From Leipzig defendant to Comintern General Secretary
"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." Spoken in the Leipzig courtroom in 1933, the words were meant to defend the content and significance of his whole life.
A printer and trade unionist who led the failed 1923 uprising, he became an international symbol by defying the Nazis at the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial. Elected Comintern General Secretary in 1935, after the 7th World Congress, he headed the CPSU Central Committee's International Information Department after the Comintern was dissolved in 1943. During the Great Purge he took part in the destruction of the Polish Communist Party's leadership and in reprisals against old Bulgarian comrades, while also intervening to save some. He returned to Bulgaria in 1945 and became Prime Minister the next year; his Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation plans were undone by the Stalin-Tito split. He died near Moscow in 1949.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1935–1943General Secretary
Related historical events
- 1934–1939The Comintern’s Popular Front turnGeneral Secretary and architect of the Popular FrontReported on fascism and the Popular Front at the Seventh Congress and became General Secretary.
- 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.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeParticipant in party purgesDuring the Great Purge, he took part in purging the Polish Communist Party leadership and repressing former Bulgarian comrades.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarComintern secretary leading anti-fascist propaganda and resistance coordination
- 1944–1949The People's Democracies of Eastern EuropeBulgarian prime minister who redefined people's democracyIn 1945–46 he said Bulgaria would be a people's republic rather than a Soviet republic; at the Fifth Congress in December 1948 he defined people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. His diary is a central source for the period.
- 1944–1949Bulgaria: From the Fatherland Front to the Kostov TrialCommunist leader, prime minister from 1946Returning in November 1945, he became prime minister in November 1946. In 1945–46 he said Bulgaria would be a people's republic rather than a Soviet one, signed the Bled agreement with Tito in 1947, and at the Fifth Congress in December 1948 defined people's democracy as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He died at Barvikha in July 1949.
- 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.
Leader of Bulgaria (1945/1946–1949)
After the Comintern was dissolved, Dimitrov headed the International Information Department of the CPSU Central Committee (27 December 1943 – 29 December 1945) and sat as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1937–1945). General Secretary of the party from 1933, he returned to Bulgaria after 22 years abroad in 1945 or 1946 (the English source says 1946; the Russian reference says November 1945). After a September 1946 referendum abolished the monarchy and Bulgaria was declared a people's republic, he succeeded Kimon Georgiev as Prime Minister (23 November 1946 – 2 July 1949), having already been the country's most powerful figure. He retained his Soviet citizenship.
One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to negotiate with Tito on a federation of the Southern Slavs. The two leaderships had discussed it since November 1944, and it produced the 1947 Bled accord, signed by both men, which called for abandoning frontier travel barriers, arranging a future customs union, and Yugoslavia unilaterally forgiving Bulgarian war reparations. The preliminary plan included incorporating Pirin Macedonia into the People's Republic of Macedonia and returning the Western Outlands. But while Dimitrov envisaged Bulgaria and Yugoslavia on an equal footing with Macedonia attached to Bulgaria, Tito saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic ruled from Belgrade and Macedonians as a separate nation. After the 1948 Stalin–Tito rupture the federation and United Macedonia ideas were abandoned, Macedonian teachers were expelled and Macedonian-language teaching was discontinued. At the party's 5th Congress Dimitrov accused Tito of 'nationalism'.
While still in Moscow in 1944–45 he personally coordinated the work of the so-called 'People's Court', ordered the creation of special labour camps for 'that scum', and held that no considerations of humanity or mercy should play any role in expelling the families of those killed by the regime. This documents his responsibility in the post-1944 repression in Bulgaria, alongside the crushing of opposition and the large personality cult built around him.
He died on 2 July 1949 at the Barvikha sanatorium near Moscow. Speculation that he had been poisoned has never been confirmed, though his health deteriorated abruptly. His body was embalmed and displayed in Sofia's Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum; after communist rule ended it was buried in Sofia's central cemetery in 1990 and the mausoleum was demolished in 1999.