Mladina

Mladina (dt. Die Jugend ) is an independent, Slovenian current-political weekly magazine, similar to the German Spiegel and the Austrian profile . It is published in its own publishing house and according to its own information (as of October 2016) has a circulation of around 13,000 copies (2009 approx. 20,000). First published in 1943, the magazine was published until 1990 by the Slovene Youth Association of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia .

At the end of the 1980s, Mladina played an important role in the public debate over the necessary economic and political reforms in the Yugoslav state . The magazine supported the liberal positions prevailing in Slovenia against the claim to power of the Serbian President Milošević and his allies in the federal organs. At that time the magazine had a circulation of over 80,000 pieces.

There are now several publications from the competition that split the market, e.g. B. Demokracija (actually a magazine of the SDS party) or Reporter (with a circulation of 15,000 copies / as of April 2017). Nevertheless, Mladina is still one of the most influential weekly magazines in Slovenia.

history

The magazine followed up on the previous titles Slovenska Mladina (1938–40) and Mlada Slovenija (1941–43). In 1943/44 Mladina was produced at different locations in the part of Slovenia liberated from the partisans. The editorial office has been in Ljubljana since 1945 . In the first decades of the Tito era, the party bureaucracy-controlled magazine did not play a particularly important role in the Yugoslav media landscape. But as early as the early 1970s, articles critical of the regime were being published in the magazine, which is why the party disciplined the editorial team in 1976 with an extensive clean-up. Mladina, who was now loyal to the line again, fell into a deep crisis and had only a few readers, because the usual party jargon no longer interested the youth.

As a result of the 11th Congress of the Socialist Youth Association of Slovenia in 1982, the magazines published by this association were again given more extensive journalistic freedom. A new editorial team was installed at Mladina, which transformed the title into a trendy youth magazine that reported a lot about current bands. So the circulation could be increased again. Externally a culture and music magazine, the editorial staff in Mladina soon made critical contributions to political and social issues. The range of topics covered ecology, human rights, privileges of the socialist nomenklatura, strikes and also sensitive historical topics such as the civil war in Slovenia during the fascist occupation. This made the magazine popular even beyond the youth and the circulation rose to over 50,000 copies in the mid-1980s.

In Slovenia, Mladina became the mouthpiece of the democratic opposition. Mladina was even read in the other republics of Yugoslavia, because there the dealings with the press were far less liberal. The party viewed with concern the growing influence that the critical magazine had on public opinion. Important employees at the time of the Slovenian democracy movement were z. E.g. the editors David Tasić and Franci Zavrl, the sociologist Gregor Tomc , the editors Robert Botteri, Miran Lesjak and Vlado Miheljak as well as the freelance journalist Janez Janša , who became defense minister and later prime minister after the independence of his country.

When Miheljak and Janša published secret military documents in Mladina in the spring of 1988, the magazine was almost banned by the Yugoslav federal authorities. However, the journalists did not reveal any secrets related to national defense, but instead made public plans to suppress the Slovenian democracy movement under the heading Noč dolgih nožev . The secret service and the People's Army considered at that time to impose martial law on Slovenia and to have the republic occupied by the military police, as it actually happened a year later in Kosovo. The federal authorities arrested Janez Janša and three other men to be tried in Ljubljana. This triggered the first mass demonstration against the communist regime in the Slovenian capital. Milan Kučan , who was the head of the Central Committee of the Slovenian Communist Party at the time, took a protective stand in front of Mladina and thus prevented the magazine from being banned. The affair continued to gain popularity, with circulation increasing to 70,000 in 1988.

Even after Slovenia's independence in 1991, Mladina remained a government and society critical magazine. For example, the former Mladina employee and later top politician (former Prime Minister, leader of the SDS party) Ivan ("Janez") Janša is a popular destination in Mladina. The relationship between Janez Janša and Mladina can be described as broken, because Janša does not give Mladina any more interviews. Mladina is a frequent advocate of human rights, so the rights of immigrants from the south (above all Albanians and Bosnians), whom many locals have encountered xenophobically in the past 15 years, have been defended again and again. Criticism of the Catholic Church can also often be found in the paper. Mladina rejected the forthcoming NATO accession in 2003 because no referendum was held about it. In 2006 the magazine reprinted the controversial Mohammed cartoons from the Danish Jyllands-Posten .

content

Critical but also above all satirical contributions, a "announcement in the form of a graphic poster" on page 3, a relatively large number of comments and her own satirical cartoon Diareja are characteristic of Mladina. In addition to the leading article, the magazine is divided into the following parts: weekly review, Slovenia, world (news) with news about Croatia and a cultural section with a comic strip. It reports on local politics and economy, as well as world events. In the last few years the reader's letter section has been enlarged to two pages. An interview is always published. Complete articles from the German news magazine " Der Spiegel " are regularly taken over, but occasionally also articles from the English Guardian , the New York Times or other well-known magazines and newspapers.

Mladina has had an online edition since 2000. Grega Repovž has been the editor-in-chief since 2006.

literature

• Karmen Erjavec: Change and continuity of the press system in Slovenia. Dissertation Salzburg 1997.
• Jure Vidmar: Democratic transition and democratic consolidation in Slovenia. Frankfurt am Main 2008. ISBN 978-3-631-57075-3

Web links

• Mladina website
• Brief introduction on the website of www.ex-yupress.com (1997)
• Tjebbe van Tijen: Europe Against The Current 1985-1989 (1990)
• Proof in the journal database : ZDB -ID 821287-9

Individual proof

1. ↑ German The Night of the Long Knives Short reports on the website of the National Museum of Contemporary History ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.