of Istrians in Franco ’ s forces , either as Italian volunteers 5 or Slavs who were mobilized to fight in Spain against their will . 6
The exhibition included the personal biographies of two volunteers from the Croatian Littoral – Edo Jardas , who served as Rijeka ’ s mayor in the 1950s , and Vladimir Ćopić , the highestranking Yugoslav commander in the International Brigades . Eduard “ Edo ” Jardas ( 1901-1980 ) was born in Zamet , now a neighbourhood of Rijeka , and became a communist a few years after he emigrated to Canada in 1926 . He was initially involved in organizing forestry and mine workers into communist-run unions and became the editor of Borba , a Croatian-language Party newspaper . He arrived in Spain in late March 1937 , where he commanded a machine-gun unit for the Dimitrov Battalion and the Third Company of the Lincoln- Washington Battalion . He was wounded twice , the second time so severely that he needed to be evacuated to France . In 1938 Jardas returned to Canada , where he became a member of the Central Committee of the Canadian Communist Party and continued his publishing activities . After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 , Jardas returned to Rijeka on the ship Radnik (“ Worker ”), which had been commissioned to ferry returnees to Yugoslavia after the Second World War . After serving in the Yugoslav embassy in India , he was Rijeka ’ s mayor ( president of the City People ’ s Council ) from 1951 until 1959 , as well as a member of the Central Committee of both League of Communists of Croatia ( SKH ) and Yugoslavia ( SKJ ). His personal collection in the Croatian State Archive in Rijeka contains not only considerable information on Yugoslav volunteers who had come from North America , but a great deal of material on the activities of the Spanish Civil
5 A recently discovered document from the fascist administration in Pula ( Pola ) lists the names of five volunteers who died in Spain , indicating that there were many more volunteers who fought there and that there were many others from other parts of Italian-occupied Croatia and Slovenia . 6 Since Istria and Rijeka were part of the Kingdom of Italy during the interwar period , Croats or Slovenes found guilty of various offences ranging from smuggling to nationalist activities were often sent to fight in Spain as an alternative to prison in the 1930s .
War veterans ’ organization which was very active in promoting the memory of the struggle against Franco .
Vladimir “ Senjko ” Ćopić ( 1891-1939 ) was the most famous revolutionary from the Croatian Littoral in the interwar period . He was born in Senj and studied law in Zagreb , but his studies were cut short by the outbreak of the First World War . As an Austro-Hungarian soldier , he was captured and sent to a Russian POW camp . Ćopić was not allowed to join the Yugoslav Volunteer Corps because he refused to swear an oath to the Serbian King Petar Karađorđević . As a result , he was not allowed out of the camp until the October Revolution , and soon after his release , he joined the Bolsheviks . In 1919 , he returned to Yugoslavia to spread communist propaganda , and participated in the Party ’ s founding congress in Belgrade in April . He was immediately elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ( KPJ ), and after it was banned he was sentenced to two years in prison .
In 1925 , he was forced to flee to the USSR , where he attended the International Lenin School for four years . Ćopić worked in Prague as a Comintern instructor to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , and from 1932 , together with Milan Gorkić and Blagoje Parović , de facto led the KPJ . After a conflict with Gorkić , Ćopić volunteered to go to Spain , where he arrived in January 1937 . He became a political commissar and then the commander of the Fifteenth International Brigade , also known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade . He led the brigade in the battles of Jarama and Brunete .
In the spring of 1938 , he was singled out by Josip Broz Tito as one of only two intellectuals who should be considered for working in the party leadership ( the other being Božidar Maslarić , another Spanish Civil War volunteer ). Ćopić arrived in Moscow in late August 1938 , roughly at the same time as Tito . The two comrades wrote reports for the Comintern on the condition of the party and plans for re-establishing its activity among the masses in Yugoslavia . However , the NKVD arrested Ćopić on 3 November 1938 , and he was shot five months later . The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1958 . In 1976 ,
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4