1,700 Items Added to Online Catalog
As the latest result of our mass digitization project, archival documents comprising around 150 thousand pages altogether are now openly accessible in the online Catalog. This latest addition of textual documents encompass 9 series selected from 3 separate fonds: Cold War media monitoring and confidential reports from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, files of the Open Media Research Institute on environmental matters in the Russian Federation and state building in Ukraine, and materials compiled at the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute on the 1990s constitutional processes of Eastern European and former Soviet countries.
The items are available in the Blinken OSA Archivum's online Catalog, without registration! Visit respective Catalog entries through the links listed below, and select the tab "Folders/Items" to see the digitized items, or "Context" to find out more about the series. Alternatively, discovering digital files in the Catalog is also possible with the Availability search filter "Digitally Anywhere / Without Registration." All files have been OCRed, including those in Cyrillic; once a document is opened in the Catalog, the viewer allows text searches.
HU OSA 103 Records of Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute
HU OSA 103-0-2 Records of COLPI, Country Files
The Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute (COLPI), the predecessor of the Open Society Justice Initiative, strived to support the constitutional, legal, and police reforms in emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, thus underpinning the rule of law, through educational and financial programs. This series within the Records of COLPI includes constitutions and draft constitutions, constitutional court decisions, and parliamentary and advisory materials on the constitutional process, from 1973 until 1997.
HU OSA 205-4 Records of the Open Media Research Institute, Information Services Department
The Open Media Research Institute (OMRI, 1994–1997) was established as a successor to the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute, in 1994, monitoring and analyzing the political events and public discourse in East, Central, and Southeastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Its Information Services Department (ISD) inherited not only the RFE/RL Research Institute’s recent files on Slavic, Baltic, Eurasian, and East European countries, but also its task to collect information for the analysts at RFE/RL, as well as OMRI. From the subfonds, arranged according to target countries, the following three series are now available online:
HU OSA 205-4-90 Records of OMRI, ISD, Bosnia Herzegovina Subject Files
The series covers the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1997, i.e., from gaining international recognition in 1992 to the Dayton Peace Agreement and post-war reconstruction. The files address the siege of Sarajevo, the genocide in Srebrenica and other war crimes, as well as parties and politicians, foreign relations, economics, and social issues.
HU OSA 205-4-204 Records of OMRI, ISD, Environmental Files
Focusing on the Russian Federation and other countries of the former USSR, this series contains clippings from Russian central and regional press, and TV and radio monitoring, on environmental matters, between 1995 and 1997, like pollution, natural or man-made disasters, movements, and policies. The files also include official and non-governmental reports and related legislation.
HU OSA 205-4-207 Records of OMRI, ISD, Ukrainian Monitoring Archives
Subjects addressed in the series include the economy, politics, foreign relations, the security and armed forces, ecology, religion, and social issues. The files give insight into the transitional years from 1992 to 1997, with material capturing Ukrainian state building, government structure and activities, national policy, political parties and movements, also profiling political leaders and activists.
HU OSA 300 Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute
Radio Free Europe (RFE) was launched in 1949 to broadcast political and cultural programs to Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe and, with the establishment of Radio Liberty (RL), to the USSR as well. Headquartered in Munich, RFE/RL maintained its own research units tasked with monitoring and evaluating the political developments and public discourse in target countries. As a result, the Records of the RFE/RL Research Institute constitutes an extensive Cold War media archive spanning from 1949 until 1994, which combines Socialist state news and propaganda, Western coverage and analysis, unofficial intelligence and underground publications. New series now available online:
HU OSA 300-30-13 Records of RFE/RL RI, Czechoslovak Unit, Information Items
HU OSA 300-50-11 Records of RFE/RL RI, Polish Unit, Information Items and Correspondence from RFE Field Offices
To acquire first-hand information on the developments behind the Iron Curtain, RFE/RL interviewed visitors on official trips returning or arriving from Socialist countries, as well as immigrants or refugees. As imprints of the process, Information Items include anonymized interview transcripts, their English summaries, and analysis weighing the intel’s reliability and relevance. Following the earlier release of 70 thousand Information Items, from 1951–1956, we publish two further series; the Information Items of the Czechoslovak Unit, from 1965–1971, and the Information Items and correspondence of the Polish Unit, from 1970–1971.
HU OSA 300-60-2 Records of RFE/RL RI, Romanian Unit, Confidential Reports on Romania
HU OSA 300-60-3 Records of RFE/RL RI, Romanian Unit, Records Relating to Romanian Opposition and Protest Movement
These two separate series from the Romanian Unit consist of limited-distribution reports on the one hand, and media monitoring materials on the other. The confidential reports were intended for the director of the Romanian broadcasting, who incorporated them into program policies and guidelines between 1971 and 1975, whether on economic issues or state security. The monitoring materials—press clippings, news agency releases, radio transcripts—focus on the Romanian opposition, social discontent, and human rights issues, from 1977 to the 1989 Romanian Revolution and beyond, until 1991. Importantly, the series also contains letters from Romanian listeners read out in the radio, and detailed biographical files on dissidents.
HU OSA 300-80-2 Records of RFE/RL Research Institute, Soviet Red Archives, New Code Subject Files
In 1992, following the collapse of the USSR, Radio Liberty reorganized its media archives. Discontinuing its Old Code Subject Files, it began to accumulate information related to the Baltic states, the new republics, and the Commonwealth of Independent States under dedicated headings, and rearranged its documents on the former Soviet Union in New Code Subject Files. Now available online, the latter series includes press clippings, news agency releases, and TV and radio monitoring materials, informing about developments in ecology, human rights, mass media, politics, security, and social issues between 1954 and 1994.
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