Library:Georgi Dimitrov: Selected Speeches and Articles

A true revolutionary and proletarian leader is formed in the fire of the class struggle and by making Marxism Leninism his own.

It is not enough to have a revolutionary temperament — one has to understand how to handle the weapon of revolutionary theory.

It is not enough to know theory — one must also forge oneself a strong character with Bolshevist steadfastness.

It is not enough to know what ought to be done — one must also have the courage to carry it out.

One must always be ready to do anything, at any cost, which is of real service to the working-class.

One must be capable of subordinating one’s whole personal life to the interests of the proletariat.

G. DIMITROV

(Preface to The Life of Ernst Thaelmann)

Printed in Holland by De IJsel Press Ltd. Deventer, Holland

Introduction

In the passing of Georgi Dimitrov, July 2, 1949, the workers of the world, and the Bulgarian workers in particular, lost one of the most self-sacrificing, thoughtful revolutionary leaders, and one of the greatest Marxists of the present epoch.

The life of Georgi Dimitrov is a glorious page in the struggle of the working people all over the world against fascism and war and for the victory of socialism.

His life and activities are inseparably linked with the Bulgarian people — with its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke and from capitalist oppression over the last fifty years, with the people’s sufferings and victories, and, finally, with their successes in building the basis of socialism.

I can see him now, unfolding to me his dream of what the workers and peasants of his beloved Bulgaria would make of their beautiful country. And in spite of all the difficulties they would have to surmount, he had the firm and proud conviction that they would succeed.

Georgi Dimitrov’s unbreakable faith in the working class gave him, as it gives all who possess it, a strength which the capitalists and social democratic organisations can never give — the faith to triumph over all obstacles, never to be afraid of anything that the enemies of the workers may try and do, and the certainty both of the righteousness of our cause and that it will finally triumph. This lay at the heart of everything to which Dimitrov set his hand, from the time when as a young lad he commenced his activity in the revolutionary movement, to the day he became the proud leader of the new Bulgarian Workers’ and Peasants’ Fatherland.

Georgi Dimitrov was born on June 18, 1882, into a poor workers’ family. It was a family of fighters. His elder brother, Constantine, was secretary of the Print Workers Trade Union in Bulgaria; his other brother Nikolai, living in Odessa, took an active part in the illegal activities of the Bolshevik Party, for which he was sentenced to lifelong exile in Siberia, where he died. His third brother, Todor, was an active Communist in Bulgaria, and was murdered by the police in 1925. The rest of the family also took part in the struggle of the working people.

It was in such a family as this that Georgi Dimitrov was brought up.

From a very early age he suffered hardships, and at twelve years of age he had to leave school and become a printer. At 15 he entered the workers’ revolutionary movement, and at 18 he was already secretary of the oldest trade union in Bulgaria, the Print Workers Union.

In 1902, Georgi Dimitrov became a member of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, and joined the struggle of the revolutionary Marxist wing, known as the “Narrow Socialists”. In 1909 he was elected secretary of the revolutionary trade unions, formed and led by the party of the “Narrow Socialists”, in which position he remained until 1924, when the trade unions were dissolved by the fascist government.

As secretary of the Sofia organisation of the “Narrow Socialists”, as a County Councillor, a member of Parliament, member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian trade unions, Dimitrov put his entire energy and his whole personal life at the service of the liberation of the working class.

Organising the workers in their everyday struggle, Dimitrov strove to combine the economic and political struggle of the working class. He ceaselessly explained to the workers that the historic task of the proletariat, the destruction of capitalism and the creation of a socialist society, could be fulfilled only by a persistent political struggle against the ruling class. For his incomparable activity in the struggle against the exploiters and for the defence of the interests of the workers, he won the love of the entire Bulgarian people.

It is characteristic of Georgi Dimitrov that from the very beginning of his political activity he stood firm by the principles of proletarian internationalism. There was no great event in the life of the international working class movement which did not find its response in the Bulgarian trade unions, led by Dimitrov.

The Bulgarian workers carried out strikes and demonstrations in solidarity with the first Russian Revolution of 1905 — 7. Dimitrov organised collections to help those who were taking part in the revolutionary struggle in Russia, as he did for those taking part in the great strikes in Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and other countries.

During the First World War, Dimitrov organised the struggle against Bulgaria's being involved. In 1915, when the Bulgarian Government hurled its people into the war on the side of the German imperialists, the "Narrow Socialists" issued the call to struggle against the imperialist war. In parliament they voted against military credits and unmasked the robber aims of the war.

