Edvard Kardelj Explained

Edvard Kardelj
Office:Member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia for SR Slovenia
Term Start:15 May 1974
Term End:10 February 1979
President:Josip Broz Tito
Predecessor:Marko Bulc
Sergej Kraigher
Mitja Ribičič
Successor:Sergej Kraigher
Office1:7th President of the Federal Assembly of Yugoslavia
Term Start1:29 June 1963
Term End1:16 May 1967
Predecessor1:Petar Stambolić
Successor1:Milentije Popović
Office2:Minister of Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia
Term Start2:31 August 1948
Term End2:15 January 1953
Primeminister2:Josip Broz Tito
Predecessor2:Stanoje Simić
Successor2:Koča Popović
Office3:Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
Term Start3:2 February 1946
Term End3:29 June 1963
Primeminister3:Josip Broz Tito
Predecessor3:Position established
Successor3:Boris Kraigher
Miloš Minić
Veljko Zeković
Birth Date:27 January 1910
Birth Place:Ljubljana, Austria-Hungary
Death Place:Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia
Death Cause:Colon cancer
Resting Place:Tomb of National Heroes, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Nationality:Slovenian
Party:League of Communists of Yugoslavia
Children:Borut Kardelj
Relatives:Ivan Maček (brother-in-law)
Alma Mater:Ljubljana Teachers' College
International Lenin School
Communist University of the National Minorities of the West
Nickname:Bevc, Krištof, Sperans
Branch: Yugoslav Partisans
Yugoslav People's Army
Serviceyears:1941–1979
Rank:Colonel general
Battles:World War II in Yugoslavia

Edvard Kardelj (in Slovenian pronounced as /ˈéːdʋaɾt kaɾˈdéːl/; 27 January 1910 – 10 February 1979), also known by the pseudonyms Bevc, Sperans, and Krištof, was a Yugoslav politician and economist. He was one of the leading members of the Communist Party of Slovenia before World War II. During the war, Kardelj was one of the leaders of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People and a Slovene Partisan. After the war, he was a federal political leader in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He led the Yugoslav delegation in peace talks with Italy over the border dispute in the Julian March.

Kardelj was the main creator of the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management. He was an economist and a full member of both the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.[1] He also played a major role in foreign policy by designing the fundamental ideological basis for the Yugoslav policy of nonalignment in the 1950s and the 1960s.[2]

Early years

Kardelj was born in Ljubljana. At the age of 16 he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, where he was drafted under the influence of the Slovenian journalist Vlado Kozak. He studied to become a teacher but never worked as one. In 1930, he was arrested in Belgrade and convicted of being a member of the illegal Communist Party. He was released in 1932 and returned to Ljubljana, where he became one of the leaders of the Slovenian section of the party after most of its former members had either left the party or perished in Joseph Stalin's purges.

In 1935, he went to Moscow to work for the Comintern. He was part of a group that survived Stalin's purge of the Yugoslav Communist leadership. Following Stalin's appointment of Josip Broz Tito as party leader, Kardelj became a leading member of the Party. The new leadership, centered around Tito, Aleksandar Ranković and Kardelj, returned to Yugoslavia in 1937 and launched a new party policy, calling for a common antifascist platform of all Yugoslav left-wing forces and for a federalization of Yugoslavia. The same year, an autonomous Communist Party of Slovenia was formed, with Kardelj as one of its leaders, together with Franc Leskošek (sl) and Boris Kidrič.

On 15 August 1939, Kardelj married Pepca Kardelj, sister of the (later) People's Hero and communist functionary Ivan Maček (a.k.a. Matija).[3]

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he became one of the leaders of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. In summer and autumn 1941, he helped to set up the armed resistance in Slovenia which fought against the occupying forces till May 1945, jointly with Tito's Partisans in what became known as the People's Liberation War of Yugoslavia.

Postwar years

After 1945, he rose to the highest positions in the Yugoslav government and moved into a luxury house in the Tacen neighborhood of Ljubljana that was confiscated from its previous owner, the industrialist Ivan Seunig. The house had been built in 1940 by the architect Bojan Stupica (1910–1970) and was initially occupied by the communist politician Boris Kraigher.[4] [5]

Between 1945 and 1947, Kardelj led the Yugoslav delegation that negotiated peace talks with Italy over the border dispute in the Julian March. After the Tito–Stalin split in 1948, he helped, with Milovan Đilas and Vladimir Bakarić, to devise a new economic policy in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, known as workers' self-management. In the 1950s, especially after Đilas's removal, he rose to become the main theorist of Titoism and Yugoslav workers' self-management.

Kardelj was shot and wounded in 1959 by Jovan Veselinov. Although the official police investigation concluded that Veselinov had been shooting at a wild boar and Kardelj was struck by a ricochet from a rock, it was suggested at the time that the assassination attempt was orchestrated by his political rival Aleksandar Ranković or Ranković's, ally Slobodan Penezić.[6] [7]

Kardelj's role diminished in the 1960s, for reasons that have yet to become clear. He again rose to prominence after 1973, when Tito removed the Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian reformist Communist leaderships, and restored a more orthodox party line. The following year he was one of the main authors of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution which decentralized decision-making in the country, leaving the single republics under the leadership of their respective political leaderships.

