Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj - Sperans (
January 27,
1910 -
February 10,
1979) was a
Slovene prewar communist,
antifascist,
partisan,
politician,
statesman and
publicist.
Kardelj was born in
Ljubljana,
Slovenia (at that time
Austria-Hungary).
He helped organize resistance in Slovenia in
1941 and accompanied Tito in figthing
Axis powers during the
Second World War.He was considered one of the main ideologists of
Josip Broz Tito's
communist regime in former
Yugoslavia. He helped in carrying out Yugoslavia's break with the USSR in 1948 and in adapting the new independent course known as socialist self-management. He had major influence on the Yugoslav military intelligence service, the
KOS.
He also led Yugoslav delegations in the late
1940s to negotiate with
Stalin and deal with his demands that Yugoslavia acknowledge the
Soviet Union's supremacy.
One of his most influental and contradictive work was a book
Razvoj slovenskega narodnega vprašanja (
The Development of Slovene national question) (
1939).
From 1948 to 1953 Kardelj was Minister of Foreign affairs. From 1963 to 1967 he held the office of chairman of the federal parliament.
Kardelj died in Ljubljana (at that time
Yugoslavia), and was mourned by many Slovenes to an extent comparable to the mourning that followed the death of Tito one year later.
Kardelj was a member of
Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU) and was officially honored as a
National Hero of Yugoslavia. Apart from many streets, the entire coastal town of
Ploče in southern
Croatia had been renamed to Kardeljevo in Kardelj's honour in
1950-
1954 and
1980-
1990. After the collapse of the communist regime, most of these were given back their previous names.
