COURAGE

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The cover and content of the Croatian State Security Service's report on enemy activities of religious communities and its countermeasures in 1965. Such multi-annual and annual overviews/reports on the activities of religious communities, with particular focus on their activities, classified as “hostile activities,” were prepared by the Service regularly. The most oft-cited forms of “hostile activity” by religious communities included incitement of ethnic hatred, hostile propaganda and the dissemination of false news, abuse of religion and the church for political purposes, incitement of religious hatred and intolerance, hostile activities against the state through émigré organisations, the émigré and religious press, and influencing workers and émigré communities. Considerable attention was focused on religious publications and foreign travel by religious leaders. The reports also include data on the Service's collaborative network and measures (studies, controls and operational measures) to counter such activities.      

In that particular report for the year 1965, the main activities of the Roman Catholic Church were analysed in the context of Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the negotiations in the early 1960s between the Vatican and Yugoslavia meant to settle relations between the Yugoslav Government and the Catholic Church, which resulted with the signing of the protocol a year later (25 June 1966).     

During 1965, which can be seen in Service's Report, Church-State relations deteriorated. The primary cause was a letter to church members adopted by the assembly of the Conferences of Bishops in Zagreb in May of that year. The Report highlights that its adoption “constitutes an abuse of religion and the Church for political purposes and an attack on the social and political system“ in the country. Another  cause was the celebration of the 250^th anniversary of Our Lady of Sinj in Sinj on 15 August of that same year. As described by Akmadža, the authorities were irritated with Bishop Franić's circular letters on the occasion of the celebration, in which, when writing about the presence of Cardinal Šeper at the celebration (he became cardinal in that same year), he often emphasised the national character of the celebration and appeared to promote ultra-nationalist tendencies (Akmadža 2004, p. 492). In this vein, in the Report, the Service assessed that it  “it recognised the tendency to give Šeper not only the role and status of Church or religious leader, but also the status of national leader.”

Report about "Agency-operational work of the organs of the State Security to prevent the attempts of the enemy to carry out ideological diversion and other subversive activities among the intelligentsia and forthcoming tasks", Sofia, April 10, 1979.
The report identifies weaknesses in the work of the State Security. It emphasizes the need to focus on preventive measures and "prophylactic work". For the past two years, the number of agents working with respect to the intelligentsia has doubled. However, the report stresses that the Unions of Artists, Actors and Journalists, and some institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of Science and the Ministry of People’s Health are still weakly covered. Thus, the report not only gives a vivid illustration of the work of the State Security in the late 1970s and of its assessment of the political attitudes of intellectuals; it also shows how the state security evaluated its own work and what rhetoric they used to demand more resources.

Matica hrvatska (MH) became the central Croatian cultural institution during the Croatian Spring, gathering the Croatian intelligentsia that was dissatisfied with the position of Croatia within the Yugoslav federation, especially with the attitude of the federal government toward Croatian national identity. For this reason, the communist government began to look at it as an institution that spread oppositional political ideas. By the fall of the Croatian Spring in 1972, Matica was practically abolished, and many of its prominent members came under attack by state repression under the accusations of "Croatian nationalism." The bearer of all actions against MH was the Republic Internal Affairs Secretariat (RSUP) of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which also collected information about the work of Matica and its branches years before the quashing of the Croatian Spring. Following the political decision in Karađorđevo in December 1971, the RSUP was tasked with filing a report on the work of MH that was supposed to serve as a basis for future indictments and the court prosecution of Matica hrvatska’s members.

The RSUP inspectors compiled a report on oversight of the legality of the work of the Matica hrvatska on five hundred typed pages. The first 150 pages refer to the history of Matica and the work of its centre in Zagreb, while the rest of the report is dedicated to its branches in numerous cities. The history, structure and the activities of the institution were given, as well as data on the most prominent individuals and their activities. A special section is devoted to the links of Matica with Croatian émigrés, which the communist regime usually characterised as "hostile political emigration." The report ends with a brief conclusion (on one page) that Matica "has grown into an association for achieving counter-revolutionary goals" (Hekman 2002, 484). Based on this report, indictments were written, and trials against Croatian intellectuals were conducted.

The Matica hrvatska Collection at the Croatian State Archives maintains the original copy of the Report on oversight of the legality of the work of Matica hrvatska, based on which Matica published a reprint (Hekman 2002) with an accompanying foreword by Josip Bratulić. One copy of the 1972 Report is also stored at the National and University Library in Zagreb.

The letter of the Commission on Religious Matters of the Vinkovci Municipal Assembly to the correspondent commission at the republic level on the activities of Serbian Orthodox Church at the time of Easter in 1966   contains the entire epistle that was read in all Orthodox churches in the Vinkovci Municipality. This was an example of how the regime also attempted to exert control over the Serbian Orthodox Church by collecting the information on almost all of its religious activities. As a religious institution, the Serbian Orthodox Church was also regarded as a source of anti-socialist policy. “In addition to increased activity by the Roman Catholic Church, we may also notice in the Orthodox Church a growing activity, which can be seen in the number of believers, organisational arrangement, the formation of ecclesiastical associations and the new religious buildings,“ it says in the letter.

This is a document that the Main Committee of the Alliance of the Communist Youth of Croatia (ACYC) from Zagreb sent to the Central Committee of the ACY of Yugoslavia in Belgrade with information on the activities of the Catholic Church and its organizations (the Crusaders), who were active in that period, and their influence on the youth. Although the report elaborated on the activities of the Church and its organizations since 1930 and during the period of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), this section refers to the period from 1945 to 1946. The review of opposition activity is shown by administrative and territorial criteria: the city of Zagreb, Varaždin County, Bjelovar County, Osijek, and Dalmatia. In the report, the activities of young people in church organizations and associations are explicitly defined as opposed to the regime, and these youth groups, under the leadership of priests, are also associated with affinity for the Ustasha regime. The document describes the impact of the Catholic Church on the youth in youth halls, schools, house parties and various church activities. In this report, emphasis was placed on the activities of youth choral societies or church choirs under the guidance of nuns or priests and gatherings of young people in the associations such as "Mary's Congregation," "Mary's Daughters," "Sacred Heart of Jesus," "St. Joseph," etc.

Through the ACYC as their transmission, the authorities responded to these phenomena in an extremely negative manner, attempting to halt the Catholic Church's influence on young people and suppress activities contrary to communist ideology, which were in fact most prominently carried out by the Catholic Church.

The document was drawn up by the ACYC Main Committee, whose archival records, along with the records of other so-called socio-political organizations, were until 1995 a part of the Archives of the Institute of History of the Croatian Workers' Movement/Institute of Contemporary History. In July of that year, the archives were handed over to the Croatian State Archives (CSA), where they are kept today. It is not known whether this document has been used by researchers.

The archives are regularly used by the researchers for scholarly publications, which was the case for this report as well.