Veljko Rus was born on 8 December 1929 in Visnja Gora near Ljubljana, Slovenia and died on 26 February 2018.

He was a Slovenian sociologist, writer and academic.

He was born into a well known upper-middle-class family.

Veljko’s father, Josip, was a left-liberal political activist, leader of the Sokol movement in the Drava Banovina, and one of the founding members of the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People.

When he completed high school in Ljubljana, Veljko Rus enrolled with the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy.

Veljko obtained a PhD in sociology at the University of Zagreb with a thesis on Power and Responsibility in Working Processes.

Veljko was visiting fellow at several western universities, including Poitiers in France (1957/58), Columbia (1968/69), and Berkeley.

During 1958, Veljko began working as an assistant professor at Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana; in 1960, Veljko was removed from university together with Taras Kermauner because their friendly relations with the dissident Jože Pučnik.

After that Rus worked as a professor at the School of Organizational Sciences in Kranj, and at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journalism in Ljubljana (later renamed to Faculty of Social Sciences).

Veljko worked at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy until the early 1990s, when he was readmitted at the Faculty for Social Sciences.

Veljko has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, the University of Uppsala, the University of Stockholm, the University of Copenhagen and the Free University of Berlin.

Since 1995, Veljko has been member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Veljko lived in Ljubljana.

He died at 88 years old.