Wild Students

I hope you won’t hold it against me that this time I am writing about myself and the distant days when I too was a secondary-school student. I do so not because my experiences were anything extraordinary or special, but quite the opposite: because in many ways they reflect the spirit of that time and the things that many young people experienced and did in the last years of the former regime, when the former common state and its socio-political system were still alive but already beginning to wilt and to smell, like vegetables left too long in the fridge.

In my student days I did quite a few fun things. I took part, if only briefly, in both the defense club and the Marxist club. The motive was Brechtian. The club is a weapon; join it.

What drew me and some friends to join the first one was the amusement we got from the new teacher of the subject Foundations of General People’s Defense and Social Self-Protection. Freshly graduated, he had come to the Šubic grammar school from the Faculty of Social Sciences and promptly founded a club as well, presumably because regular lessons were not enough for all the socio-political and defense wisdom he wanted to pass on to his eager pupils. Anyone who thinks defense lessons can’t be fun has never heard how, in the dialect of Lower Carniola, the M48 rifle is “taken apart for disassembly.” We began our extracurricular activities with a visit to the cadet school in Tacen, where our teacher had many acquaintances and friends. The next, and last, experience was shooting with an air rifle on the terrace of a building just a stone’s throw from what was then the building of the Republic Assembly, today the National Assembly. A stone’s throw away, and us with air rifles in our hands. You can probably imagine what happened. “Ping!” echoed from the windows across the street. “Ping!”—until our mentor realized what we were doing and threatened us with the arrival of the people’s militia. We left the club, and from then on he was forced to pass on his defense activities to mummy’s boys who wanted to play with guns.

I also took part in the Marxist club. Again with a group of a few older students, we joined deliberately to take over the editorship of the school magazine the club published. The story lasted a year or two, caused no small amount of dust, a lot of fun and a few bans. One of them followed our editorial decision, out of solidarity with events at the other end of the then country, to rename the magazine the Bulletin of the Members of the Marx-Kosovo Club. What protected us from worse consequences was above all that most of the teaching staff showed solidarity with us, more or less openly, and most important was the support of our mentor, the legendary teacher and DJ Albert Avguštinčič. The headmistress of the time, probably at the request of those “from above,” or out of fear of them, summoned my parents to explain themselves. My father and I went, and he listened calmly to the headmistress’s sermon about how we did not show the appropriate socio-political orientation, kept criticizing everything and had ideas of our own. When she finished her address on the importance of growing up and taking responsibility, he stood up, patted me on the shoulder, replied kindly, “Thank God they are like that,” and marched out of the office. And that was that. Except that a few days later I got a reprimand. Perhaps out of revenge, or perhaps because I was caught smoking in the girls’ toilets. In shoes.

Encouraged by my parents’ support, I continued my social engagement and troublemaking even after the Šubic grammar school, fleeing the tsunami of “directed education” reform, was exiled for a few years to the building of the Poljane grammar school. We no longer needed the Marxist club there, as we founded a new school magazine, Orlando Furioso. It too went through quite a few dramas, including a cover showing an illustration of the school building being bombed, but above all a scandal after the publication of an interview with one of the teachers, known for her firm and often rather aggressive attitude to students drinking and smoking. In retrospect, I grant the lady the nobility of her intentions, but not her methods. Since she had demanded to authorize the interview, we published an editorial comment alongside it, which I wrote myself. The publication raised a lot of dust; the comrade teacher furiously demanded a public apology and socio-political sanctions. “Matjaž Gruden and his associates should be banned from this and similar scribbling, and the matter should be dealt with as an offense through the Socialist Youth League,” she thundered.

After a stormy editorial meeting, at which quite a few cigarettes were smoked and the odd beer drunk, and after consulting our mentor Borut Šuklje, who stood firmly on our side, I published a reply to the reply. “I am convinced that, as a member of the youth organization, criticizing and seeking solutions to burning problems is my right and duty, so I maintain that the demand that ‘the matter be dealt with’ as an offense through the Socialist Youth League is ridiculous and just another proof of the attempt to use the youth organization as a means to shut some people up. A solution to the problem can only be reached through open, honest dialogue, not through insinuations, abuse of one’s position and demands for public apologies. Let us fight with the power of argument, not with the argument of power, esteemed comrade.” It was 1983.

One of my articles, a critique of the death sentence handed down at first instance to the serial killer Metod Trobec, was also reprinted by the student paper Tribuna. At that time it was edited by Aleš Debeljak and Marcel Štefančič, then literally a junior. I suspect Marcel was responsible for the illustration of a large red male organ that accompanied my piece. The period of working with Tribuna is certainly the one that marked my adolescence—my transition to adulthood, if you like—the most. Not only because of the not exactly Jesuit atmosphere in the editorial office and the unforgettable parties and nights out, but also because of a leap in my social engagement. We investigated misconduct at the Škofja Loka bus company and wrote about the crisis in the Middle East. “Begin begun” was the title of my interview with a representative of Palestinian students in Ljubljana. And of course they banned us again. We played cat and mouse with prosecutors and the police and arranged with the staff of the Ljudska pravica printing works for printing to start earlier—the prosecutor could not execute the seizure order until at least one physical copy had been printed. Then we loaded the few hundred secretly printed copies into a Fiat 600 and drove to Tribuna’s premises in the Kazina building, divided them up and went out to sell them on the streets of Ljubljana. People, of course, knew that Tribuna had been seized again, which had an extremely favorable effect on sales. I will never forget standing in front of the bookshop in the Konzorcij building, people scrambling for every copy, while behind the pillars two secret policemen in raincoats hid, watching me grimly.

The most surprising thing about it all was that that was where it ended. There were no robo-cops taking our names, no fines, no court summonses. In the early 1980s, in the former state, in those leaden, unfree times, the critical social engagement of secondary-school and university students in Slovenia was met with some reproach, but also with a great deal of tolerance and, above all, support. This became even more evident a few years later, when we stood together and protested on Roška Street. Most people, including those holding positions in the regime, already realized then that times would change, because authoritarianism and unfreedom are always defeated in the end. And once that happens, we all have to look in the mirror and live with ourselves. That is how it was then and that is how it is today. Whoever knows nothing but the argument of power and authority, especially towards young people, will sooner or later be staring at the ground in shame.