The catalog offers integrated search among the cross-referenced archival, library and film library records held at the Archivum. Where available, digital content is presented along rich contextual descriptions. While the primary language of the catalog is English, some collections are described in their original language including Hungarian, Russian, Polish and Italian.

For a better overview of the holdings of Blinken OSA Archivum, we created the following entry points to our catalog:

Archival Collections

A page displaying a full, tree-like structure of the hierarchical description levels (fonds, subfonds, series) of the archives. If you click on the main themes, on the top level, you can filter the tree with the selected value. Clicking on one element of the tree will show you a short description of the selected record, with the possibility of navigating to the fonds, subfonds, or series description page.

Library special collections

To render your research easier and to track back the origin of library documents, most of the publications are organized in browsable special thematic collections, which are displayed on this page.

Digital image gallery

To see all our digitized image files as an image gallery, rather than going through the whole archival context, a digital image gallery was created. Here you can find the same content that is shown in the regular catalog. You can search among the images using the search box on the top of the page, or you can apply filters in the same way as in the catalog.

The Archivum’s textual and audiovisual sources come in analog and digital format and in 40+ languages. Altogether they comprise 10,000 linear meters, 17,000 hours of audiovisual, and 15 TB of digital records, as well as 150,000 photographs on three main themes:

Communism, the Cold War, and their Afterlives

The largest collection in this area is that of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute and its successor, the Open Media Research Institute, consisting of background and reference materials accumulated over 45 years of activity. It is an essential source on the post-WWII political, social, economic, and cultural history of the Central and Southeast European region, which includes, among others, Radio Liberty broadcasts, Soviet television monitoring and unique Soviet, Polish and Hungarian samizdat materials

Human Rights and Social Justice

Collections comprise records from international and local agencies and non-governmental organizations, as well as individuals active in documenting the history of human rights movements and violations worldwide, including but not limited to genocide, war crimes, torture, rape, and crimes against humanity, as well as of the rights and representation of marginalized, disadvantaged groups, such as refugees, the Roma, and other ethnic minorities, the LGBTQI+ community or people with disabilities.

Central European University (CEU) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) Network

The Archivum, the official repository and historical archives of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and Vienna, as well as of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) network globally, is responsible for the long-term preservation of the permanent records of these entities.

Blinken OSA Library houses a non-circulating reference library of books related to the Cold War, Communism, international human rights, history of broadcasting and the archival profession, as well as a collection of more than 7,300 dailies and journals published from the 1950s onwards in 40 languages. It also offers special thematic collections on microforms and rare publications from the region including numerous titles of informal and regional press and ephemera

Blinken OSA’s non-circulating Film Library holds an unparalleled range of classic and rare fiction and nonfiction works in almost 100 languages, among them documentary, propaganda, and educational films related to Soviet and East European history and culture, focusing on the Cold War, Communism, and totalitarianism, as well as international human rights abuses and war crimes. The Library also holds all films submitted to the Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.

Our films come from various sources, from individual donors, national film and television archives, and public vendors. Some have English subtitles, while others are available only in their original languages.