Location

• Budapest, Teve str. 3-5.
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• Hungary
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Languages

• English
• Hungarian

Name of collection

• Documents of György and Miklós Krassó (1956-1989)

Provenance and cultural activities

• After 1956, György Krassó systematically collected documents about the Hungarian Revolution and, later, the opposition. After Krassó’s death in 1991, his partner, Ágnes Háy, collected the documents and donated them to the Budapest City Archives as a deposit in 1995. In 2000–2001, the documents were sorted systematically. The archivists created a collection of unpublished samizdats. One copy of each was given to the Open Society Archives. The books from the collection were given to the library of the Budapest City Archives. The archivists arranged the material, but they kept Krassó’s original name and categorization of the documents (for example, the folders on “The Hungarian Political, Oppositional Movements”).

Description of content

• The archive material primarily consists of things gathered in the course of György Krassó’s activity after 1985 (except for a few basic documents, such as his identity card, diploma etc.). There are ten boxes containing writings by Miklós Krassó too, György Krassó’s brother. The collection includes 23 boxes containing Krassó’s correspondence with various individuals from the second half of the 1980s. The collection also contains the manuscript of “Should we forget the Revolution?”, which is a compilation of recollections of freedom fighters on 1956. It has never been published in its entirety. The collection also includes unpublished reports about the Hungarian opposition. The collection contains several photographs of the Revolution of 1956 by Erich Lessing. The samizdat collection includes writings by István Bibó, Bulgakov, István Csurka, György Dalos, István Eörsi, György Faludi, Ferenc Fehér, Miklós Haraszti, Ágnes Heller, Václav Havel, András Hegedűs, Oszkár Jászi, István Kemény, János Kis, György Konrád, Arthur Koestler, Milan Kundera, Bill Lomax, Tibor Méray, Zdenek Mlynár, George Orwell, Ion Pacepa, György Petri, Ezra Pound, Zoltán Szabó, Géza Szőcs, Miklós Tamás Gáspár, etc.

Content

• Unknown type: 1000-
• manuscripts (ego-documents, diaries, notes, letters, drafts, etc.): 500-999

Operator(s)

• Budapest City Archives

Owner(s)

• Háy, Ágnes

Stakeholder(s) of the collection

• Háy, Ágnes

Geographical scope of recent operation

• international

Topics

• democratic opposition
• samizdat and tamizdat

Founder(s)

• Háy, Ágnes

Date of founding

• 1995

Place of founding

• Budapest, Hungary
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Creator(s) of content

• Krassó, György
• Krassó, Miklós

Collector(s)

• Háy, Ágnes
• Krassó, György

Important events in the history of the collection

• Renaming the Münnich Ferenc street to Nádor street by György Krassó in Budapest (1989)
• Donation of the collection of György Krassó to the Budapest City Archives

Featured items

• Philipp, Tibor. Krassó György's performance: Renaming the Münnich Ferenc street, Budapest, 1989. Photo

Access type

• parts are closed to the public

Author(s) of this page

• Pál, Zoltán

References

Modor Ádám: Célkeresztben Krassó [Krassó in Target]. Kairosz Kiadó, Budapest, 2006.

Háy, Ágnes, interview by Pál, Zoltán, September 23, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection