Fran Bradač, Anton Sovre, Milan Grošelj, Jože Košar, and Fran Petre: Latin and Greek at the University of Ljubljana in the First Post-War Decade (translated by Doroteja Novak)

Abstract

The post-war fates of Slovenian classicists, such as Fran Bradač, Jože Košar, Milan Grošelj, and Anton Sovre, were often decided by their standing with the ruling Communist Party. Yet the contemporary secret police documents, penned by ‘Andrej’, a State Security informant now identified as Fran Petre, reveal their difficult game of keeping up ideologically acceptable appearances while striving to preserve some bygone autonomy. The relative lack of restrictions enjoyed by the Department of Classical Philology in the decades that followed the years of unprecedented destruction between 1945 and 1950 was based on the fact that classics as a field of study became increasingly marginalised.