A Tale of a Journey Through Time: On the Forgotten Children’s Book on Capitalism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Its Place in the Life of Edvard Kardelj

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.