The East Is Read: The End of Communism, Slovenian Exceptionalism, and the Independent Journalism of Mladina
The East Is Read: The End of Communism, Slovenian Exceptionalism, and the Independent Journalism of Mladina

Summary/Abstract: In the 1980s, as the first large cracks appeared in the state the Titoists had mortared together, Yugoslavia witnessed the growth of lively local alternatives to the mainstream press. These new or revitalized media-magazines, newsletters, intellectual journals, and even the occasional radio station-became important conduits for the forces that shook apart the federal state. They spread the idea that the Communists were losing (or had lost) what remained of their legitimate mandate to govern, and they offered an arena for a renewed debate over whether political power should be vested with ethnically defined nations rather than the broader, multinational community of Yugoslav citizens. Especially noteworthy was the independent press in Slovenia, the most prosperous and ethnically homogeneous of the Yugoslav republics and, if the Slovenes themselves are to be believed, the most "western" in culture and political mentality. Little Slovenia became a hive of alternative media activity. [...]

• Details
• Contents