...Materials will soon be available in this language as well
This is not an official archive of the Social Enterprise Rilindja. The archive of this Enterprise with all its once functional entities, were not inherited to today. This material has been carefully collected amidst the dust and ashes of everything hitherto considered useless and lost from “Rilindja”, but was created by it, by the journalists who came out of Rilindja, by the writers whose works Rilindja published, by its editors and photographers.
At the forefront of this archive is the Publications Editorial Board of Rilindja, which has in a way also enliven Kosovo community of writers in the period post-World War II period, especially after the opening of a literary magazine ‘Jeta e Re’ fostering literature creation, critique, translation and literary intercommunication.
This archive does not assume an evaluating character of any historical period and the archival materials are not placed in the archive according to any assessment criteria. The materials are arranged according to a historic timeline and their purpose is to document in an audio, figure and textual form materials found of the period 1945-1999, without an attempt to recontextualize them.
Archival materials have been extracted as a result of a scientific historical research and tracing process through official and personal archives of the writers or journalists themselves and their inheritors.
This archive is not intended for Rilindja solely, nor the Kosovo writers of 1945-1999, rather it aims capturing a wider scope. Given that Rilindja was an organization comprised of a large network of publications, photographic registries, articles, translations, illustrations, this archive aims to capture an outlook including documenting Rilindja together with its writers but also writers’ manuscripts, personal pictures, written correspondence which are the best museal reflection of Kosovo history of 1945-1999.
-Museum projection of this archive documents social life through sets of pictures, especially personal ones.
-Intellectual life through sets of videos, interviews, manuscripts
-Political life through the written works, official pictures, historical development of the press and its documentation through oral history.
The collective philosophy and psychology of a nation, community or culture can be seen perhaps only when looked back in the past, not by merely reading pages of Rilindja newspaper, but rather by documenting what might have been lost between lines, what was not able to be expressed in the newspaper, but rather what was captured unintentionally in the eyes of people in the picture, in the written correspondence and the way the writers made literature. Literature is the most trustworthy document of a society, even when created in a vacuum, as it was in the period of Rilindja newspaper in Kosovo.
In order to preserve and celebrate, as much as possible, the contribution of cultural and spiritual heritage and to lay a strong foundation for that community, of not only literary, but also of activists of knowledge and writings, we will continually display material found in press and press development, literary world, photography and lifestyle through writings from 1945-1999. In this way we would have a more realistic picture of cultural heritage, writing and history itself in Kosovo and other Balkan regions.
This disclosure is a process and requires continuous engagement, time and cooperation with citizens who possess information or material that would serve to supplement the documentary material. The materials you see on this platform are in the process of being complemented. Press contributors will be identified over time. You can contribute to their completion by providing additional information or sharing your experiences or materials.
Ervina Halili
Rilindja Archive 1945-1999.
