Five-Year Plans, Explorers, Luniks, and Socialist Humanism: Anton Sovre and His Blueprint for Classics in Slovenia David Movrin* About a year before the pandemic struck, personal archives of Anton Sovre (1885–1963), the doyen of Slovenian classicists in the postwar period, were rediscovered and eventually made their way to the Na- tional and University Library in Ljubljana.1 During the fifties, Anton Sovre was an inspiring professor at the University of Ljubljana2 and a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Among the new sources now available to researchers is an essay on the Prospective Development of Classical Philology from 1959. The document was writ- ten in the course of preparation for the Third Yugoslav Five-Year Plan (1961–1965), or the “prospective plan,” perspektivni plan, as the project was called in contemporary lingo – written because every discipline had to provide one, but destined to remain, as Tacitus would say, in arto et inglorius labor, while failing to touch the hearts and minds of the decision-makers. The original five-year plans for developing the national economy of the USSR consisted of a series of nationwide centralized economic 1 I am grateful to the head of the Manuscript Department at the National and University Library in Ljubljana, Marijan Rupert, and his colleagues, who kindly assisted my work with these documents even though they have not yet been cataloged. 2 Smolej, “Filozofska fakulteta (1919–1971),” 64 ff. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4312/clotho.4.2.249-274 * University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Classics; Aškerčeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana; david.movrin@ff.uni-lj.si. DAVID MOVRIN250 plans, 13 in total. In the 1920s, there was a debate between Bukharin’s followers on the one hand and Trotsky’s supporters on the other. The former group considered that the existing economic policies provided sufficient state control of the economy and sufficient development. The latter argued in favor of more rapid development and greater state control.3 The plans focused on the economy, but science and scholarship were also put on a planned basis.4 These five-year plans outlined programs for vast increases in the output of all sorts of industrial goods. However, the out- put levels planned were “usually wide of the mark” – and more importantly, they were wide of the mark “in ways that became familiar to all involved.”5 After the communists gained power in Yugoslavia in 1945, they copied the idea immediately. The First Five-Year Plan was prepared for the years 1947–1952. Its objectives were to overcome economic and technological backwardness, strengthen economic and military power, enhance and develop the socialist sector of the country, and narrow the gap in economic development among regions.6 Significant effort was made to communicate this strategy to the impressionable masses. It is difficult to pick unum ex multis. But it might suffice to give an example: the assiduous book of encouraging poems about the endeavor, Long Live Tito’s Plan by the Croatian poet Ferdo Škrljac, published by Farmers’ Unity in 1947, alone included no less than 34 rhythmical masterworks along the following lines: Mi, borci iz rata, Pozdravljamo Tita, Naša pjesma rada Slavi novi dan. S lica nam se radost Zrcali i čita, Jer smo opet borci U bitki za Plan! 3 For the details of this transition, see Cook, “Party and Workers in the Soviet First Five-Year Plan,” 327–51. 4 For a contemporary overview, see Brožek, “Current Five-Year Plan of Soviet Science,” 391 ff. 5 Hanson, The Rise and Fall of Soviet Economy, 27. 6 Prezidij ljudske skupščine LRS, “Zakon o petletnem planu … v letih 1947 do 1951.” FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 251 We, fighters from war, Send greetings to Tito, The song of our work Now hails the new man. As joy is reflected From each of our faces, We are once again fighters, We fight for the Plan!7 Despite all the good intentions, the First Yugoslav Five-Year Plan followed suit of the wildly overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan. Both were based on the naive paraphrase of Karl Marx as formulated by Party activists in 1927: “Our task is not to study the economy but to change it.”8 Instead of rising, Soviet consumption collapsed, resulting in disastrous famines. While the results of Yugoslav economists were not as horrific as the ones achieved by their Soviet mentors, the coun- try was soon to become acquainted with the economic problems that would eventually become chronic. These included significant foreign debt, low labor productivity, and inefficient use of capital. This is where the protagonist comes into the picture. Anton Sovre (1885–1963) was a school inspector with the reputation of being an outstanding translator.9 Before the war, he published translations from Plato (1923 and 1929), Apuleius (1925), Sophocles (1922) and Euripides (1923), Seneca (1927), Marcus Aurelius (1934), Augustine (1932), and Horace (1934–35). His productivity increased during the war and exploded afterward; he translated a selection from the Pre-Socratics (1946), Lucian’s Satires (1946), the complete works of Homer (1951), substantial selections from Plutarch (1950 and 1959), Plato (1955 and 1960), Herodotus (1953–1955), Plautus (1954), Aeschylus (1963), Sopho- cles (1962), Euripides (1960), Erasmus (1952), Theophrastus (1971, posthumously), and the Greek lyrical poets (1964, posthumously).10 Unlike several other Slovenian classicists,11 Sovre was not considered a threat by the Communist powers that be. He knew how to talk up 7 Škrljac, Živio Titov plan, 5. 