NINTH JUNE COUP D'ETAT AND THE 1923 UPRISING

The foundations of the BCP were laid in July 1891 when, on the initiative of D. Blagoev, the social democratic circles of Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Kazanlyk, and other cities united to form the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party (BSDP). The first and founding congress of the BSDP, which was held on 20 July 1891, adopted a party program and party statutes and elected a governing body, the General Council of the BSDP. The Marxist nucleus of the BSDP, which was headed by D. Blagoev, was opposed by a group of opportunists who were essentially opposed to making a social democratic movement into a party.

After the Second Congress of the BSDP (August 1892), the party began publishing a political organ, the newspaper Rabotnik. In 1893 a group of opportunists founded a reformist organization, the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union (hence their name, Unionists). In 1894, Blagoev’s supporters agreed to unite with the Unionists in the interests of working class unity. However, since ideological positions had not been sharply clarified, the merger strengthened the petit-bourgeois elements in the party, who took the name Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party (BWSDP). The First Congress of the BWSDP (July 1894), at which the Unionists were in the majority, adopted a program and statutes that were primarily’ opportunistic. The opportunists (Ivan Sakuzov and others) gained the majority in the leadership.

The struggle of the Marxist wing against the opportunists brought its first significant results at the Fourth Congress of the BWSDP (July 1897). The congress made some changes in the statutes and decided to publish the newspaper Rabotnicheski Vestnik for agitation and propaganda among the workers. D. Blagoev became the editor of the theoretical organ of the BWSDP, the magazine Novo Vreme, which was published beginning in January 1897. At the Fifth Congress of the BWSDP (July 1898), which discussed the character and goals of the party and the party press, Blagoev’s supporters fought to make the BWSDP a true vanguard of the working class. They defeated the opportunists, who wanted to direct the main efforts of the party toward propaganda among the masses of urban and rural petite bourgeoisie.

In 1900 the opportunistic elements grouped themselves around the magazine Obshto Delo, which propagandized the idea of class cooperation with the bourgeoisie. From that time on they were called Obshtodeltsi. The Eighth Congress of the BWSDP (July 1901) rejected the ideas of the Obshtodeltsi. A split in the BWSDP was the unavoidable result of deep ideological and tactical differences within the party.

At the Tenth Party Congress in 1903 the Marxists, who advocated a narrow, tight-knit party (hence their name, Narrow Socialists, or Tesnytsi), formed a separate revolutionary Marxist party of the Bulgarian working class, the Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party (Narrow Socialists), or BWSDP(T). The opportunists, so-called Broad Socialists, who wanted to transform the party into a broad organization of all productive strata (including the bourgeoisie), formed their own reformist party, the Bulgarian Workers’ Social Democratic Party (Broad Socialists), or BWSDP. The Broad Socialists launched a struggle for the solidarity and organization of the working class and led the revolutionary actions of the Bulgarian proletariat. The General Workers’ Syndical Union (founded in 1904) and the Union of Workers’ Social Democratic Youth (founded in 1912) were under the influence of the BWSDP(T). The party purged its ranks of the antiparty groups of anarchist liberals (1905) and progressives (1908). The BWSDP(T) fought against not only the Obshtodeltsi but also the supporters of Bernsteinism, Centrism, and other manifestations of opportunism in the international socialist movement. The Narrow Socialists were among the left-wing parties in the Second International, but they were closer to Bolshevism than to many other left-wing tendencies.

The BWSDP(T) fought against militarism and nationalism, and its representatives were prominent at conferences of the social democratic parties of the Balkan countries (1909, in Belgrade; 1915, in Bucharest). During the Balkan wars of 1912-13 and World War I, the BWSDP(T), which was led at that time by D. Blagoev, G. Kirkov, V. Kolarov, G. Dimitrov, and K. Kabakchiev, remained true to the principles of proletarian internationalism. The party fought resolutely against chauvinism and the war and for the democratic development of the Balkan countries. The party exposed the annexationist aims of the imperialist war and voted against war credits in parliament. The BWSDP(T) condemned the opportunists in the Second International, who advocated defense of the bourgeois fatherland, and called their position a betrayal of the interests of the proletariat.

