Nova revija is a Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

n publishing house and cultural institute that developed from the literary journal with the same name.

The magazine

The journal Nova revija was founded in 1982, when the Titoist regime allowed a group of liberal and conservative critical intellectuals to publish an editorially entirely independent journal for the first time after the abolishment of the magazine Perspektive in 1964.

Already in 1980, shortly after the death of the Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz Tito

Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...

, six Slovenian authors and intellectuals (columnist Dimitrij Rupel

Dimitrij Rupel

Dimitrij Rupel is a Slovenian politician.- Biography :Rupel was born in Ljubljana, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, into a bourgeois family of former anti-fascist political emigrants from the Julian March .After receiving a bachelor's degree in comparative literature and...

, philosopher Tine Hribar

Tine Hribar

Tine Hribar is a Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual, notable for his interpretations of Heidegger and his role in the democratization of Slovenia between 1988 and 1990, known as the Slovenian Spring...

, poets Niko Grafenauer

Niko Grafenauer

Niko Grafenauer is a Slovenian poet, essayist, literary historian, editor and translator. He is particularly known as author of popular children literature, and for his active participation in the Slovenian public life, especially in conservative and liberal conservative platforms.He was born in...

, Svetlana Makarovič

Svetlana Makarovič

Svetlana Makarovič is a Slovenian writer of prose, poetry, children's books, and picture books, and is also an actress, illustrator and chanteuse .She has been called "The First Lady of Slovenian poetry." She is also noted for borrowing from Slovenian folklore to tell stories of rebellious and...

 and Boris A. Novak, and literary historian Andrej Inkret) submitted a petition to the authorities of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia

Socialist Republic of Slovenia

The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until 1990...

 in which they demanded to be allowed to publish a new independent journal. The petition maintained that the alternative magazine Problemi, which had served as the main critical publication in Slovenia since the mid 1960s, had been taken over by the Ljubljana Lacanian school, and that a new journal was needed. The petition was signed by over 60 public figures from Slovenia, which published a support letter in the daily magazine Delo

Delo

Delo is the largest national daily newspaper in Slovenia. It was established on May 1st, 1959, when two newspapers Ljudska pravica and Slovenski poročevalec merged. Nowadays, it is the most influential and credible daily newspaper in Slovenia...

. It took however two years before the journal was allowed to be published. The first issue appeared in 1982, under the simple name of Nova revija, meaning New Journal or New Review. The publishing board included intellectuals from different generations and different ideological positions. Their common feature was a critical stance towards the Communist regime, from a western perspective: either liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, conservative, Christian democratic, or Social democratic.

In the mid 1980s, Nova revija became one of the chief voices of dissent in Slovenia, together with the left liberal popular magazine Mladina

Mladina

Mladina is a Slovenian weekly left-wing current affairs magazine. It was first published in the 1920s as the youth magazine of the Slovenian Communist Party...

.

In 1987, the 57th issue of Nova revija was published, which included the Contributions to the Slovenian National Program

Contributions to the Slovenian National Program

Contributions to the Slovenian National Program , also known as Nova revija 57 or 57th edition of Nova revija was a special issue of the Slovenian opposition intellectual journal Nova revija, published in January 1987...

, a plea for a democratic and sovereign Slovenia. In 1989, the intellectual group around the journal established the Slovenian Democratic Union

Slovenian Democratic Union

The Slovenian Democratic Union was a Slovenian liberal political party, active between 1989 and 1991, during the democratization and the secession of the Republic of Slovenia from Yugoslavia....

, which soon emerged as one of the key political parties within the DEMOS coalition, a broad coalition that won the first free elections to the National Assembly of Slovenia

National Assembly (Slovenia)

The National Assembly is the general representative body of the Slovenian nation. According to the Constitution of Slovenia and the Constitutional Court of Slovenia, it is the major part of the distinctively incompletely bicameral legislative branch of the Republic of Slovenia. It is unicameral...

 in April 1990.

After the independence of Slovenia in 1991, the magazine expanded into one of the most important cultural institutions in Slovenia.