8 Hunter, “The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan,” 255. For this homage to Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, Hunter is citing Stanislav G. Strumilin, “Industrializaciya SSSR i jepigony narodnichestva,” 10. 9 His youth and education were analyzed by Kristan, “Anton Sòvre in Anton Sovrè,” in 2021. His approach to translation was evaluated by Gantar, “Sovretov prevajalski ideal,” in 1986. 10 For a detailed bibliography, see Gerlanc, “Bibliografija Antona Sovreta.” 11 See Movrin, “Classics in Postwar Secondary Education.” DAVID MOVRIN252 his relatively uneventful conduct during the war and make himself a bit of a silent hero. In the archives of the Central Committee, one can still find his autobiography, with a charming description of what he did – or perhaps did not do – during the occupation: “I was an ‘acti- vist without a function,’” he wrote in the questionnaire. “Apart from propaganda, my work was mainly in suppressing faintheartedness among comrades and strengthening their will to persist, advancing passive resistance, defending or covering for teachers and professors who were suspected or charged, etc.”12 The same archives have pre- served his karakteristika, or character evaluation, written by a Party member for the Party, which duly stressed the facts that mattered: “He did not sign the infamous memorandum against Communism and the Partisan movement. Even today, we may count him among the positives, despite his not being politically active because of his professional work.”13 Sovre was one of the representatives of the country’s literary life chosen to publish their welcoming compositions in the newspaper printed on May 9, 1945,14 the day the Partisan army entered Ljubljana, just hours after the German occupation and the war in Europe had ended with the armistice signed in Berlin – and thus stood a good chance of a late-bloomer academic career.15 The only obstacle was his lack of a doctorate. This difficulty, shared by other aspiring academics of the time, was overcome by a new government decree on university personnel, which allowed for “summoning specialists regardless of their formal qualifications,” as well as removing professors from the university “due to their professional, moral, or social unsuitability.”16 Based on this paragraph and the opinion of two professors, Sovre was rapidly made associate professor in April 1946. He was not an international scholar. “I had no contacts abroad, nor do I have any today,” he wrote in his application for full professorship (o tempora, o mores; but these were times when contacts, particularly 12 SI-AS 4483, “Vprašalna pola, Anton Sovre,” March 16, 1949; cf. Movrin, “The Anatomy of a Revolution,” 154. For the original documents, see Movrin, “Fran Bradač, Anton Sovre, Milan Grošelj, Jože Košar in Fran Petre,” 449. 13 SI-AS 4483, “Vprašalna pola, Anton Sovre,” March 16, 1949; the evaluation was written by Jože Košar. 14 Sovre, “Zahvaljeni, rešitelji, in iz veselih src pozdravljeni,” published in Slovenski poročevalec, May 9, 1945, 1. 15 For the context, see Gabrič, “Odpuščanje profesorjev Univerze v Ljubljani,” 14–19. 16 Kozak and Kidrič, “Začasna uredba Narodne vlade Slovenije o univerzitetnih oblastvih in učnem osebju,” 158. FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 253 in the West, could do serious harm, and Sovre was aware of that).17 His translations, nonetheless, remain a groundbreaking achieve- ment; most are still used, and after he died, the national translation award was named after him. His output was crowned, in 1959, by a translation of De rerum natura by Lucretius.18 Welcomed by the pro- ponents of dialectic materialism,19 over 500 pages of this publication remain one of the most majestic editions and the stateliest Slovenian classical translation of the era, if not the century. In 1959, when Sovre published Lucretius, he was already the decision-maker among Slo- venian classicists – and was thus asked to submit his proposal. The manuscript preserved represents a unique insight into the status quo and the timid hopes of the discipline, whose suspiciously bourgeois credentials frequently made it the scapegoat of the regime. The broader context of the document was the Third Yugoslav Five- Year Plan, covering the years from 1961 to 1965. The preparations started in early 1959. The institution behind the process was the Federal Institute of Economic Planning – and unlike the earlier attempts, which 17 Anton Sovre, “Personalna mapa – življenjepis,” January 20, 1951; University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, archives. 18 Researching the archives of the publisher which brought out Lucretius, I happe- ned upon a case of a manuscript submitted by what George Orwell might term an unperson. In 1954, Slovenska matica was trying to decide whether to publish “The History of Greek and Roman Philosophy,” written by Dr. Josip Jeraj (1892– 1964). National and University Library Ms 1987 preserves its carefully-worded evaluation. The editor Božidar Borko wrote that the level of the text might be somewhat high for the “Philosophical Library” series since it is “based on careful examination of the sources, attested by quotations, some of them in Greek,” and “has the scholarly apparatus.” He showed the text to Alma Sodnik, who taught history of philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, and together, they reached the inevitable conclusion: “The manuscript