However, the BWSDP(T) was not completely Leninist at that time. The Narrow Socialists did not understand that the peasantry is an ally of the proletariat and did not consider the dictatorship of the proletariat the fundamental problem of the proletarian revolution. They had not posed the question of power concretely, they did not connect the struggle for democracy with the struggle for socialism, and so forth. These errors caused the party to adopt the wrong position at the time of the Vladyia Uprising of 1918. The party as a whole did not lead this uprising, although soldiers and officers who were Narrow Socialists took part in it.

The BWSDP(T) enthusiastically welcomed the Great October Socialist Revolution and became a propagandist of its ideas in Bulgaria. This subsequently played a great role in the further development of the BWSDP(T) as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party. Under the influence of the October Revolution the BWSDP(T) freed itself of most of its former social democratic views and came under the banner of Leninism. The BWSDP(T) took an active part in founding the Third Communist International. The entire membership of the party joined the International in 1919. At its Twenty-second Congress in May 1919 the BWSDP(T) took the name Bulgarian Communist Party (Narrow Socialists), or BCP(T). At the same time, this congress became the First Congress of the BCP(T). The congress adopted a Program Declaration, which reflected Lenin’s ideas on the imperialist stage in the development of capitalism, the seizure of power by the proletariat, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. By the end of 1919 the Party had 35,500 members. On 27 December 1919, the BCP(T) led a general strike of the transportation and communications workers. In support of the general strike, the BCP(T) organized a seven-day political strike of all the workers in the country.

The Second Congress of the BCP(T) in June 1920 adopted a program and defined the tactics of party work in district and communal councils. The Third Congress (May 1921) confirmed a resolution on the agrarian question that proposed a policy aimed at establishing an alliance between the working class and the toiling peasantry. The Fourth Congress of the BCP(T) in June 1922 approved the tactics of the united front.

On June 9, 1923, a fascist coup d’etat took place in Bulgaria. During the spontaneous armed uprising of workers and peasants (June Antifascist Uprising of 1923), the Central Committee of the BCP(T) adopted an erroneous neutral position because the committee considered the fight between the fascists, led by A. Tsankov, and the supporters of A. Stamboliiski’s government a fight between the urban and rural bourgeoisie. The leadership of the BCP(T) soon understood its mistake and, as early as September 1923, led an armed uprising of the people against the fascist dictatorship. Although the September Antifascist Uprising of 1923 was defeated, it played an enormous role in the development of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement and was a turning point in the ideological strengthening of the Party in Leninist positions. After defeat of the uprising, the Party was declared illegal. During this period the Vitosha Party Conference of 1924 and the Moscow Conference of Central Committees in 1925 were important events in the life of the Party. The Vitosha Conference rallied the healthy forces of the Party, and the Moscow Conference outlined the policy for the next few years.

In 1927 the Workers’ Party (WP) was founded under the leadership of the BCP(T) to take advantage of the opportunities for legal party work. The Second Conference of the BCP(T) was held from December 1927 to January 1928. However, in 1929 left-wing sectarians seized the leadership of the Party. In 1935-36 they were removed from the leadership on the initiative and with the participation of G. Dimitrov, and the Party adopted a policy based on the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (1935). In 1938-39 the BCP(T) and the WP merged to form the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (BWP); after 9 September 1944, it took the name of BWP(Communists), or BWP(C).

During World War II BWP fought vigorously against Bulgaria’s entering the war and advocated a pad of friendship and mutual assistance with the Soviet Union. After the treacherous attack of fascist Germany on the USSR in 1941, the Party began organizing an armed struggle of the toilers against the fascist invaders and their Bulgarian agents. In 1942 the Fatherland Front was founded on the initiative of the BWP, and in 1943 the isolated partisan detachments united into a single rebel army. By September 1944 the BWP had about 25,000 trained revolutionary fighters in its ranks. The Soviet government’s declaration of war against monarchist fascist Bulgaria (5 September) and the Soviet Army’s entry into Bulgaria tipped the balance decisively in favor of the revolutionary forces. The Party, which was the guiding force of the Fatherland Front, aroused the Bulgarian people to an armed revolt on 9 September 1944. The monarchist fascist dictatorship was overthrown, and a people’s democracy was established in the country.

