Son of an artisan. From 1894 he worked as a typesetter. Since 1901 secretary of the trade union of printers (Sofia). In 1902 he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party (BRSD), and in 1903 joined its Bolshevik part of the "Close Socialists". From 1909 he was a member of the Central Committee of the BRSD (Close Socialists), which in 1919 was transformed into the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP). In 1909-23 secretary of the General Workers' Union, organizer of strikes. In 1913-23 he was a member of the Bulgarian Parliament. In Sept. 1923 one of the leaders of the communist armed uprising in Bulgaria. After the failure of the attempt to seize power, he was sentenced in absentia to death penalty and went abroad. Actively participated in the work of the Comintern, conducted communist propaganda.
He was arrested by the Nazis on charges of involvement in the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, but was acquitted at the Leipzig trial (September-December 1933). His speeches were widely used by Bolshevik propaganda, and Dimitrov himself was granted Soviet citizenship, and the USSR demanded his extradition. 27/2/1934 arrived in the USSR. In 1935 he was elected general secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI). The main conductor of Stalin's policy in the international arena, the creator of the "fifth columns" in European countries.
Dimitrov's name which gained international fame thanks to the Leipzig process, was used to create the illusion of the independence of the Comintern from the decisions of I.V. Stalin. In 1937-45 he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 22/6/1941 put at the head of the "leading troika" of the ECCI, heading all of its current activities. In 1942 he was placed at the head of the Fatherland Front of Bulgaria, created under the control of Moscow. On May 15, 1943, when Stalin decided to establish tighter control over the "fraternal" Communist Parties, Dimitrov dissolved the Comintern and in June 1943 he was appointed head. Department of International Information of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
After Soviet troops established in Bulgaria "people's democratic regime", Dimitrov in November 1945 arrived at home. From November 6, 1946 - before. Council of Ministers. From December 1947 until his death - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP. Returning from the USSR to his homeland, he established a communist regime in the country, based on the Soviet troops stationed here. Following the example of Stalin, he unleashed a campaign of terror, executed the leader of the peasant party N. Petkov, and others. Under his leadership, Bulgaria fell under the complete control of Moscow, practically losing its independence, and began to turn, as they later said, into the "sixteenth republic of the USSR."
He actively supported the idea of the Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation, which, after the break of I.V. Stalin with I.B. Tito, caused great displeasure in the USSR (especially since Dimitrov expressed doubts about Stalin's infallibility). After the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks condemned Tito's position, Dimitrov nevertheless came out in support of the Yugoslav leader. However, Dimitrov's fame made his arrest unthinkable, and "No. 2" in the Communist Party T. Postov was chosen as the main accused. In January 1949, Dimitrov was isolated from society, and only in April 1949 it was reported that he fell ill and was being treated in the USSR. He died in Barvikha near Moscow from diabetes.
The body of the deceased Dimitrov was mummified and placed in a specially built mausoleum. After the fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria, in 1990, his ashes were reburied. On February 25, 1992, the Public Council of Sofia decided to demolish the mausoleum, as a structure ideologically and architecturally alien to the city center. In August 1999, the building was blown up on the fifth attempt, the debris was taken out by cars and disassembled for souvenirs. Today nothing reminds of the mausoleum in Sofia. Where he stood is a concrete platform.
In honor of G. M. Dimitrov, cities in Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia are named.
In Moscow, in honor of Dimitrov, after his death, one of the central streets, Bolshaya Yakimanka, was renamed, which was returned to its original name after the collapse of the USSR. In St. Petersburg, a new street in the Kupchino microdistrict was named after G. M. Dimitrov in 1974, later a monument was erected in the square opposite the "Chaika" complex. In Samara (former Kuibyshev), a street in Promyshlenny and Kirovsky districts was named after G. M. Dimitrov, stretching for more than 3 kilometers, and a memorial plaque was installed on the facade of the house in which he lived and worked in 1941 (the real address is street Shostakovich B. Rabochaya d. 5, Chapaev Square).
June 18, 1882 - Georgy Dimitrov was born, leader of socialist Bulgaria (1946-49), head of the Comintern (1935-43), anti-fascist, accused by the Nazis of setting fire to the Reichstag and brilliantly disgraced fascist justice during the famous Leipzig trial, close friend and colleague I.V. Stalin.
Dimitrov Georgy Mikhailovich (1882-1949) - teacher and leader of the Bulgarian people, an outstanding figure in the international workers' movement, a loyal ally of Lenin and Stalin. The whole history of the struggle of the Bulgarian working class for its liberation is inextricably linked with the name of Dimitrov. “In the entire struggle of the working class,” said the appeal of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party to the members of the party and the Bulgarian people in connection with the death of Dimitrov, “in the socialist communist movement in our country over the past 50 years there has not been a single significant event that would not have been connected with great luck and vigorous organizational and leading activity of comrade Georgy Dimitrov.
In 1902, Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party and actively joined the struggle against the reformists on the side of the revolutionary Marxist trend in the party, from which, after the victory of the Great October revolution in Russia and the revolutionary upsurge it caused in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Communist Party grew. Dimitrov was a consistent proletarian internationalist. He selflessly fought against Great Bulgarian chauvinism and nationalism, against the imperialist war. The Bulgarian reactionary government severely persecuted Dimitrov, arrested him several times, imprisoned him, twice sentenced him to death. However, Dimitrov never stopped fighting for the interests of the working people.
In 1920 the Bulgarian Communists sent Dimitrov as a delegate to the Congress of the Comintern.
