(The author is a first-year law student who travelled extensively in the Soviet Union and East Europe last summer. He met with several student and government leaders during his month-long student exchange in Yugoslavia.)

"In last year's June barricades the students in Belgrade did not have the intention to check the traffic, but to show who was on the other side."

Students' Quarterly, University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, July, 1969

"Just as Marcuse and Franz J. Strauss do not constitute the same world, so also students in this world do not use the same language, and speak along different lines."

Ljubljana student

THE YOUNG journalist was right. The Yugoslav student movement is fundamentally different from that in the United States or Western Europe. Young radicals in Yugoslavia protest different inequities, often in different ways, with different philosophies, and different results.

What SDS'er would fight police over "greater employment opportunities for students in factories"? Jobs for students was probably the major demand in the violent demonstrations in Belgrade during June, 1968. Thousands of students waged a pitched battle for several days, nearly causing a national crisis. Their foremost concern is still good jobs after graduation.

What American student would protest over inexperienced enterprise managers who were politically appointed a decade ago? Yet the generation gap in Yugoslavia is fired by the conservatism of partisan veterans in the bureaucracy. Many were given responsible positions in reward for their conduct in World War II. "These old bureaucrats are fighting a rear-guard action against the economic reforms. They made the Revolution in the 1940's, and have been afraid of any changes ever since. They expect us to behave like the passive Soviet youth!" said one discontented youth in Zagreb.

He was a shaggy-haired history student, whose father held an important post in the regional government. We were at his home for a wild dancing party one night while his parents were out. Like other Yugoslavs, he was very open in talking about student dissatisfactions.

Unrest is a function of Yugoslav political culture. The young people there occupy a unique position. They live between East and West, between two ideological extremes: "the exploitative, late capitalistic system and bureaucratic, bloc socialism," as an economics professor put it.

It is often said that the Yugoslav system of worker self-management is a special Third Way in the world. But there is really no philosophy to guide the students. Marx and Lenin are not sufficient, and Marcuse does not quite fit. Students are beginning to say that their brand of socialism is at a "crucial point of synthesis," but they don't seem to know where to go.

The community of students and professors in Yugoslavia has only recently voiced its claims. They have been painfully aware of some inequalities and injustices for several years. Perhaps they did not speak out because they were relatively free and content. Travel and work abroad were without restriction. Most foreign goods and books were easily available.

The awakening was partially due to the removal in 1966 of Alexander Rankovic, head of the secret police. Until then it was still hazardous to criticize vigorously internal policies or the Soviet Union. As late as November, 1966, Djilas, Mihajlov, and others were sentenced for their works. Under President Tito's direction, a trend of liberalizing decentralization followed in Yugoslavia.

This emerging consciousness and new freedom of expression developed into the Yugoslav student protest. But student radicalism is a matter of definition in Yugoslavia. They are clearly not very radical in the Western sense of the word. Most of the young people I met seemed to approve of their system of worker self-management.

The radical perspective, voiced by a few, is that worker self-management is "old-fashioned, inelastic, and unsuitable for all parts of the country." None of the students I spoke with was ready to offer a substitute. They are dissatisfied with its faults. One student journalist lists the "negative practices in Yugoslav socialism" as: "too large material differences between people, mutilation of personal freedoms, poor material help to students, bureaucratic institutions, and withholding knowledge from the society."