Edvard Kardelj Edvard Kardelj ( ) ( January 27 , 1910 – February 10 , 1979 ) , also known under the pseudonyms Sperans and Krištof , was before WW II a publicist and one of leading members of illegal Communist Party from Ljubljana , Slovenia , during the war one of the leaders of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People , Slovene Partisan , and after the war a federal political leader in Titoist Yugoslavia , who led the Yugoslav delegation that negotiated peace talks with Italy over the border dispute in the Julian March . He is considered the main creator of the Yugoslav system of establishing workers ' self - management , an economist , and a full member of both Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts . Biography . Early years . Kardelj was born in Ljubljana . At the age of 16 he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia , where he was drafted under the influence of the Slovenian publicist Vlado Kozak . He studied to become a teacher , but never worked as one . In 1930 , he was arrested in Belgrade and convicted of being a member of the illegal Communist Party . He was released in 1932 , and returned to Ljubljana when 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 the Stalin ist purges . In 1935 he went to Moscow to work for the Comintern . He was part of a group that survived Joseph Stalin ' s purge of the Yugoslav Communist leadership . Following Stalin ' s appointment of Josip Broz Tito as party leader , Kardelj became a leading member of the Party . The new leadership , centered around Tito , Aleksandar Ranković and Kardelj , returned to Yugoslavia in 1937 and launched a new party policy , calling for a common anti - Fascist platform of all Yugoslav left - wing forces and for a federalization of Yugoslavia . The same year , an autonomous Communist Party of Slovenia was formed , with Kardelj as one of its leaders , together with Franc Leskošek ( ) and Boris Kidrič . On 15 August 1939 Kardelj married Pepca Kardelj ( ) , sister of the ( later ) people ' s hero and communist functionary Ivan Maček ( ) ( a . k . a . Matija ) . After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 , he became one of the leaders of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People . In summer and autumn 1941 , he helped to set up the armed resistance in Slovenia which fought against the occupying forces till May 1945 , jointly with Tito ' s Partisans in what became known as the People ' s Liberation War of Yugoslavia . Postwar years . After 1945 , he rose to the highest positions in the Yugoslav regime , and moved into a luxury house in the Tacen neighborhood of Ljubljana that was confiscated from its previous owner , the industrialist Ivan Seunig . The house had been built in 1940 by the architect Bojan Stupica ( 1910 – 1970 ) and was initially occupied by the communist politician Boris Kraigher . Between 1945 and 1947 Kardelj led the Yugoslav delegation that negotiated peace talks with Italy over the border dispute in the Julian March . After the Tito - Stalin split in 1948 , he helped , together with Milovan Đilas and Vladimir Bakarić , to devise a new economic policy in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia , known as workers ' self - management . In the 1950s , especially after Djilas ' removal , he rose to become the main theorist of Titoism and Yugoslav workers ' self - management . Kardelj was shot and wounded in 1959 by Jovan Veselinov ( ) . Although the official police investigation concluded that Veselinov had been shooting at a wild boar and Kardelj was struck by a ricochet from a rock , it was suggested at the time that the assassination attempt was orchestrated by his political rival Aleksandar Ranković or Ranković ' s ally Slobodan Penezić ( ) . Kardelj ' s role diminished in the 1960s , for reasons that have yet to become clear . He again rose to prominence after 1973 , when Tito removed the Croatia n , Serbia n and Slovenian reformist Communist leaderships , and restored a more orthodox party line . The following year he was one of the main authors of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution which decentralized decision - making in the country , leaving the single republics under the leadership of their respective political leaderships . Death and legacy . Kardelj died of colon cancer in Ljubljana on February 10 , 1979 . During his lifetime , he was given several honors . He was appointed a member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts and was officially honored as a People ' s Hero of Yugoslavia . Apart from many streets , the entire coastal town of Ploče in southern Croatia was renamed " Kardeljevo " in his honour in 1950 - 1954 and again in 1980 - 1990 . Immediately after his death , the University of Ljubljana changed its name to the " University of Edvard Kardelj in Ljubljana " ( ) . After the collapse of Yugoslavia , most of these were restored to their previous names , although in Slovenia there are still some street and square names that bear his name , most famously the main town square in Nova Gorica . Edvard Kardelj was the father of the poet Borut Kardelj ( ) , who committed suicide in 1971 . His wife Pepca Kardelj also committed suicide in 1990 .