Volume 37, Number 11 · June 28, 1990
Yugoslavia: the Awakening
By Michael Scammell
The meeting in the Culture House next to the neo-Baroque church on the hill in Slovenska Bistrica, a picturesque small market town in Slovenian Styria, bore all the marks of novelty and improvisation that I had come to expect from Yugoslavia's first multiparty election campaign since 1946. Although the hall was almost full, men still hammered on the stage as they labored to erect a make-shift flagpole, while others were pinning large letters to the orange drop curtain at the back. These in due course spelled out the names of the six parties that had come in the northern republic of Slovenia to form the opposition coalition known as DEMOS—a name whose Greek denotation held great appeal for the intellectuals who had thought it up, while forming a neat acronym for 'Democratic United Opposition of Slovenia,' an otherwise unpronounceable mouthful for the average voter. The meeting had been called to present DEMOS's slate of candidates for the elections on April 8, and for their presidential candidate, Joze Pucnik, to make a major policy speech.
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