must be first inspected by comrade Boris Ziherl; he should decide whether, in principle, the text ideologically cor- responds to what is needed in contemporary philosophical thinking and philo- sophical education.” On May 15, 1954, publisher’s representatives Anton Melik and Ferdo Godina sent the text to Boris Ziherl, the head of the Ideological Com- mission of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. It seems that he was not impressed; one suspects that his final decision was influenced by the fact that the author, Dr. Josip Jeraj, got his doctorate in theology – and was indeed a Catholic priest. His manuscript was never published. It took another quarter of a century before a book on this topic, Primož Simoniti’s translation of Karl Vorländer’s History of Philosophy, became available in Slovenian – alas, again with scholarly apparatus, but the publisher had decided that this was still better than nothing. 19 For a representative review, see Pirkovič, “Nesmrtni helenski genij,” published in Naša sodobnost in 1959. DAVID MOVRIN254 focused on heavy industry and agriculture, this one tried to balance the economy20 and even included a chapter on science and research. It required every department in every university to report its ambitions, and the report signed by Sovre was duly submitted. This Five-Year Plan was stillborn from the very beginning and marked by significant political disagreements. The two northern republics, Slovenia and Croatia, pushed for decentralization and for giving the republics more influence regarding their budgets. The southern and less-developed republics saw this position as some- what selfish. They demanded the return of uncompromising central planning, which meant significant investments in heavy industry in their regions.21 True to style, the authorities in Belgrade published the plan five-to-twelve on Saturday, December 31, 1960, only a few hours before it was supposed to come into effect.22 The necessary input was gathered during the two years before that, with institutions over the country queried for suggestions. On October 17, 1959, Anton Sovre opened the proposal in his prodigiously bombastic style: Considering today’s immense speed of progress within the techni- cal sciences, in the time when humans are successfully preparing for the occupation of the solar system, it does not seem strange that humanist education once again got the role of the sacrificial lamb, to be slaughtered at the altar of the disciplines of the natural sciences. What is the meaning, we hear people grumble, for our society to spend the money to get acquainted with the world that was extinct thousands of years ago while this precious workforce could be better used in other fields? Away with this anachronistic rubbish, what need is there of Homers, what need of Platos, of Aristotles? All very lovely, but such reasoning is essentially an echo of vulgar practicalism, which does not see (or cannot see) the dialectical connection between the average level of general culture and the external technical achievements. True, dealing with antiquity does not have such shining perspectives as nuclear physics or astronautics, yet the ancient culture is nonetheless the cornerstone of our entire cultural building. 20 Borak, Ekonomski vidiki delovanja in razpada Jugoslavije, 48. 21 Prinčič, V začaranem krogu, 151–75. 22 Zvezna ljudska skupščina FLRJ, “Družbeni plan … od leta 1961 do 1965.” Specific steps to be taken in 1961 were published on the same day; see Zvezna ljudska skupščina FLRJ, “Zvezni družbeni plan za leto 1961.” FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 255 He then promptly proceeded to show the three reasons which make antiquity relevant for the present generation. These reasons are 1) science, 2) culture, and 3) education. First, science, because antiquity remains to be explored, despite centuries of research; discoveries appear daily, Sovre explains, bringing methodological enrichment of other disciplines, such as literature and art history. “If we remember that classical philology in some of its branches, such as syntax and stylistics, remains several horse lengths ahead of the philologies of the modern languages, it would be truly pity to undercut its research activity.” It is easy to believe his claims since his own stylistics certainly shine when it comes to defending the role classics can play in the field of culture. The entire European culture, our entire way of thinking, and the relationship toward sciences and arts have their roots planted in the ground of antiquity. To remove antiquity from our cultural life means to cut the branch on which we are sitting. I am saying this with full presence of mind, and I wish from all my heart that the deci- sion-making circles would think about this metaphor. If the modern man were to forget everything that these millennia of heritage have brought to him, he would be back to the primitive level, and there would be no Explorers and no Luniks!23 Whenever during the course of history, a certain period has disavowed antiquity, it always got lost in unimportant experiments; when antiquity provided rebirth, it created great things.... To cut the story short, the cultural tradition of antiquity has to be the seed and the impulse for independent creation, and the humanism of antiquity should be the first step to the realization of socialist humanism. It is precisely the literature of antiquity that represents an inexhaustible treasury for the education of the new, complete, and rich socialist personality. Having proven the cultural significance of antiquity for the educa- tion of socialist personality, Sovre eventually proceeded to show its educational relevance. 