Boris Kidrič

Boris Kidrič (10 April 1912 – 11 April 1953) was a Slovene politician and revolutionary who was one of the chief organizers of the Slovene Partisans, the Slovene resistance against occupation by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy after Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. He became the de facto leader of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. As such, he had a crucial role in the anti-Fascist liberation struggle in Slovenia between 1941 and 1945. After World War II he was, together with Edvard Kardelj, a leading Slovenian politician in communist Yugoslavia.[1]

Boris Kidrič
Prime Minister of Slovenia
In office
5 May 1945 – June 1946
PresidentJosip Vidmar
Preceded byPosition Established
Succeeded byMiha Marinko
Personal details
Born10 April 1912
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died11 April 1953(1953-04-11) (aged 41)
Belgrade, PR Serbia, Yugoslavia
Political partyLeague of Communists
Boris Kidrič burial in 1953.

Early life

Kidrič was born in Vienna, then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the son of the prominent Slovene liberal literary critic France Kidrič.[2] He became a communist while still a teenager, aged fifteen, and was arrested for his writings, as well as for organisational and agitative work among Slovene factory workers, subsequently serving a year's prison term before having even reached the age of twenty.[2]

Political career

In the early 1930s, Kidrič was drafted by the communist publicist Vlado Kozak to join the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. He soon rose to high political posts in the Drava Banovina and was among the founders of the autonomous Communist Party of Slovenia in 1937. While in Vienna, where the CPY's Central Committee was based for a time, he was arrested by Austrian police in 1936 following an increase in pressure on communists by Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg.[3]

During the Second World War, Kidrič, alongside Milovan Đilas and Ivan Milutinović, was one of the major exponents of the policy of leftist errors.[4] He also led a successful resistance movement within the Slovene Partisans.[2]

After the end of World War II, the Slovenian National Liberation Council appointed him as the first president of the Slovenian socialist government and he moved into the Ebenspanger Mansion, which the communist government had confiscated from its previous Jewish owners.[5] Very early on, in May 1945, he became the head of the Ministry of Education in Slovenia, which was said to have had a greater level of autonomy from the central government in Belgrade than the ministries of other Yugoslav republics.[6]

Kidric attended negotiations in Moscow following the end of the war, and then noted that the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin perceived Yugoslavia not as an equal socialist state, but as a part of its own sphere of influence.[7] In the fall of 1950, he was recorded as having spoken of being "duped" by the Soviets in the past.[8]

He became a member of the Yugoslav Politburo in 1948, and was in charge of the Yugoslav economy from 1946 until his death.

Alongside Edvard Kardelj, Vladimir Bakarić, Milovan Djilas, and Moša Pijade, he took part in the drafting of the 1950 "Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises", which laid the foundations for the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management. These and other reforms were meant to win popular support, and involve the working people more intimately in government and economy, in contrast to the then-prevailing Stalinist form of socialism. Kidrič, in an influential speech, said that the working masses had to “have their say directly and daily, and not only by way of the vanguard of their political parties."[9]

Kidrič was also the main architect of the first five-year plan for economic development from 1947 to 1952, after which there would be a massive shift towards the development of heavy industries and the production and export of armaments. In particular, he was also concerned with the economic disparities between the various Yugoslav republics, a chronic issue that would haunt Yugoslavia for the entirety of its history; in connection to this, Kidrič said that the foundational privilege brotherhood and unity "categorically demands elimination of this unevenness."[9]

In 1953, he died from leukemia in Belgrade.

Honours and awards

He was awarded the Order of the People's Hero, Order of the Hero of Socialist Labour, Order of the People's Liberation and the Commemorative Medal of the Partisans of 1941. The National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana was named after him and until 1990 the main award for scientific achievements in Slovenia was called "Kidrič Prize". Consequently, there was also a Boris Kidrič Fund, which was based in Ljubljana.

Among the foreign decorations were the Soviet Union's Order of Kutuzov, 2nd class, the Hungarian Order of the Republic, the Bulgarian Order of the People's Freedom and the Polish Partisan Cross. After his death, the eastern Slovenian industrial town of Strnišče was renamed Kidričevo in his honour. In 1959, a large monument was erected in his honour in front of the Slovenian Government Office in Ljubljana, where it still stands despite some protests by anti-Communist groups and victims of Communist persecution. The Institute for Physics, near Belgrade, was renamed in his honour.[10]

References
  1. Plut-Pregelj, Leopoldina; Rogel, Carole, eds. (2010). The A to z of Slovenia. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 234–235. ISBN 9780810872165.
  2. "Boris Kidric, visionary architect of Yugoslavia's socialist alternative". Morning Star. 24 November 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  3. Auty, Phyllis (1970). "Popular Front in the Balkans: 1. Yugoslavia". Journal of Contemporary History. 5 (3): 51–67. ISSN 0022-0094.
  4. Banac 1988, pp. 82, 83.
  5. Poberšič, Renato, & Damjan Hančič. 2012. Povojne zaplembe judovskega premoženja. Irena Šuni & Hannah Starman (eds.), Slovenski Judje: zgodovina in holokavst, pp. 283–292. Maribor: Center judovske kulturne dediščine Sinagoga Maribor, p. 285.
  6. Gabrič, Aleš (2018), Feichtinger, Johannes; Uhl, Heidemarie (eds.), "Die Slowenische Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste und die Politik 1945 bis 1958", Die Akademien der Wissenschaften in Zentraleuropa im Kalten Krieg, Transformationsprozesse im Spanngsfeld von Abgrenzung und Annäherung (1 ed.), Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, pp. 69–102, ISBN 978-3-7001-8198-9, retrieved 9 October 2023
  7. Ströhm, Carl Gustaf (1978). "Review of Ohne Tito. Kann Jugoslawien überleben?". Osteuropa. 28 (3): 274–275. ISSN 0030-6428.
  8. Neal, Fred Warner (1954). "The Reforms in Yugoslavia". American Slavic and East European Review. 13 (2): 227–244. doi:10.2307/2492056. ISSN 1049-7544.
  9. Calic, Marie-Janine; Geyer, Dona (2019), "Tito's Socialism (1948 to 1964)", History of Yugoslavia, Purdue University Press, pp. 176–191, ISBN 978-1-55753-838-3, retrieved 9 October 2023
  10. "Vinca Special Weapons Facilities - Serbia". Retrieved 2 January 2011.

Sources
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