An Anthology of Croatian Literature

August Cesarec (1893-1941)

August Cesarec (1893–1941) Cesarec was raised in poverty in Zagreb, a fact which radicalized him from his youth onwards. In interwar Yugoslavia, he was among the first members of the outlawed Communist Party, and spent time in prison for that. He traveled extensively in both the U.S.S.R. and Western Europe. His drama Sin domovine (Son of the Homeland, 1940) was staged on the eve of World War II. During the war he was arrested by the Ustaša government, interned, and eventually executed. Only his brief autobiography is available in English. The following excerpt is from Autobiographies by Croatian Writers, op. cit., pp. 185–90. An Anthology of Croatian Literature 148 Autobiography (Excerpt) In the autumn of 1923, I became associate of the revolutionary-literary periodical Književna republika edited by Comrade Krleža. I wrote for that periodical until 1925, and in the same year I published (after Stihovi [Verses, 1919]) two novels: Sudite me (Judge Me) and Careva kraljevina (The Emperor’s Kingdom), and a critical study entitled Stjepan Radić i republika (Stjepan Radić and the Republic). In that year I also took part in organizing Comrade Senjak’s escape. After that, until 1928, all my energy went exclusively into literary work. In 1926 I published a book of short stories (centered around revolutionary and underground work) Za novim putem (Following a New Path) and in 1928 the anti-Fascist novel Zlatni mladić (The Golden Youth).
 From 1929 to the autumn of 1934, I contributed to almost all the left-wing literary periodicals in Zagreb: Književnik, Literatura, Savremena stvarnost, and Danas (in Belgrade). I also contributed to the capitalist Hrvatska revija before it turned Fascist, and took part in anti-Fascist literary struggles (the Crnjanski case in 1932 and the struggle against the clero-Fascists in 1933 and 1934). The censors often banned my short stories and articles; my last novel Bjegunci (The Fugitives, 1934) was censored in 33 places. Often entire pages were banned. Besides that novel, I published the short story Tonkina jedina ljubav (Tonka’s Only Love, 1930) and the critical study Psihoanaliza i individualna psihologija (Psychoanalysis and Individual Psychology, 1931). In 1932 I wrote a large study on Unamuno in the left-wing Almanah savremenih problema. By decision of the Party Central Committee, my wife and I arrived in Moscow at the end of November, 1934. I spent the whole of my first year in the Soviet Union, 1935, exclusively collecting material for my book on the Soviet Union. I visited Communist Youth leaders in March, 1935, in the Mari District, and in April, 1935, in the Western District. This gave me part of the material for my first book, Dojmovi iz Sovjetskog Saveza (Impressions from the Soviet Union), which I wrote in Croatian in agreement with the Publishing Firm for Foreign Writers. In the autumn of 1935, I joined the Yugoslav delegation (delegates to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern) on a trip to the Urals, to Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, and to the Volga, to Kuibyshev. I also went to the Caucasus, the Kabardino-Balkar District, and collected material there for my second book which I am at present—also in agreement with the August Cesarec 149 Publishing Firm for Foreign Writers—still writing: Po Uralu i Kavkazu (Through the Urals and the Caucasus). In that book I intend to write about the Ukraine, too, where I am just getting ready to go. Here, in Moscow, I work in the Foreign Section of Soviet Writers, in its Part cell and political circle. I intend to remain here until I finish my second book on the Soviet Union and until the translation (into Russian) is finished of my novel The Golden Youth, which has been accepted for publication by Goslitizdat.
Moscow, May 1936 ...