Georgi Dimitrov
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27 December 1943 – 29 December 1945
1935–1943
BSDWP-Narrow Socialists (1903–1919)
Roza Yulievna (until 1949)
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Georgi Dimitrov Mihaylov (
Born in western Bulgaria, Dimitrov worked as a printer and trade unionist during his youth. He was elected to the Bulgarian parliament as a socialist during the First World War and campaigned against the country's involvement, which led to his brief imprisonment for sedition. In 1919, he helped found the Bulgarian Communist Party, and two years later he moved to the Soviet Union and was elected to the executive committee of Profintern. In 1923, Dimitrov led a failed communist uprising against the government of Aleksandar Tsankov and was subsequently forced into exile. He lived in the Soviet Union until 1929, when he relocated to Germany and became head of the Comintern operations in central Europe.
Dimitrov rose to international prominence in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire trial. Accused of plotting the arson, he refused counsel and mounted an eloquent defence against his Nazi accusers, in particular Hermann Göring, ultimately winning acquittal. After the trial he relocated to Moscow and was elected head of Comintern.
In 1946, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile and was elected prime minister of the newly founded People's Republic of Bulgaria. He negotiated with Josip Broz Tito to create a federation of Southern Slavs, which led to the 1947 Bled accord. The plan ultimately fell apart over differences regarding the future of the join country as well as the Macedonian question, and was completely abandoned following the fallout between Stalin and Tito. Dimitrov died after a short illness in 1949 in Barvikha near Moscow. His embalmed body was housed in the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum in Sofia until its removal in 1990; the mausoleum was demolished in 1999.
Early life
Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi in present-day Pernik Province, the first of eight children, to refugee parents from Ottoman Macedonia (a mother from Bansko and a father from Razlog). His father was a rural craftsman, forced by industrialisation to become a factory worker. His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant Christian, and his family is sometimes described as Protestant.[2] The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia.[3] One of Georgi's brothers, Nikola, moved to Russia, joined the Bolsheviks in Odessa until he was arrested in 1908 and exiled to Siberia, where he died in 1916.[4] Another brother, Konstantin, became a trade union leader but was killed in the First Balkan War in 1912. One of his sisters, Lena, married a future communist leader, Valko Chervenkov.
Dimitrov was sent to Sunday school by his mother, who wanted him to be a pastor, but was expelled at the age of 12, and trained as a
Career
Dimitrov joined the
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 1915 (during World War I) he was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament and opposed the voting of a new war credit. In summer 1917, after he intervened in defence of wounded soldiers who were being ordered by an officer to clear out of a first class railway carriage, he was charged with 'incitement to mutiny, stripped of his parliamentary immunity and was imprisoned on 29 August 1918.[5] 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 returned to Moscow and was elected in December 1922 to the executive of Profintern, the communist trade union international.
In June 1923, when Prime Minister
In the aftermath the
Leipzig trial
Dimitrov was based in Berlin when the Nazis came to power, and was arrested on 9 March 1933 on the evidence of a waiter who claimed to have seen "three Russians" (in reality, Dimitrov and two other Bulgarians,
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.[9]
Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence and the accusations he directed at his prosecutors won him world renown. Dimitrov, Tanev, and Popov were acquitted. Two months later, on 23 December, the USSR secured the release of the three Bulgarians, who were granted Soviet citizenship.
Head of Comintern
When Dimitrov arrived in Moscow, on 27 February 1934, he was encouraged by
During the
Leader of Bulgaria
In 1946, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile and became leader of the Communist party there. After the founding of the
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.
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.[15] In December 1947, Enver Hoxha and an Albanian delegation were invited to Bulgaria. During their meeting, Dimitrov told Enver Hoxha, knowing about the subversive activity of Koçi Xoxe and other pro-Yugoslav Albanian officials: "Look here, Comrade Enver, keep the Party pure! Let it be revolutionary, proletarian and everything will go well with you!"[20]
After the initial rupture, Stalin invited Tito and Dimitrov to Moscow regarding the recent incident. Dimitrov accepted the invitation, but Tito refused, and sent
In
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.[3] 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.[3][23] 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[15][24] 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.[15][24]
After the funeral, Dimitrov's body was
Legacy
 |
Bulgaria
- Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria
- Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum 1949–1999
Russia
- Dimitrovgrad, Russia
- In Ob Riverare both named after him. The bridge was opened in 1978.