The members of the Central Committee were arrested and put on trial. Dimitrov among them was thrown into prison for his revolutionary work among the soldiers.

At the outbreak of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the "Narrow Socialists" taught the Bulgarian workers and peasants to follow the path of the workers and peasants of Russia. Mutinies and great demonstrations culminated in a general uprising which knocked Bulgaria out of the war in September 1918.

Under the leadership of Blagoev and Dimitrov, in 1919, the Party of the "Narrow Socialists" changed its name to the Bulgarian Communist Party and joined the Third International. In 1921, Dimitrov was a delegate of the Bulgarian Communists to the Third Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, where for the first time he met the leaders of the world working class movement — Lenin and Stalin.

May I say, with all due modesty, that this was also the first occasion I had the pleasure and honour of meeting Georgi Dimitrov — an event I can never forget, because the personal charm of the man and his political sagacity made an indelible impression on my mind.

In 1923 the fascist government of the hangman Alexander Tsankov began a bloody onslaught against the Bulgarian working people. It was met with an armed uprising. Dimitrov took the lead and set an example as a brave and unshakeable revolutionary leader. The Bulgarian fascists succeeded in crushing the uprising, but nevertheless, as Dimitrov said, it had created a deep breach between the people and the government which nothing could bridge.

After 1923, compelled to emigrate abroad, Dimitrov led the life of a professional revolutionary. He worked actively in the Executive Committee of the Communist International and became one of the organisers of the international struggle against fascism.

In 1933 he was arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo. After being months on end in chains in his cell, he was placed on trial on the charge of having organised the burning of the Reichstag.

Only a few days before he was arrested I had parted with Dimitrov in a café on the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. I remember now as clear as daylight the warnings that he gave as to how far the fascists would go in their terrorist activities.

There in the dock at Leipzig, Georgi Dimitrov demonstrated the courage of a revolutionary fighter. He exposed to the whole world the provocation of the Reichstag Fire and unmasked the fascist instigators of war. Before the fascist court he set an example of behaviour befitting a communist revolutionary.

Dimitrov told the fascist judges:

"It is true that I am a Communist, a proletarian revolutionary. It is true also that as a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, I am a responsible worker. But just because of this, I am not a terrorist adventurist, plotter, or incendiary.."

He refused the help of the official Defence Lawyer, announced that he would carry out his own defence, and explained what he was defending.

"I defend my own Communist revolutionary honour.

"I defend my ideas, my Communist views.

"I defend the meaning and content of my life"

Georgi Dimitrov was not defending himself, personally, at the Leipzig Trial, but the great cause of the working class. "No less determined than old Galileo we Communists declare 'And still it moves!’ The wheel of history moves on towards the ultimate, inevitable, irrepressible goal of Communism”.

From the defendant, he became the inexorable accuser of fascism, and carried millions of people throughout the world forward for the fight for peace and democracy. Progressive people from all countries arose to defend Dimitrov. Mass demonstrations of sympathy and a counter-trial were organised in Britain. Thanks to the mighty protests of the working people, to his own fight in the courtroom, and above all, to the action taken by the Soviet Union, Dimitrov was freed and again had the opportunity of continuing the fight as a leading personality in the international working class movement.

And in our present times, when the Tories and Right-Wing Social Democratic leaders of all capitalist nations fall over themselves to betray the national sovereignty and independence of their countries to the mercenary and aggressive warmongers of the U.S.A., it is timely to remember how proudly and defiantly Dimitrov defended his native land of Bulgaria.

“I think, comrades,” he said later, at the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, “that when the fascists at the Leipzig trial attempted to slander the Bulgarians as a barbarian people, I was not wrong in taking up the defence of the national honour of the toiling masses of the Bulgarian people, who are struggling heroically against the fascist usurpers, the real barbarians and savages; nor was I wrong in declaring that I had no cause to be ashamed of being a Bulgarian, but that, on the contrary, I was proud of being a son of the heroic Bulgarian working class.”

In Moscow, Georgi Dimitrov devoted himself entirely to the strenuous work of uniting all the forces of the working people in the world against fascism. Elected General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1935, Dimitrov, under the leadership of the great Stalin, worked out the strategy and tactics of the struggle against fascism. He fought persistently for the establishment and consolidation of the united, proletarian and people’s front against fascism, and against the war which the governing cliques in Germany, Italy and Japan were at that time feverishly preparing, with the help of the Anglo-American imperialists.

In his report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in his speeches to the Plenums of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and in the press, Dimitrov ceaselessly appealed to the peoples of all countries to rally around the Communist Party and bar the road of the fascist aggressors.

