Croatology, Vol. 14 No. 2, 2023.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.59323/k.14.2.8
Smiljana Rendić and the Contribution of the Glas Koncila [The Voice of the Council] Column „Mi, ovdje“ [We, here] in Transcending the Boudaries of Freedom of Public Speech in Communist Yugoslavia in the Sixtie
Marino Erceg
orcid.org/0009-0007-5547-5782
; Glas Koncila, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper presents the contribution that journalist Smiljana Rendić made in transcending the boundaries of freedom of public speech in Croatia during communism with her column „Mi, ovdje“ [We, here], published in the Croatian Catholic weekly Glas Koncila [The Voice of the Council]. Ten texts have been singled out for this paper from the total corpus of the „Mi, ovdje“ column, which was published in the sixties and consists of about eighty texts that Rendić signed under the pseudonym Berith. The texts were analysed by the method of qualitative content analysis. These texts can be read in the context of the contribution of expanding the boundaries of freedom of public speech during the sixties in Croatia under communist rule. One can read "between the lines" and find a veiled criticism of the communist regime. Topics that were proscribed on the media scene at the time, such as issues of religious life in urban and industrialized communities, the role of Catholic intellectuals, the pastoral care of soldiers, the construction of new church buildings, the Church's charitable activities and the complementarity of religion and science, were opened up by Rendić in her column in Glas Koncila. In the atmosphere of totalitarian control over society Rendić, in addition to her journalistic writing style, harnessed her literary skill and imagination to "mask" the real identities of the persons who were the protagonists of the column "Mi, ovdje", who would have faced potential regime repression. Therefore, in the paper, the column "Mi, ovdje" is analysed as a combination of essay, reportage and novella, a unique writting form that can be placed within the context of Rendić's voluminous work in Catholic journalism and her lesser-known literary work of Christian inspiration.
Keywords
Berith, column „Mi, ovdje“ [We, here]; Communist Yugoslavia; Glas Koncila [The Voice of the Council]; Smiljana Rendić
Hrčak ID:
312159
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2023.
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