In 1923, Dimitrov, together with Kolarov, led the September armed uprising, which played a large role in the growth of the class consciousness of the Bulgarian workers and peasants.
Dimitrov was a major figure in the international labor movement, one of the organizers of the international struggle against war and fascism, for peace and communism. He also worked actively on the Executive Committee of the Communist International. The fearlessness of a fighter and the talent of a tribune manifested themselves with particular force in Dimitrov during the Leipzig trial in 1933, where Dimitrov exposed the fascist provocation and revealed to the whole world the bestial face of fascism. Dimitrov's courageous behavior at the Leipzig trials played a big role in mobilizing the forces of the working class and all working people to fight against war and fascism. Thanks to government intercession Soviet Union and the revolutionary upsurge of the working people of the whole world, Dimitrov was wrested from the bloody paws of fascism and arrived in the USSR.
In Moscow, Dimitrov carried out hard work to rally the working people in the fight against fascism. In 1935, Dimitrov was elected General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and remained unchanged in this post until the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. G.M. Dimitrov developed questions of the strategy and tactics of the communists in the struggle against war and fascism. He fought for the creation and strengthening of a united front against imperialist reaction, and did a great deal of work to cultivate and educate the leading cadres of the fraternal communist parties, who were necessary for the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.
During the Second World War, Dimitrov gave all his strength to the mobilization populace to fight against the Nazi invaders. He did a lot of work on organizing the liberation anti-fascist movement abroad, in the countries occupied by the Nazis. He led the struggle of Bulgarian patriots against fascism. For outstanding services in the fight against fascism, Dimitrov was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1945.
When Soviet army, the liberation army, entered the territory of Bulgaria, the Bulgarian people, under the leadership of Dimitrov, overthrew the fascist regime and established the system of people's democracy. In November 1945, after 22 years of exile, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria. Here he launched a vigorous activity, directing all the work of the party, calling for the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism. In the struggle for the construction of the Bulgarian people's democratic state, Dimitrov's great talent was manifested as statesman. Under the leadership of Dimitrov, a referendum is held on state system and elections to the Grand National Assembly. After a brilliant victory in the elections, Dimitrov is unanimously elected Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Under his leadership, a nationwide discussion of the new constitution is being developed and held.
With the adoption of the constitution and the nationalization of industry and banks carried out almost simultaneously in Bulgaria, the people's democratic system was strengthened and took shape, which is a form of dictatorship of the working class. Dimitrov led the restoration and development National economy. With the fraternal assistance of the Soviet Union, the Bulgarian people, under the leadership of Dimitrov, achieved great success in raising the economy and culture of their country, in fundamentally improving the well-being of the broad masses of the working people. In December 1948, the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party took place, which outlined a program for building the foundations of socialism in Bulgaria.
On July 2, 1949, the heart of the great son of the Bulgarian people, Georgy Mikhailovich Dimitrov, stopped beating.
Dimitrov was an outstanding and talented theoretician of Marxism-Leninism. He always called to be guided by the teachings of Marxism, the richest experience of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“For the communist parties,” he said, “there is a single theory as a guide to action - the theory of Marxism-Leninism, there is a single purposefulness in their politics, there is a great party of Lenin-Stalin, as the leading party of the international labor movement.” He ardently defended the interest of proletarian internationalism, steadily fighting against all kinds of nationalism. In internationalism, he said, communists see the guarantee of the successful struggle of the working class of each country for the victory of socialism. In his speeches on questions of the international working-class movement, the strategy and tactics of the communist parties in the struggle against imperialism, on questions of building a new people's democratic Bulgaria, etc. Dimitrov creatively applied dialectical and historical materialism and gave vivid examples of a dialectical approach to reality.
In a letter to the editors of Philosophical Thought, Dimitrov pointed out that the study of philosophical works increasingly convinced him “of the absolute necessity of a complete combination of practice with theory, since practice without theory is blind, and theory without practice is fruitless. This is especially important for the working class, which is faced with the historical task of not only correctly and scientifically explaining what exists, but also radically changing this existing for its own benefit, for the benefit of its people. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice, as the great Lenin and, together with him, the successor of his work, the great Stalin, emphasized many times.
Five cities were named in honor of Georgy Dimitrov: the city of Dimitrovo (now Pernik, Bulgaria), the city of Dimitrov (Donetsk), as well as three with the same name: Dimitrovgrad (a city in Bulgaria, a newly built city), Dimitrovgrad (a city in Serbia, formerly Tsaribrod) and Dimitrovgrad (Russia, former Melekess, Ulyanovsk region). Four of these five cities are still named after Dimitrov. Hundreds of streets all over the world have been named after the outstanding revolutionary, monuments have been erected to him, one of which is located in the African country of Benin.
In honor of Dimitrov, the Order of Georgy Dimitrov was established People's Republic Bulgaria. This order was awarded to L. I. Brezhnev in Sofia.
Born on June 18, 1882 in the village of Kovachevtsi, Pernik district. Parents: artisan Dimitar Mikhailov and Parashkeva Doseva. From 1894 he worked as a typesetter in a printing house. Since 1901 secretary of the trade union of printers (Sofia). In 1902, he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party (BRSD), and in 1903, during the split of the party, he entered its Marxist part, which took shape as an independent party, the BRSD (Close Socialists). Since 1909, he was a member of the Central Committee of the BRSD (close socialists), which in 1919 was transformed into the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). In 1905-1923. member of the leadership (since 1909 secretary) of the General Workers' Trade Union (General Workers' Syndical Union - ORSS), took an active part in organizing major uprisings of the Bulgarian proletariat (miners' strikes in Pernik in 1906 and 1911, match factory workers in Kostenets in 1909, railway workers in 1919 -20, etc.).
