COURAGE

connecting collections

The Croatian Spring is the best example of cultural opposition in the period of the communist regime in Croatia. Students were an important part of this reform movement and were very decisive in their requested reforms. They started a strike at the University of Zagreb (a.k.a. the Croatian University) and invited the entire public sphere to join. Their messages were distributed on leaflets and posters, pinned at the University and in other public spaces. Many such examples are found in the collection, and the masterpiece is a big poster with an invitation to a “general strike at the Croatian University”. The poster was confiscated and handed in to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Zagreb (December 1971). The poster remained unknown to the public.

Iljko Karaman took the document illegally from the Public Prosecutor's Office and stored it in his home collection, which ended up in the Croatian State Archives in 1992. The material is available for research and copying.

The poster is one of the first hand-made materials, used in the initial protest in the autumn of 1987. The protest actions at that time were cautious due to the possible regime response, and contained no explicit political statements or requests. Their main appeal was directed towards the resolution of the severe pollution problem. Requests were articulated towards the need of pressing the Romanian state for the closure of the “Verachim” Chemical Factory in Giurgiu.
The poster is a donation by Zlatko Elenski, participant in the protests and one of the creators of the poster, to the Rousse Regional Museum of History in 2014. He kept it until he heard the news in 2014 of the Rousse Museum’s participation in the international exhibition “Roads to 1989”, and decided to donate it to the museum.

One of the historically most interesting materials related to the journal Praxis consists of the documents about student events in Yugoslavia in June 1968. The proceedings contain original documentation that closely cover events associated with the student movement in many Yugoslav cities. Along with the editorial notes, anti-Vietnam protests were documented, different views of the demonstrators regarding the relationship with student protests in the world, but also issues of social antagonisms as well as government reactions, including investigations and trials. The documentation was underscored as a precursor to sociological research into social conflicts. The primary purpose was to collect these authentic documents into a publication and to testify to the significance of events of 1968 to the development of socialism in Yugoslavia. This publication was published as a Volume 1-2 for 1969. The editors-in-chief were Gajo Petrović and Rudi Supek.