23 Explorer 1, the first US satellite and America’s answer to Sputnik 1, was launched on February 1, 1958. “Lunik” was a media nickname for the Soviet Luna program, a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon, with Luna 1 being the first spacecraft to escape the Earth-Moon system in January 1959 – and Luna 2 successfully hitting the Moon surface in September 1959, inspiring Sovre to write these lines a few weeks later. DAVID MOVRIN256 By learning Latin grammar, young people train their brains, and this training helps them in their further studying for their profession, as well as in their later practical life,24 where they generally know their way around for the most part easier than their colleagues who did not go to humanist schools. I remember how, right after the First World War, the shoe factory manager in Ptuj – a German from Vienna – kept offering me a job. “Sie haben,” he said, “die klassische Schulbildung hinter sich und verfügen daher über ein trainiertes Gehirn: und die Industrie braucht trainierte Gehirne.”25 Despite his capitalist ideology, this man valued the worth of classical edu- cation correctly. This recognition is nowadays finding its way even in America, and classical studies have been gaining much ground there. For even America needs trained brains. The more meager and slower successes of the American astrophysicists26 seem to have their cause, in the final analysis, in the fact that the Russian brain, after centuries of humanist education, is trained better than the American brains, which have no such tradition. (I do not know what is going on with classical schools in Russia today; even if they really curtailed it, the sediment of tradition is there, and this leaven keeps having an effect. In any case, after the last war was over, they published the translation and extensive commentary of Lucretius’ poem On the Nature of the World.) Suppose I add to this practical side of classical education its ideal side, the very fact that studying ancient authors cultivates aesthetic sensibility and imparts universal knowledge. In that case, one can easily understand what loss it would be to discard this precious ideological material. That is why classical languages need to be given the position that belongs to them, not because of tradition and piety but because of their utility and actual worth. One probably does not need to point out all the areas where the influence of antiquity is manifested, starting from Greek drama, still alive on the stages of the world, through Greek philosophy, which is the basis for all the European currents of thought, to the Roman law, 24 One can vividly imagine Sovre crossing this part out while rereading the pro- gram and deciding that sometimes, less is more. 25 “You have had the classical education in school, and you thus possess a trained brain – and the industry needs trained brains.” 26 This was in 1959 when the USA was still lagging in the space race. The Soviets were triumphant with the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in October 1957, as well as with the first animal in a spacecraft, Laika, aboard Sputnik 2, in Novem- ber 1957 – and were well underway to put the first human in orbit, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, in 1961. FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 257 the foundation for the legal consciousness of the world. These are well-known facts. We should consider these facts when preparing the prospective plan of scholarly work. Otherwise, time might show cracks in the sensitive field of social sciences, and future generations might be starved of classical humanism because we are pushing it today into, one could say, hopeless defensive. This is where the crude reality can suddenly be gleamed behind the cautious rhetoric. One doubts whether Anton Sovre harbored any illusions regarding life in the Soviet Union, where his younger brother Baltazar Sovre lost his life during the Great Terror, shot at 42 “for spy- ing, anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” on December 22, 1937.27 He was certainly able to observe, with his own eyes, the Stalinist onslaught on the Slovenian classical gymnasia that lasted from 1945 to 1949, and his feigned ignorance must have been rhetorically crafted dissimulatio. But all that was ancient history. Written in 1959, these pleas came only one year after the school reform of 1958,28 which destroyed the few remaining classical gymnasia, once again significantly undermining the position of Latin. Latin gained some ground after Yugoslavia was ostracized by Stalin and his Cominform in 1948 and was forced to look for help in the capitalist West.29 Ten years later, Stalin was dead, even if not yet buried;30 the threat was gone, and there was no need for the Yugoslav communists to dialectically compromise with the class enemy any longer. That is why the proposals regarding classical studies that followed in the “prospective program” were little more than a wish list. They called for research in medieval Latinity in the region, understanding the influence of European Renaissance humanism on the local Re- formation movement, and the influence of antiquity on Slovenian literature. They included a daring proposal for the division of labor between classics departments in Yugoslavia; Ljubljana would become the center for historical syntax; Skopje in Macedonia for Mycenaean and Belgrade for Byzantine studies. 