Serbia
- Dimitrovgrad, Serbia
Romania
- In Bucharest, a boulevard was named after him (Bulevardul Dimitrov), although this name was changed after 1990 to the former Romanian king Ferdinand (Bulevardul Ferdinand).
Armenia
- Dimitrov, Armenia
Hungary
- The square Fővám tér and the street Máriaremetei út in Budapest, Hungary were named after Dimitrov between 1949 and 1991. On the square a bust of him was erected in 1954, replaced by a full-length statue in 1983 and taken to the eponymous street a year later. Both sculptures are exhibited since 1992 in the Memento Park.
A memorial to Dimitrov in Budapest
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Slovakia
- During the times of the communist rule, an important chemical factory in Velvet revolution, it was renamed Istrochem.
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.
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.
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 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.
Cuba
- A main avenue in the Nuevo Holguin neighborhood, which was built during the 1970s and 1980s in the city of Holguín, Cubais 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
Nicaragua
The
's central neighbourhoods "Barrio Jorge Dimitrov" in his honor during that country's revolution in the 1980s.Cambodia
- There is also an avenue (#114) named for him in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Italy
- There is a Georgi Dimitrov street in the city of Emilia Romagnaadministrative region.
Works
References
Citations
- ^ "Dimitrov". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
- ISBN 978-0817976927.
- ^ a b c Ценкова, Искра (21–27 March 2005). "По следите на червения вожд" (in Bulgarian). Тема. Retrieved 2010-01-09.
- ^ a b c Banac 2003, p. xvii.
- ^ Banac 2003, p. xix.
- ^ a b c Banac 2003, p. xxii.
- ^ Carr, E.H. (1969). The Interregnum, 1923–24. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. p. 201.
- ISBN 978-0231065320. Retrieved 2015-03-06.
- ^ Georgi Dimitrov, And Yet It Moves: Concluding Speech before the Leipzig Trial, Sofia: Sofia Press, 1982, p. 15
- ^ Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: The Viking Press, 1965. p. 188
- ^ "The Man who defied Goering, Yet Lived"[permanent dead link], The Milwaukee Journal
- ^ John D. Bell, The Bulgarian Communist Party from Blagoev to Zhivkov, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1985, p. 47
- ^ Tzvetan Todorov, "Stalin close up." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5.1 (2004): 94–111 at p. 95.
- ^ Banac 2003, pp. 62, 89–91.
- ^ ISBN 978-0415270892. Retrieved 2015-09-13.
- ISBN 9004192085, p. 156.
- ^ H.R. Wilkinson Maps and Politics. A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, Liverpool, 1951. pp. 311–312.
- ISBN 1134665113, p. 183.
- ISBN 1850655340. pp. 107–108.
- ^ Hoxha, Enver (1982). The Titoites. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. p. 417.
- ^ H.R. Wilkinson Maps and Politics. A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia, Liverpool, 1951. p. 312.
- ^ Dimitrov, Georgi. "Political Report of the Central Committee to the V Congress of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists)". Revolutionary Democracy. Archived from the original on May 27, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0307807137.
- ^ ISBN 978-0313384479. Retrieved 2015-09-13.
Cited works
- Banac, Ivo (2003). The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949. New Haven: Yale U.P. ISBN 0300097948.
Further reading
- Dalin and Firsov, Dimitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000
- Dimitrov and Banac, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003
- Marietta Stankova, Georgi Dimitrov: A Life, London: I. B. Tauris, 2010
External links
- Georgi Dimitrov Reference Archive at Marxist Internet Archive.
- Selected Works in English (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) in PDF format, published in Bulgaria in 1972
- Georgi Dimitrov: 90th Birth Anniversary, containing biographical information.
- Video A Better Tomorrow: The Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum from UCTV (University of California)
- Newspaper clippings about Georgi Dimitrov in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW