Boris Kidrič | |
|---|---|
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| Prime Minister of Slovenia | |
| In office 5 May 1945 – June 1946 | |
| President | Josip Vidmar |
| Preceded by | Position Established |
| Succeeded by | Miha Marinko |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 10 April 1912 |
| Died | 11 April 1953(1953-04-11) (aged 41) |
| Political party | League of Communists |
Boris Kidrič (10 April 1912 – 11 April 1953) was a Slovene and Yugoslav politician and revolutionary who was one of the chief organizers of theSlovene Partisans, the Slovene resistance against occupation byNazi Germany andFascist Italy afterOperation Barbarossa in June 1941. He became the de facto leader of theLiberation Front of the Slovenian People. As such, he had a crucial role in theanti-Fascist liberation struggle in Slovenia between 1941 and 1945. After World War II he was, together withEdvard Kardelj, a leadingSlovenian politician incommunist Yugoslavia.[1]
Kidrič was born inVienna, then capital of theAustro-Hungarian Empire, as the son of the prominentSloveneliberal literary criticFrance 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]
In the early 1930s, Kidrič was drafted by the communist publicistVlado Kozak to join theCommunist Party of Yugoslavia. He soon rose to high political posts in theDrava Banovina and was among the founders of the autonomousCommunist Party of Slovenia in 1937. While in Vienna, where the CPY's Central Committee was based for a time, he was arrested byAustrian police in 1936 following an increase in pressure on communists by ChancellorKurt Schuschnigg.[3]
During theSecond World War, Kidrič, alongsideMilovan Đilas andIvan Milutinović, was one of the major exponents of the policy ofleftist errors.[4] He also led a successful resistance movement within theSlovene Partisans.[2]
After the end ofWorld War II, theSlovenian National Liberation Council appointed him as the first president of theSlovenian 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 theMinistry 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 otherYugoslav republics.[6]
Kidrič attended negotiations inMoscow following the end of the war, and then noted that the Soviet government underJoseph Stalin perceived Yugoslavia not as an equal socialist state, but as a part of its ownsphere 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 YugoslavPolitburo in 1948, and was in charge of theYugoslav economy from 1946 until his death.
AlongsideEdvard Kardelj,Vladimir Bakarić,Milovan Djilas, andMoša 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 ofworkers' 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-prevailingStalinist 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 firstfive-year plan for economic development from 1947 to 1952, after which there would be a massive shift towards the development ofheavy industries and theproduction and export of armaments. In particular, he was also concerned with the economic disparities between the variousYugoslav republics, a chronic issue that would haunt Yugoslavia for the entirety of its history; in connection to this, Kidrič said that the foundational privilegebrotherhood and unity "categorically demands elimination of this unevenness."[9]
In 1953, he died fromleukemia inBelgrade.
He was awarded theOrder 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. TheNational Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana was named after him and until 1990 the main award for scientific achievements in Slovenia was called "Kidrič Prize".[citation needed] Consequently, there was also a Boris Kidrič Fund, which was based in Ljubljana.
Among the foreign decorations were theSoviet Union'sOrder of Kutuzov, 2nd class, the Hungarian Order of the Republic, the Bulgarian Order of the People's Freedom and the PolishPartisan Cross. After his death, the eastern Slovenian industrial town of Strnišče was renamedKidričevo 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 byanti-Communist groups and victims of Communist persecution. TheInstitute for Physics, near Belgrade, was renamed in his honour.[10]
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by Minister for Slovenia Edvard Kocbek | Prime Minister of Slovenia 5 May 1945–1 June 1946 | Succeeded by |
| Prime Ministers / Presidents of the Executive Council ofSR Slovenia (1945–1990) | |
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| Prime Ministers ofSlovenia (1990–present) | |
Members of thePresidency of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia | |||||
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| 5th term (1948–1952) |  | ||||
| 6th term (1952–1958) | |||||
| 7th term (1958–1964) | |||||
| 8th term (1964–1969) |
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| 9th term (1969–1974) | |||||
| 10th term (1974–1978) |
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| 11th term (1978–1982) |
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| 12th term (1982–1986) |
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| 13th term (1986–1990) |
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| International | |
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| Other | |
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