27 Vujošević Cica, Nestajali netragom, 253. For details about Baltazar’s life, see Kristan, “Anton Sòvre in Anton Sovrè,” 93. 28 Gabrič, Šolska reforma 1953–1963. For a concise overview of the economic context of the Second Five-Year Plan – namely crisis, strike actions, and stagnation, see Prinčič, Slovensko gospodarstvo v drugi Jugoslaviji, 48–57. 29 See Movrin, “Gratiae plenum,” Keria 12, no. 2–3 (2010). For English translation, see “Yugoslavia in 1949 and its gratiae plenum.” 30 The Father of Nations was only taken from the mausoleum on October 31, 1961, under cover of Halloween night, to be quietly interred near the Kremlin wall. DAVID MOVRIN258 In the sphere of culture, the document suggested a translation program, calling for prioritizing Plato, Aristotle, Greek lyrics, Greek tragedy, Polybius, Vergil, Cezar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus, as well as those Byzantine writers that deal with the Slavs.31 Finally, in the sphere of education, it called for new dictionaries. In the end, it proposed an institute for classical studies to be created within the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts while calling for returning Latin to schools to allow classics students a modicum of hope for a career. A remarkable feature that stands out in the essay is another colleague who participated in the writing – mentioned in the very beginning. In the opening paragraph, Anton Sovre refers to one of his students: After a discussion with several colleagues in the profession, and particularly with the help of my student Dr. Gantar, I propose the following prospective work program for my discipline. At that time, Kajetan Gantar (1930–2022) had already defended his PhD thesis on Homer. Due to political reasons, he was initially blocked from getting a university position. However, the situation changed somewhat during the thaw in the sixties, when he could finally get the position of lecturer, and he eventually became the leading classical scholar and translator in the country.32 In January 2022, weeks before he was to be presented with the Prešeren Award, the highest national recognition in the sphere of culture, for his lifetime achievement in translation, I interviewed him in front of the audience in the great hall of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences. I could not resist the temptation; I asked him about the program submitted by his professor over six decades earlier, specifically about the curious fact that the leading figure of the discipline referred to his student in the opening paragraph. As usual, Gantar’s answer was highly informative – and marked by his characteristically understated humor: Professor Sovre wanted me to be his successor, and after my first seminar paper, he came up excitedly and said, “Come to me and our head of department, [Milan] Grošelj; you will become my successor.” However, I did not have the moral and political qualifications needed; 31 True to its name, Yugoslavia fostered Slavonic studies and instigated a search for the relevant sources; for the political discussion of this topic on the highest level, in the Politburo, see Movrin, “Yugoslavia in 1949 and its gratiae plenum,” 306. 32 For an overview of his work, see Čop, Hrovatič, and Rott, “Bibliografija.” FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 259 I had been imprisoned by the OZNA [secret police] for a while, and so on – even though classical philology was not a particular priority of the regime. [...] I was then offered a job by my former headmaster, Stane Melihar. He had been dismissed from the headmaster’s post [at Ljubljana Classical Gymnasium] because he had allowed various subversive activities – various literary study groups not exactly in line with Marxism – to appear at the Classical Gymnasium. However, Stane Melihar was sent [by the Germans] to Dachau during the war, so he was untouchable as a personality. Still, he was deprived of the directorship since the fact that he had allowed such things sugge- sted that he was not alert enough. A similar thing happened [at the Classical Gymnasium] in Maribor, [Jože] Košar was removed from his position [of the headmaster] when dissidents appeared there. Well, Melihar eventually became a high-ranking official in the admini- stration of the Slovenian republic in the Secretariat – this was what you would now call a ministry, but then it was called Secretariat for Culture and Enlightenment – and he oversaw the Council for Science. Whenever there were various five-year or seven-year research plans to be produced, this Council for Science asked for such plans to be made – plans of what was to be done. Melihar told me, “If you are out of a job, I will take you; I need somebody, and you are reliable.” He knew me from my student days. “And you know languages; you will help me.” His Council for Science was the predecessor of what is today the Ministry of Science, except that there were only two people back then – Stane Melihar as the head and me as a clerk. The University did not come under our jurisdiction at all, nor did the Academy, only certain technical institutes which were not a part of the University. Our only non-technical institute was the Institute for Ethnic Studies, which was somewhat different. [...] The institutes had to work out these plans, which were more like wish lists – and above all, calculate what should be done. I knew how the technical institutes and the Institute for Ethnic Studies did it, so Professor Sovre once called me to