The library’s primary purpose is to collect and make available materials suitable to support research within IRIR.
The Institute’s library has grown rapidly through acquisitions and donations of monographs, collections of documents, periodicals and other publications focusing on the recent history of East-Central Europe. It is our institute’s goal to establish a highly specialized library in Romanian and international languages in order to provide a sound basis for research and training in recent history. Currently, IRIR’s library holds about five thousands volumes in Romanian, English, French, German, Dutch, and Russian. As for the collections of periodicals, IRIR’s holdings include: Journal of Contemporary History (1966-2002); Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (1972-2001); Revue française d’Histoire d’Outre-mer (1972-2002); Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (1963-2003); Jahrbuch für Ostrecht (1964-1993); Revista arhivelor (1926-2000); Magazin Istoric (1967-1998); Arhivele totalitarismului (1994-2002); Sfera politicii (1992-2002); Studia politica – Revista Româna de Stiinta Politica (2000-2003), etc.
IRIR also collects archival material from different sources – private and institutional – and its archives are a repository for over twenty-six linear meters of original documents. Among the most precious documents preserved in IRIR’s archives one can mention the personal archive of Ghita Ionescu, a prominent political theorist of communist regimes, as well as documents produced by leading figures of the Romanian emigration. IRIR’s archives also include numerous original documents from the archive of the Brasov branch of the Romanian Communist Party.
At the same time, IRIR has received a substantial donation from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, consisting of some 160,000 pages of microfilm, a unique archival material in Romania. This invaluable archival fund contains documents related to the deportation of Romanian Jews to Transnistria (now part of the Ukraine) during the Second World War, when that territory was under Romanian rule.
The archive also gathers documents from the archives of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the former Securitate (Secret Police), the private archive of the Ratiu family, and the former “Gauck” authority in Berlin. They provide extensive information on the attack on communist Romania’s legation in Bern, Switzerland, carried out on February 14, 1955, by a group of exiled Romanians led by Oliviu Beldeanu.
