Suchergebnisse

Croatian journalist and writer Jakša Kušan (1931–2019) was one of the most prominent Croatian émigré dissidents. By editing and publishing the non-partisan magazine Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia), he tried to inform the global public about the suppression of human rights and civil liberties in socialist Yugoslavia, even under constant threat of being attacked by the Yugoslav secret police. After the fall of communism, he returned to Croatia and continued his work in the media and the civil sector for a brief time. In this article, I offer an overview of the most relevant of Kušan's oppositional activities during the period of communist rule in Croatia and Yugoslavia and consider the roles and impact of his activities. I also venture some explanation as to why his life and work have mostly been forgotten in today's Croatia. One possible answer to this question could be his complex relationships with the Croatian dissidents who won the first multiparty elections in Croatia in 1990. My discussion is based on the findings of the COURAGE project (Cultural Opposition – Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries), oral history sources, and archival documents of the Yugoslav secret police.

Cet article vise à mettre en avant le parcours fascinant d'Ante Ciliga, journaliste, écrivain, dissident communiste et émigré politique, et à mettre en valeur l'histoire de son fonds d'archive ( Ante Ciliga Papers ) déposé à la Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Zagreb. Cet article révèle également la singulière histoire des archives de Ciliga et montre comment elles ont récemment été exploitées par l'historiographie.

U radu se prikazuje kako je u historiografskom časopisu (Časopis za suvremenu povijest)
tretirana gospodarska povijest. U članku se najprije upućuje na moguće definicije pojma gospodarske povijesti te daje kratak osvrt na razvoj te
znanstvene subdiscipline u svjetskoj i hrvatskoj historiografiji. Najveći dio članka posvećen je pregledu sadržaja relevantnih radova na stranicama Časopisa, a nakon toga autor prikazuje i analizira brojčane pokazatelje o broju članaka, tematici koja se obrađivala, kategorijama i autorima radova i priloga objavljivanih u Časopisu
od njegova osnutka 1969. do kraja 2018. godine. Uz nekoliko tabličnih i
grafičkih prikaza autor je kao poseban prilog načinio kompletnu bibliografiju članaka koji se odnose na teme iz gospodarske povijesti.

Cet article porte sur la perception par la classe ouvrière de l'accroissement des inégalités sociales dans la Yougoslavie des années 1960. L'analyse des lettres, des pétitions et des revendications adressées par les ouvriers aux plus hautes autorités de l'État et l'examen des statistiques et des analyses produites par les mêmes autorités font apparaître le point de vue des ouvriers et les raisons de leur mécontentement. La principale cause d'insatisfaction était l'accroissement des inégalités socio-économiques entre eux et la couche sociale la plus élevée, au premier chef l'élite dirigeante des entreprises. Du point de vue des ouvriers, les inégalités étaient perceptibles non seulement à travers les salaires, mais aussi à travers les relations au sein des entreprises et d'autres aspects de la vie sociale, comme le logement.

Croatian politician Većeslav Holjevac (1917-1970) has been remembered as one of the most successful mayors of the city of Zagreb. However, his character and political work are scarcely known to the public today. His merits in the cultural sphere are mostly forgotten, as well as the fact that he was one of the most important Croatian dissidents. His case delineates the issue of the Croatian national reform movement known as the Croatian Spring. Due to his solid character he was not afraid to defend his standpoints, even in the fights with communist comrades who were higher in the hierarchy of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which caused his political decline. The article presents the critical moments of his dissent and political disagreement with his comrades that led him to the role of the party renegade. The article also discusses the claims that Holjevac's was to become the leader of the Croatian Spring.

