Should Facts of the Past Be Public?

The Blinken OSA launches a blog series at 444.hu, one of the leading independent news websites in Hungary. The blog entitled Forrás. [meaning source and, with the dot pronounced, boiling point] will consist of posts written by the Blinken OSA staff, revolved around archival documents and their archival, historical, and contemporary context. As 444.hu is in Hungarian, English translations will be published here, at the Blinken OSA website.

Perica Jovchevski • December 13, 2020

25 Years After Dayton: Between the Ethics of Memory and the Historiography of the Yugoslav Wars

Today, twenty-five years have passed since the official signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in Paris.

Blinken OSA • December 10, 2020

December 10, Human Rights Day: the Political Program Declaration of FIDESZ

December 10 is Human Rights Day, celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on this day, in 1948. On this occasion, we share another declaration: the 1988 Political Program Declaration of FIDESZ.

Gábor Tóka • November 11, 2020

If Polls Are so Wrong about US Elections (as You Think They Are), then Are They Good for Anything at All?

I have kept getting polite versions of the above question ever since I started talking to colleagues about the exciting prospects of expanding the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives’ collection of survey data. Joe Biden’s unexpectedly bumpy ride to an Electoral College majority turned this nagging question into a burning issue that may undermine the credibility of much social science research worldwide. Let me address the problem in three steps.

Blinken OSA • October 02, 2020

No Political Value

In February, when we recapped the first event of the Re:Verzió series below, we couldn't know that the program was soon to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were aware of the disease, but not of the fundamental impact it was about to have on our everyday lives, once evolving into a pandemic.

Iván Székely • September 23, 2020

On the International Day of Freedom of Information

September 28 is the international day of freedom of information, also called as the Right to Know Day, which UNESCO recently proclaimed as the International Day for Universal Access to Information

Claudia Masztalerz • August 05, 2020

Files on the Vatican and the Italian Communist Party: A Hypothesis

The first time I heard about Blinken OSA was in spring 2019, when I was spending a semester in Budapest as an Erasmus+ exchange student in my second year of the master’s degree in “Library and Archival Studies.” I had a meeting with Csaba Szilágyi and Örs Lehel Tari, to discuss the possibility of starting an internship at the Archives after my graduation, in the frame of the Erasmus+ Traineeship program.

Blinken OSA • July 23, 2020

Unintentional Effect: the 45th Anniversary of the Helsinki Accords

August 1 will mark the 45th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords, which, owing to its human rights principle, became a catalyst of the 1989 regime change.

Blinken OSA • July 16, 2020

Constant Change and Eternal Immutability – Gallery Reopens with Lenke Szilágyi's Exhibition

On July 17, the Archive's gallery space reopens, presenting the exhibition POST-SOVIET – Photos by Lenke Szilágyi 1990–2002. Lenke Szilágyi (who has also been working as a photo-archivist in the Archives for a number of years) has regularly traveled to the (former) Soviet Union, witnessing and documenting the fall of Communism and Post-Soviet realities. Her photos are sensitive imprints of an era of constant change and a territory of eternal immutability.

Csaba Szilágyi • July 10, 2020

Discussion About the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide Begins in the Archives

The systematic execution of 8,372 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) in July 1995 in the larger Srebrenica area, dubbed by former Chief Investigator of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Jean-René Ruez "the Axis of Death," constituted genocide.