Program Calendar

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series will be “A Radicalizing Event: How the Chornobyl Disaster Catalyzed the Collapse of the USSR (1986–1991)” by Sergii Mirnyi, Research Fellow, Ukrainian National Museum “Chornobyl”. Join the event in the Archivum, or online.

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Alexey Golubev (Associate Professor, University of Houston) and Stanislav Budnitsky (Visiting Assistant Professor, Russian and Eurasian Studies Program, Colgate University).

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Christopher Ewing (Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University) and Alessandro Ingaria (Audiovisual Artist, Italy).

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Donald Morard III, PhD Candidate, McGill University.

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Agnieszka Kubal (Associate Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL) and Jonathan Brunstedt (Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M University).

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Austin Jersild, Professor of History, Old Dominion University.

Visegrad Lecture Series - - Lecture by Julia Golachowska, visual artist and PhD student, Jagiellonian University - - The presentation investigates the emerging politics of memory present in Polish samizdat stamps from the 1980s.  The analysis of iconography of Solidarność’ philately aims to describe the different strategies used by its creators, to situate them in the context of the debates among the opposition, and to compare them to the official politics of memory of the time

We are happy to announce the next presentation of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA. Join the event in the Archivum, or online! Presentation by Lucy Jeffery, University of Reading, UK: “Circumventing censorship during the Kádár era: a case study of the Demszky circle.”

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA. Veronika Hermann (Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Eötvös Loránd University) will be presenting her project "Nationalism Revisited – Conflicting ideologies in late socialist public discourses". János Vargha (independent researcher) will present his research project "The Danube Circle and the Global Civil Society in the Last Years of the Cold War".

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Ksenia Litvinenko, associated postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space.

Adrian-George Matus's book, "The Long 1968 in Hungary and Romania", examines the history of the sixty-eighters from both countries between 1956 and 1975. It seeks to address two main topics: the impact of “the long 1968” on protest history, and the distinction between protest, opposition, and leisure activities among the youth. Through comparative and oral history methodology, the book fills archival gaps and elucidates how political and social events shaped individuals’ memories.

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Ekaterina Kamenskaya, Independent Researcher

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA by Fanni Svégel (ELTE) and Cody Inglis (CEU).

We are happy to announce the next Visegrad Scholarship at OSA presentations by Harold Gabel (Rutgers University) and Alexander Bala (University of Texas at Austin)

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA. Join the event in the Archivum, or online. “The Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the Underground: Faith on the Margins of Soviet Society (1946–1989)” by Kateryna Budz, British Academy’s Researchers at Risk Fellow at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh; and “Mihajlo Mihajlov and Others: The Way to Support Democratic Solutions against the Communist Regime in Yugoslavia in the 1980s” by Mateusz Sokulski, Institute of History, University of Silesia in Katowice/ Institute of the National Remembrance, Katowice Department.

In his talk Alfred Rieber intends to weave together two themes; first, some brief personal reflections on the place of archives in the craft of the historian and then, primarily, his own experiences in assessing the changes in atmosphere and access to the Soviet and Russian archives over the past fifty-five years since he first conducted research in Moscow as a graduate student during the first year of the Soviet-American cultural exchange in 1958-59 (Lacey-Zarubin Agreement). That same year, his research in the archives also began his personal encounters with Soviet historians which led to several lasting friendships.

Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Presentation Join the presentation in the Archivum or online!

On January 29, the Blinken OSA Archivum organized a workshop at its Budapest headquarters with sociologists and other social scientists—teachers, students, and researchers—exploring the possibilities of using the Mihály Csákó Personal Papers in education and research.

An absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past.

On the 80th anniversary of the Hungarian Shoah, two related events will take place at the CEU Nádor Street building: the working group of historians of the CEU Democracy Institute will present Viktor Karády and István Kemény’s book “Zsidóság a magyar nemzetépítésben a numerus clausus előtt és azután“ [Jewishness in Hungarian nation-building before and after the Numerus Clausus]. At 6 p.m., András Böröcz’s kinetic sculpture “Noisemaker”, commissioned and supported by the Polgár Foundation, will be presented by art historian András Rényi in the presence of the artist. (A regular exhibitor in Budapest, András Böröcz has been living in Brooklyn since 1984.)

The next presentation of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA. Join the event in the Archivum, or online.

Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Presentation. Join the event in the Archivum, or online

The workshop invites film scholars and professionals from academic and heritage institutions to critically review research directions and course curricula on film heritage and to question established approaches to knowledge production and epistemic power relations within and towards the visual material.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Tankies Then and Now: Western Leftist Responses to Soviet and Russian Military Aggression” by Gwen Jones, Researcher and Editor; and “A Description of the History of Polish–Belarusian Relations in the Post-Stalinist Soviet Mass Media as a Basis for Justification of Russian Domination over Belarus” by Stanisław Boridczenko, PhD Candidate and Research Fellow at the Institute of History, University of Szczecin, Poland. Join the event in the Archivum, or online.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Liberation – Occupation: Navigating the Continuum of Soviet Military Presence in Hungary” Christine Varga-Harris, Associate Professor, Department of History, Illinois State University; and “International Congress Rush-Hour and Historic Monument Conservation in Socialist Hungary” by Helka Dzsacsovszki, Doctoral Candidate, Professorship of Recent Building Heritage Conservation, Technical University of Munich. Join the event in the Archivum, or online.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Women’s encounters regarding women’s rights and development in the context of the Cold War” by Yulia Gradskova, Associate prof. in History and Research Coordinator at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden; and “The Romanian Anti-communist Dissidents Reflected by Radio Free Europe” by Camelia Runceanu, PhD in sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, CESSP. Join the event in the Archivum, or online.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Forging a Medieval Russian State: The Concepts of Unity and Nationhood in Russian History Textbooks and their Conceptual Ancestors” by Anna Adashinskaya, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Bucharest; and “Media Representation of Refugees and Women as Symbols” by Emma Krasznahorkai, Political scientist and social worker.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “East European Studies and the Making of Post-Socialist Academia” by Dr. Elisa Satjukow, Research Fellow, Leipzig University; and “Architecture and the Second Public Sphere in Hungary 1974–1989” by Adam Németh, Junior Research Fellow, Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “The Kosovo War Between History and Memory: Notes from an Ongoing Research” by Christian Costamagna, PhD, and “Transitional Justice in Russia: the Case of Failure” by Gleb Golubkov, Journalist, political activist.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Legacies of Transition as Reflected in Hungary’s Fidesz Party” by Maren Francke, PhD candidate, Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History; and “Playgrounds: Small Battlefields of Big Ideas” by Virág Bogyó, DLA candidate, Hungarian University of Arts.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “After Utopia: Radio Free Europe as a Laboratory of Cold War (Neo)Liberalism, 1956–1972” by Dr. Jelena B. Ćulibrk, Postdoctoral Scholar, USC School of Cinematic Arts; and “How Has the Role and Methods of Law Enforcement Evolved in the Socialist System in Hungary?” by Zsuzsa Debre, Documentary Filmmaker.

BOOK LAUNCH The Blinken OSA Archivum cordially invites you to the book launch of Stalin as Warlord by Prof. Emeritus Alfred J.

At the request of the Blinken OSA Archivum, historian Krisztián Ungváry will give twelve lectures on controversial issues of 19th and 20th-century Hungarian history. The lecture series will outline different interpretative frameworks and patterns on controversial pivotal points in Hungary's recent history. The topics of the lectures will cover historical issues that are still hotly debated today, and which are the most vulnerable to historical falsification, manipulation, deliberate or ignorant misinterpretation in historical discourse, debate, state propaganda, and social media targeting the wider public. The aim of the lectures is to reveal the inner logic of discourses that distort and falsify reality rather than only present historical reality. 

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series will be “Art as Memory: Records of Artistic Practices During the Siege of Sarajevo 1992–1995” by Dr. Amila Ramović, University of Sarajevo.

We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA and the CEU Budapest – OSUN Postdoctoral and Doctoral Fellowships: “Memory as Facilitator of Dialogue: How Can Local Archives Contribute to a Constructive Dealing with Past Process?” by Adis Hukanović, Visegrad Fellow; and “Blinken OSA as a Place to Study Central Asian History” by Faruh Kuziev, CEU Budapest – OSUN Fellow.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “The Balkans: an ongoing clash between modernity and national myths” by Izabela Morska, and “Dancing Behind the Curtain: Dance Politics in the USSR in the Early Cold War” by Maria Kardash.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Connecting archives on both sides of the Iron Curtain: Stories from the religious underground” by Tatiana Vagramenko, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, University College Cork, Ireland, and “Communicating to unfree societies: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and Soviet Moldavia” by Sergiu Musteata, Professor, History and Geography Department, Ion Creanga Pedagogical State University, Chișinau.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Re-Inventing the Formal Culture by Formal Means” by Daria Franklin, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, Columbia University in the City of New York, and “Holodomor: Silenced Past and Reclaimed History in the Shadow of the Cold War” by Karolina Koziura, Ph.D. Candidate, The New School for Social Research, New York.

