1. Edvard Kardelj was one of the leading members of the Communist Party of Slovenia before World War II.
20 Facts About Edvard Kardelj
1. 2.
Edvard Kardelj was the main creator of the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management.
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Edvard Kardelj was an economist and a full member of both the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
4.
Edvard Kardelj 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.
5.
Edvard Kardelj studied to become a teacher but never worked as one.
6.
Edvard Kardelj 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.
7.
Edvard Kardelj was part of a group that survived Stalin's purge of the Yugoslav Communist leadership.
8.
The new leadership, centered around Tito, Aleksandar Rankovic and Edvard 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.
9.
Between 1945 and 1947, Edvard Kardelj led the Yugoslav delegation that negotiated peace talks with Italy over the border dispute in the Julian March.
10.
Edvard Kardelj was shot and wounded in 1959 by Jovan Veselinov.
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Edvard Kardelj's role diminished in the 1960s, for reasons that have yet to become clear.
12.
Edvard Kardelj again rose to prominence after 1973, when Tito removed the Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian reformist Communist leaderships, and restored a more orthodox party line.
13.
In 1974, Edvard Kardelj was diagnosed with colon cancer, and after diagnosed, his doctors consulted with American and Swedish doctors about further treatment.
14.
Later in 1977, Edvard Kardelj underwent two operations after it was discovered that the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver.
15.
On 10 February 1979, after being in a coma for 20 hours, Edvard Kardelj died at the age of 69.
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Edvard Kardelj's funeral was held on 13 February 1979 in Ljubljana.
17.
Edvard Kardelj's body was cremated and buried in the Ljubljana tomb of national heroes.
18.
Edvard Kardelj was appointed a member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and was officially honored as a People's Hero of Yugoslavia.
19.
Edvard Kardelj was the father of the poet Borut Kardelj, who committed suicide in 1971.
20.
Edvard Kardelj's grandson is Igor Soltes, a lawyer and politician.