This paper is a response to the article "What Typological Appellation is Suitable for Tito's Yugoslavia" published by Sergej Flere and Rudi Klanjšek in Istorija 20. veka, in which the two authors responded to our criticism of their previously published article. Unfortunately, the two authors saw our paper as an attack, either on them personally or on their academic merits and research, which was neither the aim nor desire of our response. In this article, we contest and dispute the arguments and claims made by Flere and Klanjšek, and especially their attempt to discredit us by actually fabricating our words. Instead of engaging in an open academic debate, Flere and Klanjšek attempt to derail this debate from its core by focusing solely on some minor mistakes, thus trying to show that we were superficial and counter-factual. Our decision to reflect on some of their statements served the purpose of demonstrating that Flere and Klanjšek's response was far from an expected academic debate. In fact, in their response Flere and Klanjšek avoided addressing the crucial issues pertaining to the question of totalitarianism and the occurring dynamics of the Yugoslav communists' idea on how to structure, rule, and supervise Yugoslav society. On the contrary, they decided to resolve this issue by introducing new views on the subject and new "solutions," which deliver little substance to the key issues of this debate. However, our article reveals that the majority of their arguments is questionable or can be outright refuted by taking into consideration contemporary views on totalitarianism and the existing empirical data. This is evident with regard to the questions of historical dynamism, secret services, unified foreign policy, the role and position of the individual, Tito's role and power, and Flere and Klanjšek's distorted view of communist legitimacy. In our conclusion we point to the key aspects that need to be taken into consideration when discussing the nature of Tito's Yugoslavia. Namely: (i) citizens were unable to cast their votes in free elections and were thus denied the opportunity to have any impact on the political, social, or economic politics that influenced their lives; (ii) the only "legitimate" way to exert individual influence in the political, social or economic area was to conform to and accept the prevalent idea of the communist interpretation of Marxism, the communist worldview, and the political power of the communist party; (iii) any attempt to openly oppose and/or criticize the regime was met with repercussions and punishment; (iv) any such activities were suppressed by the state apparatus on the republic and federal levels; (v) every individual or group active within the political structures was aware of Tito's power to remove whomever he and his closest associates deemed "dangerous" or "destructive" elements; (vi) the communist leadership in the federal republics was faced with forceful removal and suppression when their policies were evaluated as non-compliant or dangerous; (vii) from an early age, individuals were immersed into the collective where they had to learn what it meant to be a "proper" and "respected" citizen. All these aspects were in force until the breakdown of Tito's Yugoslavia. In conclusion, the occurring changes and dynamics never altered this totalitarian experiment's core idea and its primary goal: to establish a socialist/communist society ruled by one party, the LCY, supervised by its police, secret service, army, and guided by a single ideological framework of the communist interpretation of Marxism.

This paper is a response to an article "Was Tito's Yugoslavia totalitarian?" published in the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014). The two authors indicate the inadequate theoretical framework and untenable interpretations made by Flere and Klanjšek, who provided a distorted picture of former Yugoslav society and the position of an individual in it. Their reduced theory of totalitarianism combined with their simplified interpretations served their aim of proving that the system established by the Yugoslav communists was not totalitarian nor did it strive to become one. Flere and Klanjšek's main argument for the absence of totalitarianism is that of a federal state concept of Yugoslavia, which is not in correlation with contemporary understanding of totalitarianism. By deconstructing their arguments, this article argues for a more elaborated and up-to-date conceptual understanding of Tito's Yugoslavia and its relation to the concept of totalitarianism.

Franjo Tuđman (1922-1999), who participated in the anti-fascist partisan movement from the beginning of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, in his military career, reached the rank of general. However, in 1961 he abandoned the military service, dedicated himself to historiography and became the first director of the newly established Institute of History of the Labor Movement. For his views and papers in which he reflected on some historical events, he came into conflict with the communist authorities who accused him being "non-Marxist" and nationalist. In 1967 he was expelled from the League of Communists and forced to retire. However, he did not stand still thus began his career as dissident – he was publishing papers on the history of Yugoslavia and Croatian status in the Federation. During the period of Croatian national movement, known as the Croatian Spring, he expressed his views on the Croatian national question in Yugoslavia even more clearly. This led to his arrest, political trial and his conviction to two years in prison in 1972. In 1981 he was sentenced to three years in prison and a ban on every public activity in the period of five years because he gave some interviews to the Western media. Based on so far published court records of the County Court in Zagreb where Tuđman was convicted both times, Tuđman's memoirs and various literature, this article will reconstruct Tuđman's trials and explain their primary role - to silence any dissident activity and to eliminate alternative view on the history and the national issues within Yugoslavia. The documents from the trials show the pattern of mounted political processes in which the verdict was set in advance. But this case will also show that these political processes had counterfeits significant for the collapse of communism in Croatia.

