Kardelj, Edvard

Kardelj, Edvard (ĕd`värt kär`dĕlyə), 1910–79, Yugoslavian politician. A Slovenian schoolteacher, he early joined the Yugoslav Communist party. In 1940 he became a politburo member. He was important in the underground in World War II and was vice premier of Josip Broz Tito's provisional government, a position that he continued to hold after the formal establishment of the Yugoslav Communist state in 1945. He later served as minister of foreign affairs (1948–53), vice chairman of the federal executive council (1953–63), and president of the federal parliament (1963–67). A leading ideologist, Kardelj helped in carrying out Yugoslavia's break with the USSR in 1948 and in adapting the official ideology to the new independent course.

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Kardelj, Edvard

(born Jan. 27, 1910, Ljubljana, Slvn., Austria-Hungary—died Feb. 10, 1979, Ljubljana) Yugoslav revolutionary and administrator. He joined the outlawed Communist Party in 1926, was imprisoned from 1930 to 1932, and fled to the Soviet Union in 1934. Returning to Yugoslavia in 1937, he helped organize resistance to the German occupation in World War II and joined Tito in much of the Partisans' fighting. In 1946 he drew up the Soviet-inspired constitution after Tito became premier, and he directed the creation of all succeeding constitutions. He was the main architect of socialist self-management, which distinguished Yugoslavia's political and economic system from the Soviet system. In foreign affairs, he pioneered the concept of Yugoslav nonalignment.