COURAGE

connecting collections

The Center for Women’s Studies is a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Belgrade. It is autonomous and independent from political structures or groups. The fundamental task of the Center for Women’s Studies is to support and improve theoretical models that embrace differences and plurality. The most important aim of the Center is the theoretical examination of the possibility of resistance and of political action against social practices of discrimination and exclusion based on sex, skin color, class, gender, sexuality and ethnic, national, religious affiliation.

The foundation of Women’s Studies in Belgrade was initiated in 1991 by the Belgrade feminist group Woman and Society. The first experimental, one-semester course, began symbolically on March 8 (International Women’s Day) in 1992. From 1992 to 2012, a library was developed that contains more than 6,000 books and 400 magazines. During this period collaboration took place with 70 organizations throughout the country, the region and beyond. It is also important to note that over 1,500 students have attended its lectures.

The Center’s long-term strategy is to develop and establish academic programs that are based on the right to be different; that is, to think and act differently.

The Center’s activities cover different fields, but the they have been arranged together to create a sophisticated alternative educational program. The Center’s primary focus is on lectures, supporting research projects, further expanding the library and information center and publishing. The Center also organizes workshops, courses and conferences.

Originally, it was conceptualized as a movement for peace: the Center for Women’s Studies operated from its very beginning in the context of the Yugoslav wars (1991-1999). Therefore, the starting point of the Center’s work, as an educational project, has been the fact that it was not a value-neutral project nor was it ever represented as one. This is due to its clear political commitment to work against war and nationalism as well as being rooted in the tradition of feminist activism. 

In addition to the development of a teaching program, the Center for Women’s Studies has developed other activities over the past 10 years that support lectures and complement its educational profile. Above all is the publishing of texts such as the Journal of Women’s Studies (now Genero), launched in 1995, a series of translations and books by local authors, its ongoing maintenance of the library (founded in 1994) and conducting research.

The Center for the Documentation of Totalitarian Regimes was established to explore the history of the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of the 20th century. CDTR wants to contribute to the preservation of historical memory and the protection of human rights.

CDTR activities include historical and archival research, oral history, academic and civic education, focusing on topics related to the existence of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in the 20th century. It also focuses on practical cooperation with other similarly-oriented bodies at both a national and international level, organizing internal and public seminars, lectures and conferences, organizing campaigns and petitions, publishing and distributing printed and electronic publications, and also conducting advisory and consulting activities in the above-mentioned areas.

The CDTR runs three web sites: minulost.cz (an online portal for the documentation of totalitarian regimes), iBadatelna (the State Security documentation portal) and vons.cz (a website collecting information on the history of the Committee for the Defense of Unjustly Prosecuted People).

CDTR has no employees. It is a non-profit organization that is run in the free time of its members.

The League of Communists (LoC) of Kosovo was founded in 1944, as a provincial branch of Yugoslavia’s LoC. Due to the decentralization process, and similarly to the other republican and provincial branches in Yugoslavia, the Central Committee to Kosovo’s LoC received autonomy from party leadership in Belgrade beginning in the mid-1960s. The Central Committee to the LoC of Kosovo was dominated by local Albanians who advocated for the greater autonomy of Kosovo within Yugoslavia. With the 1974 constitution, although formally part of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, Kosovo became a federal unit. Due to political developments in Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s, the LoC of Serbia, under Slobodan Milosevic’s leadership, launched a campaign to restrict autonomy in Kosovo. Though Kosovar leadership opposed this action, leaders of the Central Committee to Kosovo’s LoC were forced to resign under threat from both army and police forces.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia (CPC)/League of Communists of Croatia (LCC) was the highest body of the CPC/LCC between the two congresses. The CP organizations in Yugoslavia, as well as the CP organizations in its federal units, managed their central committees.
The CPC was a part of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY)/League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) which was the ruling political organization in the former Yugoslavia in the period 1945-1990. The LC dictated the overall development of Yugoslav and Croatian society, and Party decisions were largely binding on the state and republic authorities and governmental bodies, as well as for mass political organizations. 

The Central National Historical Archives in Bucharest (ANIC), located in Bucharest, is the main branch of the National Archives of Romania. The national archive system is financed by and operates under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is divided into one central branch in Bucharest, one local branch also in Bucharest, and forty-one county branches. Its main purpose is to collect, preserve, and make available to Romanian and foreign citizens documents created by Romanian state institutions (including religious ones) and personalities who played an important role in the political, social, and cultural life of Romania. Besides archival documents, the National Archives branches house an impressive library with periodicals, incunabula, manuscripts, old books, maps, and photographs.

The organisation of the national archives dates back to the nineteenth century (1831 in Wallachia and 1832 in Moldavia) when a new set of laws called Regulamentul Organic (Organic Regulation) was implemented. The following years witnessed an increased concern for drafting regulations about the selection, preservation, and use of archival documents (Berciu-Drăghicescu 1994, 39–40, 46–47). After the creation of the Romanian state through the union of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859, the archival system was reorganised. Thus, in 1862 the State Archives established a central branch in Bucharest to which the division in Iași was subordinated (Dobrincu, Marin, and Muraru 2009, 5). After the incorporation of Transylvania, Bukovina, the Banat, and Bessarabia in the Romanian state in the aftermath of the World War I, the national archives underwent a new reorganisation and three new regional branches were established in Cluj-Napoca, Cernăuți, and Chișinău. In 1925 a new law of archives was passed and several other regional branches were created (Berciu-Drăghicescu 1994, 54–56).

The administrative territorial reorganisations of Romania after the establishment of communist rule in 1948 changed again the structure of the national archive system. Thus, each territorial unit (region or county) had its own local archive branch (Berciu-Drăghicescu 1994, 56–57) with the exception of the Romanian Capital where two archive branches functioned: one for the city of Bucharest (from 1950) and another as the Central National Historical Archives (Dobrincu, Marin, and Muraru 2009, 9, 45). The latter collected and organised the archives of the central state institutions and also those created by personalities who had played an important role in the political, social, and cultural life of Romania. In 1985, due to the programme of urban systematisation, the headquarters of the Central National Historical Archives was demolished along with the building of the Mihai Vodă Monastery. The offices and the entire archival collection were moved to the current location of the National Archives in Bucharest (Dobrincu, Marin, and Muraru 2009, 9).

The Central National Historical Archives hosts several collections reflecting cultural opposition to the communist regime, such as the Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca collection and the Gabanyi collection. It is divided into departments on the basis of their daily activity and the types of archives managed: “Public Relations Office”; “Office of Administrative and Cultural Archives”; “Office of Contemporary Archives”; “Office of Economic Archives”; “Office of Medieval Archives, Personal Fonds, and Collections”; and “Office of Technical Archives and Recordings” (Dobrincu, Marin, and Muraru 2009, 10). Between 2008 and 2018 the Central National Historical Archives alone or in partnership with various foreign or Romanian institutions began an ambitious program of digitisation aimed at creating an online database of medieval documents, a virtual archive of genealogy, and an online photo library of Romanian communism.