The next presentation of the CEU Budapest – OSUN Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Blinken Open Society Archives (CEU) will be “Archiving the International Communist Movement: Critical Inquiries on the Knowledge Production of the Cold War” by Matus Adrian-George, CEU Budapest – OSUN Postdoctoral fellow at Blinken OSA.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Environing the Dam debate in ECE: the role of RFE in the 1980s and 1990s” by Jiri Janac, and “Defying the Iron Curtain: Émigré journals and their attempts to confront the post-war reality” by Jan Farfal.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “The Hidden Lives of Data: Social Research During the Cold War” by Alexander Langstaff, , Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, New York University, and “Between East and West. The entangled reception of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn in the Cold War 1970s” by José Luis Aguilar López-Barajas, Postdoctoral researcher, Masaryk University.

The next presentation of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series is “Managing Young Adulthood Under State Socialism” by Orel Beilinson, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University.

The next event of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA Lecture Series includes two presentations: “Székelykapu, Turul Madár and Kopjafa: Reinvention of Turanism at the beginning of 1990s in Hungary” by Tatyana Szafonova and “Across the Nylon Curtain: Transnational Cultural Exchanges between Italy and USSR. The role of Italian Cultural Actors in the diffusion of samizdat and tamizdat” by Ilaria Sicari.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA, we are organizing a workshop titled Methodologies of Working in Cold War Archives. Facts, Values and Archival Ecologies. The workshop will be in a hybrid format, both on-site and online.The workshop will be organized at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, on October 14–16, 2021.

The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (Blinken OSA) at Central European University organizes a seminar on fearless speech. This seminar is part of a longer event series on fearless speech co-organized by Blinken OSA and the students and lecturers of Freeszfe. The seminar will start at the beginning of October and is open to all Hungarian university and college students, including Freeszfe.

Offered to advanced-level undergraduate students, graduate students, junior faculty in humanities and social sciences, journalists, and artists, the research-intensive course is held online. The course comprises lectures, seminars, and practical workshops with archival documents and scientific datasets. 

The John Wesley Theological College and the Eötvös Lóránd University Faculty of Social Sciences co-organized a memorial conference of Mihály Csákó sociologist, educational researcher, a democratic opposition member from January 31 to February 1, 2020.

“Labor Research from Planned Economy to Savage Capitalism” is the title of a workshop conference organized by Voices of the 20th Century Archive and Research Group together with Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives.

Blinken OSA—the Archives and gallery at Central Europen University—participates in the CEU Virtual Open House. This is the first-ever virtual CEU Open house, taking place on November 27, 2020.

Public Lecture Dot.To.Dot is a newly established curatorial visitor program aiming to boost the links between the members of the Hungarian

This Hungarian language program is organized for students between the age of 15-19, please visit the Hungarian version of our

Roundtable: Gendered Dissent Presented by the NEP4DISSENT COST Action and the Donald and Vera Blinken Open Society Archives Thursday, January 31, 2019 7:00 p.m.-

“Gendered Dissent” presents two parallel reflections on how to think about oppositional practices in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe through a gendered perspective.

Scopes and Constraints in 20th Century Hungarian History Lecturers: historians András Mink and Krisztián Ungváry Organizer: Blinken OSA Archives / Central European University  Continuing

Author(s): 

A conference and workshop organized by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) at Central European University (CEU)

 6-8 april 2016International and interdisciplinary conference with historians, scientists, philosophers and artists discussing the phenomenon of dehumanization from roughly the

Victoria Harms  - Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central EuropeRoad to Redemption:Why West Germans Care(d) about Hungary.17 February

The book launch of The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy by Timothy Williams Waters.Organized by the Department of Legal Studies and

NEW ARCHIVAL EPISTEMES IN THE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE March 7-8, 2014 at the Open Society Archives, Budapest. The conference aims to bridge the

Restrisiko: A short introduction to the relationship between nuclear energy and public protest in GermanyBy Axel Braun, Visegrad Researcher, ArtistGermany's