From Leipzig defendant to Comintern General Secretary
I am an accused Communist defending my political honor, my revolutionary honor, my Communist ideals. Every word I speak in this court is part of my life.
A printer and trade unionist who led the failed 1923 armed uprising, he became an international symbol by defying the Nazis at the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial. Elected Comintern General Secretary in 1935, he formalized the anti-fascist Popular Front strategy. After the war he became the first communist Prime Minister of Bulgaria and pursued a Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation, a vision undone by the Stalin-Tito split.
Career Timeline
- 1934–1943General Secretary
Related historical events
- 1934.01–07The Fascist Riot of 6 February 1934The man of the Comintern's turnHe reached Moscow three weeks after the riot and began reopening the social-fascism line; his report to the Seventh Congress in August 1935 defined fascism as the terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of finance capital and made the popular front official policy.
- 1934–1938The French Popular Front and the Strikes of 1936Comintern general secretary who codified the popular-front lineHis report to the Seventh Congress in August 1935 ratified the experiment under way in France as the official line of world communism.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarComintern secretary leading anti-fascist propaganda and resistance coordination
- 1948–1955The Tito-Stalin SplitParty to the Balkan federation projectHis public words on federation drew Moscow's rebuke
The Leipzig Trial (1933)
After the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933, the Nazis launched a sweeping crackdown on communists. Dimitrov was indicted alongside two fellow Bulgarian communists, Vasil Tanev and Blagoy Popov, and the KPD parliamentary leader Ernst Torgler. The trial opened at the Imperial Court in Leipzig on 21 September 1933 and ran for three months, until 23 December. Dimitrov, who spoke fluent German, transformed the courtroom into an indictment of the Nazi regime. He was denied the right to speak 36 times and expelled from the courtroom on five occasions; his cross-examination of Hermann Göring left the prosecution looking like the accused. The radio broadcast was halted when the proceedings turned against the Nazis. Only van der Lubbe was convicted and guillotined; Dimitrov and the other three defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. Moscow granted the three Bulgarians Soviet citizenship, and they were deported to the USSR. In the trial's aftermath, the Nazis transferred political cases from ordinary courts to the newly established People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), after which dissidents were imprisoned and executed without public trial.