COURAGE

prepájame zbierky

In early 1972, the Municipal Conference of League of the Communists of Croatia (LCC) in Zadar appointed a separate working group with the task of interrogating and assessing the political responsibility of 16 party members accused for escalating the “mass movement” in the city of Zadar.

As most of the reformist communist leaders at the republic (Miko Tripalo and Savka Dapčević Kučar) and local level (those who were supporters of Tripalo and Dapčević-Kučar), Ivan Aralica resigned from his post as deputy chairman of the Municipal Conference of LCC - municipality of Zadar in the course of December 1971. Although not a single incriminating word was found in his texts and statements, the working group of the Municipal Conference conducted an inquiry and found evidence against him:

A) as a deputy chairman of the Conference of LCC of the municipality of Zadar, Aralica did nothing to prevent nationalist-chauvinist discussions at conferences, he participated in discussions in which he positively emphasized the activities of Matica hrvatska (MH), he did not condemn individual nationalist outbursts, he submitted papers in which he supported the endeavours of the [Croatian] national movement;

B) at the event “Croatia Yesterday and Tomorrow,” he persuaded the organisers to invite the writer Petar Šegedin regardless of his political qualifications; did not see anything negative in the “politicization of the masses,” although it was clear that this was the heart of the ideology of the mass movement;

C) as president of the MH branch in Zadar, he actively participated in its work and in the creation of its policies, and in the establishment of the special committee of MH in Nin and other villages. Although he knew that MH was turning into a political organisation, he positively assessed its work, although he should not have done so as a political leader;

D) he actively participated in the organisation of the event “Croatia Yesterday and Today” together with representatives of the League of Socialist Youth. The political consequences of this event are very well known;

E) he supported the student newspaper Zoranić and those standpoints in line with the mass movement;

F) he was engaged in overcoming the resistance of the editorial board of the weekly Narodni tjednik (People’s Weekly) in order to subordinate them to the attitudes and needs of the political forces in power;

G) he was an active member of the committee to rename streets and squares, which also had political consequences (Aralica 2014, 128-129).

Although the party cell of the organisation where he worked (the Pedagogy Gymnasium in Zadar) did not find any culpability in his actions, the working group concluded that “his contribution to the escalation of the ‘mass movement’ was immense” (Aralica 2014, 129). Because of this, Aralica was suspended from the League of the Communists of Croatia in May 1972.

Also interesting in the context of the COURAGE project and the history of cultural opposition is the Stenographic Record of the 16^th Session of the Republic Council of the Parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia which dealt with the problematic selection of the winner of the Božidar Adžija state prize. The minutes show the pressure exerted by the authorities on members of the award committee, especially its chairman, V. Holjevac. He was the chairman of that committee, and the document is in the collection because the Commission dealt with his activities contrary to the preconceived precepts in general. They therefore collected materials outside of the scope of the Emigrant Foundation of Croatia as well. The aforementioned committee usually awarded prizes to prominent scholars and cultural workers, and that year the award went to important representatives of the already condemned Praxis philosophical circle, Milan Kangrga, the founder, and Gajo Petrović, the founder and editor of the philosophical journal Praxis (1964-1974) and co-founder and member of the Korčula Summer School Council. According to the opinion of the members of the Republic Council and the Commission for the Examination of Nationalist Phenomena in the Emigrant Foundation of Croatia, the choice of the award was wrong because there was already " serious political criticism at the expense of these acts." Holjevac was subsequently removed from the post of committee chairman.

By 1995, the document was, along with the other records of socio-political organisations, a part of the Archives of the Institute of History of the Labour Movement of Croatia/Institute for Contemporary History. That year, in July, it was handed over to the Croatian State Archives (CSA) ​where it is kept today. The documents are accessible for use without any restrictions.

