Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Georgi Dimitrov was a Bulgarian activist in the international communist movement, a trade union leader, professional revolutionary, secretary general of the Comintern (Communist International), and prime minister of Bulgaria from late 1946 to his death in 1949. Dimitrov's diary, from 1933 to 1949, held secret in Bulgarian Communist Party archives until its publication in 1997, catalyzed questions on the contradictory and contested history of communism and the clash of two opposing types of memory. Some view Dimitrov as an iconic figure who unrelentingly opposed fascism and advanced the Bulgarian and Slavic working class as well as socialist internationalism. Detractors view Dimitrov as a pawn of the Soviet Union and Stalin . Born in the Bulgarian village of Kovachevtsi, Dimitrov was forced to leave school at age 12 to support his family. As a compositor, Dimitrov joined the Union of Printing Workers, and in 1902, he joined the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party. After the party split in 1903, Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Communist Party fraction that joined the Third Communist International in 1919. Dimitrov was a labor activist. In 1906 he led a miners' strike in Pernik, and from 1909 joined the Central Committee of the party and became secretary of the Trade Union Federation. Elected to the National Assembly in 1913, Dimitrov remained a member of parliament until ... log in or subscribe to read full text