COURAGE

connecting collections

The collection, which is the private property of István Viczián, illustrates the history of the Calvinist youth organization of Pasarét under socialism. The collection includes letters and photographs, which provide insights into the aspirations of the group to create an active religious community in an era when such communities were a threat to and contradiction of official communist youth policy.

The Commission for Ideological and Political Work of the People's Youth of Croatia (1945-1962) was crucial in the development of young people regarding their guidance and education based on socialist values. The Commission worked under the aegis of the Communist Party, and its primary task was to monitor all activities that were opposed to the regime. Therefore, the numerous documents in this collection encompassing the period from 1945 to 1962 show different oppositional aspirations and activities of young people in Croatia in the immediate post-war period up to the beginning of the 1960s.

The records of the Commission on Religious Matters of the Vinkovci Municipal Assembly in the State Archives in Vukovar (at present situated in the Archival Collection Centre in Vinkovci) is a part of the archival fund of the Vinkovci Municipal Assembly covering the period from 1963 until 1993. The collection contains materials that testify to the local oppositional activity of different religious institutions from the area under the jurisdiction of the Vinkovci Municipal Assembly and also to the state control over them.

The Confiscated Manuscripts Collection at CNSAS was not assembled by the creators of content or by collectors who valued the works they preserved, but by the Romanian secret police, the Securitate. It includes items confiscated from their rightful owners. More precisely, the collection contains unpublished manuscripts of literary works, diaries, memoirs, correspondence, forbidden books and publications, and open letters of protest, which the Securitate confiscated from 105 persons, survivors of the Stalinist persecution, human rights activists, priests and religious thinkers, non-conformist writers, or generally complying individuals who nonetheless attracted the attention of the secret police. These items are archived in 330 volumes, which include 50,000 pages.

The collection belongs to the group of the most relevant archival resources for researching the communist regime’s relationship with and repression against religious communities in Croatia, and their organisations, priests and other religious officials. It contains documents collected or produced by the State Security Service of the Republic Internal Affairs Secretariat of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, the civilian security and intelligence service in Croatia in the period from 1946 to 1990. Different cultural opposition activities of certain religious communities and their members can be studied on the basis of its documents. Criticism (concealed and public) of communist rule and its social and political system, i.e. the official doctrine of atheism, is especially visible.