Records of the Foundation for the Support of European Intellectuals

Fonds

184 archival boxes, 23 linear meters of physical documents.

In December 1991 - the year in which it was closed down - the records of the Foundation for the Support of European Intellectuals (Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne, FEIE) were deposited at the Fondation Archives Européennes at l'Université de Genève, Switzerland, by Annette Laborey, secretary general and Timothy Garton Ash, board member of FEIE. Due to an administrative change within the Fondation Archives Européennes (later renamed Centre d’Archives Européennes) in 2012, access to the FEIE Archives for research was no longer available. Thus, the depositors initiated the de-accessioning of the FEIE archives and their transfer to the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. The physical transfer of the FEIE archives to the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives was completed on November 21, 2012.

Constantly defining itself as a non-political organization, the Foundation for the Support of European Intellectuals (Fondation pour une entraide intellectuelle européenne, FEIE) had a unique status among Cold War cultural diplomatic programs. It provided help to individual Eastern European artists and intellectuals who were seen as being non-conformists with regard to the Communist regimes. FEIE was preceded by the Writers' Committee for European Intellectual Cooperation (Comité d’écrivains et d’éditeurs pour une entraide européenne, CEEE), which was created in 1956. The Committee extended its activities by serving as an intermediary between writers and editors. It also started making arrangements with appropriate institutions in Western Europe to provide study grants for Eastern cultural agents. FEIE continued these activities, targeting people who belonged neither to the category of politically reliable intellectuals nor to that of dissidents. FEIE materials include grant and project files, correspondence and memos, as well as administrative files relating to aid and financial support for scientists and intellectuals who worked under oppressive regimes in Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal. There are two main subfonds, reflecting the division between the general administrative work of FEIE and its activities. The two subfonds should be seen in relation to each other, as one reflects the other by containing the operation of the Foundation both in a centralized, systematic way (as managerial files or managerial syntheses) and in a piecemeal way (as the bureaucratic management of individual cases and events). From this point of view, the collection comprises two main types of documents: alphabetically ordered correspondence functioning as case files and transversal bureaucratic papers arranged chronologically and summarizing the results and conditions of such exchanges and interactions.

During the processing of the series no materials have been removed or destructed.

Not Expected

Restricted

The collection contains tenuous onion skin paper copies.

The collection is particularly interesting because it documents the existence, composition and metamorphoses of the cultural grey-zones under communism.

Processed by Ioana Macrea-Toma, Judit Hegedűs, Giovanni Aprea and Örs Lehel Tari, January 2017.