Yugoslav revolutionary who designed the economic theory of workers' self-management
In a speech on the eve of introducing self-management, he declared that the working masses must 'have their say directly and daily, and not only by way of the vanguard of their political parties.'
A Slovene Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman who was a chief organizer of the Slovene Liberation Front and Partisan resistance during the Second World War. After serving as the first prime minister of Slovenia, he became the key economic theorist who, following the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, designed Yugoslavia's turn from Soviet-style central planning to workers' self-management. His 1951 'Theses on the Economy of the Transitional Period' acknowledged that commodity production and the law of value continue to operate under socialism, a critique of Soviet state-socialism that provided the theoretical justification for Yugoslavia's separate road.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1941–1945Political Secretary of the Slovene Liberation Front and Political Commissar of the Partisan General Staff
- 1945–1946First Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Slovenia
- 1946–1953Chair of the Federal Economic Council and Minister of Industry of Yugoslavia
- 1947–1952Chief architect and executor of the First Five-Year Plan
- 1948–1953Member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Related historical events
- 1941–1945The Yugoslav Partisan WarPartisan political commissarDuring the Second World War, he was a chief organizer of the Slovene Liberation Front and Partisan resistance.
- 1948–1955The Tito-Stalin Spliteconomic theorist of workers' self-managementBoris Kidrič co-signed the November 1949 Instruction on forming workers' councils with Đuro Šalaj and, together with Kardelj, developed the economic theory of self-management.
From Stalinist Planning to Workers' Self-Management: The Turn of 1948-1951
Kidrič ran the Yugoslav economy from 1946 until his death and was the main architect of the first five-year plan of 1947-1952, which prioritised heavy industry, new factories and power plants, the nationalisation of private firms and the collectivisation of agriculture. In these years he modelled economic policy on Stalinist principles foreign to the older economies of Slovenia and Yugoslavia, and the population remained dependent on Western relief supplies for basic goods long after the war.
The 1948 Tito-Stalin split forced a reconsideration of that model. Kidrič entered the Yugoslav Politburo in the same year and was among the inner leadership that drafted the 1950 Basic Law on the Management of State Economic Enterprises, the legal foundation of workers' self-management, together with Edvard Kardelj, Vladimir Bakarić, Milovan Djilas and Moša Pijade. The reform was meant to involve working people more directly in governing production, in deliberate contrast to the prevailing Stalinist form of socialism. In an influential speech Kidrič argued that the working masses had to "have their say directly and daily, and not only by way of the vanguard of their political parties".
The break with Moscow was also argued from experience: after wartime negotiations in Moscow he had observed that Stalin treated Yugoslavia not as an equal socialist state but as part of the Soviet sphere of influence, and by late 1950 he spoke of having been "duped" by the Soviets. He remained in charge of economic policy and was re-elected at the 1952 congress to the narrower Yugoslav party leadership; leukaemia killed him in Belgrade in 1953, at the point when the self-management turn he had helped design was still being consolidated.