There are people that have a special way of leaving their mark on the time period in which they live. The trail that they leave is not always obvious, but it is still impossible to bypass. I refer to these people (in lack of better term) as the marginals, the ones that are always around the edges, on the very limits of their own culture. Ljuba Stojic was a marginal in this sense. Although he was never in the center of decision-making, Ljuba was still close enough to know what was going on. This probably helped him develop a special way of perceiving things. On the one hand, there was almost limitless and always contagious optimism, while on the other, there was a degree of scepticism and irony.

Ljuba was capable of bringing the best in people who were fortunate enough to work with him or be his friends. He was one of the few journalists that always felt the need to learn something new and improve themselves. Ljuba was opening some new intellectual horizons; for example, he brought the great Erich Fromm to the (then) Yugoslav culture. Ljuba was also interested in questions opened up by the rise of feminist theory. He was one of the very few males who attended meetings of various women's groups in the 1970s, which earned him a derogatory title of "the first Serbian male feminist". Needless to say, Ljuba regarded this "title" as a compliment.

Ljuba was one of the very few shining points in the darkness that descended on Serbia in the 1980s. Despite his intellectual openness and a capability to always listen to the others, there were some things that Ljuba could not tolerate. On June 24, 1991, he was in Slovenia, and his account of the "ten-day war" (that was a prologue into the bloody dissolution of our - then - common homeland) was quite different both from the "official version", as well as from the accounts of some people that he knew. When a weekly magazine where he worked, NIN, moved away from the radical Serbian nationalism, Ljuba was one of the deciding factors in this transformation. Taking into account all the circumstances (NIN had to escape from the deadly embrace of the fascistoid publishing house), this was quite an achievement.

When we met a few years ago, he was extremely proud to his new post of the Deputy Editor. For the first time, there was a danger that Ljuba would move from the margins into the center, at least when his professional work was concerned. Fortunately, this did not happen. Even on his new post, Ljuba managed to function from some distance, with a degree of detachment. At the same time, he remained capable of adding his own perspective, while at the same time never insisting that his perspective was the one that was necessarily the correct one.

Belgrade, Serbia, and the so-called "FR Yugoslavia" are still engulfed in darkness. From a perspective of the people that were expelled from here or had to leave, what makes this darkness even more sinister is the disappearance of people that meant and brought some hope. From a perspective of a friend, just anger (for friends are not supposed to leave us when the going gets tough), and pain.

[ Aleksandar Boskovic ]

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