Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences and Humanities
Year: 2025
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The Forgotten Case – the Slovenian Student Newspapers Mladina, Tribuna and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, Late 1980s
Maja Kaninska
ABSTRACT:
In the early 1980s, following the death of Josip Broz Tito, socio-political changes began to emerge in Yugoslavia, initially in Slovenia—a republic that was more economically developed, more liberal, and, by most standards, stronger than the other republics. The Polish trade union organization Solidarność (Solidarity) was most influential in strengthening democratic reforms in the communist countries of Eastern Europe and exposing the weaknesses of the one-party regime. Intellectuals, social movements and the media in Yugoslavia became more active under the growing influence of the West and the Polish movement Solidarność. This ideological shift led to accelerated changes at the end of the 1980s, when various means—such as the print media—were used to shape public opinion. The student magazine Mladina used the Jewish symbol, the Star of David, for a provocative gathering related to the events in Kosovo. Shortly after, in 1989, the Slovenian youth newspaper Tribuna began publishing, as a feuilleton, excerpts from the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This prompted the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia to file a complaint with the state court. This paper will present, through a retrospective analysis, three discourses that emerged as innovative within the one-party system: the breakthrough of freedom of speech and expression in Slovenia despite censorship; the reduction of the sense of responsibility for public speech; and a broader social atmosphere oriented towards ideological solidarity.
Keywords: Press, Mladina, Tribuna, Antisemitism-Semitism, Jewish Community