This paper aims to explore the role of the archives in dealing with the communist past, that is, in regard to the public debates about the contested archival materials and the problems which researchers have been facing in Croatia over the last two decades. It will inquire into the past practice of Croatian historians in carrying out research on the communist period. The article examines the state of the archives in Croatia, especially with regard to the most critical archival fonds – the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia (CK SKH) and the files of the State Security Service (SDS) of the Republic Secretariat of Internal Affairs, which are kept in the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb. Since the independence of Croatia, those archival materials have been the subject of many debates in Croatian public and political life. Finally, this article will showcase the practical consequences of the newly adopted legal changes, especially in the case of the Horizon 2020 project "COURAGE – Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent" (2016-9). ; Rad govori o problemu javnoga tretmana povijesnoga naslijeđa iz vremena vladavine komunizma te nastoji prikazati ulogu arhiva u suočavanju s komunističkom prošlošću u Hrvatskoj. Uz prikaz nesuglasja i polemika u široj javnosti o osjetljivom arhivskom gradivu iz razdoblja socijalizma (1945.-1990.), članak prikazuje probleme s kojima su se istraživači, primarno povjesničari, suočavali prilikom istraživanja u proteklih više od dvadeset godina. Prikazani su uvjeti u kojima je istraživano navedeno razdoblje, dostupnost arhivskoga gradiva, ponajprije u vezi s fondovima koji su najčešća tema javnih debata – fond Centralnoga komiteta Saveza komunista Hrvatske (CK SKH) i fond Službe državne sigurnosti (SDS) Republičkoga sekretarijata unutrašnjih poslova (RSUP) Socijalističke Republike Hrvatske (SRH), koji su pohranjeni u Hrvatskom državnom arhivu u Zagrebu (HDA). Od osamostaljenja Hrvatske to je arhivsko gradivo bilo tema brojnih rasprava u javnosti, pogotovo u onoj političkoj, čak i na najvišoj razini. Povjesničari su naglašavali važnost toga gradiva za spoznavanje recentnije hrvatske povijesti, no ono je istodobno bilo korišteno i u dnevnopolitičkim raspravama, koje su dovodile do stanja tzv. rata dosjeima. U hrvatskim medijima često je spominjano "čišćenje" arhiva, što je najviše bilo izraženo u tzv. slučaju Perković. Praksa u prvih dvadesetak godina hrvatske samostalnosti pokazala je da su postojale ozbiljne poteškoće u istraživanju socijalističkog razdoblja hrvatske povijesti, prvenstveno zbog nedostupnosti relevantnoga arhivskoga gradiva. Poteškoće su bile posljedica nedostatka političke volje najvažnijih političkih stranaka za ozbiljnim pristupom toj problematici. No, münchensko suđenje (2014.-2016.) nekadašnjim visokopozicioniranim djelatnicima Službe državne sigurnosti Josipu Perkoviću i Zdravku Mustaču pokrenulo je nove političke i društvene promjene u pogledu dostupnosti toga gradiva. Uskoro je jedna relativno nova politička stranka Most pokrenula inicijativu za otvaranjem i onih dijelova arhiva koji su dotad bili nedostupni ili čija je dostupnost bila ograničena. Inicijativa je 2017. rezultirala izmjenama Zakona o arhivskom gradivu i arhivima, a u srpnju 2018. donesen je potpuno novi Zakon o arhivskom gradivu i arhivima temeljen na prethodnim promjenama. Prema podatcima Hrvatskoga državnoga arhiva, korištenje tih arhivskih fondova drastično je povećano nakon navedenih zakonskih izmjena. Ipak, potpuni utjecaj tih zakonskih promjena vidjet će se tek u budućnosti, odnosno u novim znanstvenim radovima povjesničara i drugih istraživača. Članak je predstavio praktične posljedice primjene tih zakonskih promjena na primjeru rezultata projekta COURAGE: Kulturna opozicija – razumijevanje kulturne baštine neslaganja u bivšim socijalističkim državama, koji je u trogodišnjem razdoblju od 2016. do 2019. financirala Europska unija u okviru programa Obzor 2020.