Biography

Svetozar Vlajković (Serbian Cyrillic: Светозар Влајковић, pronounced [sʋěːtozar ʋlǎːjkoʋitɕ]; born 5 January 1938) is a Serbian radio journalist, writer, screenwriter, playwright and laureate of the Isidora Sekulić Award in 1971. Vlajković grew up in Belgrade city quarter Čubura of Vračar municipality. He attended the XIV Belgrade Gymnasium, graduating with maturity diploma in 1956. After that, he studied at the Faculty of Law of Belgrade University and graduated with diploma in 1962. After completion of his academic education, he worked as court reporter of the newspaper Borba until 1963, there he realized that he was not living in a society of justice, that theory taught at university and judicial practice are two different things. Leaving his despised job, he started his professional career as radio journalist and contributing editor of cultural program of Radio Belgrade in the same year, but after six years, he was demoted in his job and restricted in his activities, because his views were inappropriate in ideological way of thinking. He left his job again, got a scholarship for going abroad and took the opportunity to study at Sorbonne in Paris, where he listened to lectures of theater studies and became assistant of Antoine Vitez from 1971-72.

Back in Belgrade again, he continued working at Radio Belgrade until retirement, in spite of numerous conflicts with the staff members who were refusing to apply new tendencies and ideas in the domain of radio program. In the meantime, he wrote twenty-five books of fiction and fifty plays of various genres. Svetozar Vlajković spent a big part of his professional life during Titoism, and he retrospectively describes the cultural atmosphere of this period as follows: Tito was an uneducated man, he became ruler thanks to a group of uneducated people. At the same time, these nations were also people of little faith and needed a strong leader. Tito surrounded himself with rude, arrogant, but obedient people. They chose their audience on the basis of a kinship decision, creating a pyramid of power that conquered the entire population. Only a few educated people were either exiled, liquidated or taken up into the pyramid. I have written a lot about influencing the suppression of our language, the decay of the family as the foundation of good education and spirituality, but what good is it if there's a well-established technique of silence.