11-XI-1958.

The first issue of Ilustrovana politika. Dad, of course, bought it and kept on each issue for the next 25 or maybe 35 years. He collected it, and as far as I know they are still gathering dust, neatly lined up in the attic. What wikipedia says (checked now, january 2024) that there's only three of the first issue left, well, they're wrong...

Of course, at the time I didn't even know what a newspaper or magazine was, but in due time I started reading whatever I could get my hands on. And there had to be newspapers around the house, because dad as a party guy had to stay informed, so it was Politika every day, Ilustrovana on tuesdays, news on radio every evening... The dailies weren't thrown away - part of it was recycled as toilet paper, and once they even shreded a heap of paper, soaked it in a vat, kneaded into bars pretty much like corn cobs, and when these were finally dried, they happily burned in the smederevac stove.

By coincidence, or rather by reporter's wit, the front page featured a girl from some federal radna akcija. It happened to be (yeah, another coincidence) from an international brigade, one Ula Jakobson, as was later found. Bet two beers she was a blonde. There's a dozen other, more famous ones with the same name, ergo unsearchable.


Mentions: radna akcija, in serbian

11-II-2024 - 31-VII-2025