COURAGE

connecting collections

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.

Minutes from the International Table Ronde SVU in Geneva were kept by Mojmir Vanek, the main organizer of the Symposium, as well as the Chairman of the Swiss Group of the Society for Science and Art (SVU) in the aftermath of the Symposium.

On two pages of machine-written text Vaněk describes the course of the symposium and who participated in it, as well as the course of discussion. The Symposium on “Culture and Freedom” was held on 28 October 1978 to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia on behalf of the Society for Science and Arts. The so-called table ronde was held in French and was attended by six prominent people from Swiss and French cultural life: President Pro Helvetia, R. Ruffieux (Lausanne and Friborg), B. Dorival (Paris-Sorbonne), Jeanne Hersch (Geneva), G. Gottier (Geneva) and literary critic Francois Bondy (Zurich). This event was exceptionally well received in the Swiss press as well as in Czechoslovakia. Mojmir Vanek presided over this symposium.

This symposium, and especially Mojmir Vaněk´s speech at the beginning of the negotiations, was likely the reason why his Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked only a month after the symposium was held. This entry is the unique testimony of Mojmir Vanek about this symposium and was likely used as a record for the Society for Science and Art. Vanek himself regarded this event as an international manifestation, which at its level and its international focus was still the most significant enterprise of the Swiss group of the SVU.

Problemos (Problems) is a Lithuanian academic philosophical journal published by Vilnius University. The journal was reorganised during the 1960s and 1970s, when the community of Soviet Lithuanian philosophers made attempts to produce a serious academic journal, with critical articles, reviews and translations of Western authors. This initiative was seen very negatively by cultural administrators at that time. The minutes of a meeting on 27 November 1972 demonstrates the attempts of the government to direct Problemos the ‘right way’. Philosophers, the authors of papers in Problemos, were criticised at the meeting for their passive ideological stance, and their lack of publications on communist ideology. After the meeting, the control of Problemos became stronger, and the content of its volumes was thematically limited. According to the philosopher Algimantas Jankauskas, after strengthening the controls, a core group of Lithuanian philosophers, including Romualdas Ozolas, started to think of producing an underground samizdat philosophy journal. But they later decided to keep to legal cultural opposition. They initiated and established a series of books on the history of philosophy ‘Filosofijos istorijos chrestomatija’ (Chrestomatia of the History of Philosophy), which resulted in a number of volumes being published in 1974-1987. 

The documents present the continuing tendency of Prosvjeta’s leadership to expand Serbian influence in society and insure equality with the Croats, but they also reflect an attempt to justify this tendency, denying any oppositional activity by the Association (so-called counter-revolutionary activity) and rejecting comparisons with Matica hrvatska. The Conclusions of the Executive Committee and the Commission on Conclusions were in fact the working agenda the SCA Prosvjeta i.e., a list of priorities: reviving passive subcommittees and establishing new ones, launching a weekly magazine to cover cultural and social issues Srpska riječ, implementation  of a scholarship and research work plan, restoring the museum of Serbs in Croatia, activation of the Documentation Department  under the Prosvjeta SCA Main Comittee, the Association's active participation in deliberations on amendments to the Constitution of the SRC and the  proposal for constitutional and legal regulation of the status of Serbs in Croatia (equality of languages and scripts in all segments of society, education of Serbian children in special school programs), the establishment of a roughly a dozen commissions with the Main Comittee, and enhanced  funding. A change in the Association's name was also proposed: to Prosvjeta – Serbian Union of Croatia, also the convening of the Second Congress of Serbs in Croatia and re-establishment of a Serbian caucus which was supposed to have been decided at the next, twelfth, annual assembly, which, however, was never held because the association’s  further work was halted.