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The manuscript of the book was written by Bogdan Radica during his time in exile. It was finally published in 1974 in Barcelona and Munich, by the emigrant publishing house Hrvatska revija. He also collected his own articles published in the American press, his memoirs from Croatia and Yugoslavia covering the period from November 1944 to May 1946, and his notes from Izgnanički dnevnik (Exile Diary) in which he had made note on his journey from Italy and America. After the Croatian Spring in 1971, following conversations between the editor-in-chief, Vinko Nikolić and Radica in New York, they both decided to print the book. Radica decided to do that in order to explain what are the roots of “the newest Croatian catastrophe” in Tito’s Yugoslavia. In the book, he pointed out the fear and repression of the Communist revolution in Croatia.

Croatia survived the strongest level of repression because it demonstrated much more resistance than the other Yugoslav regions. In the book, Radica describes the situation during those revolutionary days in Zagreb and his hometown Split. He described the killings and jailing of people in those cities, among whom there were many respectable people from public life. Hence, he coined the phrase “great fear in Croatia” to describe the revolutionary terror. When he decided to flee Croatia and Yugoslavia, he sent his wife a telegram importantly titled “I have left Tito's paradise forever.”

Radica wrote this article in October 1946 in New York, after his escape from Yugoslavia, in which he described the terror of the revolution carried out by the Yugoslav communists. It was later published in a review called Reader’s Digest. On account this and other articles published in the American press, the Yugoslav regime banned all his works. In this article printed in the newspaper that had a large readership and reach, he was the first person who revealed this information on revolutionary events in Yugoslavia to North America and the West. The article was translated into numerous other languages, and was published in Japan in the Japanese language. He received a writer’s fee of $5,000 for the article.

Radica introduced the term “useful innocents”, a phrase unknown in the American political culture. He considered himself and other democrats from Croatia and Yugoslavia useful innocents who had an illusion that communists would not succeed to seize absolute power in Yugoslavia. They believed naively that postwar Yugoslavia would be a democratic and federal state, not a communist dictatorship. In the beginning, the communists gathered various political representatives to get the support of wider population.This kind of political organization was called the Popular Front in the postwar communist world and in Yugoslavia (Narodna fronta).

The manuscript of the book was written by Bogdan Radica during his time in exile. It was finally published in 1974 in Barcelona and Munich, by the emigrant publishing house Hrvatska revija. He also collected his own articles published in the American press, his memoirs from Croatia and Yugoslavia covering the period from November 1944 to May 1946, and his notes from Izgnanički dnevnik in which he had made note on his journey from Italy and America. After the Croatian Spring in 1971, following conversations between the editor-in-chief, Vinko Nikolić and Radica in New York, they both decided to print the book. Radica decided to do that in order to explain what are the roots of “the newest Croatian catastrophe” in Tito’s Yugoslavia. In the book, he pointed out the fear and repression of the Communist revolution in Croatia.

Croatia survived the strongest level of repression because it demonstrated much more resistance than the other Yugoslav regions. In the book, Radica describes the situation during those revolutionary days in Zagreb and his hometown Split. He described the killings and jailing of people in those cities, among whom there were many respectable people from public life. Hence, he coined the phrase “great fear in Croatia” to describe the revolutionary terror. When he decided to flee Croatia and Yugoslavia, he sent his wife a telegram importantly titled “I have left Tito's paradise forever.”

This featured item is a representative text of those published in the ARS – Review of Literature, Culture and Social Issues that dealt with the Montenegrin identity, history, and cultural heritage. Besides its predominant role as a literary journal, ARS also published texts with alternative political, social, and historical views of Montenegro around the late 1980s. The authors attempted to confront what was perceived as growing Serbian and Croatian nationalism and to present arguments on the particularity of Montenegrin history and society, thereby paving a path for an independent Montenegro.

In the article “The Point of the Disputes Between Historians about Sources on Old Montenegrin History”, Danilo Radojević criticized interpretations of medieval Byzantine historians’ texts on Dioclea [Serbian: Duklja] by contemporary Serbian and Croatian historians. Dioclea was a medieval state, which roughly encompassed the territories of present-day south-eastern Montenegro. Radojević claims that the interpretations of medieval Byzantine historical texts had been “conveniently” incomplete, imprecise, and in some cases tendentious. He further stated that contemporary Serbian and Croatian historians were taking into account only the parts of those texts that they found suitable for confirming certain preconceived theories, which always supported Serbian and Croatian nationalist agendas. In order to explain why Dioclea was the focus of disputes among historians, Radojević asserted the following:

“[…] Dioclea like crossroads, where Orthodoxy and Catholicism coincide, has become current [in debate], especially since the identification of individuals with a particular religious affiliation took place. Therefore, the negligence of the fact that Dioclea is an old Montenegrin state and the Diocleans are predecessors of Montenegrins is transpiring, and thus arises an unrealistic question – to whom does this place belong.” (Radojević 1987, 46)

Although criticizing other historians’ interpretations of historical texts on Dioclea and Diocleans, Radojević in this text does not provide evidence for his allegations about the equivalence of Diocleans and Montenegrins, which is still considered a rather contentious statement.

The work is a video recording of one of a series of performances entitled ‘Was ist Kunst?’ (What is Art?) conducted by Todosijević between 1976 and 1981 in various cities, situations and surroundings. In each performance, the artist addresses a female model, repeating the same question in German: ‘Was ist Kunst?’ The artist’s raised voice is commanding and recalls repressive techniques of police interrogation, evoking the traumatic experience of those members of the Yugoslav public who at that time still remembered scenes of Gestapo torture and the brutality of German occupation in the Second World War. The artist repeats the same question until he reaches a point of total exhaustion and loses his voice. The passive female model stoically enduring the torture triggers associations with the passive and masochistic attitude of citizens in a totalitarian order who lose their will, thus aiding the unimpeded operation of the repressive apparatus. This kind of aggressive behaviour and provocation of the public appears in other works by the artist. ‘Was ist Kunst?’ is an emblematic work by Raša Todosijević and at the same time represents one of the most significant works of Serbian art in the twentieth century.

“The performances entitled ‘Was ist Kunst?’ are political performances in the broadest sense of the word. Not art in the service of politics but rather art that sublimates the social performance into an artistic performance, emphasising in that sublimation some of the characteristics of social occurrences, the phenomenon of mass psychology, of the demagogy of language, of continual repetition – through cathartic emphasis.” (Published in 'New Art in Serbia 1970–1980’, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983).   

The work ‘Was ist Kunst, Marinela Koželj?’ was purchased and integrated into the Museum’s Collection of New Art Media in 1988.