Dimitrov carried out great work in educating and developing the leading cadres in the Communist Parties — cadres faithful to the great teachings of Marxism-Leninism, to the principles of proletarian internationalism, to the defence of the interests of the peoples in their countries.

"Comrades”, said Dimitrov, addressing the Bulgarian Communist émigrés in Moscow in May 1934, "we have learnt, we are now learning, and we shall still learn from the glorious Russian Bolsheviks .We are happy that following the example of the old Bolsheviks who are still alive, we can further strengthen our will for the fight, and our confidence in victory.

“I personally, sitting manacled in prison, remembered in my hardest hours how the revolutionary proletariat used to live in old Tsarist Russia. I remembered with what energy and courage hundreds of thousands of our old Bolsheviks fought against the hardship and dangers which confronted them, and what heroism the Russian Bolsheviks showed in the period of the Civil War and afterwards, in the period of the building up of socialism!

"And if they, I said to myself, bore all these sufferings honourably and bravely, then I, a Bulgarian Communist, standing on a world tribune, should also stand firmly and unwaveringly at my post, and set an example to the German proletariat, to my Bulgarian brothers, and to all the international proletariat, an example of how a Bolshevik can, and should, fight the bourgeoisie and fascism, most deeply convinced of the inevitability of the final victory of the proletarian revolution."

During the Second World War, Dimitrov worked to mobilise all progressive forces in the world for the fight against the German-fascist marauders. He was one of Stalin’s closest associates in teaching how to broaden the national liberation, anti-fascist movement in the countries occupied by the Hitlerites.

During the national liberation struggles, the unity of the peoples grew stronger. The embryo of the future people’s power was developing, the permanent basis of the new people’s power was being laid.

For his outstanding work in the struggle against fascism, Georgi Dimitrov, in 1945. was awarded the Order of Lenin by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.

After the war Georgi Dimitrov ceaselessly exposed the intrigues of the Anglo-American instigators of a new war. He passionately appealed to the working people all over the world to bar the road of the new candidates for world domination. With a passion which was characteristic of him, and with the steadfastness of a proletarian revolutionary, Dimitrov stressed the inevitability of the victory of the working class — at the head of all the working people — over the dark forces of reaction and fascism.

“The whole of historical development, comrades” said Dimitrov, “is moving in the interests of the working class. The attempts of the reactionaries, of fascists of all kinds, of the entire world bourgeoisie, to turn back the wheel of history, are in vain.”

While carrying out his political and revolutionary activities in the international field, Dimitrov never separated himself from his native Bulgarian people, never forgot their struggle and their everyday needs. Wherever he was during the years of his forced emigration, he always closely followed the life and struggles of the Bulgarian people, directing every step taken by the revolutionary fighters of his Motherland, Bulgaria. There was no action taken by the democratic forces in Bulgaria without the leading counsel of Dimitrov.

Dimitrov combined the features of a steadfast proletarian internationalist and of a passionate patriot. Always and everywhere, he stood for the true interests of his people.

During the war years, he formulated the programme of the Fatherland Front, and led the armed struggle of the Bulgarian people against the fascist invaders, and their agents in the country. The name of Comrade Dimitrov inspired tens of thousands of Bulgarian patriots, who took up their rifles for the fight against fascist domination and capitalist exploitation.

On September 9, 1944, under his leadership and with the decisive help of the liberating Soviet army, the Bulgarian people overthrew the fascist government and for the first time in the history of the country, took the fate of the people and of the state into their own hands. The example and the name of Dimitrov inspired the Bulgarian soldiers and their commanders, who helped to defeat the German fascists. In the early days after September 9, his constant counsel was a guide for the young government of the people.

In November 1945, after 22 years of exile, Georgi Dimitrov again stepped on to his native soil. Back in Bulgaria, he worked day and night. He directly led all the activities of the party. He addressed all sections of the working people — miners, transport workers, tobacco and textile workers, peasants, office workers, women and youth, and intellectuals. He put before them concrete and clear tasks, appealed to them to fight for fundamental, democratic changes in the country, and for the creation of the conditions for building socialism in Bulgaria. Under his leadership, the Bulgarian people carried out a referendum for the abolition of the monarchy, resulting in a unanimous vote for a People’s Republic.

After the Communist-led Fatherland Front had won a great election victory, Georgi Dimitrov became Prime Minister of the People s Republic of Bulgaria. Under his leadership, the new Constitution was drafted, widely discussed and adopted. This Constitution gave legal form to the basic, democratic changes which had taken place in Bulgaria. Under his leadership, Bulgaria started on the road to socialism.

