Jože Pučnik (9 March 1932 – 11 January 2003) 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 SFR Yugoslavia. He was imprisoned for a total of seven years, and later forced into exile. After returning to Slovenia in the late 1980s, he became the leader of the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia, a platform of democratic parties that defeated the communists in the first free elections in 1990 and introduced a democratic system and market economy to Slovenia. He is also considered one of the fathers of Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia. Early life and formation Pučnik was born in the village of Črešnjevec in Slovenian Styria (now part of the municipality of Slovenska Bistrica), in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He came from a Roman Catholic peasant background. His family had supported the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People during World War II: his older brother Ivan was an anti-Nazi resistance fighter in the Yugoslav Partisan movement. Already as a teenager, Pučnik clashed with the communist establishment. Because of some critical thoughts published in the high school paper Iskanja (Quests) he was prohibited from taking his final exam. Since he couldn't enroll in the University, he was drafted in the Yugoslav People's Army. After completing the military service, he took the final exam, passed it and enrolled at the University of Ljubljana, where he studied philosophy and comparative literature, graduating in 1958. While living in Ljubljana, he became involved with a group of young intellectuals, known as the Critical generation, which tried to open a space for public debate and challenged the rigid cultural policies of the Titoist regime in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Among Pučnik's closest collaborators from that period were the literary historian Taras Kermauner, sociologist Veljko Rus, and poet Veno Taufer. Pučnik believed that the system could be changed from inside and therefore joined the Communist Party of Slovenia. At the same time, he published several articles in the journal Revija 57, in which he openly criticised the economic policies of the communist regime. The dissident years In 1958, Pučnik was arrested accused of "subversion of the socialist system" and sentenced to 9 years in jail. At the trial, which lasted only a couple of hours, he was accused of