Georgi Dimitrov

Career

Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1902. The following year he allied himself with Dimitar Blagoev and the faction that formed the Social Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria ("The Narrow Party", or tesniaks). In 1919, this party became the Bulgarian Communist Party when it affiliated with Bolshevism and the Comintern. From 1904 to 1923, Dimitrov was Secretary of the General Trade Unions Federation, which the Narrows controlled.

In 1911, he spent a month in prison for libeling an official of the rival Free Federation of Trade Unions, whom he accused of strike-breaking. In 1913, he was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament. He opposed government policies in the Balkan Wars and World War I. In 1915, he voted against awarding new war credits and denounced Bulgarian nationalism, for which he received short prison sentences. In summer 1917, after he intervened in defense of wounded soldiers who were being ordered by an officer to clear out of a first-class railway carriage, Dimitrov was charged with incitement to mutiny, stripped of his parliamentary immunity, and imprisoned on 29 August 1918. Released in 1919, he went underground and made two failed attempts to visit Russia, finally reaching Moscow in February 1921. He returned to Bulgaria later in 1921, but then travelled again to Moscow and was elected in December 1922 to the Executive Bureau of Profintern, the communist trade union international.

In June 1923, when Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was deposed through a coup d'état, Dimitrov and Khristo Kabakchiev, the leading communists in Bulgaria at the time, resolved not to take sides, a decision condemned by the Comintern as a "political capitulation" brought on by the party's "dogmatic-doctrinaire approach". After Vasil Kolarov had been sent from Moscow to impose a change in the Bulgarian party line, Dimitrov accepted the Comintern's authority. In September 1923, he and Kolarov led the failed uprising against the regime of Aleksandar Tsankov, which cost the lives of possibly five thousand communist supporters during the fighting and the reprisals which followed. Despite its failure, the attempt was approved by the Comintern, and secured the positions of Kolarov and Dimitrov – who escaped via Yugoslavia to Vienna – as the joint leaders of the Bulgarian CP.

The political struggle in Bulgaria intensified in 1925. Dimitrov's only surviving brother, Todor, was arrested and killed that year by royal police. After the April 1925 St Nedelya Church assault, which was a terrorist bomb attack carried out by members of the Bulgarian CP, Dimitrov was tried in absentia in May 1926 and sentenced to death, although he had not approved the attack. Living under pseudonyms, he remained in the Soviet Union until 1929, when he was ousted from his Bulgarian CP leadership role by a faction of younger, more left-wing activists. Dimitrov then relocated to Germany where he was given charge of the Central European section of the Comintern. In 1932, he was appointed Secretary General of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, replacing Willi Münzenberg.

Leipzig trial

Dimitrov was living in Berlin in early 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took power. On the night of 27 February, the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was severely damaged in an arson attack. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found near the scene of the crime and presumed to be the culprit. Hitler quickly blamed a Communist conspiracy for the arson, and the Nazis proceeded to make mass arrests. On 9 March, Dimitrov was arrested based on the evidence of a waiter who claimed to have seen "three Russians" (in reality, Dimitrov and two other Bulgarians, Vasil Tanev, and Blagoy Popov, both of whom were members of the faction that had supplanted Dimitrov in the Bulgarian Communist Party) talking in a cafe with Van der Lubbe. Dimitrov would remain in Nazi detention until the following February. His diary entries during this period tended to be "dry and elliptical, and occasionally obscure" since he knew they would be subject to examination by his captors.

The Reichstag fire trial lasted from September to December 1933. Because it occurred at the Reich Supreme Court in Leipzig, it is often referred to as the Leipzig Trial. Dimitrov decided to refuse counsel and defend himself against his Nazi accusers, most famously Hermann Göring. Dimitrov used the trial as an opportunity to defend the Communist ideology. Explaining why he chose to speak in his own defense, Dimitrov said:

I admit that my tone is hard and grim. The struggle of my life has always been hard and grim. My tone is frank and open. I am used to calling a spade a spade. I am no lawyer appearing before this court in the mere way of his profession. I am defending myself, an accused Communist. I am defending my political honor, my honor as a revolutionary. I am defending my Communist ideology, my ideals. I am defending the content and significance of my whole life. For these reasons every word which I say in this court is a part of me, each phrase is the expression of my deep indignation against the unjust accusation, against the putting of this anti-Communist crime, the burning of the Reichstag, to the account of the Communists.

Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence, and the accusations he directed at his prosecutors, won him world renown. In Europe, a popular saying spread across the Continent: "There is only one brave man in Germany, and he is a Bulgarian." Among those impressed with Dimitrov was the noted U.S. attorney Arthur Garfield Hays, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hays attended the Leipzig Trial and devoted a chapter to it in his 1942 autobiography. In an oft-quoted passage, Hays wrote of Dimitrov:

I have never seen such a magnificent exhibition of moral courage. The man was not only brave but reckless, and selflessly so. Whenever he got to his feet, he would by force of his personality place the court, the prosecutors, the German audience, and the Nazis on the defensive.

