COURAGE

connecting collections

The University Library of Pula initiated the digitization of regional Istrian newspapers in 2005, and a digital page containing 22 digitized newspapers and seven digitized journals, two of which are related to Istrian Fighter (Istrian Fighter and IBOR), was launched in 2010. A total of 64 issues of Istrian Fighter and nine issues of IBOR have been digitized. Istrian Fighter was digitized and posted on the repository page in 2015.

The digital version of Istrian Fighter/IBOR is an important step in promoting research into issues related to the journal itself as well as the presentation of the cultural-opposition activity of the Literary Club and its members in the socialist period.

The collection of Milan Jelínek documents in detail the Communist thinking of a formerly protected linguist, and the later, a critic to the regime, becoming a samizdat publisher and co-organiser of lectures at the underground university. In May 2015, the collection was donated to the Moravian Museum, after Jelínek’s death, by his second wife, Jana Jelínková.

The collection was handed over to the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb on an ex officio basis from the public authorities on two occasions. The majority of the documents was handed over in 2015 from the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Croatia. A minor part of these documents was handed over in 1992 from the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Croatia .

The collection was transferred to the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb on an ex officio basis from the public authorities on several occasions during the period 1991-2015. Most of these documents were handed over from the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Croatia. The first unit of personal files was handed over in 1993. Personal files on paper or microfiche from that Ministry were handed over on several more occasions during 2001 and 2002.

An additional unit of personal files (around 14,8 linear metres) was handed over from the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Republic of Croatia in 2015.

During the period mentioned (1991-2015) individual files were handed over from the Counterintelligence Agency and from the Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia (Andrija Hebrang's file).

The exhibition “My Youth in Communism” aimed at providing a comprehensive image of the everyday life of young people in communist Romania during the 1970s and 1980s. Given the specific nature of the institution which organised the event, the CNSAS, the exhibition highlighted the methods and techniques used by the Securitate in monitoring young people’s leisure activities, such as staking out, informative surveillance, phone-tapping, and illegal interception of private correspondence. The exhibition also described the preventive measures, such as warnings, so-called positive influencing talks, public debates on their alleged deviant behaviour, and forceful dissolution of groups, which the secret police used to employ in order to limit the influence of Western culture on Romanian youth. Many young people came under surveillance after they listened to Cornel Chiriac’s programmes and attempted to get in touch with him through letters. As a result, the exhibition contained documents from the informative file on Cornel Chiriac and also letters that Romanian young people sent to him at the address of the Romanian desk of Radio Free Europe. For more on the exhibition, see http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/evenimente/2018.06.05%20Comunicat%20de%20presa.pdf