Special Collections: Hungarian

The Declassified Documents Reference System provides online access to over 500,000 pages of previously classified United States government documents. Covering major international events from the Cold War to the Vietnam War and beyond, this single source enables users to locate key information underpinning studies in international relations, American studies, United States foreign and domestic policy studies, journalism and more. A wide range of documents is devoted to the Soviet Union, selected Soviet republics, and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Highlights include U.S. intelligence reports on Ukrainian nationalists at the end of the Second World War as possible allies in case of a war with the Soviet Union; the Budapest Uprising of 1956; the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968; the Polish strikes and the Solidarnosc movement, etc.

Created by U.S. Presidential directive during World War II and at first placed under the Federal Communications Commission in 1941, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was later transferred to the War Department, and then to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language materials, make up the Daily Reports.

The FBIS Daily Reports collection is divided into two chronological segments: 1941-1974 and 1974-1996. FBIS Daily Reports, 1941-1974, consists of a single Daily Report publication. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996, is comprised of eight separate regional Daily Reports, of which Part 6 pertains to Eastern Europe (EEU), and Part 7 to the Soviet Union and Central Eurasia (SOV). Regional coverage for eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is also included for the years 1968 to 1974.

The reports includes news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary, and other materials.

The collection includes 115,000 biographical entries taken from lexica, handbooks, yearbooks, almanacs and biographical reference works. It contains articles on some 90,000 people (often more than one article about one person) from Hungarian history beginning in the 9th century through the founding of the Habsburg Empire, its division following the Austro-Prussian War (1866), the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy (the so-called Austro-Hungarian settlement), up to the present.

A collection of reports on politics and military affairs, statistics, interviews, meeting minutes, court proceedings and diplomatic cables, including documentation on the critical period of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 against the Soviet-backed government.

The collection includes 175 newspapers and journals published in Western Ukraine (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia) during the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This database provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of political processes through the lens of revolutions, protests, resistance, and social movements. The collection includes videos, printed materials, and images from a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, including material on the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Prague Spring.

With typescript copy. (1726, Munkacs, Hungary (now Mukachevo, Ukraine)).

The collection includes Hungarian political records pertaining to the Hungarian Nazi Party known as the Arrow-Cross Party under the leadership of Ferenc Szalasi, a Regent and Premier of Hungary in late 1944. Also included are collections of speeches, essays, and other writings of Ferenc Szalasi which serve to complete his diary. In addition, this collection contains Hungarian military records, personal name files of Hungarian Army officers for the World War II period and earlier, maps, books, pamphlets and newspapers in Hungarian.

The Chair of Hungarian Studies was created at the University of Toronto in 1978 through a fundraising initiative launched by the Canadian Hungarian community to establish a permanent teaching position in Hungarian studies.  The first Chair in Hungarian Studies was George Bisztray, who taught in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures until his retirement in 2004.

Files of George Bisztray, Hungarian Chair, covering various topics, including establishment of the chair in 1978 and other academic and administrative matters.

Records of George Bisztray, Chair of Hungarian, including annual reports to the Faculty of Arts and Science, 1978-2004, promotional programme pamphlets, personnel files, as well as correspondence concerning the Finno-Ugric Programme, the Szechenyi Society, and the Hungarian Chair.

A digitized, fully searchable and hyperlinked repository of visual testimonies by almost 52,000 survivors of genocidal wars. The vast majority of the testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust (1939-1945), as well as other Holocaust witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers.

Among the main subjects discussed in the interviews are geographical locations, prominent figures, names of family members and other people, prewar Jewish life, religious practice, cultural life, acts of persecution and prejudice, camps and ghettos, deportations, massacres, means of adaptation or survival, resistance, rescue and aid efforts, and postwar emigration and immigration.