“Comrade Tito, help!” Letters of prisoners and in favor of prisoners addressed to authorities of communist Yugoslavia as a historical source
“Comrade Tito, help!” Letters of prisoners and in favor of prisoners addressed to authorities of communist Yugoslavia as a historical source

Author(s): Josip Mihaljević
Subject(s): Criminal Law, Government/Political systems, Penology, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism, Penal Policy
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: prisoners; letters; Yugoslavia; government; Josip Broz Tito; communism; socialism;
Summary/Abstract: The author analyzes letters written by prisoners, detainees, and their relatives to authorities of the communist Yugoslavia. Today, these letters are being kept as archival material, and the author has analyzed the material of several archives in Belgrade and Zagreb. By using content and discourse analysis, it is revealed who were the authors of these letters, what was being asked for in the letters and in which way, and to which addresses were the authors reaching out to, as well as what was the attitude of authorities towards individuals addressing them in letters. With this paper, the author endeavors to present values of the aforementioned historical sources for researching social history and history of everyday life of the communist Yugoslavia, as well as the functionality of the historical-anthropological approach to research of history of the second half of the 20th century. In the appendix, the author provides several letters, mostly in the form of facsimiles.

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