Vlado Gotovac (1930-2000), as a writer and philosopher, and then a politician, is a significant Croatian historical figure, as he marked almost fifty years of the most dynamic part of 20th-century history of Croatia. His fruitful work marked not just his active life, but also the overall processes and changes in the system in socialist Yugoslavia. Gotovac began writing in the early fifties, when he published his first poems. This dissertation, then, analyzes his highly active and key role in the “Croatian Spring” movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially as editor-in-chief of the Hrvatski tjednik (“Croatian Weekly”) paper, followed by his politicar prisoner and dissident days through the 1970s and 1980s, and his exceptional role in the democratic processes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Gotovac’s political activities lasted until the end of his life, in 2000. Vlado Gotovac was a prolific writer who never touched upon political issues until his first texts in the book Autsajderski fragmenti and the paper Hrvatski tjednik, when his political activities started. The work focuses on two main themes of Gotovac's life positions and ideals, namely: freedom and the individual, both topics evident in his national and liberal views, which he used in different historical periods in his confrontation with Yugoslav communist ideology.