having instigated workers to strike. Some have suggested that Pučnik's imprisonment was a deliberate attempt by the regime to silence dissident intellectuals. He was released in 1963 and immediately continued writing for the alternative journal Perspektive. At this point he was already publicly stating his disapproval of the regime. In 1964, his article Problemi našega kmetijstva (The Problems of Our Agriculture) was published in the journal Perspektive. In it, Pučnik criticized the agricultural policy of the regime, arguing that it was inefficient using publicly available official data. He was arrested again, sentenced to another two years in prison and expelled from the Communist Party. During his time in prison, Pučnik became an idol for his generation. The playwright Dominik Smole dedicated the play Antigone to him and Primož Kozak portrayed him in the leading role of his play Afera (The Scandal). Both plays were metaphors for the totalitarian repression in communist Yugoslavia. Exile and academic career Pučnik was released from jail in 1966. After several unsuccessful attempts to find a job, he decided to emigrate to West Germany. He settled in Hamburg, making a living from manual jobs. When he decided to enrol as a postgraduate student at the University of Hamburg, the University of Ljubljana refused to provide him with a copy of his degree. He thus enrolled again to undergraduate study of philosophy and sociology, obtaining his PhD in 1971. He worked at the universities of Hamburg and Lüneburg, where he taught sociology. During his life in Germany, Pučnik became a supporter of the German Social Democratic Party, maintaining close relations with several of its leaders. In the late 1980s, he became an open admirer of the Social Democratic leader of Lower Saxony Gerhard Schröder, later chancellor of Germany, whom he took as his main role model for his subsequent political activity. In the academic sphere, he became influenced by the theories of Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann and his system theory, as well as by several phenomenological sociologists such as Alfred Schutz and the Slovene-born Thomas Luckmann. During his years of exile, he kept up a correspondence with several important critical intellectuals in Slovenia, especially Ivo Urbančič. Return to Slovenia In the 1980s, Pučnik could again publish articles in Slovenia, this time in the alternative journal Nova revija. In 1987, he co-authored the Contributions to the Slovenian National Program, published in the 57th issue of the Nova revija