Since August 1904, the Rabotnichesko Vestnik, the central party organ of the BRSDP, has also become an organ of the ORSS. The editor of his "Syndical Page" was Georgy Dimitrov. He was also the editor of the "Syndical Bulletin" (1920-1921) and the organ of the Syndical Committee of the ORSS "Bulletin of the General Workers' Syndical Union in Bulgaria". Separate syndicates that were part of the ORSS also published their own newspapers, for example: "Railwayman", "Teacher's spark", "Pechatar", "Voice of a waiter" and many others.
In 1913-1923. Member of the Bulgarian Parliament
In 1921, Dimitrov participated in the work of the 3rd Congress of the Comintern, where he met with Lenin. In the same year he was elected a member of the Central Council of the Profintern. On September 6, 1923, under the editorship of Georgy Dimitrov, the newspaper "Trud" is published - the weekly printed organ of the ORSS. In September 1923, together with Vasil Kolarov, he led an anti-fascist armed uprising in Bulgaria, after which he emigrated abroad. For organizing an anti-government rebellion, he was sentenced to death in absentia. In exile, he lived in different European countries under false names. For a short time he lived in Yugoslavia, then, in October 1923, he left for Vienna. He was a member of the Foreign Bureau of the BKP, and on December 17, 1923 he was elected secretary of the Presidium of the Balkan Communist Federation (BKF). In the spring of 1924, Dimitrov became the representative of the ECCI in the Communist Party of Austria. That year he visited Moscow twice.
In June-July 1924, at the V Congress of the Comintern, he was elected a member of the ECCI, and at the III Congress of the Profintern, he was again included in the Executive Bureau of the Profintrain.
Since 1925 - member of the Comintern, member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Political Secretariat of the ECCI. In March and June 1926 he was again in Moscow. At the end of January 1927, Dimitrov left for Vienna, where he became head of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the BKP(ts). From the beginning of 1929, Berlin became the headquarters of the BKP and BKF bodies in which Dimitrov worked. There he held the following positions:
- member of the foreign bureau of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party;
- Member of the Executive Bureau of the BKF (established at the end of January 1929);
- Head of the Western European Bureau of the Comintern (ZEB - WEB).
Dimitrov and the ZEB led by him had the following tasks:
- carry out instructions and exercise control over the execution of the general directives of the governing bodies of the Comintern (ECCI);
- coordinate the activities of 25 European communist parties and many mass international organizations;
- contribute to their strengthening and educate them in the spirit of mutual assistance and solidarity;
- to strengthen close ties between the Communist Parties and the leading bodies of the Comintern.
As the leader of ZEB, Dimitrov had to travel frequently. According to the documents - he is a Swiss citizen Rudolf Goediger. In his passport, under the name of Louise Goediger, his wife Lyuba Ivoshevich is recorded.
A prominent Soviet party leader A. Kuusinen recalled: “Dimitrov worked in various departments of the Comintern, but every time he had to be dismissed: he was only interested in drinking and women. When indignation and complaints reached the limit, he was transferred somewhere. The Comintern simply refused to work with him... Otto told me, laughing: “Nobody wants to mess with Dimitrov. Where to put him? It's probably better to send them back to the Balkans." And they sent them. Together with two other students of the Lenin School - Vasil Tanev and Blagoy Popov. A few years later they were transferred to Berlin.
Shortly after the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, on March 9, Dimitrov, together with Blagoy Popov and Vasil Tanev, was arrested in the Bayernhof restaurant on the denunciation of the waiter Gelmer. Soon they appeared before the court at the Leipzig trial organized by the Nazis in September-December 1933. Despite all attempts to falsify evidence and falsify the facts, the court had to acquit Dimitrov. His dramatic confrontation at the trial with Hermann Goering spread around the world. His speeches were widely used by communist propaganda, and Dimitrov himself was granted Soviet citizenship. According to A. Kuusinen, Dimitrov's famous speech at the trial was composed by O. Kuusinen. All three left for the USSR, where they accepted Soviet citizenship.
In 1934 he was elected to the Leningrad City Council. From the second half of 1934 Dimitrov lived and worked in Moscow. In 1935 he was elected General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Dimitrov repeatedly met with Stalin. He kept a diary in which he recorded the content of all his conversations. On February 11, 1937, Stalin told Dimitrov: "All of you there, in the Comintern, are working for the enemy." On November 7, 1937, at a feast organized by Voroshilov on the occasion of the holiday, Stalin was too frank:
"The Russian tsars did a lot of bad things. They robbed and enslaved the people. They waged wars and seized land in the interests of the landlords. But they also did one good deed, creating a huge power - to Kamchatka. We inherited this power. And for the first time we , the Bolsheviks, rallied it as a single and indivisible power ... Therefore, anyone who tries to destroy the unity of this socialist power, who seeks to tear away individual parts and nationalities from it, is that enemy, the sworn enemy of the state and peoples of the USSR. And we will destroy every such enemy, even if he is an old Bolshevik, we will destroy his entire family, his family. We will mercilessly destroy those who, by their actions and thoughts (yes, and thoughts) encroach on the unity of the socialist power. For the complete destruction of all enemies - them and their kind !"
