alternative forms of education
alternative lifestyles and resistance of the everydays
avant-garde, neo-avant-garde
censorship
conscientious objectors critical science
democratic opposition
emigration/exile environmental protection
ethnic movements
film
fine arts folk culture
human rights movements
independent journalism
literature and literary criticism media arts
minority movements music national movements party dissidents
peace movements philosophical/theoretical movements
popular culture
religious activism
samizdat and tamizdat
scientific criticism social movements
student movement surveillance
survivors of persecutions under authoritarian/totalitarian regimes
theatre and performing arts
underground culture
visual arts
women's movement
youth culture
applied arts objects
artifacts
cartoons & caricatures
clothing equipment
film
furniture
graphics grey literature
legal and/or financial documentation manuscripts memorabilia
music recordings
other other artworks
paintings
photos publications
sculptures video recordings voice recordings
The Igor Cașu Collection represents above all an alternative collection of archival materials about the history of the Soviet Regime in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR), originating from major public archives in the Republic of Moldova that preserve such documents without granting free access to them. The founder of this collection had privileged access to the items that are now part of his collection in the short time span when he acted as vice-president of the Commission for the Study and Evaluation of the Communist Regime in Moldova in 2010. In contrast to the public archives, the Igor Cașu Collection, which also includes an oral history interviews section, is shared with fellow researchers.
The art collection of Indrek Hirv consists of works by artists who continued the spirit of art from before the Soviet occupation. Many of them were persecuted, and later they did not obtain official recognition. Some became reformers of art, who resisted the Soviet discourse and Socialist Realism. Although some works in this collection depicted directly forbidden subject matter, like prison camps and prisoners, resistance to the Soviet regime is expressed mostly through the style.
The digital collection of the Oral History Center contains more than 2000 interviews with twentieth-century witnesses, which are divided into different themes and topics, thus presenting a unique collection of professionally created interviews and memories, many of which are related to the theme of cultural opposition.
The Ion Monoran Collection documents the intellectual profile of one of the leaders of the underground cultural movements in the Banat, who, thanks to his ability to catalyse the action of the crowd gathered in the streets of Timişoara on 16 December 1989, became one of the figures who incontestably made a mark on the Romanian Revolution.
The Irina Margareta Nistor Private Collection includes a series of written documents, together with a few dozen VHS video cassettes preserving a small part of the Western films that were introduced clandestinely into Romania between 1985 and 1989, to be translated and dubbed and then distributed on video cassettes (semi)clandestinely. This collection epitomises a popular culture phenomenon without any equivalent in Eastern Europe, which emerged in Romania as a reaction to the reduction of the official programme broadcast on television channels to just two hours per day and to news broadcasts about the activity of Nicolae Ceauşescu and the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party.