Our Historical Literature and Worker Movement in Croatia from its Beginning till 1914 (Part I)

The essay embraces the literature on the worker movement on the entire area of Croatia as a whole (all its components too), from its very beginning in the fifties of the 19th century until 1914. Some literature got compiled even in the period until 1914: it con sists of occasional and memoir texts, with several useful original data and details. Very similar to it is the literature of the following period (until 1945). But from 1929 to 1939 the first wholesome history of the worker movement in Croatia and Slovenia was compiled and written by Vitomir Korać, and then soon published. The book is partly original partly literature texts, but written by Korać, himself an eminent participant of the events, it contains a number of data still very useful though they should looked on with a critical eye. Otokar Keršovani under very special conditions (hard labour) wrote the first marxist history of Croats: it abounds in useful remarks and estimations on the worker movement. The work on the history of the worker movement after 1945 was rapidly progressing, mostly because of the social and political factors. The participants in the events, those interested in history, like Josip Cazi (important for this thesis), started to work on the movement, gradually followed by the knowledgeable historians: Mirjana Gross, and several others (Dinko Foretić, in Dalmatia, Vjekoslav Bratulić, in Istria, as well as the group of the collaborators of the "Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske"). The after-war period is rich with various literature material, but nothing was strictly planned. The first editions were not compiled by qualified people, but they continue to be of some use (Istoriski arhiv KPJ, by J. Cazi). Later there followed some works of the historians, such as: D. Foretić, A. Herljević, I. Mažuran. These editions leave open some problems to further research. Though a certain number of bibliographies, historiography surveys, chronology tables, indexes, stay at hand to our research workers, they are not nearly sufficient as; they do not cover all the subjects