COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

Jiří Lederer (1922-1983) was a Czech journalist and publicist, one of the most prominent journalists during the "Prague Spring" in 1968. In the 1970s he participated in the work of the Czechoslovak opposition and was one of the first signatories of Charter 77. During the 1970s he was imprisoned several times. In 1980 he went into exile. The collection mainly contains materials and notes from the period around the Prague Spring.

Kazys Boruta (1905-1965) was a famous Lithuanian novelist, poet and translator. The Kazys Boruta collection holds various documents: his diaries, correspondence and manuscripts. The documents illustrate the situation of the writer in Soviet Lithuania. The government tried various means to control and restrict the writer’s creative initiatives. During the period of Stalinism, Boruta was arrested, accused of collaborating with bourgeois nationalists, and imprisoned. After he was released, he had problems publishing his work.

‘Književne novine’ [Literary News] was one of the leading cultural and literary journals in Yugoslavia. It was often the target of criticism due to views that were not always in line with the communist party, causing it to be banned several times. The available editions are kept in two libraries in Belgrade: the National Library of Serbia and the University Library "Svetozar Marković".

The collection of Ladislav Mňačko (1919–1994), a Slovak writer and former prominent Czechoslovak journalist, consists of unique correspondence, manuscripts, prints and clippings which help to describe the life of this significant writer, who after August 1968 was a critic of the communist regime and a representative of Czechoslovak exile literature.