Jasna Koteska

Communist Intimacy Jasna Koteska

This book analyzes the nature of the police states in Eastern Europe (especially, of ex-Yugoslavia) during the communist era. The book opens as a personal memoir. The author's father, the famous Macedonian poet Jovan Koteski was a subject of massive police surveillance by the secret communist police of ex-Yugoslavia for 42 years out of 69 years of his life, in a well-documented case. His secret police file was maintained under the code name The Intimist (hence, the title of the book). The book continues as an academic enquiry into the mechanisms of the Eastern European police states in their relations towards the individual, the private and the public. The American poet Allen Ginsberg publicly revolted against the imprisonment of the author's father in 1986, when he was visiting Macedonia, which resulted in the release of the poet from prison in 1987.