COURAGE

connecting collections

Some of the documents were initially classified in the State Security Service as highly confidential. In September 2015, all documents were declassified. As mentioned in the SOA's Public Report for 2016, “the Agency's intention is that these valuable archival documents become available to the scholarly and general public, thereby enabling a clearer overview of that period of Croatian history” (SOA. 2016 Public Report, p. 42).

A notice posted on the Agency's web pages on 25 September 2015 also pointed out that the acquisition of the State Security Service Collection by the Croatian State Archives “distances the SOA from any connection to the activities, methods and traditions of the former State Security Service.” It was concluded that after doing so, “the SOA has been recognised as a modern security-intelligence agency of a democratic state which adheres to the practices of services in states with long democratic traditions where this pertains to declassification of documents for which there are no longer grounds for maintaining confidentiality.”

The ‘Goli Otok’ collection (PB 39) was formed in 2015 on the basis of a donation by academician Dragoslav Mihailović. It was created as a separate library entity with the idea that all literature relevant to this topic would be collected here. This is a library in the making and as such new material is regularly added.    

The Croatian State Security Service Collection on the Milovan Djilas case and Djilas supporters in Croatia (Djilasovci), was handed over to the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb on an ex officio basis from the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Croatia in 2015. The documents were then also declassified. It led to increased possibilities for research into the phenomenon of cultural opposition and dissent, as well as state surveillance of such activities.

The content of the collection is entirely relevant to cultural opposition topics. It testifies to the political and ideological movements in Communist Yugoslavia/Croatia in the 1950s. It also documents the nature of the communist system of government, which was still based on a monopoly by Communist Party leaders to decide what was and  was not acceptable, i.e., permissible (Najbar-Agičić 2016, p. 136).

The Croatian State Security Service collection on Operation Tuškanac was handed over to the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb on an ex officio basis from the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Croatia in 2015. It was one of several operations conducted by the Croatian State Security Service against members of the Croatian Spring, a national movement in which student reform demands were an essential element.