»S svojo žrtvijo sva vključena v nekaj orjaškega«

Edvard Kardelj – človek, aktivist, oblastnik

Abstract

The author deals with the personality of the communist activist Edvard Kardelj in the 1930s, when one of the central Slovene postwar politicians quickly came to develop as a politically thinking individual within an illegal political organization. On the basis of Kardelj’s private letters, the article analyzes his relationship towards two women who played a pivotal role in his life: first his mother Ivana and later his wife Pepca. The article also touches upon the phenomenon of public concealment of Kardelj's first wife Franica and follows the development of Kardelj’s political attitude from that of an activist to that of a state official, which took place during and after the Second World War; the author tries to articulate this process with the help of the memoires of his contemporaries.