The Communist Party became the leading force in the state. Under its leadership the Bulgarian people carried out radical democratic and socialist reforms in a short time. The monarchy was abolished, an agrarian reform was carried out, industries and banks were nationalized, and a new constitution was adopted. Between May and August 1948, the BWSDP, which had been reestablished after the victory of the people’s regime, fully accepted the ideological and organizational principles of Marxism-Leninism and united with the BWP(C). The Fifth Congress of the BWP(C) was held on 18-25 December 1948. The congress adopted a policy aimed at the industrialization and electrification of the country and the cooperative organization and mechanization of agriculture. It also adopted a decision on the first five-year plan, a plan for building the foundations of socialism in Bulgaria. At this congress the BWP(C) was renamed the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). The Sixth Congress of the BCP in 1954 adopted the Directives on the Second Five-year Plan for the Development of Bulgaria for 1953-57.

The historic plenum of the Central Committee of the BCP in April 1956 was very important for the further development of the Party and the country. The plenum condemned the cult of personality and proposed measures to liquidate its consequences in all areas of public life. The Seventh Congress of the BCP, which was held on 2-7 June 1958, adopted the Directives on the Third Five-year Plan for the Development of Bulgaria for 1958-62 and made some changes in the Statutes of the Party. At the congress it was emphasized that from that moment on socialism would be the universally dominant and sole commanding force in the whole national economy in Bulgaria. The Eighth Congress of the BCP (November 1962) adopted the Directives on the Development of Bulgaria for 1961-80 and made a number of changes in and amendments to the Statutes of the Party. The Ninth Congress of the BCP (November 1966) adopted the Directives on the Fifth Five-year Plan for the Development of Bulgaria for 1966-70. In addition, the congress recognized that its main task was the intensification of all branches of the national economy on the basis of scientific and techhnological progress and adopted a policy aimed at the accelerated development of the machine-building, chemical, metallurgical, and electrical power industries. The congress made some changes in the Statutes of the Party. In particular, it abolished the candidate phase in admission to the BCP. The Ninth Congress was a powerful demonstration of Bulgarian-Soviet friendship and the unity of the CPSU and the BCP. BCP delegations attended the Conferences of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 1957, November 1960, and June 1969 in Moscow. The BCP approved the documents adopted at these conferences.

The BCP is built on the principles of democratic centralism. The highest agency is the party congress, and between congresses, the Central Committee. The politburo of the Central Committee is elected to guide political work, and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the BCP, to handle current questions. In conformity with the administrative division of the country, there are district, city, community, and rayon (in Sofia) committees of the BCP. At the end of 1969 the BCP had more than 672,000 members. The first secretary of the Central Committee of the BCP is Todor Zhivkov. The central organ of the BCP is the newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo. The Central Committee of the BCP publishes the magazines Partien Zhivot and Politicheska Prosveta.

Dimitar Blagoev Nikolov (14 June 1856 - 7 May 1924) was a Bulgarian political leader, founder of Bulgarian socialism and of the first social democratic party in the Balkans.

Blagoev was born in the village of Zagorichani in the region of Macedonia (today Vasiliada in Agioi Anargyroi, Kastoria, Greece), at that time part of the Ottoman Empire. In his youth he was influenced by the atmosphere of the Bulgarian National Revival. He studied consequently in Bulgarian Exarchate's schools in Tsarigrad (1873-1874), Adrianople (1874-1875), Gabrovo (1875-1876) and Stara Zagora (1876-1877), where during the Russo-Turkish War, he welcomed the Opalchentsi and the Russian Army. Later he studied at the Odessa Real School from 1878 to 1880. He became involved in public activities in the early 1880s, while a student at Saint Petersburg University in Russia. In the Russian capital he matured with Marx and while still under the influence of populist ideas and those of Proudhon and Lassale. Blagoev created the first social democratic group in Russia, called a party, with its press organ, the "Rabochi" (Worker) newspaper.

