The collection consists of more than 2,400 items: mainly correspondence, manuscripts and objects. This collection was created mainly after Broņislava Martuževa was released from Soviet prison camps in 1956, but some items were in her family's possession, or were created or obtained in the Ozerlag camps. Martuževa wrote poetry all her life, a significant part of which was created when she lived in hiding in 1946-1951. Fortunately, these poems were not confiscated by State Security (MGB) forces in 1951, and were found by Martuževa's brother in 1974. Most of the collection consists of letters and postcards. About 160 of them are letters written by Martuževa to her family and friends from Siberia, and later from different places in Latvia, because she suffered from tuberculosis for several decades, and after her imprisonment she spent long periods in hospitals and sanatoriums. More than 2,000 items are letters and postcards sent to Martuževa by family, friends and other people. Among them were friends she made during her detention, including people sentenced in the French Group cases (the poetess Elza Stērste [1885-1976], the translator of French literature Maija Silmale [1924-1973], etc), as well as other people from the intellectual community. Martuževa kept this correspondence carefully, and it is now an important source for research into these personalities, as well as for understanding the social milieu and mindset of people who were persecuted by the Soviet regime. Martuževa's opposition to the Soviet regime was patriotic and principled, she never reconciled herself to the Soviet occupation or the totalitarian regime, she and her friends never capitulated to Soviet power, and they were constantly under surveillance by the authorities. Maija Silmale was arrested and persecuted by the KGB in 1971, and forbidden to publish her translations. During Soviet rule, Martuževa was known to a comparatively narrow circle of family and friends, but with the beginning of the independence movement in the second half of the 1980s, she became famous as a member of the underground, a political detainee and poetess. Her first poetry book, with poems written while she lived in hiding and in prison, was published under her own name (her two previous ones came out under the name of her relative, the poetess Eva Mārtuža, in 1981 and 1987). Martuževa became a public figure. She was asked to participate in events and received awards. Writers, journalists, researchers and people from the emigre community joined her network of correspondents. From approximately the mid-1990s to the beginning of the 2000s, Martuževa gradually donated her personal papers and most valuable personal possessions to the Museum of Literature and Music.
