SKRYTÁ DRÁMA LITERÁRNEHO HISTORIKA (ŽIVOT A POSTOJE ŠTEFANA DRUGA V ARCHÍVNYCH DOKUMENTOCH)

The literary historian and critic Štefan Drug (1931 – 2011) began his science career in the year 1955 at the Institute of Slovak literature, Slovak Academy of Science. He was a lecturer of Slovak literature and culture at the Jagellonian University in Krakow between the years 1969 and 1974. At the time of normalization he could not work in the academic environment for political reasons, so he found a job as an editor of the publishing house Tatran (1974 – 1989). He did not return to his scientific work until the social and political changes in 1989: he dealt with Slovak literature of the 20th century, especially the issues of literary life, at the Institute of Slovak literature, Slovak Academy of Science, between the years 1990 and 2006. At that time he helped remove the distortions in the history of Slovak literature and rehabilitate then-proscribed authors (e.g. Valentín Beniak). Despite the forced break due to the political circumstances, Štefan Drug´s lifelong literary and historical work features a continuous interest in interwar leftist avant-garde, left-wing literature of the 1920s and the 1930s, in the DAV group and the life stories and works of its most significant representatives, namely Laco Novomeský and Vladimír Clementis. The paper built on archive materials shows how Štefan Drug was confronted with the period ideological apparatus.