his home. I was living nearby, he knew me as his former student, and he said, “I am the only classicist at the Academy, now I am trying to arrange for Professor [Milan] Grošelj to become a member as well, but I have to submit this [prospective plan] by such and such a deadline, so write something down.” So, I wrote something after the same pattern I saw with the technical institutes – I no longer have that paper; I gave it to Sovre. Then Sovre told me: “But Mr. Gantar,” – not just me, he called everybody “Mister,” never “Comrade” – “but Mr. Gantar, I cannot submit this [under my name], this is yours.” I said, come on. So, he said, “I suppose it was DAVID MOVRIN260 done the way it should be done.” I told him I do not consider the text to be my personal masterpiece; I did it the way they did at the Institute for Research of Materials and Structures or the Laboratory for Hydroelectric Power Stations – if they can do it, we can do it for classical philology, too.33 Gantar’s insider information explains the sudden change of tone after the first two and a half pages, from what Cicero might term genus orationis Asiaticum, beloved by Sovre, toward the stricter standards of the oratores Attici (or at least genus medium … atque ex utroque mixtum, to use Quintilian’s phrase). Le style, c’est l’homme; one can safely say that sections 2 and 3 of the document were predominantly based on the draft prepared by Gantar, with Sovre only occasionally writing over the top of his initial draft, while the magnificent intro- duction on “the topical relevance of classical philology” in section 1 was penned by Sovre, apparently to avoid the feeling of merely signing somebody else’s rough copy. More importantly, Gantar’s testimony underlines the problems with such planning. First, the context of the five-year plans, “the instability, the cycling behavior, and the tendency toward radical administrative strategies that excessive bureaucratization imparts.”34 This was deeply flawed. None of these plans were successful, but this one was particularly ill-conceived. The proposals were submitted in late 1959, duly analyzed, and then put together by the end of December 1960. One sterling example of the economic fiascos from that period was a facility in Velenje, initiated by Slovenian authorities in 1961 and meant to convert coal into gas. It would cost an obscene amount of money, about 6 percent of Slovenia’s GDP at the time,35 and was canceled when it became clear that the local brown coal could not provide enough energy to compete with cheap gas from abroad – but not before the equipment had already been bought. It was later dubbed “The largest non-natural economic disaster in Slovenia.”36 33 Movrin, “Filologija ne gradi samo na logiki,” 169–70. The interview was pub- lished posthumously, paying the journal’s respects to the scholar who published one of his last scholarly papers in its first issue; see Gantar, “Ovidijeva poezija ob soočenjih z Avgustovim režimom.” 34 Beissinger, Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power, 298. 35 According to the official data from World Bank, GDP in Slovenia was worth 61.53 billion US dollars in 2021; adjusted for recent inflation, those 6% would currently mean around 4 billion USD. 36 Repe, “Energokemični kombinat Velenje,” 119. FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 261 Already in June 1962, a mere year and a half into the project, Tito proclaimed that the solution for the problems that had accumulated in the country called for the revision of the Prospective Plan. Only a month later, the Central Committee held a plenary meeting and declared that the Five-Year Plan had become unrealistic and that “organized work should immediately start” for creating the Seven-Year Plan for 1964–70.37 The whole circle started again. Indeed, the soundest study of that context, the analysis of the socialist economy in Slovenia between 1955 and 1970 by historian Jože Prinčič, is titled The Vicious Circle.38 The second and perhaps more significant problem was that the Party was not interested in what classicists had to say. Even the republics themselves had a minimal role. As Boris Kraigher, the president of the Executive Council of the People’s Republic of Slovenia, noted on the eve of the project, December 30, 1960, a constitutional right of the republic to make its own Plan would be unrealistic. In fact, the republic has no such possibility. Yugoslavia is a space united; everything is decided by the federal Plan. From that perspective, the republics can have programs but no plans.39 This somber realization explains why Sovre, far further down the pecking order from Kraigher, speaks of a “program” and not a “plan” in his first sentence. His input was mostly irrelevant; classicists, with their modest proposal, were just one of the many scholarly commu- nities involved in what was, in the end, a pointless ritual. The policy toward Latin in schools remained the same; if anything, it became more hostile during anni di piombo of the seventies, when the very concept of a gymnasium was attacked and demolished.40 Interestingly, the proposals suggested by Gantar and Sovre even- tually came to fruition once this policy fell apart – together with the 37 The Seven-Year Plan was another example of parroting the Soviet system, where Khrushchev had been espousing this innovation; see Hoeffding, “Substance and Shadow in the Soviet Seven-Year Plan,” 394–406. For the Yugoslav variant (and the Slovenian opposition), see Prinčič, V začaranem krogu, 195–210. 