The collection Records of Kevin Devlin and the Communist Area Analysis Department on Non-Ruling Communist Parties’, held by Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, show an alternative story of the Cold War: the story seen by the Communist Parties from non-socialist countries and how they reacted to the Soviet Union’s aggressions.

The collection was dispersed inside the archive and only in 2020 started to be processed systematically. Up to that point, it was thought that Radio Free Europe Research Analysis Department focused solely on the activity of the C.P. from the socialist states. The 131 boxes seem to be at odds at first as they contradicted Radio Free Europe’s archives. In that regard,  the question that naturally arises is: what was the epistemological intention of the Radio Free Europe in trying to map the impact of the Soviet Union’s aggressions on Hungary in the 1950s and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s on the Communist Parties from the non-socialist countries?

This research aims to follow changes in categorical and classificatory practices influenced by official and non-official information availability on the impact of the Soviet Union’s aggression in the 1950s and 1960s. Having understood the epistemological context, I will investigate the role of the mysterious producer of the archive: Kevin Devlin. This part has two primary intentions. First of all, by researching Kevin Devlin’s holding, I intend to understand how the employees gathered information from different source about the aggression of Soviet Union. Having understood the classificatory practice and the biographies of the authors, I will present how this archival collection mirrors the changes outside the archive, particularly focusing on mapping the amorphic forms of revisionisms that resulted after the Soviet Union invasion in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.