Publishing house

In 1990, the publishing house Nova revija was founded. In the 1990s and 2000s, several other magazines were launched within the Nova revija consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

, including a magazine for current political analysis Ampak (since 1999), the journal for legal theory Dignitas, the philosophical journal Phainomena (since 1992), and the journal for religious studies

Religious studies

Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.While theology attempts to...

 Poligrafi.

Contributors

Several famous authors, essayists, columnists, and thinkers have contributed to Nova revija, among them sociologists Jože Pučnik

Jože Pucnik

Jože Pučnik was a Slovenian public intellectual, sociologist and politician. During the Communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, Pučnik was one of the most outspoken Slovenian critics of dictatorship and lack of civil liberties in former Yugoslavia. He was imprisoned for a total of 7 years, and later...

, Igor Škamperle

Igor Škamperle

Igor Škamperle is a Slovenian sociologist, cultural theorist, novelist, essayist, mountaineer and translator.He was born in a Slovene-speaking family in Trieste, Italy. He studied comparative literature and cultural sociology at the University of Ljubljana, where he graduated in 1990...

, Gregor Tomc

Gregor Tomc

Gregor Tomc also known as Grega Tomc is a Slovenian sociologist, musician and activist. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he was the founder and member of the famous Slovenian punk rock band Pankrti.- Biography :...

, Aleš Debeljak

Aleš Debeljak

Aleš Debeljak , is a Slovenian cultural critic, poet, and essayist.- Biography :Debeljak was born in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated from comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana in 1985...

 and Frane Adam; political analysts Viktor Blažič

Viktor Blažič

Viktor Blažič is a Slovenian journalist, essayist, translator and former anti-Communist dissident.He was born in the village of Smolenja vas near Novo Mesto in south-eastern Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1944, he joined the partisan resistance. After World...

 and Dimitrij Rupel

Dimitrij Rupel

Dimitrij Rupel is a Slovenian politician.- Biography :Rupel was born in Ljubljana, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, into a bourgeois family of former anti-fascist political emigrants from the Julian March .After receiving a bachelor's degree in comparative literature and...

; essayists Žarko Petan

Žarko Petan

thumb|Žarko PetanŽarko Petan is a Slovenian writer, essayist, screenwriter, and theatre and film director. He is most famous as writer of aphorisms....

, Brane Senegačnik, Alenka Puhar

Alenka Puhar

Alenka Puhar is a Slovenian journalist, author, translator, and historian. She is known for her columns in the Slovenian journal Delo, for her writings on the dissident movements in Socialist Slovenia and Yugoslavia, as well as for her book "The Primary Text of Life" , a combination of...

, Spomenka Hribar

Spomenka Hribar

Spomenka Hribar is a Slovenian author, philosopher, sociologist, politician, columnist, and public intellectual. She was one of the most influential Slovenian intellectuals in the 1980s, and was frequently called "the First Lady of Slovenian Democratic Opposition", and "the Voice of Slovenian...

, Andrej Capuder and Igor Senčar; poets Veno Taufer

Veno Taufer

Veno Taufer is a Slovenian poet, essayist, translator and playwright. Together with Dane Zajc and Gregor Strniša, he is considered one of the foremost Slovenian modernist poets of the postwar era...

, Niko Grafenauer

Niko Grafenauer

Niko Grafenauer is a Slovenian poet, essayist, literary historian, editor and translator. He is particularly known as author of popular children literature, and for his active participation in the Slovenian public life, especially in conservative and liberal conservative platforms.He was born in...

, Aleš Šteger

Aleš Šteger

Aleš Šteger is a Slovene poet, writer, editor and literary critic. His poetry has been translated into numerous languages and published in over two hundred literary journals and magazines internationally....

, Jože Snoj

Jože Snoj

Jože Snoj is a Slovenian poet, novelist, journalist and essayist.He was born in Maribor, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, into a wealthy Slovene family. His uncle, Franc Snoj, was a prominent member of the Slovene People's Party and a minister in the Royal Yugoslav Government...