This striking characterization was cited in multiple American newspaper reviews of Hays' book and helped introduce Dimitrov's name throughout the U.S.

On 23 December 1933, the verdicts were read. While Van der Lubbe was found guilty and sentenced to death, the judge acquitted Dimitrov, Tanev, and Popov because of insufficient evidence to connect them to what the judge was convinced was a conspiracy to burn down the Reichstag. The three Bulgarians were expelled from Germany and sent to the USSR.

Head of Comintern

When Dimitrov arrived in Moscow on 28 February 1934, he was encouraged by Joseph Stalin to end the practice of denouncing Social Democrats as 'social fascists', practically indistinguishable from actual fascists, and to instead promote "united front" tactics against the threat of European fascism. In April, as Dimitrov's fame grew in the wake of the Leipzig Trial, he was appointed a member of the Executive of Comintern and of its political secretariat, in charge of the Anglo-American and Central European sections. He was being groomed to take control of the Comintern from two of the so-called "Old Bolsheviks", Iosif Pyatnitsky and Wilhelm Knorin, who had held the position since 1923. Finally, in 1934, Stalin chose Dimitrov to head the international organization. At this point, Tzvetan Todorov writes, Dimitrov "became part of the Soviet leader's inner circle."

From 25 July to 20 August 1935, the 7th World Congress of the Communist International met in Moscow. Dimitrov was the dominant presence; he was elected the Comintern's General Secretary. His impassioned anti-fascist speeches at the Congress were transcribed and published in a September 1935 pamphlet, The United Front Against Fascism, which went through numerous editions over the ensuing years.

During the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov knew about the mass arrests, but did almost nothing. In November 1937, he was told by Stalin to lure the German communist Willi Münzenberg to the USSR so that he could be arrested. Dimitrov did not object and did as he was told. He noted in his diary when Julian Leszczyński, Henryk Walecki, and several members of his staff were arrested, but again did nothing, though he did raise questions when the NKVD representative in Comintern, Mikhail Trilisser, was arrested.

Leader of Bulgaria

In 1946, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile. After a referendum abolished the monarchy in September, Bulgaria was declared a people's republic. Later that year, he succeeded Kimon Georgiev as Prime Minister, though Dimitrov had already been the most powerful man in the country since the monarchy was abolished two months earlier. He retained his Soviet citizenship.

One of Dimitrov's first acts as Prime Minister was to negotiate with Josip Broz Tito on the creation of a Federation of the Southern Slavs. The Bulgarian and Yugoslav Communist leaderships had been discussing this matter since November 1944. The idea was based on the fact that Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were the only two homelands of the Southern Slavs, and were separated from the rest of the Slavic world. The idea eventually resulted in the 1947 Bled accord, signed by Dimitrov and Tito, which called for abandoning frontier travel barriers, arranging for a future customs union, and having Yugoslavia unilaterally forgive Bulgarian war reparations. The preliminary plan for the federation included the incorporation of the Blagoevgrad Region ("Pirin Macedonia") into the People's Republic of Macedonia and the return of the Western Outlands from Serbia to Bulgaria. In anticipation of this, Bulgaria accepted teachers from Yugoslavia who started to teach the newly codified Macedonian language in the schools in Pirin Macedonia, and also issued an order that the Bulgarians of the Blagoevgrad Region should claim а Macedonian identity.

However, differences soon emerged between Dimitrov and Tito 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, Tito regarded them as an independent nation of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bulgarians. The initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm.

By January 1948, Tito's plans to annex Bulgaria and Albania had become an obstacle to policy of the Cominform and the other Eastern Bloc countries. In December 1947, Enver Hoxha and an Albanian delegation were invited to a high-level meeting in Bulgaria. Dimitrov was aware of the subversive activity of Koçi Xoxe and other pro-Yugoslav Albanian officials. He told Enver Hoxha during the meeting: "Look here, Comrade Enver, keep the Party pure! Let it be revolutionary, proletarian and everything will go well with you!"

After the initial rupture, Stalin invited Dimitrov and Tito to Moscow regarding the recent incident. Dimitrov accepted the invitation, but Tito refused, and sent his close associate Edvard Kardelj instead. The resulting rift 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 its policy on the Macedonian question. The ideas of a Balkan Federation and a United Macedonia were abandoned, the Macedonian teachers were expelled and the teaching of Macedonian throughout the province was discontinued. At the 5th Congress of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists), Dimitrov accused Tito of "nationalism" and hostility towards the internationalist communists, specifically the Soviet Union. Despite the fallout, Yugoslavia did not reverse its position on renouncing Bulgarian war reparations, as defined in the 1947 Bled accord.