Three years later, the situation repeated itself. Stalin in November 1940 attacked his interlocutors with "comradely criticism". Dimitrov wrote:
“Everyone was about to leave when Iosif Vissarionovich took a glass and asked to speak. History, he said, spoiled us. We achieved many successes relatively easily. And this caused many complacency, dangerous complacency. People do not want to study, although we have excellent conditions. They think that since they are workers and peasants, since their hands are in the calluses, then everyone can do it, and they no longer need to study and work on themselves. And by the way, they remain absolute fools.
On September 7, 1939, he wrote down the following words of Stalin:
“We wouldn't mind if the imperialist powers got into a good fight and weakened each other... Hitler, without knowing it and not wanting it, would weaken and undermine the capitalist system. We can maneuver, push one side into the other, so that they hit each other as best as possible.
Unfortunately, these words of Stalin can be attributed to the relations of the communist parties among themselves, especially their leaders to each other. One of the most dramatic pages in the history of the world communist movement is the Stalinist repressions that fell in the 1930s on foreign communists, social democrats, and representatives of other anti-fascist forces.
Subjected to repression:
- leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party M. Gorkich, M. Filippovich, V. Chopich (in Spain he commanded the 15th International Brigade named after Lincoln)
- leaders of the German Communist Party X. Eberlein, G. Remmele, G. Neumann, F. Schulte, G. Kippenberger
- leaders of the Polish Communist Party E. Prukhnyak, Y. Pashin, Y. Lensky, M. Koshutska
- leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party B. Kun, F. Baiaki, D. Bokanyi, I. Kelen, S. Sabodash, F. Karikash, L. Gavro (hero civil war, holder of two Orders of the Red Banner)
- head of the Swiss Communist Party F. Platen (organized Lenin's visit to Russia in the spring of 1917)
- the leaders of the Bulgarian Communist Party R. Avramov (the first Bulgarian to be awarded the Order of Lenin), X. Rakovsky (member of the Central Committee of the RCP (b)), B. Stomonyakov (Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR).
- leaders of the Finnish Communist Party G. Rovio, A. Shotman, E. Gylling (comrade-in-arms of Lenin, headed the Karelian commune), A. Kuusinen (wife of O. Kuusinen), K. Manner (the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Finland)
The former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece A. Kantas, one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Iran A. Sultan-zade, the leader of the Communist Party of India G. Luhani, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Romania A. Dobrogeanu-Gherya were arrested and shot.
In the memoirs of a veteran of the Italian Communist Party, A. Roasio, it is said that more than a hundred Italian communists who lived in the USSR in the 30s were arrested and sent to camps, where living conditions turned out to be fatal for them.
The leaders and activists of the communist parties of Latvia were subjected to mass repressions (almost all the red “Latvian riflemen” died - “obstetricians of the revolution”, as Lenin called them), Lithuania, Estonia, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus (even before they entered the USSR).
They say that Dimitrov constantly stood up for the repressed. Employees of the apparatus of the ECCI, the representative offices of the communist parties compiled for Dimitrov lists of communists arrested in the USSR, supplying them with characteristics that could contribute to the release of these people. Dimitrov sent many such lists with a request for their release to Stalin, to the NKVD bodies, the prosecutor's office, and to the secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
For some time, a propaganda department also worked under the executive committee of the Comintern. One of the most high-profile cases of propagandists was the operation carried out by the German Comintern Maria Osten, who, during a period of particularly bad relations between Stalin and Hitler, brought a ten-year-old German boy Hubert Loste to the USSR from Germany and wrote the book Hubert in Wonderland, which was sensational at that time, where the German boy did not cease to rejoice violently at everything he saw in the USSR, while cursing everything that he left in his homeland. The preface to this book was written by Georgy Dimitrov himself. This book was read aloud in schools and pioneer houses, on the radio, and excerpts were published in newspapers. The photograph of Hubert himself took pride of place among other "pioneer heroes" next to the photograph of Pavlik Morozov. After the signing of the pact in 1939, the whole operation lost its meaning. Maria Osten was shot as a "German spy", and the unfortunate Hubert Loste was exiled to "places not so remote".
On June 22, 1941, he was placed at the head of the ECCI, leading all activities. In 1942, he became the head of the pro-Soviet Bulgarian Fatherland Front, which aimed to establish a communist regime in Bulgaria. On July 17, 1942, the Fatherland Front program developed by Dimitrov was officially proclaimed. It provided for the breaking of the alliance with Germany by Bulgaria, the liberation of the country from the Nazi invaders, the democratization public life and establishing close ties with the USSR. The idea of establishing a "Marxist government" in Bulgaria exposed the inner-party struggle.
After the First World War, the party was headed by Vasil Kolarov and Georgy Dimitrov. In the period 1922-1924, Kolarov was General Secretary of the Comintern, and after the unsuccessful rebellion of the Bulgarian Communists in September 1923, he, Dimitrov and other communist leaders left for the USSR, where they established the BKP Foreign Bureau.
Thinned as a result of the rebellion and outlawed in 1924, the BKP went through a period of struggle between the foreign bureau and the so-called. "leftist sectarians" in Bulgaria itself; the number of its members was reduced from 38,000 to 3,000. After Dimitrov was elected general secretary of the Comintern in 1935, the foreign bureau of the BCP won this fight, and the triumvirate, headed by Traicho Kostov, returned to Bulgaria to purge the ranks of the BCP. Thus, Dimitrov and Kolarov in Moscow and Kostov in Bulgaria became party leaders.
On May 15, 1943, Dimitrov dissolved the Comintern and in June 1943 he was appointed head. Department of International Information of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, for which the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Dimitrov in 1945 the Order of Lenin.
The victory of the Red Army at Stalingrad and its offensive to the west greatly contributed to the development of the resistance movement in Bulgaria. In 1943 the Bulgarian Workers' Party (BRP) created a united People's Liberation rebel army. The resistance movement was led by the communists, but also included representatives of other parties - the left wing of the agrarians, the socialists, the "Link", the Union of Officers and other opponents of the alliance with Germany. All these actions fit into the program of the Fatherland Front proclaimed by Dimitrov.
In September 1944, when the Red Army reached the borders of Bulgaria, about 30 thousand partisans participated in the resistance movement. On September 8–9, 1944, the leaders of the Resistance movement formed the government of the Fatherland Front, headed by Kimon Georgiev, and on October 28, 1944, an armistice was signed in Moscow.
The Communists occupied the key positions of ministers of internal affairs and justice in the government of the Fatherland Front and gradually ousted all their opponents.
Detachments of "people's militia" were organized under the leadership of the Minister of Internal Affairs, and partisan leader Todor Zhivkov organized mass raids that ended in special "people's tribunals" (what a familiar word).
According to official figures, in 1945 more than 2,800 people were executed and 7,000 people were imprisoned. Although the Bulgarian army remained at first under the leadership of the purely military minister Damian Velchev, key posts in the army were given to those who served in the Red Army or fought in the international brigades in Spain. Bulgarian army, subordinated Soviet command, participated in operations against German troops in Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria.
The hard line of the communists in the struggle for power destroyed the coalition of the Fatherland Front. The first sign of the conflict was the resignation of the leader of the BZNS G.M. Dimitrov, who emigrated to the United States. In 1945-1946, the split within the Fatherland Front deepened, and the leader of the BZNS, Nikola Petkov, led the opposition, which included socialists and representatives of other parties. After a referendum on September 15, 1946, Bulgaria was proclaimed a "People's Republic". In the October 27 elections to the Great People's Assembly, which was supposed to draw up a new constitution, the opposition won about 30% of the vote and won 99 out of 465 seats, the communists got 277 seats. Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria and on November 6, 1946 headed the Bulgarian government. In December 1948 Dimitrov became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Bulgaria.
The federation of the two South Slavic peoples of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia has been the dream of liberals, socialists and communists for many decades. Both Dimitrov and Tito were ardent supporters of the idea of federation, even during the war, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were exploring ways to create a Bulgarian-Yugoslav core, to which other Balkan countries were to join. However, Bulgaria's urgent demand for parity with Yugoslavia, as well as the Yugoslav proposal for Bulgaria to join the Yugoslav Federation as a seventh member, led in 1944–1945. to disrupt the negotiation process. In Dimitrov's "Diary" there are such entries on this account:
"September 27, 1944. Second conversation with Tito. We talked for a long time. We came to an agreement on issues affecting the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Communist Parties, as well as on the main points of the relationship between the new Yugoslavia and the new Bulgaria. Of course, there is complete mutual understanding between us, but difficulties are ahead in carrying out the intended line of creating an alliance between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, a federation of South Slavs (consisting of Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenes), stretching from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.Difficulties will be, especially from the British and their Great Greek and Great Serbian agents".
Negotiations resumed in August 1947. An agreement was reached to start the process of unification - the creation of a customs union, the removal of border restrictions and the promotion of cultural ties between Bulgarian Macedonia and the Macedonian Republic within Yugoslavia.
The peace treaty, which entered into force on October 2, 1947, recognized the borders as of January 1, 1941, i.e. secured the accession of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, but rejected its claims to Greek and Yugoslav territories, as well as Greek claims to Bulgarian lands. According to the agreement, Bulgaria had to pay reparations in the amount of 45 million dollars in favor of Greece and 25 million dollars in favor of Yugoslavia.
On February 10, 1948, the "Protocol on Mutual Consultations" was signed between the leaders of the three countries in the Kremlin. Dimitrov attached this document to his diary, providing it with the stamp "Top Secret". Stalin: "The Yugoslavs, apparently, are afraid that we will take Albania from them. You must take Albania, but - smartly ..." Stalin: "You should not delay the unification of the three countries - Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. But it is necessary that national assemblies decided and instructed the governments to start negotiations on unification. It is better to start with political unification, and then send troops to Albania - then this cannot serve as a pretext for an attack ... If you organize unification through national assemblies, everything will be all right. The Federation decides all issues. Between the Bulgarians and the Yugoslavs, the similarity in both racial and domestic terms is very great, and everyone will understand this association. And the Albanians will also benefit from the federation, since a united Albania will be created with an almost doubled population."
After the elections and the signing of the peace treaty, Dimitrov found it possible to start liquidating the opposition. Opposition leader Nikola Petkov was arrested and on September 23, 1947, despite numerous protests, was executed. Other opposition leaders were thrown into prison, and all parties, with the exception of a part of the BZNS that wished to cooperate with the communists, were dissolved or included in the BRP (k). In Bulgaria itself, repressions against Macedonians and supporters of an alliance with Yugoslavia, Protestant and Catholic communities and schools, as well as everyone who had contacts with Western countries, intensified. Trials were organized against Protestant priests who were found guilty of spying for the United States and imprisoned; relations with the Vatican were severed, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was forced to remove Patriarchal Exarch Stefan from his post.
After the liquidation of the opposition, the Great National Assembly on December 4, 1947 adopted the so-called. Dimitrov's constitution, and Bulgaria was reorganized along the Soviet lines and fell under the complete control of the Kremlin, practically losing its independence, and began to turn into the "sixteenth republic of the USSR."
He died in Moscow on July 2, 1949 in Barvikha near Moscow from diabetes. The sarcophagus with the body of Dimitrov was installed in a specially built mausoleum in Sofia. After the fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria, his body was taken out of the mausoleum and buried according to the Christian ritual by relatives and friends at the Central Sofia cemetery. In the summer of 1999, the Dimitrov Mausoleum was blown up three times in one week. The first explosion thundered on August 21, but the building, resembling a cube lined with white marble, only slightly warped. The second - also could not finish it, and only the third explosion on August 29 turned what used to be the mausoleum of Georgy Dimitrov into ruins.
Dimitrov's death in 1949, at the height of the conflict between Stalin and Tito, provoked a crisis in the leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party. A long-awaited conflict broke out between communist repatriates who returned after 1944 from the USSR and "local" communists.
The main candidate for Dimitrov's successor was, but he opposed Soviet policy economic exploitation of the country. Stalin supported the candidacy of Dimitrov's son-in-law, Vylko Chervenkov, who spent most of his life in the USSR. In 1949, Chervenkov organized a trial of Kostov and his supporters, accusing them of conspiring with Tito and American diplomats to stage a coup d'état. Kostov was executed, Chervenkov headed the BKP, and in February 1950, immediately after Kolarov's death, he also took the post of prime minister.
Chervenkov gained a reputation as the Bulgarian "little Stalin". Massive repressions against supporters of Kostov and Tito led to the expulsion of 92.5 thousand members from the party. A fierce propaganda campaign was launched to isolate Bulgaria from the "pernicious Western influence" and fight against the "enemy encirclement". The US and UK were portrayed as imperialist aggressors, setting Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey against Bulgaria; Yugoslavia was called a renegade of socialism; borders with these three neighboring countries were closed. In 1950, it was announced that 250,000 Turks had to be deported from Bulgaria, and in 1951-1952 about 160,000 of them were resettled in Turkey. In order to strengthen the elements of Bulgarian nationalism in this campaign and enlist the support of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, in 1953 she was given the status of patriarchy, which she lost in the 14th century when the country was captured by the Ottoman Turks.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Chervenkov's position in Bulgaria began to weaken. A harbinger of change was his resignation from the post of head of the BKP in March 1954. Todor Zhivkov became the first secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP. Chervenkov showed a complete inability to adapt to the policy of de-Stalinization carried out in the USSR by N.S. Khrushchev, and in April 1956 was removed from the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers of the NRB. The new regime tried to adapt to the changed situation in Moscow and to apply Khrushchev's ideas and policies to Bulgarian realities. Following similar processes in the USSR, the process of liberalization began. So, in 1956 Kostov was posthumously rehabilitated.
Mirnograd (Ukrainian Mirnograd, until 2016 - Dimitrov) is a city of regional significance in eastern Ukraine in the Donetsk region. It is located 8 km from the Pokrovsk railway junction. The village of Svetloye is subordinated to the city. Distance to Donetsk: by road - 68 km, by railway - 59 km. Distance to Kyiv: by road - 675 km, by railway - 797 km.
It was formed by merging the workers' settlements of the Novoeconomic and Grodovsky mines. Each of these villages has its own history. The discovery of coal seams on the lands of the village Novoekonomicheskoe belongs to Afanasy Prokofievich Evtukhov. In the spring of 1909, the community handed over four acres of land in Veselaya Balka for coal mining. It was a small peasant mine run by the contractor Yevtukhov. In 1911, most of the mines became the property of the Donetsk-Grushevsky joint-stock company of coal and anthracite mines, which led to the creation of one of the largest coal mining centers in the Donbass. With the revival of industrial production in 1910, new mines arose in the Grishinsky coal region: Novoekonomichesky, Grodovsky and Zapadno-Donetsky. The development of coal was carried out by small mines under the leadership of Kachanov. In 1911, industrialists Krechunesko and Ievlev received permission to explore minerals on the lands of the village of Novoekonomicheskoye. The new owners, who were part of the Donetsk-Grushev joint-stock company, began to lay mines. Mine No. 1 "Central" in 1911 was registered in archival documents as an industrial enterprise. The beginning of the construction of the Tsentralnaya mine should be considered the year of foundation of our city. In 1913, mine No. 3 (the predecessor of mine No. 3 "bis") and No. 4 came into operation. These mines were given the name Novoenomichesky Mine. In the spring of 1915, on the southwestern outskirts of the current city of Dimitrov, at that time on the territory of the Grodovsky mine, the construction of a new mine shaft began. It was shaft No. 5 of the current Dimitrova mine. The engineer Kazarinov became the owner of the Grodovsky mine. Small workers' settlements were formed near the mines. In 1934, the Grodovskiy mine was renamed "New Donbass", and in 1933 the mine was named after Georgy Dimitrov, a prominent figure in the international labor movement. Since 1923, the Novoeconomichesky mine became known as the Novoeconomic settlement, and in 1938 Novoeconomice received the status of a city. Having merged, the small settlements of neighboring mines received the name of the settlement of Dimitrov. On July 5, 1965, by the decision of the Donetsk Regional Council of Workers' Deputies, the city of Novoekonomicheskoe, territorially practically united with the village of Dimitrov, received the status of the city of Dimitrov. On May 9, 1972, by the decision of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR, the cities of Novoeconomic and Dimitrov were merged into one city of Dimitrov of regional subordination. On August 2, 1990, by the decision of the session of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR, the city of Dimitrov received the status of a city of regional subordination. On March 21, 2016, in accordance with the law on decommunization, the Dimitrovsky deputies elected ...
He was called the "Bulgarian Lenin", after his death in the era of socialism in Bulgaria, a mausoleum in Sofia was built for him like Lenin's and he was called the "leader" of the Bulgarian people.
Biography
Son of an artisan. From 1894 he worked as a typesetter. From 1901 - Secretary of the Trade Union of Printers (Sofia).
Bulgarian revolutionary, parliamentarian and rebel
In 1902 he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party (BRSD), and in 1903 he joined its Bolshevik part - the "Close Socialists". Since 1909, he was a member of the Central Committee of the BRSD (Close Socialists), which in 1919 was transformed into the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP). In 1909-1923 he was secretary of the General Workers' Union, organizer of strikes. In 1913-1923 he was a member of the Bulgarian Parliament. In 1921 he participated in the work of the III Congress of the Comintern and in the same year was elected a member of the Central Council of the Profintern. In September 1923 - one of the leaders of the armed uprising against the Tsankov government in Bulgaria. After the failure of the attempt to seize power, he fled with V. Kolarov and other agents of the Comintern to Yugoslavia, then lived in the USSR. He was sentenced to death in absentia for participating in an armed rebellion.
Agent of the Comintern in Germany
In autumn 1929 he moved to Germany. Lived in Berlin incognito. Actively participated in the activities of the Comintern, led communist propaganda.
He was arrested by the Nazis on charges of involvement in the burning of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, but at the Leipzig trial (September-December 1933) he was acquitted because he had an alibi. Dimitrov was good at German and his speeches at the trial were widely used in anti-fascist propaganda, and Dimitrov himself was granted Soviet citizenship, and the USSR demanded his extradition.
Leader of the Comintern
February 27, 1934 arrived in the USSR. In the 1930s, along with Ernst Thalmann and Dolores Ibarruri, he was one of the charismatic leaders of the international communist movement. In 1935 he was elected General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI).
After the VII Congress, the Comintern proclaimed a course towards a broad anti-fascist coalition. However, in connection with the repressions of 1937-1938, the influence of the Comintern decreased markedly. Dimitrov was not repressed, unlike most of the leaders of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe.
In 1937-1945 he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. On June 22, 1941, he was put at the head of the "leading troika" of the ECCI and headed all its current activities. In 1942, he was placed at the head of the Fatherland Front of Bulgaria, created under the control of Moscow. On May 15, 1943, the Comintern was dissolved, and in June 1943 Dimitrov was appointed head of the Department of International (Foreign) Policy of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, thanks to Dimitrov, became the actual successor to the business of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.
Leader of Bulgaria
After the Soviet regime was established in Bulgaria, Dimitrov arrived in his homeland in November 1945. From November 6, 1946 - Chairman of the Council of Ministers. From December 1947 until his death - General Secretary of the Central Committee of the BKP.
In the era of Dimitrov, Bulgaria became heavily dependent on the USSR and was even sometimes called the “seventeenth republic of the Soviet Union” (from 1940 to 1956 there were 16 republics in the USSR, including the Karelian-Finnish republic, which was transformed into the ASSR as part of the RSFSR in 1956).
Plan for the creation of the Bulgarian-Yugoslav Federation
Dimitrov actively supported the idea of creating a Bulgarian-Yugoslav federation, which, after JV Stalin's break with J. Broz Tito, caused great discontent among the Soviet leadership. After the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks condemned Tito's position, Dimitrov nevertheless came out in support of the Yugoslav leader.
Death
Shortly before his death, in April 1949, Dimitrov came to Moscow with L.P. Beria, at the urgent request of Beria himself, who persuaded the Bulgarian leader to come for treatment. Dimitrov had cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, chronic prostatitis. Already two weeks after his arrival, Dimitrov's state of health deteriorated sharply. On July 2, 1949, Georgy Dimitrov dies in Barvikha near Moscow, where he was treated for four months. Prominent Soviet doctors diagnosed heart failure II degree.
Dimitrov's body is delivered to Sofia already opened and embalmed.
Bulgarian doctors have not had access to the body for more than five years.
Peter Gylybov, who holds Dimitrov's brain, was an employee of the Bulgarian mausoleum group from 1949 to 1990, until the burial of Georgy Dimitrov. During the reburial, Gylybov managed to take samples of Dimitrov's hair and, together with his colleagues, conduct an examination of the existing remains. The examination showed that the mercury content was increased in the hair samples. However, the poisoning version never became official. At the same time, mercury-containing sublimate is used in embalming in the form of a 1% solution.
Mausoleum
The mummified body of George Dimitrov, in a sarcophagus, was placed in a specially built mausoleum. After the fall of the communist regime in Bulgaria, in 1990, the BSP party (the former Bulgarian Communist Party), at the request of relatives (according to the official version), decided to rebury the body. The body of the former leader was taken out of the mausoleum secretly, late at night. On February 25, 1992, the Municipal Council of Sofia decided to demolish the mausoleum, as a structure ideologically and architecturally alien to the city center.
In August 1999, the building was blown up on the fifth attempt, the debris was taken out by cars and disassembled for souvenirs. Today nothing reminds of the mausoleum in Sofia. Where he stood 42.695833, 23.326389 - a concreted area.