Extradited in 1885 by the Russian government, Blagoev returned to Bulgaria, settled in Sofia and began to propagate socialist ideas. In July 1891 on the initiative of Blagoev, the social democratic circles of Tarnovo, Gabrovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Kazanluk and other cities united to form the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party (BSDP). The Marxist nucleus of the BSDP was opposed by a group, who were essentially opposed to making the social democratic movement into a party. In 1893 this group, led by Yanko Sakazov, founded a reformist organization, the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union. In 1894, Blagoev’s supporters agreed to unite with the Unionists in the interests of working class unity and took the name Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party. Blagoev founder and became the leader of its left wing, which split from the BSDWP in 1903 to found the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Narrow Socialists). Under his guidance the foundations of the class trade-union movement was laid in 1904. From 1897 to 1923 Blagoev directed the publication of the party’s theoretical organ, the journal "Novo Vreme", which published more than 500 of his articles. Meanwhile he worked as teacher in different cities in Bulgaria. In 1905, Blagoev translated into Bulgarian the first volume of Das Kapital and a number of other works by Marx. Blagoev’s book "On the History of Socialism in Bulgaria" was published in 1906 and was the beginning of Bulgarian Marxist historiography. He led the delegations of narrow socialists at the Balkan socialist conferences in Belgrade (1910) and Bucharest (1915).

Blagoev was against foreign intervention by the Great Powers in Southeast Europe, believed in a Balkan Federative Republic and opposed Bulgaria's military engagements in the Second Balkan War and First World War. A deputy to the National Assembly of Bulgaria, Blagoev voted in October 1914, along with the rest of the faction of narrow socialists, against war credits. During World War I as deputy Blagoev exposed the war’s imperialist nature and the "traitorous role" of the Second International. Blagoev hailed the Russian October Socialist Revolution and propagandized for the ideas of the Bolsheviks. Under his leadership the Narrow Socialist party broke with the Second International. In 1919 the party joined the Communist International and became the Bulgarian Communist Party with Blagoev at its head. However, during this period Blagoev and the party as a whole did not completely adopt Bolshevik's positions on the basic questions. This determined the party’s policies during the Vladaya Soldiers’ Rebellion of 1918 and the military coup of June 9, 1923, when the party adopted a position of neutrality. He was also an opponent of the failed September Uprising and thought that there were no ripe conditions for a revolution in Bulgaria yet.

Blagoev was also author of a number of research essays on questions of Marxist philosophy, political economy, history, esthetics, and Bulgarian literature.

Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov, also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich, (18 June 1882 - 2 July 1949) was a Bulgarian Communist leader.

Georgi Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi in today's Pernik province, as the first of eight children to working-class parents from Pirin Macedonia (a mother from Bansko and a father from Razlog). His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant Christian, and his family is sometimes described as Protestant. The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia. Dimitrov trained as a compositor and became active in the labor movement in the Bulgarian capital.

Dimitrov joined the Social-Democratic Party of Bulgaria in 1902, and followed Dimitar Blagoev and his wing, as it formed the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1919, when it affiliated to Bolshevism and the Comintern. From 1904 to 1923, he was Secretary of the Trade Union Federation. In 1915 (during World War I) he was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament and opposed the voting of a new war credit, being imprisoned until 1917. In 1906, Dimitrov married his first wife, Serbian emigrant milliner, writer and socialist Ljubica Ivoshevich, with whom he lived until her death in 1933.

In June 1923, when Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was deposed through a coup d'état, Stamboliyski's communists allies, who were initially reluctant to intervene, organized an uprising against Aleksandar Tsankov. Dimitrov took charge of the revolutionary activities, and managed to resist the for a whole week. He and the leadership fled to Yugoslavia and received a death sentence in absentia. Under various pseudonyms, he lived in the Soviet Union until 1929, when he relocated to Germany, where he was given charge of the Central European section of the Comintern.

