Contribution for the Bibliography of Mihajlo Mijahlov

By Rusko Matuli?

This volume serves as an example of compilations of books, writings, essays, speeches and lectures by Mihajlo Mihajlov. A scholar, writer, and commentator in Yugoslavia and on the world stage, he was also one of the best known dissident in Tito's Yugoslavia. For his articles, critical of the regime's human rights record, both in the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia, he spent seven years in prison.
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R. Matulic

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503517981

Rusko Matuli?

Rusko Matulic - Born in Yugoslavia in 1933. After five years in a refugee camp in Egypt, via Italy, Chile, and England, landed in Hoboken, NJ in 1952. U.S. Army claimed years 1954-56, and the NJIT extracted 1958-66 (nights). Retired electrical power engineer. Edited bimonthly bulletin for defense of Yugoslav dissidents 1980-92. Published a number of technical and non- technical articles. Original Bibliography of Sources on Yugoslavia published in 1981. Three new volumes in 1998-2014.

Book preview

Contribution

For The

Bibliography of

Mihajlo Mihajlov

DOPRINOS

BIBLIOGRAFIJI

MIHAJLA MIHAJLOVA

Rusko Matulić

Copyright © 2014 by Rusko Matulić.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5035-1799-8

                eBook           978-1-5035-1798-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 11/26/2014

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SADRŽAJ - CONTENTS

Key to abbreviations - Skraćenice

Photos

Brief biographical sketch - O M. MIhajlovu

Mihajlovljevi članci, eseji, prevodi prije prvog hapšenja juna 1965 Mihajlov’s articles, essays, translations prior to the first arrest in 6/1965

Books and essays by M. Mihajlov - Knjige i eseji M. Mihajlova

Addresses and Speeches - Obraćanja i Govori

Articles from the World press - Članci iz svjetske štampe

M. Mihajlov u knjigama i tezama - Books and dissertations about M. Mihajlov

U štampi bivše Jugoslavije - Mihajlov in the former Yugoslavia press

Russian expatriate press - Ruska zagranična štampa

U zagraničnoj štampi bivše Jugoslavije - In former Yugoslavia expatriet press

Odlazak Mihajla Mihajlova - On passing of Mihajlo Mihajlov

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

SKRAĆENICE

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A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

O M. MIHAJLOVU

Mihajlo Mihajlov was born in 1934 at Pančevo, near Belgrade, Yugoslavia. His parents were emigrants - the father was seventeen and the mother seven - who had come to Yugoslavia after the Russian Revolution.

After completing secondary education in Sarajevo, he studied comparative literature at the Philology Department of Belgrade University and at the Philosophy Department of Zagreb University, where he graduated in 1959.

Following the army service, he worked in Zagreb as a translator and contributed many articles to noted Yugoslav newspapers and journals. He became well known as a specialist in modern Russian literature and as a translator from Russian. In December 1963 he was appointed an assistant professor of Russian literature and language at the Philosophy Department of the Zadar branch of Zagreb University.

In Zadar, in addition to lecturing, he undertook work on the doctoral dissertation. During the Summer of 1964 Mihajlov spent five weeks in Moscow and Leningrad as a part of Yugoslav-Soviet cultural exchange program. As the result of this visit a series of articles, recording his conversations with perceptive impressions of modern Russian writers - Akhmadulina, Erenburg, Leonov, Okudzhava, Voznesensky, and others -including their experiences in the labor camps, were published. Following the second of the articles, published in Belgrade Literary monthly Delo in March 1965, owing to the pressure by the Soviet Government, President Tito publicly accused Mihajlov of ‘a new form of what we used to call Djilasizm’. Delo was confiscated and Mihajlov was promptly expelled from the university post and arrested. A suspended sentence for ‘calumny against a friendly country’ followed. Moscow Summer, the collection of articles from Delo, was published in the United States in late 1965. It immediately received wide acclaim and was subsequently translated into a number of languages. His attempt therefore, in August 1966, to publish an independent journal named Slobodni glas (Free Voice) received noted support from world public opinion. While this effort was strictly within the guarantees of the Yugoslav Constitution, it ran afoul with the authorities, as is always the case in one-party dictatorships, where the unwritten party ‘law’ prevails. Mihajlov was arrested on August 8, 1966 and his collaborators a few days later. Following months of investigations, his friends were released, while he received one year sentence for ‘spreading false information’.

Mihajlov’s third trial opened in Belgrade on April 17, 1967. This time the charge was ‘conducting hostile propaganda against Yugoslavia’. Pleading ‘not guilty’, he contended that he had merely availed himself of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution. Found guilty on all the charges, he was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment to run concurrently with the term being served. At the same time a ban was imposed on all public activities, including publication of writings, for four years after the release.

The second book, Russian Themes, was published in New York in March 1968. This collection of literary essays written with intellectual honesty and eloquent style, evaluates writers such as Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Sholokhov, Sinyavsky. Solzhenitsyn, and others. Throughout the text there are Mihajlov’s own visionary thoughts.

Released from prison in March 1970 and until the new arrest in October 1974, he lived in Novi Sad. Deprived of employment and a place to live, he continued working on the book Non-Scientific Thoughts (published in Russian in September 1979), which was started during an earlier prison term.

While under constant, illegal, harassment by the regime, he defiantly sent articles abroad, publishing over 40 essays in the world press. In February 1975 he was once again tried, for disseminating ‘hostile propaganda’ in the form of four articles in The New York Times, and sentenced to a seven year prison term.

Underground Notes were published in the United States in 1976. The central message of his third book, is lucid in its simplicity. Because the true believers, who were to create heaven on earth, have been replaced by those whose only belief is in ‘the invincibility of power and violence’ therefore, "in the spiritual sense, Communism and Marxism are dead. And ‘dead for good at that’, Mihajlov states. Stressing the vital nature of freedom, he sees mankind’s salvation in a ‘planetary consciousness’ - in a new faith brought by ‘spiritual revolution, religious rebirth’.

Partly due to pressures brought to bear by persistent protests from abroad on Mihajlov’s behalf, and partly because Belgrade was to host the Conference on European Security and Cooperation, whose task was to examine the conditions of human rights in member countries, Mihajlov was released from prison on November 27, 1977. On April 8, 1978 The New York Times published his open letter (Rights Come First) addressed to the CESC conference urging a reference to human rights in the final document. In the following Spring a passport was issued, and he was free to travel abroad. After a brief stay in West Germany and France he arrived in the USA to join his mother and his sister’s family.

The International League for Human Rights presented its human rights award to Mihajlov in early June 1978, in New York. After a whirlwind tour of the United States, Europe, and Asia, and following grants from the Ford Foundation and a Fellowship from the National Humanities Center. Mihajlov spent from 1981 t0 1985 as a visiting lecturer/professor at Yale University, University of Virginia, Middlebury Summer School, Ohio State University, University Gesamthochschule Siegen, F.R. Germany, and University of Glasgow, He taught courses on Russian culture, civilization and literature, and all the nuances of the genre. During this exacting travel and scholarship endeavor he maintained a steady stream of writings, as attested by this slim