István Kemény's Collection in the Vera & Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
István Kemény's Collection in the Vera & Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
The Vera & Donald Blinken Open Society Archives has acquired legacy documents of István Kemény (sociologist, 1925-2008) in 2015. The archival collection has been processed and made available for research last year. As the Blinken OSA collects material related to social and political history of the Cold War and human rights issues, including the situation of minorities, these documents have become a part of the holdings of the most adequate archival institute. The collection provides an insight into the scientific career and public appearances of István Kemény as being produced during the course of social scientific research projects led by him in the 60’s and 70’s, mostly about workers, behavior of managers, poverty and the situation of Roma, while another part of the corpus has been created during the emigration years in Paris, between 1977 and 1990, when Kemény worked for Radio Free Europe. The collection also documents his work as the chief advisor to the Mayor of Budapest, after his return to Hungary. The collection complements and links together other collections of the archives, providing new possibilities for understanding social history of Hungary, the activities of the democratic opposition movement and the situation of emigrant intellectuals. The present study attempts to illustrate these connections between the Kemény and other collections by introducing holdings of the Blinken OSA Archives and endeavoring describe the Kemény collection.