[1] Already in 1980, shortly after the death of the Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito, six Slovenian authors and intellectuals (columnist Dimitrij Rupel, philosopher Tine Hribar, poets Niko Grafenauer, Svetlana Makarovič and Boris A. Novak, and literary historian Andrej Inkret) submitted a petition to the authorities of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia in which they demanded to be allowed to publish a new independent journal.
The petition maintained that the alternative magazine Problemi, which had served as the main critical publication in Slovenia since the mid-1960s, had been taken over by the Ljubljana Lacanian school, and that a new journal was needed.
Prominent authors, essayists, columnists, and thinkers have contributed to Nova revija, among them sociologists Jože Pučnik, Igor Škamperle, Gregor Tomc, Aleš Debeljak and Frane Adam; political analysts Viktor Blažič and Dimitrij Rupel; essayists Žarko Petan, Brane Senegačnik, Alenka Puhar, Spomenka Hribar, Andrej Capuder and Igor Senčar; poets Veno Taufer, Niko Grafenauer, Aleš Šteger, Jože Snoj, Boris A. Novak, Josip Osti, Dane Zajc, and Tomaž Šalamun; philosophers Tine Hribar, Ivo Urbančič and Dean Komel; legal experts France Bučar and Peter Jambrek; writers Rudi Šeligo, Lojze Kovačič, Alojz Rebula, Drago Jančar, and Boris Pahor; literary critics Taras Kermauner, Janko Kos and Simona Škrabec; historians Vasko Simoniti, Peter Vodopivec, Peter Štih, Igor Grdina, and Jože Pirjevec and many others.
Many notable non-Slovene authors, especially dissidents from former Yugoslavia and the former Communist bloc, have contributed to the magazine, including Adam Michnik, Václav Havel, György Konrád, Dobrica Ćosić, and Vlado Gotovac.
The journal has published translations of foreign literates such as Naguib Mahfouz,[3] Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, Peter Handke, Diego Marani, and Czeslaw Milosz, as well as theorists like Jan Patočka, Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Jacques Derrida, François Furet, Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Peter Szondi.