Abstract: Few works of economic history venture into literature, let alone qualify as a “children’s novel”. Yet, Edvard Kardelj’s “A Journey Through Time” (1934) stands out as a unique contribution, written by a leading Yugoslav communist – in fact, Tito’s second-in-command. Despite its pre-war and post-war success, Kardelj’s early works, including this one, receive little attention today. To bridge the gap, this article first explores Kardelj’s Marxist education and Slovenia’s children’s publishers, and exposes the interrelationships between the two. The article then proceeds to analyse the book’s contents, and in doing so, it touches upon Kardelj’s conception of “progress”, before continuing on to assess the book’s reception in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and its brief role in post-war Yugoslav Marxist education. The article ultimately outlines the book’s place in Kardelj’s opus and the role of his early educational aspirations in the evolution of Yugoslav self-management.

Keywords: Children’s literature, Edvard Kardelj, Marxist education, Slovenia, Yugoslavia

Summary: There are few works of economic history that might delve into the foray of literature, let alone call themselves a “novel”. Such is, however, the case with a unique work of children’s literature, called “A Journey Through Time” (1934), a nowadays completely forgotten, and yet pivotal work by one of Yugoslavia’s top-tier communists, Edvard Kardelj. Although Kardelj produced more than 6,000 pages of published texts, and another 6,000 pages of unpublished work, his opus receives surprisingly little attention today. Not least, when it comes to his early period, or his engagement with children’s literature – about which there is not a single published text in the last several decades. The aim of this article is, therefore, to bridge this gap and offer a glimpse at Kardelj’s early activism and pedagogical work in order to shed some light on the background against which “A journey through time” was written. Based on archival research in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia in Ljubljana and Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, it does this in three main sections: the beginning uncovers Kardelj’s own Marxist education as a child, the development of the children’s publishers in Slovenia, like “Mladinska matica”, and their collaboration. The second section analyses the book, while the third assess its role in Kardelj’s opus. Since Kardelj was a key figure in the Yugoslav society and beyond, uncovering the book and Kardelj’s early period will prove valuable for future researchers of the period.