In 1933 he was arrested in Berlin for alleged complicity in setting the Reichstag on fire. During the Leipzig Trial, Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence and the accusations he directed at his prosecutors won him world renown. During the Leipzig Trial, several German aviators who had been trained in secret in the Soviet Union were arrested. They were released when, after secret negotiations, the Bulgarian communists Dimitrov, Vasili Tanev and Blagoi Popov tried in Leipzig were allowed to leave for the Soviet Union. There Dimitrov was awarded Soviet citizenship. The massive popularity he enjoyed made him an ally of Joseph Stalin's regime, and Dimitrov was appointed General Secretary of the Comintern from 1934, remaining in office until the organization's dissolution in 1943. He asserted himself as a Stalinist during and after the Great Purge. While in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov married his second wife, the Czech-born Roza Yulievna, who gave birth to his only son, Mityo, in 1936. The boy died at age seven of diphtheria. While Mityo was alive, Dimitrov adopted Fani, a daughter of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.

After the war, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria to head the Communist party there, and in 1946 succeeded Kimon Georgiev as Premier, while keeping his Soviet citizenship. As from 1946, Dimitrov started negotiating with Josip Broz Tito on the creation of a Balkan Federation, which was supposed to include Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and an enlarged Macedonia. The idea eventually emanated in the 1947 Bled accord, which called for cooperation in several areas between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The preliminary plan for the federation included the incorporation of the Blagoevgrad Region ("Pirin Macedonia") into the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and the return of the Western Outlands from Serbia to Bulgaria. In anticipation of this, Bulgaria accepted thousands of teachers from Yugoslavia who started to teach the newly-codified Macedonian language in the schools in Pirin Macedonia and issued the order that the Bulgarians of the Blagoevgrad Region should claim а Macedonian identity.

However, differences soon emerged between Tito and Dimitrov with regard to both the future federation and the Macedonian question. Whereas Dimitrov envisaged a federation where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing and Macedonia would be more or less attached to Bulgaria, Tito saw Bulgaria as a mere seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia tightly ruled from Belgrade. Their differences also extended to the national character of the Macedonians - whereas Dimitrov considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians, Tito regarded them as an independent nation which had nothing to do whatsoever with the Bulgarians. Thus the initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm.

Luckily for Dimitrov, Tito's plans had become an obstacle in the way of Stalin's wish for total control over the new Eastern Bloc. The falling out between Stalin and Tito in 1948 gave the Bulgarian Government an eagerly-awaited opportunity of denouncing Jugoslav policy in Macedonia as expansionistic and of revising their policy on the Macedonian question. The ideas of a Balkan Federation and a United Macedonia were abandoned, the Macedonian teachers were expelled and teaching of Macedonian throughout the province was discontinued. Nevertheless, due to his initial actions on the Macedonian question, Dimitrov is still admired by many in the Republic of Macedonia, with a Skopje high school being named in his honor, whereas many in Bulgaria consider him to be a national traitor.

Dimitrov died in 1949 in a sanatorium near Moscow. The rising speculations that he had been irradiated (or poisoned in some other way) have never been confirmed, although his health seemed to degenerate quite abruptly. His body was embalmed and placed on display in the Sofia Mausoleum. After the fall of Communism in Bulgaria, his body was buried in 1990 in the Central cemetery of Sofia. The mausoleum was blown away in 1999.

Communist Party of Bulgaria had its origins in Russian Socialism. Prior to the First World War the Socialist groups in Bulgaria were led by Marxist intellectuals who had served their apprenticeship in Russian Socialist organizations and who imitated the examples of their Russian tutors. Drawing his material from largely unreferenced and controversial sources, Dr. Joseph Rothschild traces the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party from its Socialist beginnings to its development into a small but dedicated group which strenuously and dedicatedly sought to achieve power through revolution as well as through economic and political penetration of the society. During the early 1920s the Party capitalized on the hardship of the masses as well as on nationalistic sentiments to gain in membership and legislative representation, but its doctrinaire attitude toward the peasantry prevented it from becoming effective politically. Its terroristic activities resulted in repressive measures by Bulgarian government which drove the Party underground. During the late 1920s and early 1930s the Bulgarian Communists sought in vain to re-enter the political life of the country by championing minority groups and the exploited peasants and by trying to establish "front" organizations. The ability of the Communists in Bulgaria to survive in spite of their lack of revolutionary success and in the face of persecution by the State was largely owing to the corruption of government officials and the contempt of bourgeoisie for the peasant masses which were thereby alienated. Communist advocacy of social justice and social revolution so impressed the peasants that they did not resist the Party's installation into power by the Soviet Union in 1944.