Death and legacy

In 1974, Kardelj was diagnosed with colon cancer, and after diagnosed, his doctors consulted with American and Swedish doctors about further treatment. Shortly after returning from Washington D.C. in 1977, his health began to deteriorate. Later in 1977, Kardelj underwent two operations after it was discovered that the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver. At the end of 1978, he fell seriously ill.[8] In January 1979, his health did not improve, so he was admitted to Ljubljana University Medical Centre in the beginning of February, where he fell into a coma on the 9th. On 10 February 1979, after being in a coma for 20 hours, Kardelj died at the age of 69.[9]

Kardelj's funeral was held on 13 February 1979 in Ljubljana. His body was cremated and buried in the Ljubljana tomb of national heroes.

During his lifetime, he was given several honors. He was appointed a member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and was officially honored as a People's Hero of Yugoslavia. Apart from many streets, the entire coastal town of Ploče in southern Croatia was renamed Kardeljevo in his honour from 1950 to 1954 and again from 1980 to 1990. Immediately after his death, the University of Ljubljana changed its name to "Edvard Kardelj University of Ljubljana" (Slovenian: Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljani).

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, most of these were restored to their previous names, but in Slovenia there are still some street and square names that bear his name; for example, a square in Nova Gorica and in Velenje.

Edvard Kardelj was the father of the poet, who committed suicide in 1971. His wife Pepca Kardelj died of a heart attack in 1990 but was widely rumored to have committed suicide.[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] His grandson is Igor Šoltes, a lawyer and politician.[15]

Awards

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Politika daily, Političari i akademici
  2. Silvio Pons and Robert Service, eds. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism (2010) p 438.
  3. Strle, Franci. 1980. Tomšičeva brigada: Uvodni del. Ljubljana: Partizanska knjiga, p. 146.
  4. http://www.dnevnik.si/tiskane_izdaje/dnevnik/1042480563 Pahor, Peter. 2011. "Kardeljevo vilo v Tacnu vrnili dedičem." Dnevnik (15 October).
  5. http://www.ibn.si/articles/detail/2268 Delić, Anuška. 2007. "Od Kraigherja in Kardelja do kaznovanih sodnih izvedencev". Delo (16 July).
  6. http://www.dlib.si/stream/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-Z0BGRFN7/85cc106e-c4b3-464e-bb52-d444eba32353/PDF "She Came in through the Bathroom Window" Tribuna (14 August 1989), pp. 3–7. Ljubljana: UK ZSMS, page 3.
  7. Ramet, Sabrina P. "Yugoslavia." In Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture, and Society Since 1939, pp. 159–189. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, p. 166.
  8. Web site: Michael . Dobbs . Kardelj, Expected to Succeed Tito, Dies . February 11, 1979 . January 14, 2024.
  9. Web site: David A. . Andelman . Edvard Kardelj, 69, Dies in Yugoslavia – Tito Ideologist Pioneered Theories for Worker Self-Management and Nonalignment Policy. February 11, 1979 . 40 . January 14, 2024.
  10. Pečjak, Vid. 1990. Kako se je podrl komunizem: psihosocialna analiza dogodkov v nekdanjih in sedanjih socialističnih deželah. Ljubljana: author, p. 89.
  11. Kermauner, Taras. 2002. Dramatika slovenske politične emigracije. 3. Paradoks odreševanja. Ljubljana: Slovenski gledališki muzej, p. 88.
  12. "Rezidenco, kjer je Kardelj gostil Tita, bi radi za upokojenski dom." 2012. Finance 105.
  13. http://www.dlib.si/stream/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-MU6F51X0/53464c11-f970-4a91-9ab9-0f614ae70f64/PDF Drozg, Tomi. 1990. "Cenjeni gospod Jelnikar!" Tribuna: študentski časopis 39(8): 3.
  14. See also: Edvard Kardelj, Vermeidbarkeit oder Unvermeidbarkeit des Krieges: Die jugoslawische und die chinesische These, Rowohlts Deutsche Enzyklopadie, (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch GmbH, 1961)
  15. Web site: Revizor, ki igra odvetnikom . Finance.si . 19 January 2001 . 2 June 2014.
  16. 24 January 1970 . ЕДБАРД КАРДЕЉ ОДЛИКОВАН ОРДЕНОМ ЈУГОСЛОВЕНСКЕ ВЕЛИКЕ ЗВЕЗДЕ . Borba . XXXV . 22 . 1.
  17. 22 December 1951 . Едвард Кардељ одликован Орденом народног хероја . Borba . sh . 8.
  18. 11 February 1979 . Кардељ посмртно одликован . Borba . 2.
  19. 28 February 1945 . Председништво Антифашитстичког већа народног ослобођења Југославије одликовало је Орденом народног ослобођења маршала Југославије Јисипа Броза-Тита . Borba . 1.
  20. 14 July 1956 . Висока одликовања . Borba . sh . 5.
  21. 24 October 1946 . Предаја високих пољских одликовања потпредседнику владе ФНРЈ Едварду Кардељу и руководиоцима НАродне Републике Словеније . Borba . sh . 1.