38 Prinčič, V začaranem krogu; for a wider context, see Ellman, “Rise and Fall of Socialist Planning.” 39 The minutes of Session 68 of the Executive Council, held on December 30, 1960, are cited by Prinčič, V začaranem krogu, 161. For further details about the “pro- gram” in question see Ljudska skupščina LR Slovenije, “Resolucija o programu … od 1961 do 1965. leta.” 40 Baskar, Latinščine, prosim. For the context, see Milharčič-Hladnik and Šušteršič, Šolska reforma je papirnati tiger. DAVID MOVRIN262 Berlin wall.41 In the early nineties, gymnasia returned and started teaching Latin; some of these students went on to study classics, and the number of translations eventually far surpassed those proposed above. Research on Slovenian Humanists, interdisciplinary studies in the Reformation, translations of Greek philosophy, lyric poetry, tragedy, and historiography, as well as Roman epic and lyric poetry, philosophical and historical prose; Latin-Slovenian dictionary in six volumes; thriving contacts with universities all over Europe; specialized scholarly journals; and the expansion of the Department of Classics in Ljubljana – everything that Kajetan Gantar was envisioning at the turn of the sixties was eventually achieved. Primarily due to his focused grassroots efforts, as he translated key texts by Aeschylus (1957 and 1982), Aristotle (1959 and 1964), Procopius (1961), Horace (1966 and 1993), Sappho (1970), Propertius (1971), Catullus (1974), Hesiod (1974), Ovid (1977), Pindar (1980), Plautus (1970 and 1991), Herondas (1971), Sophocles (1973, 1978 and 1985), Terence (1987), Homer (1994), Euripides (2001), Longinus (2011), and others – and tended to the discipline, in dürftiger Zeit, bringing up generations of classicists who then translated many more. As the notorious Soviet mantra had proclaimed back in the thirties: Plan – zakon, vypolneniye – dolg, perevypolneniye – chest’; “Plan is law, fulfillment is duty, over-fulfillment is honor.” Paradoxically, it took the system’s collapse to bring about the dream of every socialist planner: the Plan that was not only fulfilled but over-fulfilled. A thought that lingers, however, is the one articulated by the astute scholar and researcher of Soviet economy, Holland Hunter: “A number of alternative paths were available, … leading to levels of capacity and output that could have been as good as those achieved … yet with far less turbulence, waste, destruction, and sacrifice.”42 41 For an evaluation of the broader phenomenon, see the final chapter by Ellman, Socialist Planning, 362–95. 42 Hunter, “The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan,” 256. DAVID MOVRIN270 BIBLIOGRAPHY Baskar, Bojan. Latinščine, prosim: Latinščina in njeno izganjanje na Slo- venskem, 1849–1987. Ljubljana: Univerzitetna konferenca ZSMS, 1988. Beissinger, Mark R. Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power. Russian Research Center Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Borak, Neven. Ekonomski vidiki delovanja in razpada Jugoslavije. Zbirka Spekter. Ljubljana: Znanstveno in publicistično središče, 2002. Brožek, Josef. “The Current Five-Year Plan of Soviet Science in Historical Perspective.” The Scientific Monthly 70, no. 6 (1950): 390–95. Cook, Linda J. “Party and Workers in the Soviet First Five-Year Plan: The Transition from Political Mobilization to Administrative Control.” Russian History 15, no. 2/4 (1988): 327–51. Čop, Breda, Renata Hrovatič, and Zala Rott. “Bibliografija akad. prof. dr. Kajetana Gantarja od 1953–2010.” Keria 12, no. 2–3 (2010): 441–64. Ellman, Michael. Socialist Planning. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2014. ——— . “The Rise and Fall of Socialist Planning.” In Transition and Beyond, edited by Saul Estrin, Grzegorz W. Kołodko, and Milica Uva- lić, 17–34. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Gabrič, Aleš. “Odpuščanje profesorjev Univerze v Ljubljani zaradi politič- no-ideoloških vzrokov.” Objave 6 (2000): 12–32. ——— . Šolska reforma 1953–1963. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2006. Gantar, Kajetan. “Ovidijeva poezija ob soočenjih z Avgustovim režimom.” Clotho 1, no. 1 (2019): 9–20. ——— . “Sovretov prevajalski ideal.” In Sovretov zbornik, edited by Kajetan Gantar, Frane Jerman, and Janko Moder, 27–31. Ljubljana: Društvo slovenskih književnih prevajalcev in Društvo za antične in humanis- tične študije Slovenije, 1986. Gerlanc, Bogomil. “Bibliografija Antona Sovreta.” In Sovretov zbornik, edited by Kajetan Gantar, Frane Jerman, and Janko Moder, 109–24. Ljubljana: Društvo slovenskih književnih prevajalcev in Društvo za antične in humanistične študije Slovenije, 1986. Hanson, Philip. The Rise and Fall of Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945. New York: Routledge, 2003. Hoeffding, Oleg. “Substance and Shadow in the Soviet Seven-Year Plan.” Foreign Affairs 37, no. 3 (1959): 394–406. Hunter, Holand. “The Overambitious First Soviet Five-Year Plan.” Slavic Review 32, no. 2 (1973): 237–57. FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 271 Kozak, Ferdo, and Boris Kidrič. “Začasna uredba Narodne vlade Slovenije o univerzitetnih oblastvih in učnem osebju.” Uradni list SNOS in NVS 1–2, no. 35 (1945): 158. Kristan, Matic. “Anton Sòvre in Anton Sovrè: Dolga pot do filologije.” Keria 23, no. 2 (2021): 67–98. Ljudska skupščina LR Slovenije. “Resolucija o programu perspektivnega razvoja LR Slovenije v razdobju od 1961 do 1965. Leta.” Uradni list LRS 18, no. 3 (1961): 25–80. Milharčič-Hladnik, Mirjam, and Janez Šušteršič. Šolska reforma je papirnati tiger. Ljubljana: RK