 After finishing the German-language State Gymnasium in Gorizia, he enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, graduating in 1920.In the years before World War I, he joined the young generation of Christian Socialist activists around the Carniolan priest Janez Evangelist Krek, who challenged the conservative leadership of the Slovene People's Party.Together with the priest Virgil Šček, Besednjak became one of the leaders of the Slovene Christian Socialist youth in the Austrian Littoral.