Today, documentary footage of the mausoleum can be seen in the video hall of the Museum of Socialist Art in Sofia.
In secret Soviet correspondence for G. Dimitrov, the code name "Brilliant" was used.
Memory
Cities renamed in honor of Georgy Dimitrov
- Four cities are named in honor of Georgy Dimitrov: the city of Dimitrov ( Donetsk region, Ukraine), as well as three with the same name Dimitrovgrad: in Bulgaria (newly built city), Serbia (former Tsaribrod) and Russia (former Melekess). All three Dimitrovgrad still bear these names.
Streets, avenues and avenues renamed in honor of Georgy Dimitrov
- In Kyiv, during his lifetime in 1938, the former Delovaya Street was named after Dimitrov. In 1977, an annotation board was installed on the facade of house No. 7 (bronze, granite, bas-relief; sculptor A.N. Skoblikov, architect A.F. Ignashchenko).
- In Moscow, in honor of Dimitrov, after his death in 1956, one of the central streets, Bolshaya Yakimanka, was renamed, which was returned to its original name in 1990.
- In St. Petersburg, a new street in the Kupchino district was named after Dimitrov in 1974, later a monument was erected in the square opposite the Chaika cinema.
- in Ulyanovsk. Street in the Upper Terrace District
- In Samara, a street in the Promyshlenny and Kirovsky districts was named after Dimitrov, stretching for more than 3 kilometers, and a memorial plaque was installed on the facade of the house where he lived and worked in 1941 (the real address is Shostakovich b. Rabochaya street, 5; Chapaeva Square).
- In the village of Stepnoye, Saratov region a street was named after him, more than three kilometers long and running from the entrance to the village along the park, near which the monument to G. Dimitrov is located, as a token of eternal friendship between the two peoples and gratitude to the Bulgarian builders.
- In Novosibirsk, an avenue in the Zheleznodorozhny district of the city and one of the road bridges across the Ob were named after Dimitrov.
- In Bryansk there is a street to them. Dimitrov, located in the Volodarsky district of the city.
- In Izhevsk there is a street to them. Dimitrov, located in the Industrial district of the city. Renamed in 1957 from Voroshilov Street.
- In Kaluga, on the right bank of the Oka River, Georgy Dimitrov Street is named.
- In the city of Kaliningrad, one of the central streets is named after Dimitrov.
- In Kostroma there is Dimitrova street.
- In the city of Krasnogorsk, a street is named after Georgy Dimitrov.
- In the city of Kursk, one of the streets is named after him.
- In the city of Mogilev (Republic of Belarus), one of the avenues is named after Georgy Dimitrov.
- In the city of Gomel (Republic of Belarus), one of the streets is named after Georgy Dimitrov.
- In the city of Saransk, one of the streets is named after him.
- In the city of Odessa, one of the avenues was named after him.
- In Voronezh, one of the major streets in the Levoberezhny district of the city bears the name of G. Dimitrov.
- In Lugansk (Ukraine) there is a street and a quarter named after G. Dimitrov.
- In the city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, one of the central highways (Avenue #114) bears the name of G. Dimitrov.
- In the city of Kherson (Ukraine), which is twinned with the Bulgarian city of Shumen, the central street of the Shumensky microdistrict is named after G. Dimitrov.
- In the city of Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, a street is named after Dimitrov.
- In the city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region, an avenue in the western part of the city is named after Dimitrov.
- In Zheleznogorsk (Kursk region), a street is named after Georgy Dimitrov.
- In Abakan, Khakassia, one of the streets is named after Georgy Dimitrov.
- In the city of Rybinsk (Yaroslavl region), one of the streets is named after Dimitrov.
- In the village of Tvarditsa, Republic of Moldova, one of the streets is named after Dimitrov
- In Novodvinsk Arkhangelsk region one of the first streets is named after Dimitrov, as the city was built by the efforts of Bulgarian workers. Also, a bust of Georgy Mikhailovich was erected in the city.
- In Barnaul, one of the streets in the central part of the city bears the name of Georgy Dimitrov (crosses the main street of the city - Lenin Avenue). Administration Building Altai Territory located on a section of Lenin Avenue between Dimitrova Street and Molodyozhnaya Street. Also on the street. Dimitrova is located one of the buildings of AltSU and building "B" of AltSTU.
- In the village of Chernomorskoe (Crimea), one of the microdistricts is called Bulgarian and bears the name of Dimitrov. The microdistrict was built by Bulgarian builders under the interstate program for establishing cooperation with Bulgaria. There is a memorial plaque on house number 6.
- In the city of Temirtau, Republic of Kazakhstan, one of the streets is named after Dimitrov.
Miscellaneous
- In honor of Dimitrov, the Order of Georgy Dimitrov of the People's Republic of Bulgaria was established. This order was awarded to L. I. Brezhnev in Sofia.
- In Magnitogorsk there is a village of Dimitrova.
- In Taganrog, the aircraft building plant was called the Dimitrov Plant.
monuments
- In Moscow, on B. Yakimanka Street, a monument to G. Dimitrov was erected.
- In Yaroslavl, opposite the Balkan Star tobacco factory, at the intersection of Pobedy Street and Oktyabrya Avenue, a monument was erected in 1985.
- In Vladikavkaz, on Lenin Street, a monument to Georgy Dimitrov was erected.
- In the city of Cotonou, Benin, a giant statue of G. Dimitrov still stands on one of the main streets today.
- In the village