COURAGE

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This picture shows the honorary diploma given to Hristo Ognyanov by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1981 on the occasion Ognyanov’s 70th birthday and in gratitude for his activities defending freedom of religion (Source: CSA, F. 1264). It is associated with the History of the Bulgarian Church, written by Hristo Ognyanov for broadcasts on Voice of America in the period 1953–1957 (CSA F. 1264, op. 1, a.e. 249–251). In this and in programs on Radio Free Europe, Ognyanov critically discussed communist propaganda against religion. Ognyanov’s program "Eleven Centuries of Christianity in Bulgaria" received an award by The Catholic Broadcasters Association of America. Under the name "Religion and Atheism in Bulgaria under Communism," he delivered a series of lectures in 1974. In Bulgaria, Ognyanov's activities, including those on religious subjects, were considered by the authorities as "subversive propaganda".

This manuscript was written on 2 April, 1969. Rendić raises the question of the position of the Catholic Church and Catholics after the so-called "liberalization" of the Yugoslav regime. She came to the conclusion that after ceasing the policy of open force, nothing had substantially changed in their position. She added that both the Church and Catholics live together in a sort of social ghetto isolated from the mainstream of socialist society, since "as it is with all liberalization, the Church remained in a ghetto, the Church is not moving from the ghetto at all" (Rendić 1969: 12). For this state of affairs, Rendić pointed to, as she said, the "totalitarian atheism" of the then socialist regime in Croatia and Yugoslavia, who taught that the progress of time would necessarily lead to the disappearance of religious consciousness throughout socialist society (Rendić 1969: 10).

This manuscript was created at the time of the Croatian Spring, and was published in the journal Kritika in its June issue in 1971. Rendić discussed the Croatian national question under Yugoslavian socialism, with particular emphasis on the status of Croatian language and Croatian statehood within a common state. In this respect, Rendić negatively assessed the developmental logic of Yugoslav socialism, which according to her view was based on the negation of the Croatian national identity and language. The main reason for Rendić's thesis was that the “radical colonization of the Croatian language” was carried out in socialist Yugoslavia by the introduction of numerous words from the Serbian language. Precisely because of that, the “Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Language” arose to resist such efforts in 1967. According to Rendić, apart from linguistic policy, the unequal status of Croatia in the Yugoslav federation was reflected politically in the fact that all republic institutions were written in the genitive case, "Croatia has been wholly reduced to a certain administrative-territorial term, so that it could only be expressed as: Republic of Croatia, Parliament of Croatia, Executive Council of the Parliament of Croatia…"(Rendić 1971: 14). This prompted the Supreme Court to rule against her, after which she was forced to retire.

Report "The status of counter-intelligence work of the State Security to unveil and suppress the subversive activities of the enemy among the artistic intelligentsia and measures for its improvement", Sofia, April 20, 1973.

The report presents the state security's vision of how "the enemy" tries to win over wavering members of the artistic intelligentsia (whose majority is said to support and promote the party line). It is reported that among the intelligentsia groups of friends are formed in so called ‘microstructures’ opposing the policies of the party. Typical examples of this are said to be the writers Hristo Ganev, Valeri Petrov, Marko Ganchev, Gotcho Gotchev and Blagoy Dimitrov. The report is a good example for the assessment of the political attitudes of the intelligentsia by the state in the early 1970s, and also of the way how such assessments were rhetorically framed.