Georgi Dimitrov
Encyclopedia
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
politician. He was the first Communist leader of Bulgaria, from 1946 to 1949.
Early career
Georgi Dimitrov was born in KovachevtsiKovachevtsi, Pernik Province
Kovachevtsi is a village in western Bulgaria, part of Pernik Province. It is the administrative centre of Kovachevtsi municipality, which lies in the western part of Pernik Province....
in today's Pernik Province
Pernik Province
-Religion:Religious adherence in the province according to 2001 census:-Ethnic groups:Ethnic groups in the province according to 2001 census:145 642 Bulgarians ,3 035 Roma and 1155 others and unspecified .-Economy:...
, as the first of eight children to working-class parents from Pirin Macedonia (a mother from Bansko
Bansko
Bansko is a town and a popular ski resort in southwestern Bulgaria, located at the foot of the Pirin Mountains at an elevation of 925 m above sea level....
and a father from Razlog
Razlog
Razlog is a town and ski resort in Razlog Municipality, Blagoevgrad Province in southwestern Bulgaria. It is situated in the Razlog Valley and was first mentioned during the reign of Byzantine emperor Basil II....
). His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, and his family is sometimes described as Protestant. The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
. Dimitrov trained as a compositor
Typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
and became active in the labor movement in the Bulgarian capital.
Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party
Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party
The foundations of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party were in 1894.In July 1891 on the initiative of Dimitar Blagoev, the social democratic circles of Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Kazanlak and other cities united to form the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party...
in 1902, and in 1903 followed Dimitar Blagoev
Dimitar Blagoev
Dimitar Blagoev Nikolov ; was a Bulgarian political leader, the founder of Bulgarian socialism and of the first social democratic party in the Balkans.-Biography:...
and his wing, as it formed the Social Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria ("The Narrow Party") - the Bulgarian Communist Party
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...
in 1919, when it affiliated to Bolshevism and the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
. From 1904 to 1923, he was Secretary of the Trade Union Federation; in 1915 (during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
) he was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament and opposed the voting of a new war credit, being imprisoned until 1917. In 1906, Dimitrov married his first wife, Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
emigrant milliner, writer and socialist Ljubica Ivošević, with whom he lived until her death in 1933.
In June 1923, when Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski
Aleksandar Stamboliyski
Aleksandar Stamboliyski was the prime minister of Bulgaria from 1919 until 1923. Stamboliyski was a member of the Agrarian Union, an agrarian peasant movement which was not allied to the monarchy, and edited their newspaper...
was deposed through a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
, Stamboliyski's Communists allies, who were initially reluctant to intervene, organized an uprising against Aleksandar Tsankov
Aleksandar Tsankov
Aleksander Tsolov Tsankov was a leading Bulgarian right wing politician between the two World Wars.-Biography:...
. Dimitrov took charge of the revolutionary activities, and managed to resist the clampdown for a whole week. He and the leadership fled to Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
and received a death sentence
Death Sentence
Death Sentence is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov.-Plot summary:...
in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
. Under various pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s, he lived in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
until 1929, when he relocated to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where he was given charge of the Central European section of the Comintern.
Leipzig trial and Comintern leadership
In 1933 he was arrested in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
for alleged complicity in setting the Reichstag
Reichstag (building)
The Reichstag building is a historical edifice in Berlin, Germany, constructed to house the Reichstag, parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire. During the Nazi era, the few meetings of members of the...
on fire (see Reichstag fire
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
). During the Leipzig Trial
Leipzig Trial
The Leipzig Trial, also known as the Reichstag Fire Trial, took place from 21 September to 23 December 1933. It involved Ernst Torgler , Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov and Marinus van der Lubbe...
, Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence and the accusations he directed at his prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
s won him world renown.
