How Tyranny’s Loss Became Liberty’s Gain

Funding the Next Generation of Slovenian Freedom Fighters

By Alejandro Chafuen

I’m grateful that totalitarians have not been able to perfect their art of coercion and tyranny. They build walls, they strengthen their borders, but some of their victims will always escape to tell the story. Such is the refreshing case of Bojan Ribnikar and Vida Ribnikar nee Pahernik. This wonderful couple, throughout their lifetimes, served as shining examples of freedom champions. It is my pleasure to share their story – and the continuing freedom benefits they created through their legacy gift to Atlas.

The Ribnikars and Paherniks were very well known families in Yugoslavia. Bojan’s father was the Speaker of Yugoslavian Parliament. Ribnikars owned newspapers and a cement factory, while Paherniks were in lumber, forests, and vineyards. Their properties were the envy of socialists of all stripes. In 1941 both families were expropriated first by Hitler’s National Socialists and again in 1945 by Tito’s Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

Just before the war started, Bojan and Vida married but they seldom could see each other since Bojan was continually hunted either by Gestapo or by Communists. In 1944 they successfully fled to Italy. Both left behind parents in hiding, and each one brother. Both brothers became casualties of war. During the early post-war years in Italy, Bojan completed a doctorate in Padua and Vida studied in Florence, then both worked for the Allies’ press liaison office in Rome. When return to Yugoslavia no longer made sense, Bojan and Vida traveled to Argentina and a few years later came to the United States. But the fate kept separating them. Soon after Bojan found work with Pan American Airlines in New York, Vida was offered a job with KLM in San Francisco. Bojan soon solved the problem by taking a bus across the country and at last the Ribnikars had their permanent home in Berkeley Hills, not far from the University of California. Soon all the forced travel turned out to be an advantage. Bojan opened a travel agency across the street from the Berkeley campus. It did so well that soon he opened a second agency, and then a third.

About then they befriended another Slovenian émigré, Borut Prah, who lived nearby. Although in pre-war Slovenia, both families knew each other, they had no idea they were almost neighbors in the U.S. It was Ljubo Sirc who connected the two when he came to visit California in 1969. Sirc also introduced Borut to his good friend Sir Antony Fisher in San Francisco. Fisher had just opened an Atlas office in San Francisco, about a block away from the IBM office where Borut worked. Fisher made an enormous impression on Borut and his wife Nadine that reoriented their interests. “Public policy, especially in economics,” he said, “is made of successes and failures … At Atlas, we must document both, otherwise nothing is learned.” This was worth passing on to close friends, and Ribnikars were among them. In time, both the Ribnikars and the Prahs became generous friends and supporters to Atlas. It was evident to all that this is the best way to fight socialism, communism, Marxism, and any other -ism that promotes policy that invariably leads to economic catastrophe.

With the collapse of the communism by 1990, Borut and Nadine saw that Atlas needed resources to develop programs to reverse decades of socialist indoctrination in Slovenia and other Central and Eastern Europe countries. They encouraged Vida to begin donating to Atlas. With her first contribution, Atlas sponsored young Slovenians to attend training programs at Atlas and other market-oriented conferences. Her continued support helped Atlas began collaborating on programs, conferences, and publications with the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University.

Vida Ribnikar always valued efforts that were spearheaded by, and helpful to the younger generations. She wanted them exposed to America’s best free enterprise traditions as well as to the all-important rule of law. Her generosity enabled Atlas to sponsor educational programs, seminars, and translations, provide training in free market economics, connect Central and Eastern Europeans with allies in the Atlas network, and fund Slovenian projects and organizations working to expose the damage that collectivism and equality of outcome theories cause. One of her beneficiaries is Ljubo Sirc, Slovenian professor of economics and co-founder of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies (CRCE) in London. Sirc was the first in Atlas’s network to conduct annual conferences with scholars from the former communist countries discussing the transition to markets.

Today, Vida’s generosity also enables Lovro Sturm, former Slovenian Minister of Justice, professor of law, and founder of the Carantania Institute, to teach the benefits of the free economy to students and teachers who were raised on socialistic ideology. Sturm organizes seminars for Slovenian teachers using DVD material provided by the Free to Choose Network’s FreeToChoose.org.

Today, Vida’s contributions allow Atlas to sponsor the annual Liberty Seminars for students from Eastern and Central Europe. In September, students from Germany, Ukraine, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, the United States, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Slovakia traveled to Lake Bohinj in Slovenia for week-long lectures and advanced study on the philosophical foundations of freedom and liberty in European transition countries. Renowned scholars leading the discussions included: Tanja Stumberger and Andrei Illarionov both of the Cato Institute, Steve Pejovich (Texas A&M University, USA), Aleksandar Novakovic of the Serbian NGO Katalaksija, Bernard Brščić (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Sirc from CRCE.

Sir Antony Fisher, who passed away just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall probably never imagined that the tiny country of Slovenia would become a classroom for students from former communist countries to come and discover the virtues of free markets and liberty.

The Ribnikar’s generous legacy gift to Atlas lives on today, helping Central and Eastern Europeans in the fight against socialist advances. For that, we are grateful – both to the Ribnikars and Prahs.

Alejandro Chafuen is President of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.  A version of this article appeared in the 2009 Atlas Year in Review.

Please visit the Liberty Seminars website for information, pictures, videos, and more.