In the late 1960s, Gotovac joined the Croatian movement demanding political and economic reform, which eventually led to the Croatian Spring in the early 1970s.
Before being arrested in 1971 Gotovac became the editor-in-chief of Hrvatski Tjednik (The Croatian Weekly), which historian Marcus Tanner explains, "was a real phenomenon - a mass-circulation newspaper with an enormous audience that went way beyond the confines of the Communist Party and made a national reputation."[REF] .