September 2011

On 30 August, Jurij Gustinčič reached ninety years of age; he has been in journalism for seventy years. He became a professional journalist in 1951 when he took a job with the Belgrade newspaper, Politika, and worked twenty-four years as its permanent foreign correspondent:  working nine years in London, fourteen in New York, and sending reports from a burning Jerusalem and an occupied Prague. In 1974, the Washington Post described him as a star of Yugoslav journalism when he dared to foretell the downfall of President Nixon. Through his writing, he marked some of the most significant events of 20th century.  In the 1980s, he continued his career at what was then TV Ljubljana and also remained a journalist after his retirement in 1985. He wrote articles for Vreme of Belgrade and Slobodna Dalmacija of Split and currently appears as a commentator for the RTV and the news magazine Mladina.  "Once a journalist, always a journalist," has been his credo to the present day.

He was born in Trieste, but his family fled to Idrija. He spent his childhood in Vienna and Ljubljana, where he finished elementary school and was enrolled in the Ledina secondary.  At eleven years of age he, his younger brother and his mother Ana (sister of the Slovenian writer Danilo Lokar) moved to be with his father Dragotin, who was living in exile in Moscow. He was one of the co-founders of the Slovenian communist movement but became its victim in the post-war period and was imprisoned for having criticised the party leadership. A couple of months before the break with Stalin, he was arrested and sent to the prison camp of Goli Otok).

"My father was a strange man. He was a dedicated communist of the first generation of communists who never thought of having a position with a high status. He had always repeated to me: 'Jurij, you have to say only what you really think'".

When in Moscow, his father sent him to a German school and  then in a Russian secondary school. Along with these two languages, Jurij Gustinčič mastered English and Serbian, which he used in writing for many years. In Moscow, he enrolled in university to study history, but had to retreat with his colleagues to Turkmenistan when the German army approached Moscow in 1941. Later, he was sent by the Russian authorities to Tbilisi, Georgia, where he ran the Slovenian radio station for a year and a half.  Three years later, he joined the Yugoslav brigade organised within the Red Army and took part in combat for the liberation of Serbia. "I am a lucky man", are his words when he recalls that time, "I survived Čačak, where more than half of my unit died during a single German counter-attack; while fleeing across a field along the Morava River, we were swept away by their machine-gun fire".

After the war, Jurij Gustinčič started to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but returned to Moscow in 1946 to finish his studies of history; however, this was interrupted due to the dispute with Stalin. Following his return to Belgrade, he was head of Agitprop (department of foreign political propaganda) in the Federal Secretariat of Information.

He has always written about foreign policy. For many years he worked as a foreign correspondent.  As to the years he spent in London (nine) and New York (fourteen) while perfecting his English language and in journalism as a profession, he considers them to be too long for a journalist.

He was known abroad and all around the world; his name appeared on the front page of Washington Post, where it was written that Politika's 'star journalist' Jurij Gustinčič had been criticised for his excessive flattering of the West, which referred to his writing about the Watergate affair.

"We received warnings to be cautious in writing about Nixon, as he allegedly was to win (another election), and that as a resentful person he would surely bear a grudge against us.  Six months before his downfall, I held the view that he would lose – which actually happened – and I insisted on my writing as such."

And he managed to remain upright and faithful to himself; he only wanted to be the master of his own work and of his texts. And he is proud of this uprightness, that of a Slovenian who through his knowledge has helped broaden international and national horizons for us.  "I felt the most Slovenian only when I was very far away from Slovenia.  But I always felt Slovenia in me. We are such a family – we come from Primorska, I read Cankar in Russia… Now in Slovenia, I feel less enthusiastic as a Slovenian".

He retired before the course of events in Yugoslavia turned serious, but never retired in terms of journalism – despite the fact that he had to recreate in his memory the secrets of his mother's tongue. In his words, he had not heard Slovenian for many years, except when he was home. 

"In 1941, when my parents divorced, I had no possibility of getting in touch with my native language. I spoke Slovenian in my inner self. I ordered myself to speak Slovenian. Such was my situation during childhood, but also after I came to Belgrade when I had to be careful about the language, since I married a Serbian woman.  Again, Slovenian became my inner language. Actually, I started to write articles in my mother tongue only in the last few years."

However, whatever the language he uses, it is clear and understandable.

Interview by Miša Čermak; full text in Sinfo, June 2011 

Jurij Gustinčič's quotes:

"Once a journalist, always a journalist."

In his view, the secret of a good text lies not so much in its subject but rather in how it is written. "When writing, I always try to imagine the person or a politician I write about in as human terms as possible. Man as such has always been the centre of my interest, a starting point of my writing. This is the way I used to write about American and English politicians."

"I felt the most Slovenian only when I was very far away from Slovenia.  But I always felt Slovenia in me. We are such a family – we come from Primorska, I read Cankar in Russia…Now in Slovenia, I feel less enthusiastic as a Slovenian."

"Actually, I started to write articles in my mother tongue only in the last few years."

- 1921 born in Trieste, he moved to Moscow in 1932, where he finished secondary school and started studying history in 1939. As a student, he took on a job for Radio Moscow.
- Following the German occupation of the Soviet Union, he found shelter in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan and Tbilisi, Georgia, where he continued working for the radio.
- In 1944, he volunteered for the Yugoslav brigade of the Red Army and was sent to Belgrade.
- In 1951 he was hired by Politika, which sent him to London as correspondent, where he spent nine years.
- In 1968, he was one of ten Yugoslav reporters from Prague at the time of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
- In 1963 he was sent to New York, where he spent the next 14 years. After returning to Belgrade, he moved to Ljubljana and started working as a political commentator for RTV Ljubljana.
- In 1988 he received the highest journalistic prize in Yugoslavia, the Moša Pijade Award.

- Even though he retired in 1985, he has continued working as a journalist and makes regular appearances on TV Slovenija.

In April 2011 Public broadcaster TV Slovenija ran a documentary "Jurij Gustinčič's 20th Century" by journalist Polona Fijavž to mark the journalist's 90th birthday.

The documentary, filmed in the journalistic technique, focuses on the period between 1969 and 1982 when Gustincic worked as the New York correspondent for the Belgrade daily Politika, while also appearing on the then TV Ljubljana, now TV Slovenija.

Video