, Boris A. Novak, Josip Osti

Josip Osti

Josip Osti is a Bosnian poet, prose writer and essayist, literary critic, anthologist and translator.Osti was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Sarajevo...

, Dane Zajc

Dane Zajc

Dane Zajc was a Slovenian poet and playwright. He served as president of the Slovene Writers' Association , and was awarded the prestigious Prešeren Award for lifetime achievement...

, and Tomaž Šalamun

Tomaz Salamun

Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet. He was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published 39 collections of poetry in his native Slovenian language. Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the 1970s and has lived for periods of time in...

; philosophers Tine Hribar

Tine Hribar

Tine Hribar is a Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual, notable for his interpretations of Heidegger and his role in the democratization of Slovenia between 1988 and 1990, known as the Slovenian Spring...

, Ivo Urbančič

Ivo Urbancic

Ivo Urbančič is a Slovenian philosopher. He is considered to be one of the fathers of the phenomenological school in Slovenia...

 and Dean Komel

Dean Komel

Dean Komel is a Slovenian philosopher.He was born in the small village of Bilje in the Goriška region of Slovenia, then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....

; legal experts France Bučar

France Bucar

France Bučar is a Slovenian politician, legal expert and author. Between 1990 and 1992, he served as the first chairman of the freely elected Slovenian Parliament. He was the one to formally declare the independence of Slovenia on June 25, 1991. He is considered as one of the founding fathers of...

 and Peter Jambrek

Peter Jambrek

Peter Jambrek is a Slovenian sociologist, jurist, politician and intellectual. He is considered among the fathers of the current Slovenian Constitution and among the most influential public intellectuals in Slovenia....

; writers Rudi Šeligo

Rudi Šeligo

Rudi Šeligo was a Slovenian writer, playwright, essayist and politician. Together with Lojze Kovačič and Drago Jančar, he is considered as one of the foremost Slovenian modernist writers of the post-World War II period.- Life :...

, Lojze Kovačič

Lojze Kovačič

Lojze Kovačič was a Slovene writer. His novel The Newcomers is often considered one of the most important Slovene novels of the 20th century and has been translated into German, French, Spanish and Dutch....

, Alojz Rebula

Alojz Rebula

Alojz Rebula is a Slovene writer, playwright, essayist and translator, who lives and works in the Province of Trieste, Italy. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.-Life:...

, Drago Jančar

Drago Jancar

Drago Jančar is a Slovenian writer, playwright and essayist. Jančar is one of the most known contemporary Slovene writers. In Slovenia, he is also famous for his political commentaries and civic engagement.-Life:...

, and Boris Pahor

Boris Pahor

Boris Pahor is a Slovene writer from Italy. He is considered to be one of the most influential living authors in the Slovene language and has been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts...

; literary critics Taras Kermauner

Taras Kermauner

Taras Kermauner was a Slovenian literary historian, critic, philosopher, essayist, playwright and translator.- Life :...

, Janko Kos

Janko Kos

Janko Kos is a Slovenian literary historian, theoretician and critic.He was born in Ljubljana in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the son of the painter and sculptor Tine Kos...

 and Simona Škrabec

Simona Škrabec

Simona Škrabec is a Slovene literary critic, essayist and translator who lives and works in Barcelona.She was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to a Serbian father and a Slovene mother. She spent her childhood in the small town of Ribnica in the Lower Carniola region. She studied German language and...

; historians Vasko Simoniti

Vasko Simoniti

Vasko Simoniti is a Slovenian historian and politician. Between 2004 and 2008, he served as the Minister of Culture of Slovenia...

, Peter Vodopivec

Peter Vodopivec

Peter Vodopivec is a Slovenian historian and public intellectual.He was born in a Slovene family in Belgrade, Serbia, then capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He studied history at the University of Ljubljana...

, Peter Štih

Peter Štih

Peter Štih is a Slovenian historian, specialising in medieval history.Štih was born in Ljubljana, but spent most of his childhood years in the town of Most na Soči in the Goriška region of western Slovenia. He attended grammar school in Tolmin and studied history at the University of Ljubljana,...