During the Leipzig Trial, several German aviators who had been trained in secret in the Soviet Union were arrested. They were released when, after secret negotiations, the Bulgarian communists Dimitrov, Vasili Tanev and Blagoi Popov
Blagoi Popov
Blagoy Popov , one of the co-defendants along with Georgi Dimitrov and Vasil Tanev in the Leipzig trial. After the trial, he moved to Moscow in February 1934. Popov studied there until 1937 when he was caught up in the Stalinist purges. He would spent the next seventeen years in a Soviet Gulag...
tried in Leipzig were allowed to leave for the Soviet Union. There Dimitrov was awarded Soviet citizenship. The massive popularity he enjoyed made him an asset of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's government, and Dimitrov was appointed General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
from 1934, remaining in office until the organisation's dissolution in 1943. He asserted himself as a Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
during and after the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
. While in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov married his second wife, the Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
-born Roza Yulievna, who gave birth to his only son, Mitya, in 1936. The boy died at age seven of diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
. While Mitya was alive, Dimitrov adopted Fani, a daughter of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
The General Secretary of the Communist Party of China , officially General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is the highest ranking official within the Communist Party of China, a standing member of the Politburo and head of the Secretariat...
.
In 1935, at the 7th Comintern Congress, Dimitrov spoke for Stalin when he advocated the Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
strategy, meant to consolidate Soviet ideology as mainstream Anti-Fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
— a move later exploited during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
.
Leader of Bulgaria
Kimon Georgiev
Colonel General Kimon Georgiev Stoyanov was a Bulgarian general and prime minister.Born at Pazardzhik, Kimon Georgiev graduated from the Sofia military academy in 1902. He participated in the Balkan Wars as a company commander and in the First World War as a commander of a battalion. In 1916 he...
as Premier
Premier
Premier is a title for the head of government in some countries and states.-Examples by country:In many nations, "premier" is used interchangeably with "prime minister"...
, while keeping his Soviet Union citizenship. Dimitrov started negotiating with Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
on the creation of a Federation of the Southern Slavs, which had been underway since November 1944 between the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Communist leaderships.. The idea was based on the idea that Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were the only two homelands of the Southern Slavs, are separated from the rest of the Slavic world. The idea eventually resulted in the 1947 Bled accord
Bled agreement
The Bled agreement was an agreement signed on the 1st August, 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. The agreement was signed between Bulgaria under Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito which paved the way for future unification between the states in a new Balkan Federative Republic...
, signed by Dimitrov and Tito, which called for abandoning frontier travel barriers, arranging for a future customs union, and Yugoslavia's unilateral forgiveness of Bulgarian war reparations. The preliminary plan for the federation included the incorporation of the Blagoevgrad Region ("Pirin Macedonia") into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia
Socialist Republic of Macedonia
The Socialist Republic of Macedonia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia...
and the return of the Western Outlands from Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
to Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
. In anticipation of this, Bulgaria accepted thousands of teachers from Yugoslavia who started to teach the newly-codified Macedonian language
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
in the schools in Pirin Macedonia and issued the order that the Bulgarians
Bulgarians
The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...
of the Blagoevgrad Region should claim а Macedonian
Macedonians (ethnic group)
The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...
identity.
However, differences soon emerged between Tito and Dimitrov with regard to both the future joint country and the Macedonian question. Whereas Dimitrov envisaged a state where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing and Macedonia would be more or less attached to Bulgaria, Tito saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia tightly ruled from Belgrade. Their differences also extended to the national character of the Macedonians - whereas Dimitrov considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians
Bulgarians
The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...
, Tito regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with the Bulgarians. Thus the initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm.
By January 1948, Tito's and Dimitrov's plans had become an obstacle to Stalin's aspirations for total control over the new Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
. Stalin invited Tito and Dimitrov to Moscow regarding the recent approachment between the two countries. Dimitrov accepted the invitation, but Tito refused, and sent Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj also known under the pseudonyms Sperans and Krištof was a Yugoslav communist political leader, economist, partisan, publicist, and full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts...