In December 1948, the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party took place, in which the power and influence of the Party was clearly expressed. Georgi Dimitrov delivered an outstanding report, m which he analysed the long struggle of the Bulgarian Communists for the freedom and independence of the country, for fundamental, democratic changes in Bulgaria. He indicated the further path of development of the Party and the country, and posedas an immediate task for the Bulgarian Communists and for the entire people, the laying of the foundations of a socialist society in Bulgaria.

In this report, Dimitrov gave a theoretical summing-up of the post-war developments in Bulgaria, and defined the road for the building of socialism in the country. The building of a socialist society in Bulgaria would be carried out through the industrialisation and electrification of the country, the mechanisation of rural economy on the basis of co-operatives, the further strengthening of the regime of people’s democracy, which carries out the functions of the proletarian dictatorship and develops in alliance and friendship with the Soviet Union, in hard class struggle against internal and foreign reaction.

"According to Marxist-Leninist principles, the Soviet regime and people’s democracy are two forms of one and the same rule — the rule of the working class in alliance with and at the head of the working people from towns and villages. They are two forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The particular form of transition from capitalism to socialism in Bulgaria does not and cannot alter the basic laws of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, which are valid for all countries. The transition to socialism cannot be carried out without the dictatorship of the proletariat against the capitalist elements and for the organisation of the socialist economy . . .

"From the fact that the people's democracy and Soviet regime coincide in the most important and decisive respect, i.e. that they both represent the rule of the working class in alliance and at the head of the working people, there follow some very essential conclusions concerning the necessity of making the most thorough study and the widest application of the great experience of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. And this experience, adapted to our conditions, is the only and best model for the construction of socialism in Bulgaria, as well as in the other people’s democracies.”

Georgi Dimitrov educated the working people of Bulgaria in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and international solidarity. He always appealed for the use of the great teachings of Lenin and Stalin and the rich experience of the Bolshevik Party as a guide.

He taught the Bulgarian Communists to be vigilant, to be always faithful to the great cause of Lenin and Stalin.

“Our Party” said Georgi Dimitrov, “has before it the example of the great Bolshevik Party, whose Central Committee and great leader Comrade Stalin, have lent us more than once invaluable aid by their advice and guidance. Our Party, which takes an active part in the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, is proud to belong to the great family of world communism, headed by the Bolshevik Party and the leader of progressive mankind, Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin”.

Under Dimitrov's ideological leadership, the treacherous gang of foreign agents led by Traicho Kostov, which had penetrated the Bulgarian Communist Party, was crushed.

The Bulgarian Communist Party, headed by Georgi Dimitrov, decisively proclaimed itself against the nationalistic and treacherous clique of Tito in Yugoslavia. Giving all his energy to the consolidation of the anti-imperialist camp, and so uniting all democratic forces, Dimitrov mercilessly exposed the treachery of the Titoites to the cause of the united, anti-imperialist front.

Until the very last moment of his life, Georgi Dimitrov directed the social changes in Bulgaria, and the building of the basis of socialism. Under his leadership, the Bulgarian working people have healed the wounds of war and revived their national economy, which had been plundered by the Germans. Under his leadership, the nationalisation of industry and the land reforms were carried out. The factories passed into the hands of the people, and thousands of landless peasants received land for the first time. Under Dimitrov’s leadership, there began the transformation of village economy through the co-operative tilling of the soil.

Under Dimitrov’s leadership, the Bulgarian Government concluded agreements for friendship and mutual aid with the great Soviet Union and with the People’s Democracies, guaranteeing the country’s national independence and further development on the road to socialism.

The death of Georgi Dimitrov was deeply mourned by the Bulgarian people and by working people all over the world. Twenty-seven foreign delegations were present at his funeral.

The scenes in Sofia on that sad and unforgettable day of July i o, 1949, can never be effaced from the memory. Only once before have I seen such grief, tears and sense of loss depicted on people’s faces, and that was at the funeral of Lenin.

To see such scenes is indeed to read history in people’s eyes. In these solemn days there will be millions of working men and women, peasants and their families, the best in the ranks of the working intellectuals and all who love peace, who will think with sadness, but with a great pride, of everything that Dimitrov stood for, fought for, and yet saw achieved.

Let us resolve to carry his life’s work forward in the conditions of our time, fortified and strengthened by his immortal example and by his precepts, to intensify the fight for peace and remove for ever the shadow of imperialist war - Harry Pollitt.

THE REICHSTAG FIRE TRIAL.