, Igor Grdina, and Jože Pirjevec

Jože Pirjevec

Jože Pirjevec is a Slovene historian from Italy. He is one of the most prominent diplomatic historians of the west Balkans region, and member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts....

 and many others. Many notable non-Slovene authors, especially dissidents from former Yugoslavia and the former Communist bloc, have contributed to the magazine, including Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik is the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, where he sometimes writes under the pen-names of Andrzej Zagozda or Andrzej Jagodziński. In 1966–1989 he was one of the leading organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland...

, Václav Havel

Václav Havel

Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...

, György Konrád

György Konrád

György Konrád is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom. He was a dissident under the communist regime.- Life :...

, Dobrica Ćosić

Dobrica Cosic

Dobrica Ćosić is a Serbian writer, as well as a political and Serb nationalist theorist. He was the first president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1993...

, and Vlado Gotovac. Western authors and columnist who have contributed to the magazine include Jacques Rupnik, Thomas Luckmann

Thomas Luckmann

Thomas Luckmann is a German sociologist of Slovene origin. His main areas of research are the sociology of communication, Sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion, and the philosophy of science.- Biography :...

, Gianni Vattimo

Gianni Vattimo

Gianteresio Vattimo, also known as Gianni Vattimo is an internationally recognized Italian author, philosopher, and politician. Many of his works have been translated into English.-Biography:...

, and Fernando Savater

Fernando Savater

Fernando Fernández-Savater Martín is one of Spain's most popular living philosophers, as well as an essayist and celebrated author....

.

The journal has published translations of foreign literates such as Zbigniew Herbert

Zbigniew Herbert

Zbigniew Herbert was an influential Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement – Home Army during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers...

, Wyslawa Szymborska, Peter Handke

Peter Handke

Peter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...

, Diego Marani

Diego Marani

Diego Marani is an Italian novelist, translator, and newspaper columnist. In 1996, while working as a translator for the Council of the European Union, he invented Europanto, a mock international auxiliary language. Marani has published different articles, short stories and video clips in Europanto...

, and Czeslaw Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz

Czesław Miłosz was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator of Lithuanian origin and subsequent American citizenship. His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of 20 "naive" poems. He defected to the West in 1951, and his nonfiction book The Captive Mind is a classic of...

, as well as theorists like Jan Patočka

Jan Patocka

Jan Patočka is considered one of the most important contributors to Czech philosophical phenomenology, as well as one of the most influential central European philosophers of the 20th century...

, Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

, Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor (philosopher)

Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...

, Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...

, Francois Furet

François Furet

-Biography:Born in Paris on 27 March 1927, into a wealthy family, François Furet was a brilliant student who graduated from the Sorbonne with the highest honors and soon decided on a life of research, teaching and writing. He received his education at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and at the faculty...

, Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...

, Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

, Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in sociological systems theory.-Biography:...

, and Peter Szondi

Péter Szondi

Péter Szondi was a celebrated literary scholar and philologist, originally from Hungary. His father was the Hungarian-Jewish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Léopold Szondi, who settled in Switzerland after his 1944 release from Bergen-Belsen....

.

Since the early 1980s, Nova revija has edited and published works of those modern Slovene authors who were prevented from publishing their complete oevre during the Communist period. Those include Edvard Kocbek

Edvard Kocbek

Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...

, Vitomil Zupan

Vitomil Zupan

Vitomil Zupan , who also wrote under the pseudonym Langus, was a Slovenian writer, poet, playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He is considered one of the most important authors in the Slovene language of the second half of the 20th century.-Biography:Vitomil Zupan was born in Ljubljana, then part...

, Dušan Pirjevec

Dušan Pirjevec

Dušan Pirjevec, known by his battle name Ahac , was a Slovenian resistance fighter, literary historian and philosopher...

, and Gregor Strniša

Gregor Strniša

Gregor Strniša was a Slovenian poet, playwright, and songwriter. He is considered as one of the most important Slovene language poet of the second half of the 20th century...

.

External links

• Nova revija home page