ZSMS, 1986. Movrin, David. “Classics in Postwar Secondary Education: Personal Per- spectives of Four Slovenian Principals.” In Classics and Class: Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School, edited by David Movrin and Elżbieta Olechowska, 122–27. Warsaw: Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw, 2016. ——— . “Filologija ne gradi samo na logiki (pogovor s Kajetanom Gantar- jem).” Clotho 4, no. 1 (2022): 163–77. ——— . “Fran Bradač, Anton Sovre, Milan Grošelj, Jože Košar in Fran Pe- tre: Latinščina in grščina na ljubljanski univerzi v desetletju po vojni.” Zgodovinski časopis 68, no. 3–4 (2014 2014): 432–77. ——— . “Gratiae plenum: Latinščina, grščina in Informbiro.” Keria 12, no. 2–3 (2010): 281–304. ——— . “The Anatomy of a Revolution: Classics at the University of Lju- bljana after 1945.” In Classics and Communism: Greek and Latin Behind the Iron Curtain, edited by György Karsai, Gábor Klaniczay, David Movrin, and Elżbieta Olechowska, 141–68. Budapest: Collegium Buda- pest Institute for Advanced Study, 2013. ——— . “Yugoslavia in 1949 and Its Gratiae Plenum: Greek, Latin, and the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (Comin- form).” In Classics and Communism: Greek and Latin Behind the Iron Curtain, edited by György Karsai, Gábor Klaniczay, David Movrin, and Elżbieta Olechowska, 291–329. Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, 2013. Pirkovič, Ivo. “Nesmrtni helenski genij.” Naša sodobnost 7 (1959): 1057–68. Prezidij ljudske skupščine LRS. “Zakon o petletnem planu za razvoj naro- dnega gospodarstva Ljudske republike Slovenije v letih 1947 do 1951.” Uradni list LRS 4, no. 31 (1947): 211–26. Prinčič, Jože. Slovensko gospodarstvo v drugi Jugoslaviji. Ljubljana: Mod- rijan, 1997. ——— . V začaranem krogu: Slovensko gospodarstvo od nove ekonomske politike do velike reforme; 1955–1970. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1999. DAVID MOVRIN272 Repe, Božo. “Energokemični kombinat Velenje – primer socialističnega nepodjetništva.” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 34, no. 1 (1994): 119–32. Smolej, Tone. “Filozofska fakulteta (1919–1971).” In Zgodovina Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, edited by Dušan Nečak, Tone Smolej, Kornelija Ajlec, Peter Mikša and Barbara Šatej, 31–90. Ljubljana: Znan- stvena založba FF UL, 2019. Sovre, Anton. “Zahvaljeni, rešitelji, in iz veselih src pozdravljeni.” Sloven- ski poročevalec, May 9, 1945, 1. Škrljac, Ferdo. Živio Titov plan. Zagreb: Seljačka sloga, 1947. Vujošević Cica, Ubavka. Nestajali netragom: Jugosloveni - žrtve političke represije i staljinističkih čistki u Sovjetskom savezu 1927–1953. Belgrade: Institut za savremenu historiju, 2019. Zvezna ljudska skupščina FLRJ. “Družbeni plan gospodarskega razvoja Jugoslavije od leta 1961 do 1965.” Uradni list FLRJ 16, no. 53 (1960): 969–97. ——— . “Zvezni družbeni plan za leto 1961.” Uradni list FLRJ 16, no. 53 (1960): 997–1015. FIVE-YEAR PLANS, EXPLORERS, LUNIKS, AND SOCIALIST HUMANISM 273 ABSTRACT About a year before the pandemic struck, personal archives of Anton Sovre (1885–1963) were rediscovered, and they eventually made their way to the National and University Library in Ljubljana. During the fifties, Anton Sovre was the undisputed éminence grise of the field of classics in Slovenia and among the new sources now available to researchers is an essay on “Perspective Development of Classical Philology” from 1959. The document was written in the tradition of the Five-Year Plans, and its rhetoric is often amusing. Its content, however, was written mainly by Sovre’s best student. At that time, Kajetan Gantar (1930–2022) had already defended his PhD thesis on Homer. Due to political reasons, he was initially blocked from getting a university position. However, the situation changed somewhat during the thaw in the sixties, when he could finally get the position of lecturer, and he eventually became the leading classical scholar and translator in the country and Sovre’s successor. His proposal for the future of the discipline shows strategic thinking, which was confirmed by the decades that followed. kEYWORDS: five-year plans, Anton Sovre, Kajetan Gantar, classical tradition, history of classical scholarship, University of Ljubljana DAVID MOVRIN274 Petletke, Explorerji, Luniki in socialistični humanizem: Anton Sovre in njegov načrt za klasično filologijo v Sloveniji IZVLEČEK V obdobju pred izbruhom pandemije se je znova pojavila rokopisna zapuščina Antona Sovreta (1885–1963) ter sčasoma prispela v Narodno in univerzitetno knjižnico v Ljubljani. V petdesetih letih je bil Anton Sovre nesporna siva eminenca klasične filologije na Slovenskem in med novimi viri, ki so zdaj na voljo raziskovalcem, je tudi njegov spis »Perspektivni razvoj klasične filologije« iz leta 1959. Dokument je nastal v tradiciji petletnih načrtov, njegova retorika je pogosto svojska. Njegovo vsebino pa je v veliki meri napisal Sovretov najboljši študent. Kajetan Gantar (1930–2022) je takrat že obranil svojo doktorsko disertacijo o Homerju. Zaradi političnih razlogov so mu sprva onemogočili zapo- slitev na univerzi. Razmere so se nekoliko spremenile med odjugo v šestdesetih letih, ko je končno lahko začel predavati, sčasoma je postal vodilni klasični filolog in prevajalec v državi ter Sovretov naslednik. Njegov predlog za prihodnost discipline priča o strateškem razmiš- ljanju, ki se je potrdilo v naslednjih desetletjih. kLjučNE BESEDE: petletka, Anton Sovre, Kajetan Gantar, klasična tradicija, zgodovina klasične filologije, Univerza v Ljubljani