Addendum: We shall start are short commentary with the concluding paragraph from the review essay. Strangely enough the book "Communist Party of Bulgaria" was written by someone who never visited Bulgaria or had to do anything in common with BCP. Joseph Rothschild of New York used largely untapped sources from various Archives of the Communist International — commensurably, in libraries at Paris, London, Berlin, etc. How those matters of documentation reached their lodges of destination would remain a secret but it is evident that Bulgarian Communists were good emissaries of their subversive activity and assiduously published on every important event that concerned Bulgarian proletariat. The reference list of Rothschild's book gives a fullest account on sources from the 1920s and 1930s that report those tumultuous years of wrath and discontent. Few appendices are given in the book that also show, how the proletariat masses grew from predominantly syndicate and trade-unionist organizations into a revolutionary force that craved and dismantled the government machine of a whole country.

So far we should peg our attention to the Bulgarian side and try to describe what Bulgarian communists did from within struggling to de-confound the mist of their own revolutionary past. As a rule no printed sources existed in Bulgarian language that facilitate such a compound work. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) in its variant membership detachments and interchangeable name-face was never a homogenate mass of people to discern — at least, in the period from the first half of XX century. Banished and persecuted by Police and other Military organizations, the BCP hardly had time to consolidate and have its permanent printing organ. Whatever remnant materials are available from this period are scattered leaflets and occasional brochures that found their way among the mass public incidentally. Functionaries of the Party, who managed to escape abroad, were lucky enough to be given a chance to work; consequently, libraries of most important Labourism centers in Western Europe had received deposits from research work of this Bulgarian emigrants. This were the principal sources that were used later and in orderly manner translated in the mother language which made possible for contemporary scholars of Communism to formulate their own history.

Bulgarian communism gained speed in the 1950s and the further 2-3 decades provided lavish time to compile and re-write a considerable literature database. Disgruntled by lack of opportunities in capitalist and monarchist Bulgaria, the modern communist scholarship employed vast number of devotees to serve the publication activities of the Party and its privilege nomenclature. Especially here the Bulgarian pawns of communist conspiracy excelled in copying their forbidding Soviet masters — in everything, commencing with Party congresses and to the utmost village or community in the countryside. By the 1980s it hardly remained any thinking head in Bulgaria that availed himself in another way different from Communism and Internationalism. Ten years later the end of Cold War came abruptly and unexpectedly. What happened then in a climate of new democracy is another story.

Seemingly the clear-cut period from 1944 to 1989 should be termed Communism proper by exponents of modern political periodization. Contrary to Marxist-Leninist doctrinaire the intermediate period between the two World Wars should be named "lag-time" or with other appropriate idiom. While multitude of social factors become adapted to fit a projectile with Communist landscape, it becomes a futile effort by the writer of these lines to comprehend how a miserable force of 3000-4000 members (i.e., which actually composed the BCP in year 1919) could turn into a million mass rally that overturned democracy in Bulgaria by the end of World War II.

Three periods of revolutionary struggle are demarcated in the titular book by Prof. Yono Mitev. They culminated with mass insurrections after coup d'etats by the Bulgarian Military League. The actors are always high military personnel while simultaneously leading Bulgarian politicians are put in prison. No eminent Communist or otherwise Marxist is directly present at the time of those government turnovers. Thus, after reading this book about the 9 June 1923 coup d'etat and the subsequent June and September rebellions, it becomes twice more unclear why the Communists are still at power today, ditto.

(i). Block-list of Bulgarian Social Democratic Party (left wing) from the XVII National Assembly, 1914-1918. The parliamentary group consisted eleven members: ~ D. Blagoev (leader, upper right) + V. Kolarov, G. Kirkov (radicals, central chunk 1 and chunk 2) + G. Dimitrov (syndicalist, below right) and others.

(ii). Funeral ceremony of Dimitar Blagoev-Dyado (7 May 1924). This staunch socialist was never adherent of militant activities and preferred the slow but permanent way of negotiations with the bourgeoisie. Blagoev was in poor health in his last years and did not participate in the revolutionary 1923 events.