Nova Istra

460 NOVA ISTRA Literary and cultural journal Pula, Croatia, No. 3-4/2014 SUMMARY Since the whole world, especially Europe, was literally obsessed this year by 1914 and the 100 th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, causing almost the in- flation of this term, we could not resist touching on this in the introduction in our own way. Just like usual, contemporary literature is represented by well-established and less known writers, different genres and generations of writers who belong to the cu- rrent literary production in Croatia. New translations include a selection from the contemporary Bulgarian short stori- es, as well as from the Spanish and Italian poetry. There are two sections which present current issues: the first one is dedicated to optimism in this harsh time of modern civilization, while the second one is about politics and politicians , viewed mostly as the profiteers of democracy in the so-called globalized world. The section containing reviews and essays presents, among other things, tough and severe, grounded in theory and practice, criticism of liberal capitalism, that seems to have no masks under which to hide its own exploiting and manipulative essence. The contribution on our native region considers the periodicals that were published in German in Pula (the main naval port in the Empire), under the Austro-Hunga- rian rule, till the end of World War I and disintegration of the Monarchy. Finally, critical texts are on literary and historical topics and new books in the fields related to them. It should mention a survey of the first anthology of Montenegrin poetry by poetesses (originally released in Croatia), and a survey of a non-critical, in ideological terms completely exclusive monograph about the time of the communist dictator Josip Broz Tito, who is still glorified in Croatia by many people, without any valid, object arguments, that is, in a diehard manner from the ideological point of view, with common sense deficit and surplus emotions. Translation: Renata Šamo, Pula