COURAGE

Свързване на колекции

The last issue of the CADDY bulletin contained a recapitulation of the work of both the CADDY and the bulletin itself. Although the last issue appeared in November 1992, sometime later, at the beginning of March 1994, it was announced that the work of the CADDY had ended, which included the publication of the bulletin. This all happened against the backdrop of the definitive disintegration of the Yugoslav state and the war in its former territory. Such a turn of events signalled a defeat for the ideals championed by Mihajlo Mihajlov and Rusko Matulić as the main leaders of the project, who believed in the possibility of maintaining Yugoslavia in a democratized form.

Most likely, this epilogue forced Mihajlov and Matulić to forsake their work around the CADDY and the bulletin. On the other hand, there was no single-party dictatorship in the republics of the former Yugoslavia, and the public was no longer strictly controlled as it was in the preceding period. During the 1990s, the first multiparty elections were held in all of the Yugoslav republics. However, in his final message to readers, Mihajlov pointed out the pioneering role of the CADDY in informing the Western public about the status of political freedoms and human rights in Yugoslavia, and in presenting the fate of each dissident. He also stressed that CADDY was quoted in over 20 books and 60 magazines and newspapers throughout the Western world. (Rusko Matulic Papers, box 4).

The manuscript of Mihajlov's travels, “Moscow Summer,” written in English is in the box 28. The text was the fruit of Mihajlov's visit to the Soviet Union in the summer months of 1964. Mihajlov supported Nikita Khrushchev's reforms and the program of de-Stalinisation, and he criticized the changes in the Soviet leadership after Kruschev’s fall. This criticism alarmed those in charge of Yugoslavia’s foreign policy, since it could once more undermine Soviet-Yugoslav relations, which had normalized in the mid-1950s.

Referring to the publication of the first two essays of this book, Tito himself called out Mihajlov in February 1965 as a result of pressure from the Soviet ambassador due to his criticism of the new political course following the fall of Khrushchev in the autumn of 1964. Despite censorship of Mihajlov’s essays in Yugoslavia, American politicians and the public were interested in Mihajlov's case precisely because of his stance on the Soviet Union during the political upheavals in the upper echelons of the Soviet party in those years.

A letter from Milan Uhde to the Host Publishing House in October 1970 shows him rejecting the report of his dismissal from work, the editorial office Host do domu. Uhde protested against the whole process, and rejected the term "agreement" in connection with the dismissal, then refused to sign a document on the termination of employment. Uhde also wrote about the non-existent opportunities to find other reasonable employment. The short letter documents practices of persecution towards important cultural figures criticising the post–August development in Czechoslovakia, as well as a concrete example of defiance towards them.

The document reproduces the report drawn up by two representatives of the communist Militia following the search carried out on 3 December 1986 for the purpose of investigating the possible illegal basis of the collection of art stored in Brad at the home of Dr Sorin Costina. Under Law 18/1968 regarding the control of the provenance of goods not acquired through legal means, the possessions of any physical person could be checked if there were “data or indications,” basically meaning information collected through informers, pointing to “an evident disproportion” between the estimated value of a person’s possessions and the income legally obtained by that person. The text of this minute, drawn up in the wooden language of the communist authorities, does not identify in its conclusions any illegality that might have been found as a result of the search. However it is highly relevant with regard to the manner in which the communist authorities penetrated the private lives of citizens. The document mentions that the search lasted approximately three hours and provides in ten hand-written pages a detailed inventory of all the items found in the Costina family home. It was drawn up in three copies, one of which, in the original, is now in the Costina family archive.