COURAGE

connecting collections

“Literature and the Cominform” is a newspaper article written by Predrag Matvejević (Mostar, 7 October 1932 – Zagreb, 2 February 2017) in which he critically reviews the breaking of the taboo on the Tito-Stalin Split (Yugoslav-Soviet Split) in 1948 and the Goli otok prison camp, and their analysis in Yugoslav literature, theatre and film in the early 1980s.    

The review was published in magazine Start on 24 April 1982. It was founded by newspaper company Vjesnik on 29 January 1969 as a semi-monthly automobile magazine. In the period 1969-1972, when it was edited by Andrinko Krile, such topics were soon left behind, and the magazine focused on interviews about topics avoided in other magazines, and by the mid-1970s it became a magazine that covered politics, culture and the media, to which the most prominent Croatian journalists and intellectuals contributed. Krile was removed from his post as a member of the Croatian Spring, and it was assessed that Start had “succumbed to the base impact of the West and was a part of the Westernisation of Croatia.” According to Božidar Novak, after the Croatian Spring was suppressed, the magazine was rigidly censured, and until the July 1973 it was obliged to pay the so-called “trash tax.” In the period 1973-1980, under editor Sead Saračević, it acquired a new form and journalistic expression. Topics like so-called high culture were added, the works of the world’s top artistic photographers were regularly published, and a prominent place was accorded to feuilletons on political and historical themes. In the period 1980-1987, under editor Mladen Pleše, the magazine focused on new topics such as rock and roll and it highlighted the writings of social analysts and covered sensitive domestic policy topics. This put the magazine in a difficult position, because the political leadership maintained strict watch to ensure that the policy of “With Tito after Tito” was not violated. Political pressure continued when liberal and critical politicians and scholars began to speak in the magazine’s pages. The magazine continued to come out until 22 June 1991.             

The article described above, like many other articles published in Start encompassed in the collection, are available for research and copying.

This 12-page meeting protocol of the Ukrainian National Council is an important historical artifact. it was signed in 1919 by Ivan Horbachevsky, a renowned chemist and professor, who was born in the Galician province of Ternopil, but spent most of his adult life outside Ukraine. This document was produced by the Ukrainian government-in-exile, which was comprised of individuals who fled from the Bolshevik revolution and lobbied for Ukrainian independence from the outside. It predates the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922 and is a byproduct of the tumultuous period most often referred to as the Russian Civil War. Former imperial subjects articulated many differing political projects and visions of the future in the wake of the Russian Empire’s collapse. Among them were the Central Rada and the Ukrainian National (or People's) Republic, which after the fall of the Romanov dynasty lobbied for greater autonomy within the framework established by the Provisional Government. Once it became clear that the Bolsheviks had no intention of honoring that arrangement, they declared the independence of the nine southwestern most provinces, which they referred to as Ukraine. 

This piece hints at the breadth, depth and variety of materials found in the Zina Genyk-Berezovska Collection at the T.H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature in Kyiv. As with most private archives, her collection developed organically and is comprised mostly of her own work as a literary scholar. However, Genyk-Berezovska and her husband were also integrated into a vibrant Ukrainian émigré community in Prague.  Therefore, Genyk-Berezovska’s collection extends beyond personal papers to include materials from the larger community. There is a subsection in her archive with the title “Documents relating to the cultural life of the Ukrainian community in Prague,” as well as material relating to a number of prominent community leaders from the early 20^th Century, like Ivan Horbachevsky. As a result, many surprises await scholars and researchers who plan to work with this collection. Among the materials are a list of interned officers, officials and Cossacks from the archive of Petro Krytskyi, a former colonel in the Ukrainian National Republican army. His papers also have documents relating to humanitarian work of Ukrainian organizations in Czechoslovakia from 1939, and his own personal documents--IDs, passport, directives--from 1914-1919. In the files labeled as the Ivan Horbachevsky Archive, one can find photographs of Horbachevsky himself as well as the Ukrainian community in Prague from 1924, letters written to Professor Horbachevsky in the years 1920-1945, as well as an appeal to Ukrainian "brothers and sisters across the ocean" drafted by the UNR government-in-exile in 1919. 

4 April was one of the most important public holidays in socialist Hungary, because on this day in 1945, the Soviet Red Army finally ousted the German troops from the country. On 4 April, people were required to participate in commemorative marches, but the members of the Calvinist youth organization of Pasarét never accepted the official Communist ideology of the state. Rather, they organized excursions to the mountains around Budapest. This picture was taken on Zsíros Mountain during one of these excursions.

The leadership of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, acting underground because their Church had been officially dissolved by the communist regime in December 1948, sent a memorandum to Ceauşescu in October 1989, in which they asked that the official status of their Church be restored. After the Greek Catholic Church was dissolved by the communist regime, its hierarchs and hundreds of priests continued to practise their confession clandestinely. This underground religious activity continued until the fall of the communist regime. During the 1980s the leadership of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church launched several initiatives that aimed at regaining official status. In 1989, these initiatives were encouraged by the open debates in the Soviet Union about the fate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which led to the restoration of the latter’s official status in December 1989. In this context, marked by the reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, the leadership of the Romanian Greek Catholic church asked Ceauşescu that the situation of the Church be discussed at the fourteenth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party, which was planned to take place in November 1989 and that their church regain its official status. In this respect, the Greek Catholic hierarchy invoked the state constitution. Article 30 of the 1965 Constitution stipulated that: “Freedom of conscience is guaranteed to all citizens of the Socialist Republic of Romania” (ACNSAS, FD 69, vol.1, ff. 45–46). In this respect the Greek Catholic hierarchy had the courage to mention the state repression that targeted their Church’s priesthood and parishioners after 1948, but also the harassment affecting Greek Catholic priests and parishioners at the time when the memorandum was drafted. The Securitate managed to confiscate a copy of this document and attached it to a file of the Documentary Fonds in order to illustrate the anti-State activities of the leadership of the Greek Catholic Church. The document was signed by several bishops and vicars: Alexandru Todea, Ioan Ploscaru, Vasile Hossu, Tertulian Langa, and Lucian Mureşan.