Original scientific paper
Between Repression and Poverty: The City and District of Koprivnica in the Early 1950s in the Eyes of Glas Podravine
Željko Krušelj
orcid.org/0000-0002-3890-1045
; University North, Department of Communicology, Media and Journalism, Koprivnica, Croatia
Abstract
The city and district of Koprivnica got their permanent newspaper Glas Podravine at the end of 1950. Launched solely for the electoral needs of the ruling Communist Party, this local newspaper was first a periodical, then a biweekly, and from October 1953 a weekly paper. It was not edited and written by professional journalists in that period, but by party officials and activists, who did not respect the basic rules of the craft, but achieved their political goals through it. Despite this, the paper was a reliable representation of political, social, economic and cultural circumstances, primarily marked by unanimity, mass repression and general poverty, due to numerous information from the field, fierce comments and reactions from readers. The population lived largely from agriculture, which was devastated by the failure of forcibly formed peasant labor cooperatives, and the industry was still in its infancy. The stores lacked almost everything, including the most important items - bread, salt, sugar and all types of energy sources. The culprits for such a situation were exclusively »anti-national elements«. That is why the paper occasionally resembled a bizarre combination of a crime report, listing prison sentences and ideological deviations, and a propaganda bulletin in which citizens of shaken ideals were instructed on how to build proclaimed socialism.
Keywords
Glas Podravine; Koprivnica; Communist Party; activism; unanimity; repression; poverty
Hrčak ID:
268172
URI
Publication date:
1.6.2021.
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