Auditorium, Museum of Modern Art

Pripravila: Ana Mizerit and Robert Botteri

The display presents a selection of front covers of the controversial Slovene weekly Mladina, designed by design collectives and individual designers, and a number of key articles that well represent the politically, socially, and culturally turbulent period of the second half of the 1980s, especially between 1987 and 1989. That was also the time when Mladina became known as a periodical of radical and creative form and content, with its liberal openness and critical approach.

Well-known for commenting on current events and dealing above all with political, economic, social, cultural and other issues, Mladina has always been the loudest critic of the old mentality and a harbinger of new ideas. The magazine was established in January 1943, during the Nazi-fascist occupation of Slovenia. During the war it served as the gazette of the underground League of Slovene Youth, supporting the national liberation struggle. In the 1980s, Mladina emancipated itself from its subordinate political role and earned the reputation of a political weekly that tackled taboo subjects. It broached topics such as freedom of speech and the press, tough economic issues, the privileges of the upper echelons of the socialist government, the political role of the Yugoslav People’s Army, the repression of youth subcultures, ecology, workers’ strikes, the feasibility of self-management, post-war killings, repression in socialism, and especially human rights. Since its articles were both provocative and influential, the weekly came to be seen as an enemy of the state in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s. Until the turn of the decade, Mladina remained the only radically critical magazine of mass circulation that dealt with a wide variety of pressing issues in society, making itself known to the general public in Slovenia, and also Yugoslavia as a whole.