The cover and content of the Croatian State Security Service's report on enemy activities of religious communities and its countermeasures in 1965. Such multi-annual and annual overviews/reports on the activities of religious communities, with particular focus on their activities, classified as “hostile activities,” were prepared by the Service regularly. The most oft-cited forms of “hostile activity” by religious communities included incitement of ethnic hatred, hostile propaganda and the dissemination of false news, abuse of religion and the church for political purposes, incitement of religious hatred and intolerance, hostile activities against the state through émigré organisations, the émigré and religious press, and influencing workers and émigré communities. Considerable attention was focused on religious publications and foreign travel by religious leaders. The reports also include data on the Service's collaborative network and measures (studies, controls and operational measures) to counter such activities.      

In that particular report for the year 1965, the main activities of the Roman Catholic Church were analysed in the context of Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the negotiations in the early 1960s between the Vatican and Yugoslavia meant to settle relations between the Yugoslav Government and the Catholic Church, which resulted with the signing of the protocol a year later (25 June 1966).     

During 1965, which can be seen in Service's Report, Church-State relations deteriorated. The primary cause was a letter to church members adopted by the assembly of the Conferences of Bishops in Zagreb in May of that year. The Report highlights that its adoption “constitutes an abuse of religion and the Church for political purposes and an attack on the social and political system“ in the country. Another  cause was the celebration of the 250^th anniversary of Our Lady of Sinj in Sinj on 15 August of that same year. As described by Akmadža, the authorities were irritated with Bishop Franić's circular letters on the occasion of the celebration, in which, when writing about the presence of Cardinal Šeper at the celebration (he became cardinal in that same year), he often emphasised the national character of the celebration and appeared to promote ultra-nationalist tendencies (Akmadža 2004, p. 492). In this vein, in the Report, the Service assessed that it  “it recognised the tendency to give Šeper not only the role and status of Church or religious leader, but also the status of national leader.”

Report about "Agency-operational work of the organs of the State Security to prevent the attempts of the enemy to carry out ideological diversion and other subversive activities among the intelligentsia and forthcoming tasks", Sofia, April 10, 1979.
The report identifies weaknesses in the work of the State Security. It emphasizes the need to focus on preventive measures and "prophylactic work". For the past two years, the number of agents working with respect to the intelligentsia has doubled. However, the report stresses that the Unions of Artists, Actors and Journalists, and some institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of Science and the Ministry of People’s Health are still weakly covered. Thus, the report not only gives a vivid illustration of the work of the State Security in the late 1970s and of its assessment of the political attitudes of intellectuals; it also shows how the state security evaluated its own work and what rhetoric they used to demand more resources.

Matica hrvatska (MH) became the central Croatian cultural institution during the Croatian Spring, gathering the Croatian intelligentsia that was dissatisfied with the position of Croatia within the Yugoslav federation, especially with the attitude of the federal government toward Croatian national identity. For this reason, the communist government began to look at it as an institution that spread oppositional political ideas. By the fall of the Croatian Spring in 1972, Matica was practically abolished, and many of its prominent members came under attack by state repression under the accusations of "Croatian nationalism." The bearer of all actions against MH was the Republic Internal Affairs Secretariat (RSUP) of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which also collected information about the work of Matica and its branches years before the quashing of the Croatian Spring. Following the political decision in Karađorđevo in December 1971, the RSUP was tasked with filing a report on the work of MH that was supposed to serve as a basis for future indictments and the court prosecution of Matica hrvatska’s members.

The RSUP inspectors compiled a report on oversight of the legality of the work of the Matica hrvatska on five hundred typed pages. The first 150 pages refer to the history of Matica and the work of its centre in Zagreb, while the rest of the report is dedicated to its branches in numerous cities. The history, structure and the activities of the institution were given, as well as data on the most prominent individuals and their activities. A special section is devoted to the links of Matica with Croatian émigrés, which the communist regime usually characterised as "hostile political emigration." The report ends with a brief conclusion (on one page) that Matica "has grown into an association for achieving counter-revolutionary goals" (Hekman 2002, 484). Based on this report, indictments were written, and trials against Croatian intellectuals were conducted.

The Matica hrvatska Collection at the Croatian State Archives maintains the original copy of the Report on oversight of the legality of the work of Matica hrvatska, based on which Matica published a reprint (Hekman 2002) with an accompanying foreword by Josip Bratulić. One copy of the 1972 Report is also stored at the National and University Library in Zagreb.