Veljko Rus

Who is Veljko Rus?

Veljko Rus is a Slovenian sociologist, writer and academic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia to a prominent upper-middle-class family. His father, Josip, was a left-liberal political activist, leader of the Sokol movement in the Drava Banovina, and one of the founding members of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. After finishing high school in Ljubljana, Veljko Rus enrolled with the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He obtained a PhD in sociology at the University of Zagreb with a thesis on Power and Responsibility in Working Processes.

In the late 1950s, he was part of the so-called "critical generation", a group of young Slovenian intellectuals who followed a critical attitude towards the Communist system in the former Yugoslavia, challenging the cultural policies of the Titoist regime. He wrote in alternative journals Revija 57 and Perspektive.

He was visiting fellow at several western universities, including Poitiers in France, Columbia, and Berkeley. In 1958, he started working as an assistant professor at Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana; in 1960, he was removed from university together with Taras Kermauner because their friendly relations with the dissident Jože Pučnik. He then worked as a professor at the School of Organizational Sciences in Kranj, and at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journalism in Ljubljana.