Personal life

In 1906, Dimitrov married his first wife, Serbian emigrant milliner, writer and socialist Ljubica Ivošević, with whom he lived until her death in 1933. While in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov married his second wife, the Czech-born Roza Yulievna Fleishmann (1896–1958), who gave birth to his only son, Mitya, in 1936. The boy died at age seven of diphtheria. While Mitya was alive, Dimitrov adopted Fani, a daughter of Wang Ming, the acting General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1931. He and his wife adopted another child, Boiko Dimitrov, born 1941.

Death

Dimitrov died on 2 July 1949 in the Barvikha sanatorium near Moscow. The speculation that he had been poisoned has 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.

After the funeral, Dimitrov's body was embalmed and placed on display in Sofia's Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum. After the end of Communist rule in Bulgaria, his body was buried in Sofia's central cemetery in 1990. His mausoleum was demolished in 1999.

Legacy

Armenia

• A statue in the village of Dimitrov, named in his honour in 1949.

Benin

• A large painted statue of Dimitrov survives in the centre of Place Bulgarie in Cotonou, Republic of Benin, decades after the country abandoned Marxism–Leninism and the colossal statue of Vladimir Lenin was removed from Place Lenine.

Bulgaria

• Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria
• Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum 1949–1999

Cambodia

• There is also an avenue (#114) named for him in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Cuba

• A main avenue in the Nuevo Holguin neighborhood, which was built during the 1970s and 1980s in the city of Holguín is named after him.
• Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias Jorge Dimitrov in Bayamo is named after him.
• IPUEC Jorge Dimitrov (Ceiba 7) school in Caimito
• Primary School Escuela Primaria Jorge Dimitrov in Havana

East Germany

• In then-East Berlin's Pankow district, a street that since 1874 had been named Danziger Straße — after the formerly German city Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) — was in 1950 renamed Dimitroffstraße (Dimitrov Street) by the Communist East German regime. It also lent its name to an U-Bahn station. After German unification, the Berlin Senate in 1995 restored the street's name to Danziger Straße, and the U-Bahn station was renamed Eberswalder Straße.

England

• In July 1982, there was a centennial celebration of Dimitrov's birth held at Mahatma Gandhi Hall in London. A lecture from the event was printed in the pamphlet, Georgi Dimitrov: Fighter Against Fascism.

Greece

• In 1974, the song Mavra Korakia along with 20 songs of album "Antartika" (The Guerilla [Songs]) were published by Notis Mavroudis and Petros Pandis, as part of the return of KKE in Greece during the Metapolitefsi. The song is a glorification of the Leipzig Trial of Dimitrov, Tanev and Popov, emphasising Dimitrov's ability to avoid hanging. It is widely sung in the left-wing circles of Greek society.

Hungary

• The square Fővám tér and the street Máriaremetei út in Budapest, Hungary were named after Dimitrov between 1949 and 1991. In the square, a bust of him was erected in 1954, replaced by a full-length statue in 1983, which was then relocated to the eponymous street a year later. Both sculptures are exhibited since 1992 in the Memento Park.
• Szentlőrincpuszta, part of Érsekvadkert was called Dimitrovpuszta (Dimitrov Plains) between 1955 and the late 1990s.

Italy

• There is a Georgi Dimitrov street in the city of Reggio Emilia, Emilia Romagna administrative region.

Nicaragua

The Sandinista government of Nicaragua renamed one of Managua's central neighbourhoods "Barrio Jorge Dimitrov" to commemorate him during that country's revolution in the 1980s.

Romania

• In Bucharest, a boulevard was named after him (Bulevardul Dimitrov). In 1990, following the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, this boulevard was renamed in honor of the former Romanian King Ferdinand I (Bulevardul Ferdinand).

Russia

• Dimitrovgrad, Russia
• In Novosibirsk a large street leading to a bridge over the Ob River are both named after him. The bridge was opened in 1978.

Serbia

• Dimitrovgrad, Serbia (see below)

Slovakia

• During the times of the communist rule, an important chemical factory in Bratislava was called "Chemické závody Juraja Dimitrova" (colloquially Dimitrovka) in his honour. After the Velvet Revolution, it was renamed Istrochem.

Ukraine

• Dymytrov, now Myrnohrad in Ukraine was named Dymytrov between 1972 and 2016.

Yugoslavia

• After the 1963 Skopje earthquake, Bulgaria 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-World War II president, the high school was named after Georgi Dimitrov, a name it still bears today.
• The town of Caribrod (Цариброд) in what was then the People's Republic of Serbia, FPRY was renamed in 1950 to Dimitrovgrad (Димитровград) to honor the late Bulgarian leader, despite the Tito-Stalin split. The name has been kept since, although in recent years the local city council has tried to restore the old name (most recently in 2019), and some people prefer the older name to avoid confusion with the Dimitrovgrad in Bulgaria.