Dimitar Blagoev
Encyclopedia
Dimitar Blagoev Nikolov ; (June 14, 1856 – May 7, 1924) was a Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n political leader, the founder of Bulgarian socialism and of the first social democratic party in the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

.

Biography

Blagoev was born in the village of Zagorichani in the region of Macedonia
Macedonia (region)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...

 (today Vasiliada in Agioi Anargyroi, Kastoria
Agioi Anargyroi, Kastoria
Agioi Anargyroi is a former municipality in Kastoria peripheral unit, West Macedonia, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Kastoria, of which it is a municipal unit. Population 2,845 . The seat of the municipality was in Korisos....

, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

), at that time part of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. In his youth he was influenced by the atmosphere of the Bulgarian National Revival. He learned consequently in Bulgarian Exarchate
Bulgarian Exarchate
The Bulgarian Exarchate was the official name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church before its autocephaly was recognized by the Ecumenical See in 1945 and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was restored in 1953....

's schools in Tsarigrad (1873-1874), Adrianople (1874-1875), Gabrovo
Gabrovo
Gabrovo is a city in central northern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Gabrovo Province. It is situated at the foot of the central Balkan Mountains, in the valley of the Yantra River, and is known as an international capital of humour and satire , as well as noted for its Bulgarian National...

 (1875-1876) and Stara Zagora
Stara Zagora
Stara Zagora is the sixth largest city in Bulgaria, and a nationally important economic center. Located in Southern Bulgaria, it is the administrative capital of the homonymous Stara Zagora Province...

 (1876-1877), where during the Russo-Turkish War, he wellcomed the Opalchentsi
Opalchentsi
Opalchentsi were Bulgarian voluntary army units, who took part in the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The people in these units were called opalchenets-pobornik meaning "volunteer combatant"....

 and the Russian Army. Later he studied at the Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

 Realschule 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
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...

. Blagoev created the first social democratic group in Russia, called a party, with its press organ, the "Rabochii" (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 Tyrnovo, Gabrovo, Sliven, Stara Zagora, Kazanlyk 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
Yanko Sakazov
Yanko Ivanov Sakazov was a Bulgarian socialist politician.A native of the northeastern city of Shumen, Sakazov went abroad for studies during his youth, studying in Western Europe and Russia. He was a student of natural sciences, philosophy and history in Germany, biology in England and literature...

, founded a reformist
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...

 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. He was a founder of the 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
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...

 and a number of other works by Marx. Blagoev’s book "From the History of Socialism in Bulgaria" was published in 1906 and it book initiated Bulgarian Marxist historiography. He led the delegations of narrow socialists at the Balkan socialist conferences in Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

 (1910) and Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

 (1915).

He was against foreign intervention by the Great Powers in Southeast Europe
Southeast Europe
Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a relatively recent political designation for the states of the Balkans. Writers such as Maria Todorova and Vesna Goldsworthy have suggested the use of the term Southeastern Europe to replace the word Balkans for the region, to minimize potential...

, believed in a Balkan Federative Republic and opposed Bulgaria's military engagements in the Second Balkan War
Second Balkan War
The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 29 June 1913. Bulgaria had a prewar agreement about the division of region of Macedonia...

 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
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 as deputy Blagoev exposed "the war’s imperialist nature and the traitorous role of the Second International". Blagoev hailed the Russian October Socialist Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

 and propagandized for the ideas of the Bolsheviks. Under his leadership the Narrow Socialist party broke with the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...

. In 1919 the party joined the Communist International and became the Bulgarian Communist Party
Bulgarian Communist Party
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1990 when the country ceased to be a communist state...

 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
Vladaya
Vladaya is a village situated on the northwestern parts of Vitosha mountain in western Bulgaria. - Geography and population :The village is situated in the valley between Vitosha mountain and Lyulin Mountain on the outskirts of Sofia city....

 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
September Uprising
The September Uprising was an armed insurgency staged in September 1923 by the Bulgarian Communist Party under Comintern pressure, as an attempt to overthrow the Democratic Accord government of Bulgaria that had come to power with the coup d'état of June 9. Besides its communist base, the...

 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. He died in Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

, Bulgaria.

The city of Gorna Dzhumaya in today's Blagoevgrad Province
Blagoevgrad Province
Blagoevgrad Province , also known as Pirin Macedonia , is a province of southwestern Bulgaria. It borders four other Bulgarian provinces to the north and east, Greece to the south, and the Republic of Macedonia to the west. The province has 14 municipalities with 12 towns...

 in Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 was named after him Blagoevgrad
Blagoevgrad
Blagoevgrad is а city in southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Province, with a population of about 74,302 . It lies on the banks of the Blagoevgradska Bistritsa River....

.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK