twentieth and twenty first century issues of human rights, as well as providing information, records, and archival services to all parts of the Soros foundations network, including the Central European University (“CEU”), in which OSA is housed. Today OSA holds 3,341 linear meters of textual records, and maintains its own library and a constantly growing audiovisual collection. Most of these holdings are fully accessible on the OSA website. OSA moved to its present site in the buildings of the Central European University complex in 1997. Here the holdings are stored in a three level underground storage area, are made available in a well equipped research room, and form the materials for exhibitions in OSA’s own exhibition hall, Galeria Centralis... Our 5 year (1995-2000) Annual Report is available in PDF format.