, his close associate, instead. The resulting fall-out between Stalin and Tito in 1948 gave the Bulgarian Government an eagerly-awaited opportunity of denouncing Yugoslav policy in Macedonia as expansionistic and of revising their policy on the Macedonian question. The ideas of a Balkan Federation and a United Macedonia
United Macedonia
United Macedonia is an irredentist concept among ethnic Macedonian nationalists that aims to unify the transnational region of Macedonia in southeastern Europe, which they claim as their homeland, and which they assert was wrongfully divided under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, into a single...
were abandoned, the Macedonian teachers were expelled and teaching of Macedonian
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
throughout the province was discontinued. Despite the fallout, Yugoslavia did not reverse its position on renouncing Bulgarian war reparations, as defined in the 1947 Bled accord
Bled agreement
The Bled agreement was an agreement signed on the 1st August, 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. The agreement was signed between Bulgaria under Georgi Dimitrov and Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito which paved the way for future unification between the states in a new Balkan Federative Republic...
.
Dimitrov died in 1949 in the Barvikha
Barvikha
Barvikha is a village in Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia. It is the site of the Barvikha Sanatorium, the health resort of the President of Russia...
sanatorium near Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. The rising speculations that he had been poisoned have never been confirmed, although his health seemed to deteriorate quite abruptly. The supporters of the poisoning theory claim, that Stalin did not like the "Balkan Federation" idea of Dimitrov and his closeness with Tito. A state consisting of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be too large and independent to be controlled by Moscow. The opponents claim that Dimitrov was the most loyal "lap dog" of Stalin and Stalin did not have a real reason to kill him. Stalin never forgot the "betrayal" of Dimitrov. However, the anti-Yugoslav (anti-Titoist) trials and executions of Communist leaders orchestrated by Stalin in the Eastern Bloc countries in 1949 did little to calm these suspicions. Dimitrov's body was embalmed
Embalming
Embalming, in most modern cultures, is the art and science of temporarily preserving human remains to forestall decomposition and to make them suitable for public display at a funeral. The three goals of embalming are thus sanitization, presentation and preservation of a corpse to achieve this...
and placed on display in the Sofia Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum
Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum
The Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum in Sofia, Bulgaria was built in 1949 to hold the embalmed body of the Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov . The construction of the Mausoleum was begun right after the news of Dimitrov's death. It was built for a record time of just 6 days, the time it took for...
. After the fall of Communism in Bulgaria
History of Bulgaria since 1989
The reforms towards liberalization, both social, political and economic in the Eastern Block started with Gorbachev's reform program in the Soviet Union which was felt in Bulgaria in the late 1980s...
, his body was buried in 1990 in the Central cemetery of Sofia. His mausoleum was torn down in 1999.
Legacy Outside Bulgaria
After the 1963 Skopje earthquake1963 Skopje earthquake
The 1963 Skopje earthquake was an 6.1 moment magnitude earthquake which occurred in Skopje, SR Macedonia then part of the SFR Yugoslavia, on July 26, 1963 which killed over 1,070 people, injured between 3,000 and 4,000 and left more than 200,000 people homeless...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
joined the international reconstruction effort by donating funds for the construction of a high school, which opened in 1964. In order to honor the donor country's first post-WWII president, the high school was named Georgi Dimitrov, a name it still bears today.
A massive painted statue of Dimitrov survives in the centre of Place Bulgarie in Cotonou
Cotonou
-Demographics:*1979: 320,348 *1992: 536,827 *2002: 665,100 *2005: 690,584 The main languages spoken in Cotonou include the Fon language, Aja language, Yoruba language and French.-Transport:...
, Republic of Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, two decades after the country abandoned Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
and the colossal statue of Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
was removed from Place Lenine. Few Beninois are aware of the history of the statue or its subject. There is also an important avenue (#114) named for him in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, despite the three decades that have passed since the end of Communist rule.
External links
- Georgi Dimitrov Reference Archive at Marxist Internet Archive. 共产国际为中共提供财政援助情况之考察 Yang Kuisong:Study on the financial assisitants to CCP by Comintern抗战期间共产国际与中共关系文献资料述评 Yang Kuison:The analysis of historical documents between Comintern and CCP during the Sino-Japanese War.
- Video A Better Tomorrow: The Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum from UCTV