This is a public letter from Mihajlo Mihajlov to President Josip Broz Tito written on July 15, 1966. He argued that his initiative to establish a “legitimate oppositional ideological, political, social, cultural, democratic, socialist magazine, Slobodni glas”, did not in any way violate the laws and Constitution of Yugoslavia (Mihajlo Mihajlov Papers, box 12).

In the period of limited “liberalization” and move away from the Stalinist legacy, Mihajlov tried to convince Tito that his initiative had the requisite legitimacy. Mihajlov believed that the party monopoly in the political and cultural sphere was a remnant of the Stalinist past and contended that the League of Communists could not have an exclusive monopoly in the construction of a socialist society.

Furthermore, he informed Tito of the preparations for the establishment of a periodical in Zadar in August 1966, which should be the core of a future social and political movement. At the end, he warned him that the success of the Zadar initiative would serve as the main evidence of “whether the League of Communists is above the law and constitution and whether Yugoslavia is the private property of the communist party“ (Mihajlo Mihajlov Papers, box 12).