The Movement of Independent Intellectuals in Yugoslavia

Abstract

This essay sums up the quest for freedom of thought, speech, press, and association in Tito's Yugoslavia via an attempt to launch an independent magazine. Free Voice, and simultaneously foimd a Movement of Independent Intellectuals at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Zadar branch of Zagreb University in the 1960s, This was the Movement that Mihajlo Mihajlov joined. And while Mihajlov became famous for his intellectual travelogue, Moscow Summer 1964, published in the West, but banned in Yugoslavia, the would-be founders of the new magazine and Movement were all intimidated and persecuted, Mihajlov himself was imprisoned in August 1966 on the eve of the press conference to announce the project, while Mirko Vidović was in exile in France, Vidović would also face imprisonment in the 1970s, joining Mihajlov in the same prison where they organized hunger strikes demanding better treatment and regime recognition of the status of political prisoners.