From the introduction to the exhibit "The Battle for Hearts and Minds: World War II Propaganda" currently on display at the Hoover Institution, by Dr. George H. Nash

Andrzej Paczkowski, professor of history in the Political Studies Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and his country’s most respected authority on Communism, is in residence in the Hoover Tower during the month of May. He is surveying and exploring Hoover’s extensive research collections on modern Poland. Paczkowski’s historical works, some of which have been translated into English (The Black Book of Communism, and The Spring will be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom), are well known to specialists. Much less is known about the Polish historian’s past as one of the underground archivists of “Solidarity,” the premier pro-democracy movement in all of the former Soviet Bloc, and about his important role in building Hoover’s Polish collections.

Image credit: Janet Chang

On Thursday, April 19, 2012, a five-member delegation from the Estonian Parliament, including Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Sven Mikser, chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Estonia; Kadri Simson; Imre Sooäär; and Birgit Leppik, secretary, visited the Hoover Institution Library and Archives to examine materials from the Baltics, mainly Estonia. All are members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees Estonia’s relations with other states and international organizations and maintains contacts with foreign affairs committees of the parliaments of other countries. Andrus Viirg, director of Enterprise Estonia Silicon Valley, joined members of the delegation on their visit.

Image credit: Janet Chang

A delegation from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China visited the Hoover Archives on Tuesday, April 10, 2012. Led by Ambassador Chongli Guo, director general of the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the delegation included researchers Sulin Zhang and Mitao Wang. Consul Zhen Liu and Vice Consul Zhouzhou Bian of the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco accompanied the delegation.