Discuss Data: Workshop on the History of Soviet Dissent
Blinken OSA Archivum staff participated in the first in-person workshop of the project Discuss Data Community Space – History of Soviet Dissent and Samizdat/Samvydav (2023-2026) at Forschungstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen. Revolved around the distribution and research of data on Soviet dissident culture, the project aims to create a community platform incorporating archival material from partner institutions.
On July 14–15, 2025, Forschungstelle Osteuropa an der Universität Bremen (Research Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, FSO) organized the first in-person workshop of the international project Discuss Data Community Space – History of Soviet Dissent and Samizdat/Samvydav (2023–2026). The project aims at building a community platform for distribution of and research on archival data based on input from institutions hosting collections of samizdat/samvydav and dissident culture from the territory of the former USSR.
This is the second phase of the project Discuss Data – Repository and discussion platform for research data, done in cooperation with the State and University Library Göttingen, sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Fund, DFG). Partners include organizations from Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania, as well as the Blinken OSA Archivum, which was represented at the consortium meeting by Katerina Belenkina, Archivist-Slavic Collection, József Bóné, Head of IT, and Csaba Szilágyi, Chief Archivist/Head of Human Rights Program.
The workshop included a presentation of staff and collections of participating institutions from which a selection will be integrated in the future Discuss Data platform. A prototype of the platform was also introduced by developers at FSO, followed by the recording of first impressions and a Q&A session. The workshop team then had a superb guided tour of the extremely rich archives of the FSO, where the earliest issues of samizdat, numerous literary and artistic publications, as well as seminal documents on human rights violation cases in the USSR in the 1950-1970s, including the handwritten transcripts of the trial against Joseph Brodsky by Frida Vigdorova from 1964, were on display. Discussions on the technical framework and content of the platform and use case scenarios followed. In conclusion, participants agreed on the schedule and assignments for the next phase of development.
